PRETEXT, a Re/INter/VIEW
       with Jane Gallop 9

From: "D. Diane Davis" d3davis@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: ddd>jg: on clarity...and s'mo, plenty s'mo
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 07:17:10 -0600

First, Jane, thanks again for your thoughtful response. I nodded and grinned sympathetically all the way through that paragraph about readers trying to narrow a rhizomatic, experimental text down to, ahem, The Thesis. Been there, myself. On the point you have been making about "clarity," then, I think 'I kin dig it,' as one of my students said to me last week after a discussion on feminism. I think I was misunderstanding your terms as you used them, misunderstanding what you meant when you advocated "plainspeak" and "clarity," both of which call up all kinds of nasty connotations for me. I needed to hear you rework them a bit before I could nod along. I still have a few reservations/questions, but I do think I hear what you're saying now in a way that I didn't before. So thanks again for taking the time to answer carefully.

Second, I want to thank VV for setting up this gig in the first place, for raising issues that seem to me vital, both to Jane's book and to feminism and [feminist] ethics in general. In the midst of the flame war here--in spite of it and even embedded in it, irrepressibly--critical issues have been attempting to articulate themselves, issues that have perhaps needed precisely this forum to speak themselves.

Whether it is ethical to begin a[ny] line of questioning that will have required a bracketing off of the other, especially in a book that locates itself within the arena of feminist politics, seems to me a question that deserves a good-faithed response.........and perhaps that's especially true when 'the other' who has been lodged within the brackets asks it *herself*. This doesn't seem to me a side issue--and certainly not a *sideshow.* Raising the question of 'proper decorum' in response to this crucial line of inquiry seems to me to me to be an evasive maneuver and to be a bow to precisely the kind of 'politeness' that Jane's own work has so often flown in the face of. [ddd refers you to Dana beckelman (db>jg: "are we still") on the issue of dangling.]

Feminist politics has never been about politeness-----it has been, in a variety of ways, about cracking the code of that "politeness," exposing the phallocratic 'order of things' that 'proper [fill in the blank--decorum, identity, thinking...] covertly supports...founds and funds. If there has been a sideshow here, it has been a BIG/heavily populated one...in which many performers have demonstrated a rather remarkable and acrobatic dodging of this fundamental line of inquiry: what about attending to the other? And if there has been a lynch mob here, it seems to me, it has been made up of those who feel outraged at the *impoliteness* of the question, who feel uncomfortable witnessing such a disruption of proper authorial respect, and have jumped to jane's defense.

But--and I apologize for talking about you in the third person, jane--Jane has proven herself over and over to not need such protection. In her long and successful career, she certainly has faced many tougher audiences and tougher questions than this one. Victor has made this point repeatedly. And frankly, I would imagine it to be a tad insulting to her to watch all this protective posturing on her behalf....as if she needs to be protected.

There definitely have been some interesting exchanges here between jane and a number of list-ers. But as I read back over the posts from this reinvw last night, it seemed to me that the 'sideshow,' for the most part, had successfully deflected what may be the most important question, and had deflected it in a Pee Wee HerMan-esque kind of way (as in the "well YER ONE, TOO!" response). This kind of advocacy is not, it seems to me, in jane's best interest. [In fact, who needs enemies with this kind of advocate?]

Aaaaaaaaaaand, so, thirdly, I'm going to try to extend, one more time, the unique courtesy this list was designed to extend to its guests. I'm going to offer Jane the opportunity to respond to her critics, those readers who have read her work (which is in itself a show of respect) but who have not been able to take that first step with her....who have had "a doubt," as Nietzsche put it, "right [t]here at the threshold" where they/we are asked to bracket 'the other.' So I ask the very difficult and critical question to jane again, a question that does not demand an 'answer' so much as a response (there is a difference):

....................Jane, please discuss your decision to bracket 'the other[s],' the two students, in _Feminist Accused_. You have said that you heard their accusations as reactions against your negative evaluations of their work. But you are a careful thinker and certainly a reflective one. Surely you experienced their accusations and your relation to the students themselves in many ways throughout the long investigations into the case and since then, as well. By the time you write the book, you have landed on a particular way to situate and/or locate yourself vis a vis them. And you have landed on a particular [her]story that locks them there so that you might move on to examine other aspects of the whole show as you experienced it.

This kind of bracketing, of course, in a world/whirl that has no final foundation ["you can't confuse me, young man; it's turtles all the way down!"], may be necessary if one hopes to reach particular goals. To go one way means you ain't gonna go an/other. A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing...and all of that. But taking one path doesn't necessarily need to silence for good other [com]possibilities. You chose a particular approach and got a book written. Good. Now, though, can you, would you (for us) retrace your steps and try another path, and from there would you (for us) re-view (analyze) your choices, for the sake of making s'mo knowledge?

best, ddd

Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 12:12:17 -0600 (CST)
From: hijinks@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: tr>gw: on the lynch mob

Near as I can tell, Lynch Mob only had four members, and the guitarist broke up the band last year...

Thomas Rickert

Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 13:26:26 -0800
From: lbj sophia@compcurr.com
Subject: Re: lbj>vv: various questions and concerns
At 01:12 AM 2/8/98 -0600, you wrote:

We are speaking at cross-purposes, which is the major heuristic on this list as is typical of many e-lists. Now, let me see if I can specify for you precisely what I am talking about in relation to the two students. ([disclaimer about V's long posts.])

[... Jane and student's voices] When I refer to cutting the students out, I am not referring to editorial decisions. I am talking about Jane's strategy, which I will refer to in more detail below. You say, "I'd like it if some of the people at Duke UP were also on the list so that they could say something about how and why they decided to market/edit the book the way they did...." This might be interesting but it does not address my particular concern in terms of Jane's strategy.

[...] Well, LBJ, we all at one time have axes we want to grind, right?, your post notwithstanding! In being ethical, I try to be irresponsible! ;-). [...] I have no interest in mincing or greasing my statements with charges such as "I am not asking so much as to accuse you of being an irresponsible editor, but...." Why not be straight forward and state?: I am accusing you of being an irresponsible editor. If you were to do this, I could respect the statement and then address it with the respect that it would deserve.

[risk-taking, tight rope-walking, etc.] If your question is solely in response to my thinking about Duke UP's publication of the book,

And let's not forget that our providing this venue and joining in on it has helped not only Jane (in the long run) but also Dana et al. (in the long run). Or at least I would place hope in that thought.

I don't doubt that at all, which is one reason why I think reinview in this format is a great idea.

*But as I said LBJ--and I will continue to be very straight forward with you--I think that Jane's pedagogy mixed with sex as she has described it in terms of her history (1971+) is highly problematic, highly naive and nostalgic, and yes ... Unethical. And yes, I think it is narcissistic. These things ... I have concluded thus far from rereading the book and from our discussions. They were arrived at proleptically. But LBJ, there is really nothing unorthodox in my assessment of Jane's book. I've done some reality checking since arriving at this conclusion and searched out for reviews and letters concerning the book. What I found is pretty much the same, though of course there are other views, as we would hope.

Well, those are your opinions, to which you are certainly entitled. And thank you for stating them outright. This is what I had hoped for.

Enuf!! but I can give always some more if you so wish. v

Whatever. Do what suits you. You tha man ;-) lbj

Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 18:11:05 +0900
From: dana@yaksi.eco.saitama-u.ac.jp (Dana Beckelman)
Subject: On the question of silencing

Thanks for your Bravo!, Victor. Just last night the "my old lady, ball and chain" was waving her wicked wooden spoon and saying, Why are you pandering to that bitch? And I said, Ah, Honey, don't call her a bitch. Haven't you read _Empowering Your Bitch_? Bitch is a good word and, besides, as a southern gentledyke, I think as long as she's our guest we should ask her questions and, like good southerners, wait 'til she's gone to gossip about her (though I know you're gonna be listen', Gary), which no doubt will inspire her next book: _Midwesterner Attacked By A Texan_. Hell, I'll even give you your first line, Jane: "I was just a nice girl from Diluth who had no idea what hit me when that big, bad cowdyke came to town."

But I'm just trying to return the comic relief favor to Thomas for his Lynch Mob band joke. Let me know if they ever get back together and need a trombone player who can only play "When The Saints Go Marching In."

OK, Johanna (and everyone else), here's a rough draft always in revision, first "stab" at answering your question, which for those suffering from academentia was: "In other words, Dana, all I could guess, from Jane's description of your request that she not be allowed to use these incidents in her academic work, was that in asking for this injunction you were making a claim of this kind: "You (Jane) should not be able to make theory out of my misery." Am I right? If so, I (still) think this would be an interesting question to pursue."

I was listening to my "1975-1979 Only Dance" CD this morning, dancing with my 17-month-old daughter and remembering, in the spirit of Jane's book, my own golden days of yesteryear, which I realize were merely vacuous and decadent (unless, of course, you're a queer theorist, which I'm not) compared to Jane's every action had a cause and every cause had a reason pre-1972 "It's Too Late, Baby" Carole King era. But one can only make the best of the herstory into which she is born, and I wondered if maybe, as Collin alluded to in his latest generation gap post, part of my obvious "misunderstanding" with Jane, shall we say, had to do with the difference (no doubt among many) between Pro-Sex, Power Feminists, like Jane, who think sex is about power and worthiness, and Pro-Sex, Power Feminists, like me, who think sex is about girls who "just want to have fun."

So in the spirit of "Good Times"--"Let's put an end to this stress and strife, I think I want to live this party life"--allow me to rephrase Johanna's question a tad more gently: Just what the fuck were you thinking?

Well, Sister(s) (and you, too, Brothers), I guess I was thinking about what "the fuck" was going to be and maybe if "Fargo" had come out a little sooner, I could have forseen the cob shredder (what is that thing called, Jane? We just use chain saws in Texas) fate that awaited me in Jane's book. But at the time I could only imagine "the fuck" was not going to be the "good" kind, and how could it have been? She'd already constructed me as a bad student and she desperately wants to construct herself as a bad--she's bad, uh-huh, uh-huh, she's bad--teacher. So I suspected it was all going to come down to: Was it as bad for you as it was for me, Baby? Oh yeah, Sexy Mama, it was the baddest I've ever had.

It is Jane's "classic" move--when she's bad, she's good, but when you're bad, you're more horrid than the girl with the curl on her forehead. When Jane says students have been complaining for a decade that she's "authoritarian," as she glosses over in a paragraph in her book (20-21), without giving any examples of the women she's reduced to tears or the men whose weenies have shriveled right before my eyes, she claims she's merely pursuing academic rigor (one woman in my class with Jane packed her bags after one semester and went back to Syracuse, which I highly doubt is less rigorous than UWM, after Jane called her presentation "stupid," "infantile," and "ludricrous." Granted, the woman had used a tape player that was hard to hear to play her recorded interpretation of "The Blank Page" while she left the room, but you'd think Jane might have appreciated its performative aspects. Unless Jane is supposed to be the only belle at the ball). Or, as she "successfully" argued against my complaint, that she merely has "higher intellectual standards" than others (such as the obvious dipshits on my committee who approved my second prelim proposal before I wrote four more drafts for Jane that Jane singularly never approved). And when she's doing so, of course, she's merely being a "good" academician, a brave Power Feminist willing to fight for her right to answer to a higher God (i.e., her reflection in the water). But, as she has shown on this list (far better than anyone would have ever believed little ol' me), when people ask her "rigorous" questions or hold her work up to their own "high intellectual standards/narcissistic reflections" they're being "bad," mean-spirited, or just stupidly not "getting it," and since she couldn't possibly be a Victim Feminist, she must just be a Power Feminist who's being picked on by petty people.

When Jane crosses "ethical" boundaries and invades one's "private (and/or sexual) space," it's a "transgressive performance." Yet when anyone invades her " private space," it's a personal attack by a PacMan computer in "her own home." When reporter after reporter interviews Jane in person, taking video footage of her teaching a gaggle of groupies, and having tea with her while commenting on the light streaming in her attic study window, it must be her message that's seductive. But when Jane is merely a disembodied e-mail voice in cyberspace, as I have been in phone calls and e-mails with reporters (since no one wants to come to Japan and have green tea on my tatami mat and and trade haiku while staring at Fuji-san in the distance), it must be the medium that isn't seductive.

Is it any wonder, then, that when Jane is accused of sexually harassing students, it's a "limit case" of a Pro-Sex, Power Feminist being persecuted because of her "passion" for students, while anyone else accused would be just your "classic," "male pig"?

Was I saying that I thought Jane could possibly be kept from writing about the case? Hell no. The closest one could wildly imagine is that she not be allowed to keep the proceeds from her book (though she could always donate them, in a tender Power Feminist gesture, to Students Against Sexual Harassment ;) ) like murderers in some states who turn their crimes into "sensational" bestsellers, and, given that one usually doesn't go to prison for sexual harassment, that would be a bit of a stretch, even for my "stylistic proclivity to pulp fiction" (98). All I was acknowledging in asking that she not be allowed to write about the case was that, just like she's done with me as a student, Jane will use her power to lie to a wider audience (in the name of telling the "truth," of course). And has she lied? You tell me.

On page ten she claims the university investigator "was convinced that [Jane] had not in fact discriminated...on any basis whatsoever." *In fact,* the first finding never made any such distinction; only Jane's lawyer did. The finding (though it is not in the supposedly "complete" file, while Jane's lawyer's memo claiming no discrimination occurred is), to my recollection, said there was "probable cause" that sexual harassment had occurred and never mentioned that discrimination had not also occurred. *In fact,* if Jane wants to claim it was not a "classic" case, it was only because she argued there was no sex or sexual orientation discrimination involved because she's bisexual (even as she claims in her book that she hasn't slept with a student since 1982 because she "fell madly in love with the man I'm still happily with today" [48]).

So when she's accused of sexual harassment, she's bisexual; and when she goes home and screams at her kid because her computer attacked her, she's straight. There are, of course, females who aren't students with whom she could "prove" her bisexuality, but it doesn't hurt, when Jane claims she was just making a "bad joke" when she said "graduate students are my sexual preference" (86-87), to have a "little mister" at home taking care of the one "rugrat," at the time, to round out her All-American image, which she doesn't want to have as a "transgressive performer" unless she really needs it to prove she's not "transgressive." (Whatever you say, Slick.)

Similarly, it's crucial to Jane's argument, ironically, that she interpret the second finding as claiming that she was "slightly guilty of sexual harassment" because she had engaged in a "consensual amorous relation" (34-35). *In fact,* she was not found guilty of sexual harassment whatsoever and did not break any UWM policy in having had a supposedly "consensual amorous relation" other than, as the finding states, that she did not report "the relationship to the Dean or the Division Head" and "take steps to disassociate from positions where a conflict of interest could arise." But citing UWM's policy wouldn't have made for as good of a performance as citing "another major" university's policy (35) (I'm not sure I would call UWM "major," but then we can't have Jane staring at herself in a backwater), just as it wouldn't have been as "sensational" if Jane had only talked about her so pathetically "fringe" as not even to be on the map case rather than (the) feminist response(s) to sexual harassment in general. Small wonder, as she said in her first response to Victor, that she sees "the book not as an argument, but as an exploration." She's still trying to find a way to prove she was harassed, though not sexually, and that's the problem! "Hell, if I'm gonna get accused of sexual harassment I ought to at least get more out of it than a kiss! Put the sex back into sexual harassment, Sisters!" And had she talked about what UWM actually found her guilty of, refusing to give up control, she would have had to talk about the "missing" power issue and that its her abuse of power that's being harassed and not her teacher-student sexuality.

I made an A in Jane's course and what she doesn't mention in her description of my being "jittery with excitement" and "overjoyed" (54) when she agreed to be my advisor was that I had just given a presentation in her class for which I had earned what ended up being one of the highest grades of all the presentations--an A/A+ (since, as we know now, there are always two Janes). Second week of the semester, first batter up, and--bam!--I'd hit a homerun (not bad for a bad student). Of course I was excited. So excited that I ran down the hall to catch Jane in her office before she left. So excited that I invited her to have drinks with me and some of the people I knew from class who were meeting across the street even though I knew they would probably look at me (and they did) like, Why did you bring the monster? But I thought it would give Jane a chance to be "more human, more vulnerable" and let her see us that way as well, since, in my excitement, I'd only briefly stopped in the bathroom to give my condolensces to the crying woman Jane had just turned into a blank page.

And even now, almost eight years later, I still feel bad about that. That in my excitement about playing the Power Feminist academic game, I forgot about the Power Feminist personal one. That part of the naivete of feminism was that we were going to do power differently. I thought of her many times during the investigation of my complaint, admired her Power Feminism in saying to UWM, Take your famous feminist and shove it, I ain't puttin' up with that female pig no more. And having gotten to know her a little in class, it's interesting that out of all of our mothers, her's was the only one who was an executive in an economically powerful position, who'd obviously taught her that what passes for rigor in academics is just downright rude in the business world and is ultimately not the way to "succeed." In the same way what Jane wants to pass off as "consensual" would be an abuse of power by any other name.

There are more lies/distortions, but I've gone on far too long. Suffice it to say I made an A- in an independent study with Jane the following semester (after only allowing her one kiss, which I did to show her groupies that her saying that she's all talk and no walk is *in fact* a crock) and started on my prelim proposal while Jane started trying to get another kiss and when, after six drafts, it became apparent to me that Jane was more interested in talking about her sexual fantasies about me than my work, I stopped working with her. I switched my emphasis to Creative Writing (aka: pulp fiction) and was lucky to be able to finish my PhD since people weren't exactly thrilled to work with me and simultaneously piss off Jane at the same time (and Jane must think you're naive if you don't know exactly how she "worked" the department), and in fact some people who did work with me have been hurt by "Jane's Revenge" (the sequel to "Jane Can't Get No Satisfaction").

Was I out for revenge? No. I thought I'd made my own damn bed, so to speak, having "naively" believed Jane when she said her flirtations were just a "pedagogical strategy" and, thus, being a lover of the art of wordplay, had flirted back shamelessly. I'd gotten with the lover I'm still with now, I'd started applying for jobs in Japan, and, probably like most graduate students, I was too busy singing, "If I ever get out of here, Gonna give it all away" to think about much else. But when I witnessed Jane working her "pedagogical strategy" on another (dyke) student and heard similar stories to mine of what the student had been through with Jane trying to get a recommendation from her (you're gonna have to be really bad if you want me to say you're good) and that Jane had "confessed" to a friend of the student's that she considered herself a "feminist sexual harasser," I agreed to file a complaint with her since we thought two stories would be more believable (which, of course, became the "real" "bad joke" when the investigation chose to focus on my "kiss-off" to Jane as being the only public, and, thus, provable incident in either of our cases). But even after five years of being dragged through Jane's buttload of media bullshit, I still think it was the Power Feminist thing to do. To at least warn Jane's future students that when you think it's "just your imagination," it's not. That really is Jane's tongue in your ear!

I don't have anything against consensual sexual relations and, like the old line about queers, some of my best friends have fucked their professors. But I do think it's in both the student's and the teacher's best interest if grading/evaluation is not involved. Like Jane, I, too, believe students should have choices. I just think one of them should be the ability to say no and not be constructed as a "bad, sad, blind, angry, revenge"-seeker as a result.

Thanks for asking,

Dana

Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 08:54:45 -0500 (EST)
From: malgosia askanas
Subject: Re: On the question of silencing

Dana wrote:

And even now, almost eight years later, I still feel bad about that. That in my excitement about playing the Power Feminist academic game, I forgot about the Power Feminist personal one. That part of the naivete of feminism was that we were going to do power differently.

When I read this, my knee-jerk reaction was to say: pooh, _of course_, just because we are women, we are going to do power differently? Doesn't this "difference" or sameness have to do with other things, such as the conditions of production, the political/economic system, and so on? This is what I was going to say. Then I thought: well, if I am so poohish about this, then why do I find this interview with Jane so painful? Why do I find painful precisely the fact that in this here spectacle feminism, together with all the old tricks of "womanhood" -- and feminism, then, _as_ yet another trick of "womanhood" -- are used as tools in getting a large enough piece of the pie? So then I decided that this was part of Collin's generation gap: old age wants to pretend it knows, but I'll (or it'll) be damned if it does.

But then I want to ask of Victor: __What is this spectacle all about? Here is a person who's into getting a piece of the pie, and she's gotten it. __Is the spectacle about the fact that when one gets pie, it is almost never gotten "differently"? __Do you, Victor, know a different way of getting pie? Is doing these public interviews, asking so-called "hard" questions and making people squirm, not part of the way you maintain your own slice of pie? __And if so, is there really a moral punchline to this Jane Gallop story, as much of the tone of this interview, I believe, tries to insinuate? Jane likes and wants power. She uses people, disregards their feelings, plays them for her purposes, postures as a big feminist, and so on. Is there a different way of liking, getting, and maintaining power in this society?

-malgosia