(No part of this re/inter/view discussion may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and the individual posters.) --Full Copyright notice is at the end of each file.
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The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with Jane Gallop, beginning January, 1998. The subject of conversation is/was Jane's Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment (Duke UP, 1997). |
As one of the "bad, sad, blind, angry, revenge"-seeking (I hope I've included them all :) ) students referred to in "jg>vv: authorizing questions and defining," I have a few questions about Jane's book and her response to the re/inter/view that I realize, Gary, she may not be able to or even desire to answer in this lifetime or any future incarnations. I was going to pose them for lurking Byron's sake (whom, having just seen "My Best Friend's Wedding," I had imagined out there singing, "Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying"), but since he and Steve have recently posted (in "feminisms/making knowledge" and "Re: jg>jp") more eloquent versions of some of the same questions I have below, I'll merely add mine to their ideas about which I think inquiring minds would like to know.
Jane, It would seem, given your admission to Jim that you "are not enjoying" the re/inter/view "because you "usually attempt to avoid volunteering for abuse" ("jg>jp") that you are experiencing some form of pain/discomfort/whatever you call the result of abuse. Do you feel, then, as Victor asked in his second round of pain questions that it is because he has been cruel to you ("vv>jg:authorizing questions")? If so, in what way? And if so, how might that allow you to answer (and keep your learning process alive) his question of "whether you can have, in your pedagogy and in _Feminist Accused_ (after the fact) [and I would add, now having experienced this re/inter/view] empathy for the two students" ("vv>jg: style and seduction") or, since I'm asking, me? Victor claims he is asking the "question with your best interest in mind." Do you believe him? Do you not feel the issue of empathy is related to the issue of transference that you claim in your book "is an inevitable part of any relationship we have to a teacher who really makes a difference" (56)? Or is empathy only related in terms of what the student should feel for the teacher? Do you think Victor's question is merely another "inquisitorial trick" ("jg>vv: pedagogy...pain") to find out how you "feel" about your accusers/me or what your transferences as a teacher might have been toward them/me? Or do you believe, by definition and as your usage of it in your book would imply, that transference can only occur from a student toward a teacher? Or is there space in "feminist desire" where transference might occur from a teacher toward a student by way of the teacher imbuing the student as an authority about something that the teacher lacks? Or is the teacher's desire, due to her institutionalized authority, always by definition a counter-transference? Do you feel in your examples in your book of your having had sex with your professors as a student and students having had sex with you as a professor, that transference occurred in those relations? If so, having wanted to get your professors "into bed in order to make them more human, more vulnerable" (41), do you think of transference as an effort to make an authority more human, more vulnerable? Do you think the students who had sex with you were also trying to do the same? Do you think students who don't want to have sex with you, then, are somehow treating you less human or vulnerable? Given Victor's questions about pain and whether or not one can redescribe one's self after having suffered it and any answers you might have had to my previous transference questions, do you feel the way you used the theory of transference in your defense and in your book could be said to be a form of causing pain and/or limiting your accusers'/my ability to redescribe themselves/myself? When, in your latest response to Victor, you say, "If I had known when you politely invited me to do this that you thought my book a monstrous symptom of narcissism, that you were simply setting me up, framing me, putting me in your duck barrel where you could take aim, I of course would never have agreed. But you so sweetly & ingratiatingly said you thought the book raised important intellectual issues (appealing I presume to my narcissism to lure me in).... [W]hat I find creepiest is that you chose to lure me in by pretending respect" ("jg>vv"), do you feel he's pulled off a "daughter's seduction" and your response is an attempt to undermine his "impassive mastery"? Do you feel you transferred a trust upon him that you now feel has been betrayed? And how might the way you felt when writing the above response be related not only to whether you can empathize with your accusers/me, but to the argument your book at least partly hinges upon that it was only in response to your judgments of my work that I felt "let down, became outraged, and charged [you] with sexual harassment" (55)? You claim Victor feigned respect for your work/you for ulterior motives and now you feel he finds it "not satisfactory" (55), shall we say, while you are "incapable of writing" and you feel what? Seduced? Betrayed? Harassed? Are you becoming "increasingly suspicious and angry" (55)? You said in your first response to Victor that there "are in fact two Janes in the book (or a split Jane perhaps). Jane is both a character in the story and the narrator who is telling the story AND analyzing its meanings" ("Gallop reply to VV"). And yet both Janes primarily talk about sex and the issue of teacher-student consensual amorous/sexual relations. Since you have yet to answer Thomas' questions about whether feminists can disadvantage other feminists and why the relation between sex and power is absent from your book ("tjr>feminism disadvantage"), and since I assume the reader is to assume that both Janes are feminists, where is the Jane who speaks about about harassment? If you did not want to explore the issue of power in the teacher-student relationship and the abuse of power that a charge of harassment is predicated upon, why didn't you just title your book _Feminist Accused of Being Sexy_? Is the only harassment in your book the fact that you feel university policy is cramping your teaching style? And does UWM's policy in fact say that you cannot teach/preach/or otherwise engage in sexuality as a teacher or merely that you cannot grade sexuality? Is the harassment of your title, then, that you're being asked to give up your authority? Are you saying, as your responses to Johanna and Jim and Victor would seem to imply, that you're the real victim here? That the two Janes are in fact Power Feminist Jane (when she's a student "screwing" [42] her teachers or when she's describing students who wanted to screw her) and Victim Feminist Jane (when she's a teacher whom students do not want to screw or when university policy won't let her screw her students and their work at the same time) and, as Alanis Morissette (who might be said to be a "young feminist") sings, "Isn't [that] ironic....don't you think?" Say that ain't your game, Jane! (She says, as Steve points out as necessary in not being face-to-face, in her best "naive" and "nostalgic" voice, alluding to the boy who asked his hero baseball player if he'd lost the game on purpose, "Say it ain't so, Joe!") Gary was wrong in his "Re: questions posed" response. You're the man, Jane! (metaphorically speaking). You're the only female Distinguished Professor at UWM (last I heard), a noted authority who's written seminal work, a person who could hire a male lawyer to intimidate the female investigators when your female accusers/I could not, and who has, in a stroke of genius, brilliantly claimed: "I saw my 'case of sexual harassment' as a 'limit case' because it was a kind of fringe example, a feminist accused of harassing feminists rather than the usual male pig.... [Thus,] [t]he students' version was not a 'classic' case.' Because in a classic case I'd have had to be a man" ("jg>vv: authorizing questions and defining"). How could you possibly be the victim here? What kind of Power Feminism is that? Be a mensch. Get a sense of humor (and I'm here to testify that it can help you through all kinds of situations). Answer the questions you desire, ignore what you find "offputting," create your own "productive" q & a virtual reality and buck up. Power Feminism is counting on you and because you're blazing the trail, we can all celebrate, as Annie and Aretha sing, that "sisters are doin' it for [and to] themselves!" Sadly, Badly, Madly, Cadly (which is as close as I can get to evoking revenge and blindly's just going to have to go for poetry's sake) Yours, Dana "Bad Dog"--Dr. Bad Dog to you--Beckelman
I don't know if this refers to my post at all, but I wanted to say a couple of things in regard to my two questions to Jane. The first question was not accusatory (at least in my intentions when I wrote it). So far I haven't bought Jane's responses to the master/slave - power, questions, and I provided her a way to couch it through her own terms victim/power feminism that would make me buy it. That, to me, seems pretty nice. As far as the second question goes, I think Steve's and Johanna's posts are on the money as far as assessing the situation. I brought up the fictious notion of Victor's new book _Sophist Accussed of Rhetorical Harrassment_ as a joke to show that my intentions aren't simply to flame Jane. But also as a joke that makes an important point. Now the roles have been reversed. Victor is the teacher writing a book, Jane the student who has been pained. All this goes back to what I thought Victor was getting at in his original post-- making knowledge often comes from PAIN. And to do so that pain has to be acknowledged by all parties. I asked Jane to make knowledge from her pain. This is an open question, and really any answer will do. Blowing my intentions to lurk, Byron
Johanna, Thanks for the "oy," adding another ethnic dimension to my switch of what's-his-name's ethnic identity. Thanks even more for your useful thoughts about how different disciplinary constructions are working to produce some of what I've experienced as infuriating misunderstanding. I think you are right. Certainly about assumptions about what "everyone has read." Also I realized that in his first question, Victor was using terms like "ethos," & although I have a vague sense of what they mean, they are not part of my active vocabulary & I don't know what baggage they carry. As for your remarks about learning from fires, I actually have always enjoyed learning from such (that in fact was literally the idea behind my book). But still your image made me feel like Joan of Arc. Finally, as for applying the critique of maternality to pedagogy, I have too much to say, but a few notes: 1)see my "The Teacher's Breasts" in the collection I edited with Indiana UP called _Pedaggoy_ (I'll leave the slip in, in homage to your "oy") 2)I think like the mother, the teacher's power and sexuality are considered evil & threatening (at least the female teacher's). Too many women and/or feminist teachers buy the maternal by trying to deny their authority (& their sexuality) & become as selfless, self-effacing, self-denying as possible. I think this as pedagogically unhealthy (& hypocritical) as I do when a literal mother does such in the family. 3)I try to put my authority on the table in the classroom, talk insistently about grading, about the parameters for classroom discussion. This is just a beginning. Thanks for asking. (Do you have a last name?) Jane
Steve, Yes, you're right that it is very much the medium that is causing my distress. While I disagree vehemently that f2f q & a's are not productive (I've been in a large number which are at least here at UWM, where the group as a whole starts working out some ideas taking off from the lecture), I agree that this is very different. What it most resembles (in my experience) is talk radio. I did that last year & hated it too (every caller attacked me and either diagnosed me as sick or condemned me as immoral, or both). But this is much much more disconcerting than talk radio. First because that lasted an hour & this is weeks. But more importantly b/c it literally comes to me on my computer monitor in my study, early in the morning or late at night. My computer, where I go to write, where it's important that I feel a sense of the value of my writing, is as if talking back. For me the biggest difference from the public appearance, is that this has invaded my private space. Last nite while perusing a message from Victor, I ended up yelling at my son who came in to ask if I'd tuck him in. I'd only just begun to understand that part of my experience was my total unfamiliarity w/ the format. And so your msg & your apparent interest in the format (albeit in the annoying mode of celebrating it for taking away my power, something I'm just not gonna appreciate) has prompted me to tell you what I've thought about this aspect of this experience. As I said, I've never been on a list. I've only used email to communicate w/ friends or to handle business correspondence (arrangement of conference panels, requests for letters of recommendation etc). Never before have I been attacked in my own home by strangers. I'm afraid I've gone on too long. Not that I expect sympathy from you. Figured you'd enjoy more evidence of my subjective experience of the list. Jane
I've read your book, Jane. And I can appreciate your attempt to mark(et) it via the title as a tabloid-esque, albeit clear piece of writing (as opposed to what one usually associates with a tabloid headline: "Feminist Resurrects Clarity and Teacher/Student Sex: Feminists, Teachers, and Students Baffled!" above an image of a teacher resurrected from the dead, wrapped in a shroud and halo laying hands on the sick student at her feet). I'm interested in why you have tied your responses on this list to the banner of clarity, and why you tie your arguments in the book to the banner of goodness...and all in the name of the pursuit of knowledge. So let me begin. In the book you said, "I became a feminist, and I became a good student." And all this was "changing my life for good." You associated "bad power" with "men's power." "I regard sex as a considerable good." My questions are: Is it possible that there are permutations of "goodness" that do not match what you value as "good" in the dynamic above? When you say this combination of feminism and the pursuit of knowledge changed your life for "good," are you using that term ambiguously as both "good" (vs bad) and "for good," meaning forever? Are the pursuit of knowledge and feminism and goodness so inextricably entwined that you cannot separate one from the other? If so, do you think it's possible that, especially given all the wdie range of protests you've received over the years (ie from your first attempts to hold a conference on teacher/student sex to the present critiques of your book), that you are wrong to conflate in practice what was conflated for you, indeed that constructed you such that you extrapolate your experience as "good" for all female students? And are you now consorting with clarity under the auspices of the pursuit of knowledge only in order to maintain your innocence, your goodness? Being clear is quite often mistaken for an imperative to be "brief," "succinct," or "precise." Nietzsche wrote that "the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation." But, being brief can have the effect of being reductionist. Being reductionist excludes much in an argument that is necessary to contextualize and back a claim. So, as I see it, the argument for clarity is not so much about divesting our language of so-called "theoryspeak" as it is about being brief so that the claim is allowed to stand on its own with little or no backing. Then when the person making the claim is asked to give more, using the alibi of clarity they shift the focus off their claim and thereby deflect counterclaims that weaken their argument. My question: How were we to know, Jane, that you have shifted your own 'politics of theory' (ie your claim that clarity is now a viable force that disrupts assumptions) when some use theory (indeed some of your own theories) to call your statements in _Feminist Accused_ to task? I am all for 'shedding one's own skin' as Nietzsche exhorts us: "Let us be wiser than the serpents who lie too long in the same sunlight." Changing one's mind is devoutly to be desired, and all too frequently labeled as being 'flaky' or 'wishwashey' (ie feminine?). Though I have not asked the theoretical questions, or cast my questions in what some would consider "theoryspeak" (or have I?), I have to say that it seems a similar betrayal on your part not to have warned us (readers of your prior work) in the book. The fact that you don't *seems* not only deceitful, in retrospect of course (esp in light of how you have responded on this list), but quite opportunistic and two-faced. You play up to a popular mass audience and court the media in the name of clarity (as subversive), goodness (as feminism and sex), and eating of the tree of knowledge (teacher/student sex as forbidden fruit). What are the ethics of how you constructed your audience for this book? And this leads me to my last questions. You say you don't understand the baggage associated with the term "ethos" that Victor used. Surely you understand the relation of that word to "ethics," do you not? To credibility? Your book opens with the question, "What kind of feminist is accused of sexual harassment?" And I close by asking, "What *good* are you modeling for students (your own and those on this list) when you call Victor "Vitansky"? What *kind* of kinship do you belong to that resorts to name-calling and name-*dropping* (literally, as in "What's-his-name's ethnic identity")?
Cynthia Haynes
In reading, or forcing myself to read, these comments meant for Jane, but also meant for everyone, I am struck by the poo-bahism of American education. I believe it is one more dreary example of the detrimental effects of being trapped under patriarchy for thousands of years. If this is what education is about, I'm glad I didn't get much. I wonder, Jane, in grammar school, how you felt when you were caught up in a book and the teacher asked the class, "Now what did the author really mean?" And proceeded to dissect it like some pickled frog. I didn't care what the teacher's version of the author's meaning was. I just wanted to be in bed with the book, in a one-on-one relationship, to come away with whatever stuck to me. And so it should be with this list - I want to know where your book took people, what stuck to them. I don't want to read how cleverly erudite is their dissection of the author. Mary Daly would turn over in her swivel chair! Best fishes (and it is fishes, Gary), Lizzy PS: liked your response - RJ on the way.
On Fri, 6 Feb 1998, Lizzy wrote:
><...> Oh, Lizzy, Let's don't blame Gary, who is doing a fine job here. 'Twas I who was trying to correct what I thought was a typo. Thank the gods that you did not write, "best fishes and bread." Who knows what multiple corrections might have appeared! best frogs, v
Yesterday an article appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education (on-line edition) about our discussion on this list. It seemed a pretty accurate (even-handed) account of our discussion. But that account was preceded by an incredibly distorted account of my book. I have to say I am getting kinda used to distorted accounts, but this one is pretty out there. Perhaps the worst of it is its beginning by stating that the book "advocates sex w/ students." Just in case, any of you out there think that's what the book does, I'd like to say that while it does in fact DEFEND sex w/ students, it does not ADVOCATE it. The purpose of the book was not to persuade teachers to sleep w/ students. I'm not on a crusade to make more teacher-student sex. (in fact there's plenty of it, always has been; I just want us to have a less hypocritical relation to its existence). I feel like this verb "advocate" makes me seem like a real loon, some kind of fringe weirdo pervert. Jane Gallop
Lizzy, Your tone is wonderfully refreshing. Actually makes me wonder what you're doing on this list. But I have to admit that I was someone who took to literary analysis like a fish to water. In your version, it sounds like aggression. But I'd like you to consider the possibility that for some people, people of perhaps a slightly different textual preference, analysis (or what I call close reading) can be a form of love-making. To find some little tumescent detail in the text and to diddle with it. Not that that's what's generally being done to my book on the list. But in fact what's being done to me doesn't feel like textual analysis, more like author-baiting. When I first learned in school how to analyze a poem, I was excited b/c I really saw more going on, gained a greater appreciation. (i know that doesn't work for everyone, most of the students in class thought it took away their pleasure, but we know people find their pleasures differently) I guess tho I very much share your frustration w/ this discussion (& in some similar terms) I'd hate to have the sort of textual analysis that is for me a source of pleasure & knowledge be defamed by association w/ this lynch mob.
In cordial difference,
ddd, let me try to explain what seems to look like a contradiction but is not, to my mind. I have of late embraced both clarity & accessibility (the latter part of my attempt to reach a wider audience than those who read academic theory, maybe the former too). But I've hardly started writing in standard expository prose. I'm still completely interested in writing as performance, in experimentation w/ mixed genres, with writing theory in a narrative or a chatty manner. In fact my move to clarity is a move to this more entertaining or chatty theory (tho I always wanted to be entertaining). So it would be wrong to assume that what I'm advocating is a return to standard phallogocentric academic writing (which for me means one in which everything is subordinated to the thrust of the argument, generally a singular argument that is driven home until the reader hopefully submits entirely). If you look at the writing in Feminist Accused you will see my attempt on the one hand to write in a less theoretical, less academic lexicon, & on the other hand a really complicated weave of narrative, analysis, and theory. In fact the genre of the book is so unfamiliar that many reviewers have just not gotten it (thankfully some have). The book actually belongs to the same genre as late Barthes (who moved from high theory to trying to do writing where theory passes through anecdote & observation, through the autobiographical also, Barthes would call this writing the essay perhaps). I find that people either want to reduce the book to one thesis (one reviewer said I was trying to revise consensual relations policies [ignoring 70% of the book], another reviewer said I was trying to prove women could not sexually harass [ditto]: reviewers who reduce it to a singular thesis then inevitably remark that I've done a poor job of supporting my thesis) or they see it simply as tell-all confessional (believe me if I wanted to "tell all," this ain't all, only a minuscule portion of my life, or sexual, or pedagogical experience: such reviews seem not to notice that there are ideas, arguments, analyses in the book). I guess I've said more than enough, but my main point is that while I've moved toward clarity/accessibility (b/c of the politics of theoryspeak) I have not adopted a conventional style of writing. I think it desirable to be accessible AND experimental. I may fail, but that is my goal. Thanks, by the way, for appreciating my persistence in responding thoughtful to questions in what for me has become a hostile environment. But I don't want to totalize b/c some participants act a certain way. I'd rather attempt to shift my focus to participants like you who seem sincere about using this as a forum to communicate, to learn, to exchange, rather than posturing. You have consistently been asking me difficult questions, but you seem earnest about wanting to hear how I answer them, rather than trying to stump me. Jane
Jane - a female counselor once said to me - "whatever gets you there". I agree it is a lynch mob, with the exception of some sincere people who truly wish to establish dialog with you and obviously hope they are expressing themselves truly.
What am I doing there? I'm chuckling - good question! Curiosity and a
chance to rub elbows with those battered souls who have dueled their
way past the guards of academe and found entrance to the hallowed
halls. I
guess I want to see what they're about. And I've been very fortunate to
have received your correspondence - I do come away wiser. But I think
I'll sign off from the pretext list - it has increased the email pile to
an unreadable extent. Thanks for your attention, and I hope we meet some
day. Happy fencing and don't take shinola from those males!
Lizzy says among other things:
Jane - a female counselor once said to me - "whatever gets you there". I agree it is a lynch mob, with the exception of some sincere people who truly wish to establish dialog with you and obviously hope they are expressing themselves truly. For the record: * I don't consider myself a lyncher. Jane may consider herself a lynchee (and again, I think that's unfortunate), but, as I wrote earlier, I think that has as much to do with the approach taken to the format of the discussion and the "dimensions" of the rhetorical space as it does with anything else. And from my vantage point, I can't be at all critical of the book under discussion since I haven't read it. I'm just interested in the process of the discussion itself. * I resent the idea that I or anyone else is "out to get" Jane because we're male. First off, y'all don't know that-- what makes you think that it's not entirely possible that I'm not merely posing as a man online? Happens all the time. Second, I was kind of under the assumption-- especially given the book we're talking about here-- that we were beyond such a simplistic notions that the reason why someone might disagree with a feminist is because they're a "man." And third, according to my count, there have been more than a few (apparently) female critics of Jane and more than a few (apparently) male supporters. --Steve (or Stephanie)
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