On Doing Democracy: A Final Lecture 2012

Endings are always a time to look back. At the end of one’s life, one looks back on the life lived while those around one’s self do the same. At the end of a relationship, one looks back to see what went wrong along with what went right. And here, at the end of a course, we look back to see the journey - the intellectual journey - we have been on. So, as we end this class we might look back at our experiences and rehash what we read, thought about, discussed, and seen these past 15 weeks. We might literally RE-VIEW the class by going from week to week, reminding ourselves of what we “did” and perhaps should know upon leaving this class. Such an approach would begin with thinking about “democracy” through John Dewey, remembering the importance and limitations of educational policy, contemplating again the position of being an observer, a spectator, a viewer, the representations of gender at the American Girl store and Andi Zeisler...and so on and so forth.

Yet, such an approach seems rather outdated. It assumes, I think, that you as students need me as teacher to “explain” to you the readings and what is important from them...Rather than say allowing you to review and think about the readings on your own time as you see necessary since learning happens not in a linear fashion but in strange ways.

As such, I would rather start with the assumption that you don’t need me to explain this course to you because you are capable and intelligent individuals who can make sense of this course in any number of ways. Instead, I want to use this final lecture to “review” the course by viewing it differently, to demonstrate - rather than explain - the implications of this course as I see them myself.

There are many different ways to conceive of and think about the educational project. We can think of it as an act of transmission, an act of liberation, an act of oppression. We can think about and conceive of education as maintaining the status quo, as a mode of social reproduction, or as a push for social justice. What I think I have learned by thinking through the various materials of this course is that the way we frame the issues we talk about impacts the attitudes we take towards those very issues. And those issues are always inevitably connected to the bodies of our students, ourselves, and our community. I think perhaps Biesta illuminated this best when he asked us to leave open - quite radically - the question of the “human” and so here at the end, I want to use Biesta’s work as a frame to look back on our course and time together...

We might see that what we read, discussed, and experienced was not so much a quest for knowledge - although it was not devoid of knowledge I hope - but rather a quest, an adventure to think about and imagine the ways in which we might relate to the self and others. While we did not always read work that showed positive examples of how people relate to one another - think back to the film “Please Vote for Me” where we saw that even grade schoolers could be coercive and manipulative of one another. Or think about the various struggles for rights and recognition that undergird much of our reading - civil rights, women’s rights, and gay and lesbian rights. We see in all of these “movements” a struggle to relate to the self and others in less violent, less harmful ways. We see that Democracy is a struggle, a constantly evolving and perhaps at time de-volving political theory that plays out in everyday experience in complex and contradictory ways.

We see in all of this - the struggles and successes - the immense vulnerability that exists in being human. Humans are precarious beings. We can, at any given moment, be violated to the point of death. Yet, we can also, at any given moment, experience immense joy and happiness. Precarity shows us not only our vulnerability but also our excitability. Our readings this semester and our explorations of what it means to “do” democracy not only I think exposed the struggles of surviving in the world but also asked for, I hope, that we imagine and create ways to thrive in that very world. They have demonstrated ways in which people have related and might relate to one another.

For instance, while Eve Sedgwick showed the violence inflicted on non-gender conforming boys in the late 80’s and early 90’s - calling it open season on gay kids - we can see simultaneously the ways in which gay kids can have technicolor lives in the 21st Century. The stories we tell about, in this instance, gay kids cannot be centered entirely on the “gay kid as victim” but also the ways in which gay kids lead lives that are exciting, pleasurable, and perhaps most importantly worth living...There is, to return to Chimamanda Adichie, a danger in the single story asking us to constantly be vigilant in the representations, the stories we hear, read, and create. To, as Foucault asks, that we remain in a state of perpetual critique.

There are of course other ways to think through Sedgwick or any of the other readings and films we “read” this semester - perhaps the implications in The Weather Underground look different now at the end of this class. But, I think for me I see that “doing democracy” and the ways in which we think about “doing democracy” impact how we can relate to one another and ourselves. I would argue that we are at a strange juncture in American Democracy where the ways in which we relate to one another are narrowing ever so slowly...where public spaces are becoming privatized, where people interact less and less, where poverty increases at the same time immense wealth increases, where politicians are more concerned about being elected than doing anything productive for the ever growing list of problems we face as a nation and a globe, where intellectualism is in decline and being “smart” seen as a liability.

Yet, such challenges are opportunities to “do democracy” - to be a part of the process. And, it is my belief that how we frame and engage these issues is the challenge we all face leaving this classroom. Do we frame these issues as ethical? As political? As aesthetic? As a combination? And how does that framing impact what lives we can and cannot see?

While such a challenge might seem overwhelming and impossible, it is what we have before us. I hope that we can, in our own ways, rise to the challenge and imagine, create, and struggle for a more just, more humane, and a more livable world for all of us. This is not some utopic hope, but it is a call to “do democracy” in a way that allows people to see their power and their responsibility to one another and to, with that power, do less harm next time.

I conclude then by thanking you for this opportunity to learn from and with you...for your patience and kindness as kinks were worked out and I myself learned through democracy. While I am sure it was not the smoothest of rides and that I had my own share of failings...I do hope it was rather enjoyable and intellectual ride.

Teaching is, I believe, an incredibly humbling act and being with you all for this term  has been incredibly humbling. So, thank you for this journey.

A History of a Course

A History of a Course

And so we come to our final moments together as a class. Over the past 15ish weeks we have covered a rather large amount of content, philosophical arguments, and well “time”. Since this is part history class, time is of the essence since it is time that we travel through in looking at the spaces and practices in which “art” and “education” have occurred.

Efland while not the most exhilarating read does I think when juxtaposed with much of the other texts we read show us a particular way of doing history. He, we might say, provides a rather “straight” telling of the history of art education and in doing so covers over the untidy, unruly, failures of time gone by. Yet, I think there is benefit to such a straight reading because it does provide us one vantage point of thinking about art, art education, and education. From the Greeks and their gymnasium where the mind and body were “one” to the Middle Ages and the concept of the “apprentice” to the “child-art” movement we see the successful attempts at doing art education. And success if one aspect of living.

Yet, we might here at the end realize that success is not all it is cracked up to be. We might realize that our “time” together has been bookended by two drastically different approaches to ‘art’, ‘education’, art education, and history. Halberstam in her Queer Art Of Failure that we worked through today asks us to look at queer histories that “must contend with a less tidy past”. Failure becomes the name of the game for it is failure that disrupts the colonial, neoliberal, capitalist, normalized worlds of what it means to “be” or “do” living. We might, on our own time, think about the PBS documentary we watched on the history of American education (narrated by the most darlin’ Meryl Streep) how the failures of education’s past might expose some rather strange lessons that the conservative and liberal historians failed to grasp with their desire for American Education to be a “success”. But I won’t “go there now”...instead leaving that for you to do in your own time.

Instead I want us to think about “philosophy” since that has been the “other” part of class.  Perhaps philosophy is the failed discipline these days that “takes” time and seems rather out-dated in these days where “time is money” and “practicality” is the ideal form of doing things. Philosophy is after all, particularly in education, the discipline that seems out of touch and unrelated to the daily lives and practices of teachers. Unlike most other courses, the philosophy of education is the course most often put on the ‘cutting block’ and disdained by students for its irrelevance or difficulty. Yet, I am not totally convinced of this...so I will wax on for a bit on this thing called philosophy that we have engaged together because I didn’t succeed at anything else...I couldn’t “do” so therefore “I teach” and I teach “philosophy”.

Let’s begin with a definition of “philosophy” and let’s do so with Matthew Lipman whose work on children and philosophy opened up ways of de-professionalizing philosophy and opening it up to the lives of children. Lipman writes:

philosophy is concerned to clarify meanings, uncover assumptions and presuppositions, analyze concepts, consider the validity of reasoning processes, and investigate the implications of ideas and the consequences in human life of holding certain ideas rather than others (224)

And so from reading philosophers from various perspectives - be that progressive, pragmatic, postmodern, poststructural, or feminist - we see an attempt to engage meaning and concepts in order to think through the consequences of such meaning and concepts. Lipman, we might be able to see now from his definition of philosophy is a pragmatist...for philosophy is not about “Truth” but about how words or ideas impact the ways we live and the consequences of doing so. The assumptions we make impact how we “do” things.

Jacques Ranciere as discussed by Halberstam uncovers the assumption of inequality that pervades how education is thought proposing instead to “presuppose” equality of intelligence. Perhaps the most challenging ideas in contemporary education and educational philosophy...Ranciere asks that we start with the assumption that teachers and students have an equality of intelligence...meaning neither is more capable than the other in terms of intelligence. The student does not need to be filled with knowledge...a knowledge that is never complete and sets the student up to constantly look for a knowledgeable other to “explain” the world. What does education without explanation look like and what does it mean to say to you, as Ranciere did “I must teach you I have nothing to teach you”? What does it mean to ask of ourselves that we taught ourselves amidst conversations with others...as opposed to having been “taught” by me, a teacher? Can you now, at the end of our time together...play out the implications of such a philosophical idea?

Perhaps this brings us to thinking about “giving a lesson” and the problems with such an idea in these postmodern times. Can we really “give” a lesson when such thought is often built upon the idea that something must be given in return? If I give you a lesson are you obligated to give something in return - papers? discussion? Or can I simply give and move on - not expecting something in return? If I do so...do I neglect my “responsibility” as a teacher? If so, what is my responsibility? What is yours? I am not sure...have I given you your lessons? And have you given me what students are supposed to give in return? Have we all been responsible?

Enough of such questions...let’s be pragmatic. Pragmatism seems an apt place to be pragmatic since “pragmatism” is for education quite useful. It is not concerned with transcendental meaning or truth. It recognizes the slipperyness of language and how language can come to signify many different things, but does not get caught up in language games. The challenge for pragmatists is to think through the consequences of holding such beliefs or “truths” on how individuals can or cannot relate to one another. From Cleo Cherryholmes showing the ways to do “different” types of readings - itself a “pragmatic” approach - to Cornel West asking us to think about “prophetic thought” and “tragedy” we see pragmatism orienting us toward seeing philosophy as rather ‘practical’ and concerned with consequences.

Pragmatism has its own drawbacks though and so there are other ways we have been asked to orient our gaze. But before getting to other ways...let’s ponder “orientation” since I find it an interesting term. If we think about the various philosophical realms we explored...we might see how they “orient” us (position our gaze) in different ways. In doing so, such orientation simultaneously opens up ways of seeing while framing other things out. This is easily seen with the concept of “sexual orientation” where one’s orientation makes one look at particular bodies while framing out other bodies. Our “sexual orientation” orients us in particular ways toward particular bodies and pleasures and I would argue sensibilities.

So, the feminists orient us to frame the world by thinking particularly about gender. Nel Noddings, Angela Davis and Maria Tamboukou all asked us to look at gender and philosophize how “gender” implicates how teachers are seen, how teaching has been constructed in the modern era, and want ways thinking like a feminist opens up particular questions or ideas for doing education. Additionally, how do feminists themselves “disagree” and complicate one another by wanting to think more particularly about the position of raced female bodies? Classed? Able-bodied? It’s challenging and particular...but I think important.

Lynn Fendler - a poststructural feminist we might say - moves us away from thinking explicitly about “gender” and toward thinking about language. The radical question asked by poststructural feminists - namely Judith Butler - is “what is woman”? Such a question - damning to some feminist projects that rest on the assumption that “woman” is a stable category - points to the ineffable. If we accept language as figural - as opposed to holding onto the idea that language is “representative” - what are we allowed to do? We saw in our own class discussions brought in by you yourselves...that poetry and art can by being figural open up the imagination to break out of the status quo (and quite possibly maintain the status quo). How, Fendler asks, can we think about “figural education”? And is “art” a rather privileged domain to do so?

Before my concluding paragraph...I want to do my duty as a philosopher and point out that much of what we have engaged in throughout this semester while focused on issues of knowledge and knowing...was often more about ethics and relationality. If as I have noted many times, “knowledge is ubiquitous” and we still think schools are important despite such ubiquity of knowledge...we realize that schools are a “place” where people meet. So, how do we relate to one another? How do the knowledges we have engaged and the knowledges that we fail to see limit and open up the challenges of relating to the self and other? How does education shift if we focus less on “knowledge” and more on that ineffable thing of relationality and the feelings, emotions, and affects of being in a classroom? I am not sure...

I am, as you well know, not an artist so I am perhaps not qualified to engage in such an artistic question. I am somewhat of an outsider to this thing called “art education”...yet, my hope in engaging this adventure in insight with you all over this short period of time that perhaps we were able to see that education does not have to be dull...that as Foucault argued...education being dull is quite an achievement BUT one with a purpose...for if education was “pleasurable” like sex he says, then people would be knocking down the doors to get in. While none of you tried to knock down the doors to my class...perhaps illuminating my own failure to make education pleasurable OR my success as maintaining the dull, sad, history of education founded on inaccessibility...I might hope here at the end...that our time together allowed something to happen or opened up the possibility that somewhere, there in the future that will then be present these lessons we have engaged will come to life and the consequences will be beautiful.

I thank you for giving me your time and attention...

A Final Lecture - Social Theory 2012

The Time of Social Theory

It seems apropos to begin the end of a class with Madonna. In her fabulous portrayal of Eva Peron in Evita she sings...”Where do we go from here? This isn’t where we intended to be. We had it all. You believed in me. I believed in you. Certainties disappear. What do we do for our dream to survive? How do we keep all our passions alive?”

Of course, the context of the song is rather different than ours has been these last 15 weeks, but the sentiment I think perhaps gets at one way to think about not only the pedagogical scene we’ve been in but also what it means to “do” social theory or theorize the social.

So, here at the end of a class we are left asking “where do we go from here”? And before you do, in fact, go from here and our time in this space has ended, I want to take time to re-view our time together as I see it. So, I ask for you to give me your time, for one last time.

We began what seems to be rather long ago when the temperature was warm and all of us unsure what was intended to occur in this space and time of a class on social theory. Charles LeMert started us off asking us to think of social theory as, in many ways, an attempt to put language to our social experiences and learn how to survive and I would add thrive in this perhaps beautifully cruel world we live in. John Berger also helped us frame one way to think about social theory via art history by reminding us or perhaps teaching us that seeing matters and how we see is related to and impacted by what languages, images, and stories we have access to. So, as I mentioned last week...we might think about this course as an adventure in different languages that might allow us to “do” social theory...so let’s review...

Jacques Ranciere started us down what might have felt like a confusing rabbit hole proposing that we ponder what happens if we presume an equality of intelligences. What happens if we “frame” the world in a way that actually presumes equality and how does this alter how we look at children who are often seen as “unformed” “immature” and “innocent”? In proposing we presume equality, his most compelling lesson is “I must teach you that I have nothing to teach you” and that is I hope what you have realized here at the end...that I have nothing to teach you...I can only take part in this adventure and create opportunities where you and I can muck around in knowledge, play with words, and try to make sense of our worlds and our contexts together. At times this was frustrating. At times it was confusing. At times it was hilarious. At times is was boring...but no matter the affective state hopefully we might be able to salvage the failures, the boredom to realize that even those states allow us to “do” something.

Along with Ranciere LeMert wrote:

One must never assume that those without a public voice are inarticulate. The arrogance of intellectuals lies in the assumption that they alone know and speak the truth (11).

As a professor I am rather concerned that I might come off as arrogant and knowing the truth and if that occurred....my sincerest apologies. What LeMert reminds us, however, is that part of the task is to think about who can Speak. Gayatri Spivak in one of those “oft” cited sayings once asked “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and we learned in our engagement with Spivak, Fanon, and Anzaldua different ways in which the “subaltern” has been able to speak and the challenges that exist when trying to speak from the “outside”. And, of course, last week Grosz explicitly engaged what it means to be on the outside and how outsider status while often seen as “negative” can offer insight and a space/time to ask different questions. The “outside” is not always positive though as it has its own pitfalls. Wendy Brown in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty proposed that we think about the emergence of “walls” - walls that create an inside and outside - and the curious emergence of such walls at a time of “waning sovereignty”.

Walls and Sovereignty merge if we allow them with Grosz ideas about architecture from the outside. How does architecture ask questions about the body - not simply about the structures it puts in place but the ways such structures impact the different bodies. What does it mean to be on the “outside” of the wall between states and by definition on the “inside” of a different state? What are the powers that impact what it means to be either “inside” or “outside” such walls - what might be called architectural scars dividing space?

We might also go a different direction and think about the outside - as Grosz allowed us - and the reality that fashion is about the outside...and if we buy Svendsen’s argument, that fashion is, in a sense, what allows us to develop our identity or the “inside” of how we see ourselves. While Roland Barthes book on The Language of Fashion might have been a challenge...what Barthes here at the end might allow us to think about is the outside and how the emergence of fashion over time has allowed us to adorn the outside, the body in different ways. How does the detail of the dandy relate now to things weeks ago we might not have thought about? What is the time of education and how does the “process” of working through texts over time allow us as “outsiders” to different fields begin to ask questions?

Going back to the issue of “speaking”, we might also think about how the Southern Hemisphere has been left outside of Social Theory which caused Connell to ask and for us to explore

“Can we have a social theory that does not claim universality for a metropolitan point of view, does not read from only one direction, does not exclude the experience and social thought of most of humanity and is not constructed on ‘terra nullis’ [land belonging to nobody]” (47)

Perhaps it is Connell that illuminates the adventure we have been on...which is an adventure in disrupting social theory to think about the particular, the contextual, the space and time of difference to counter the dominance within the history of social theory (or academic thought broadly) as universalizing. This could be, following Spivak, an attempt in “education in the humanities” that “attempts to be an uncoercive rearrangement of desires” (17). And this type of education is one that Spivak argues “teaches us to learn from the singular and the unverifiable” because that is what a human is - a singular subject that by being singular is not “verifiable” (228).
Spivak brings us back to Foucault whose entire body of work was an exploration in subjugated knowledges. In his History of Sexuality paired with Christopher Reed’s art history of Art and Homosexuality, we were able to begin thinking about how we might read the social through sexuality - similar to how Anzaldua allowed us to think about the social through the mestiza or Fanon through the colonized. Foucault, however, allowed us to think about history in a different way - a way that is not linear and determined but one that is well, quite messy and complex. Reed illustrates this idea in how he read art history by looking at the different ways in which “sex”, “sexuality”, “eroticism” and “intimacy” are represented and taken up in different time periods - providing if you return to these two texts a rather nice “illustrated” way to read Foucault’s own history.

But, I feel like this review is getting rather time-consuming...so I must wrap up. I will do so with Latour whom the vast majority of us were not quite able to engage. This makes sense because Latour is challenging and in the oft-cited binary between “art” and “science” we here at an “art school” might feel some animosity to “science” since it gets all the money these days. But, it might also be because as Latour argues Science has become something we cannot question or that “science has been used to silence”. If Science has silenced, then those of us who are not experts in “science” might feel rather shy or inhibited with talking about science...because we feel like Outsiders.

What I think is perhaps most compelling about Latour in relation to our time together is that in challenging the “epistemology police” and its emphasis on “matters of fact” he wants us to think about I would argue ethics and “matters of concern” and in doing so shifting us from seeking “certainty” to engaging “uncertainty. He re-frames the questions to ask

1 - How many are there of us?

2 - Can we live together?  

In asking these questions he does not allow us to get out of reality. Rather, he re-looks at reality to do something else....namely to radically argue for democracy and the necessity to not allow “knowledge” or “facts” to trump how humans relate and live together. He does not negate knowledge - he asks that people “knock at the door” - those who are “aptly outside” to seek entry and provide an argument that might or might not compel for changes.

And perhaps this is where I leave you and end our time together...pondering about the relationship between knowledge and relating to the other. How knowledge can oppress and emancipate? How different languages, different disciplines, might allow us to “do” different things...hopefully they allow us as educators and journalists to think through the ethics of living in the world and to end with Ranciere “one need only to learn how to be equal in an unequal society. This is what being emancipated mean” (133). So, I hope you learn how to be equal, how to “do” things in the world and that “such emancipation will begin when the student [you] decide it will begin” (24). 
 
My many thanks to you for this adventure in insight.

Stories of Objects: On the Possibilities for Fetishism in Education

We make our objects from what we make of our world, and in return they teach us: this is fetishism’s object lesson.

-    E. L. McCallum

We read this week about the role of stories in our lives. Stories, it seems, for Alberto Manguel in City of Words, are responsible, in part, for our ways of seeing, being, and relating in or to the world. It does not matter if the story is pure fiction or one materially lived out for “the story materially lived out and the story lived out in the imagination hold equal ranks” (80). The materially lived out story - one experienced by the body and mind is no different from the story imagined by the mind and body. Scientifically, we see the emergence of empirical evidence to support this. Manguel points out via Richard Dawkins that “in biological terms, imagination is a survival mechanism developed to grant us experiences that, though not rooted in physical reality, serve nevertheless to educate and improve with the same power and efficacy as those that take place in the physical world” (80). And neuroscientists have recently argued about the power of  literature - fiction - whereby “brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” (Murphy-Paul, 17 March 2012, Your Brain on Fiction)

Stories are central to the human. We might argue that humans are constituted - become subjects - through stories. As Chimamanda Adichie noted in her acclaimed TED Talks lecture “The Danger of a Single Story” “stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize”. Stories as Manguel concludes “can tell us who we are and what are these hourglasses through which we sift, and suggest ways of imagining a future that, without calling for comfortable happy endings, may offer us ways of remaining alive, together, on this much-abused earth.” (146). Manguel, ends on a rather positive note on the power of stories - noting, however, throughout his argument how stories have been used to construct and negate the other, to dispossess and malign. Who can tell the story, when and how often matters.

What I am interested in for this response is thinking through Manguel as opposed to thinking about Manguel. Specifically, I want to think through how stories - as objects we possess either via our memory (shared, cultural) or via books - illuminate the productive possibility of “fetishism”. As I have noted before, I have a reading fetish. Often within the popular imagination the “fetish” is seen as a sexual pathology - one of the paraphilias listed in the DMS IV-TR. Fetishism is viewed as a abnormal relationship between a subject (human) and an object (shoes, feet) whereby the object comes to “replace” the whole (e.g., another subject). Plus, I am a “queer theorist” by some people’s definitions so my scholarship seeks to think through sexuality (in all its complexities) to see what it offers us as educators, as humans, in relation to knowledge, pleasure, and desire.

So, as E. L. McCallum argues in her feminist re-evaluation of fetishism - fetishism offers an alternative epistemology (an alternative model of knowledge). There is a promise in fetishism. McCallum - in her history of fetishism - notes its emergence with the “age of exploration” or what Willinsky taught us to see as the beginning of the European’s “diving the world”. Fetishism she highlights began in reference to religion (fetish objects), later taken up in Marxist economics (commodities fetishism), but most notably psychoanalysis (sexual fetishism). In all of these operations or uses of  “fetish” “the definition of fetishism has consistently boiled down to the use of an object to negotiate (usually binary) difference to achieve an immaterial end, whether it be economic gain, cultural prestige, or psychical satisfaction” (x).

Fetishism offers a promise - a promise that seeks to navigate the tensions between subject and object. Stories - as objects - come into contact with subjects - notably in schools - to educate and in that education create tensions and spaces to navigate the anxieties and pleasures of living. Stories - as objects - are something that are “read”. We “read” objects - using objects for our own pleasure (pleasure of creating, of learning, of impressing) and how we read matters - as Eve Sedgwick pointed out in her analysis of paranoid and reparative reading practices. McCallum, adds to this, writing that “a degree of sympathy with the text and a sense of its interpretive openness is required to produce the kind of reading that makes a text blossom” (155).

Creating relationships with texts - with stories - that open up the world to us rather than close the world from us simultaneously open ourselves up to relate to other subjects. If we read sympathetically - not to simplify McCallum too much - helps I would argue to sympathize with others. And as Adichie makes quite clear - having multiple stories as opposed to a single story helps in our constant struggle to recognize the other and be recognized as a subject ourselves. Objects and our relationships with those objects have a significant impact on how we as subjects relate. Objects are not the problem. Objects are a means by which we relate and understand the world.

While fetishism is easy to pathologize, see as problematic, and perhaps causes some sense of dis-ease...such responses, I believe, neglect the inevitability it would seem within the contemporary world of objects and our relations to them. As feminist Donna Haraway argued in her “Cyborg Manifesto” - the human and object have become intertwined - think about prosthetics, our attachment to our mobile phones - and so fetishism offers us a promise and a way to think through how objects allow us to achieve some sort of satisfaction - not solely “sexual”. Fetishism, via McCallum’s argument, provides us with critical leverage to not simply demean objects but to look at the hope that objects bring to our lives. Objects - like subjects - offer ways of experiencing pleasure and satisfaction. This relation is not a substitution for relations between subjects BUT rather is an alternative way of knowing the world - an alternative epistemology that opens up ways of knowing the self.

How does this help us think through Manguel? Well, Manguel relying on Lewis Carroll’s Unicorn in Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass notes that “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you”. Belief becomes central to our relationships to or with stories. We fall in love with stories that we can “believe” - even if a story is “fantasy” we are drawn to it if it is “believable” or allows us to see ourselves reflected in it. Belief here, I think, comes into contact with knowledge which seems central to the educational project. What is the difference between “belief” and “knowledge”. We can probably point to any number of instances where “belief” is seen as getting in the way of “knowledge”. Belief is a problem - something that gets in the way of “knowledge”. But belief is also central to living for belief is what pushes us to create new knowledge. We “believe” something is wrong and find ways to prove that the flaws of “knowledge”. Belief pushes us to change the world. Whitney Houston sang about belief - she “believed the children are our future” and she “believed in you and me”. She believed these things...she did not “know” them but used her belief to create music that spoke to her fans worldwide.

Within fetishism belief becomes central for the fetishist “believes” in the object. The fetishist, in a sense, knows that the object is just that - an object - but the fetishist believes that the object can “do” something more - can provide psychic satisfaction. And we all probably have memories of an object we imbue with special powers (a blanket, a pacifier, a stuffed animal) that gives us satisfaction. Normal development asks us to give us these objects to create “proper” relations with other subjects. But, what might it mean to re-ignite our passion for objects - not to the detriment of other subjects - rather so we have diverse ways of achieving satisfaction? Can education work like fetishists and embrace its strange relationships with objects? What might it mean to not, as I have said before, talk about our “fetishization of standardized tests” in negative light but critically think about how such objects (tests) are used to create satisfaction (probably more for policy makers than students)?

Stories then, as objects, offer possibilities. Complex possibilities, adventures that might take place only in our minds...but it is there in our minds that we come to some sense of satisfaction with our world, ourselves.

References:

Manguel, Alberto. City of Words. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Press. 2007. Print.

McCallum, E. L. Object Lessons: How to do things with Fetishism. New York: SUNY Press, 1999. Print.

Murphy Paul, Ann. “Your Brain on Fiction”. New York Times. 17 March 2012 accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Sedgwick, Eve. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2003. Print.

On Time

The task was to write a personal time-line. In such a task I imagine many will provide pivotal moments, moments that had time in the background, as a date, but where time ne'er took center stage. Time is always with us, yet time is rarely thought about extensively it would seem. For me, time is center stage and any one who has asked me for the time knows that I don't wear a watch. Time binds and the watch band binds me too close to it. Time does a lot of things. Time flies and time is lost. Time is money so don't waste my time. Time is of the essence, yet one should take your time. Queer time (QST) is about 15 minutes behind schedule, along with Color People Time (CPT). Those of us who might fall in such categories are allotted time to be late. We take our time and perhaps waste your time.

It seems odd to write a personal time-line as it seems to tame the unruliness that is time, past time - history. The very image of a time-line, to me, asks that time be straightened out, made into a proper story that is linear, that follows one thing after another. However, to give such a time-line requires a line be broken, many lines perhaps, as I give an account of my "I" to individuals who I do not entirely know - crossing lines of intimacy, professionalism, and propriety. We were asked to make a personal time-line, a rather strange request and one that many may feel is a "waste of time". Time cannot refrain from rearing its clockface as we take time to make a timeline about the time of our lives. We take time out of our personal time-line to narrate the line of time we have been on - rather strange indeed - and all most likely narrowed down to a tiny moment in time since there are so many of us with time to share.

Time is of the essence though as my time to narrate is limited...I don't want to "waste" your time or take too much of your time because to do so would make me seem inconsiderate with your time and well, time is money. Yet, narrate I must to look like I am participating in the time of this meeting and being a team-player.

I keep messing up though as I begin to narrate this personal time-line. I cannot understand what person I am meant to be here in the space and time of work. There are rules in place that seem to limit what "personal" can be. Non-fraternization clauses make it nearly impossible to be "personal" with managers, yet here in the professional space and time I am asked to narrate the personal. This makes me feel like I should "sterilize" the personal for this space steeped in worries about harassment, propriety, and maintaining "professional" boundaries. One person's personal is another person's harassing statement. And since this is an "at-will" employer, any time one of us can lose our jobs making it seem necessary to mind our "p's" and "q's". Since I like spending time here, the task of narrating my time in the face of such complexities is rather overwhelming.

Perhaps I am over-thinking this. Making it out to be more serious than it is supposed to be. I don't think so though as I think giving an account of our lives, even mundane, seemingly comical things, expose us in ways we cannot predict bringing us into the politics of representation. The personal is political, yet the time here does not seem to be political. Yet, the task at hand is political, how do "I" tell about my time in such a way that "you" will see me in a particular light that makes our "time" together on the floor, enjoyable. Do I narrate the time of my education - the most time-consuming aspect of my life? Do I narrate mundane details like when I wet my pants in the 2nd grade to get a laugh, to make peeing your pants not seem shameful? Do I talk about the sexy time I have had with men whose names I can't remember, to push the boundaries and provide an alternative to the story of engagement and marriage others have told? Are any of these times proper to talk about this time? Or have I merely wasted your time with my own curious fascination with time, telling you little about my personal time-line except between the lines or in questions that may or may not expose me to your glazed over eyes?

Becoming in Glee: The Problem of Outing

I've written about Glee before. I have a love-hate relationship to the show. Sometimes I really love it and find it rather enjoyable while other times I hate it for its constant move to the normal. It is overall a corporatization of multiculturalism, but as such it speaks more than it dare admit. Difference is all the rage and difference these days pays. Not all difference of course, some difference is simply inappropriate to show, at least in any positive light. We, of course, glimpse this at moments in Glee particularly when the gay issue emerges. From the episode "never been kissed" to "the first time," representation of gay desire sets off a firestorm from the socially conservative and religious right.

This season (the 3rd season) has been particularly disappointing. However, with the episodes "The First Time" and "Mash-Off" I was reminded how provocative the show can be. Now, don't get me wrong, Glee is not a provocative show but it has moments that touch on the provocative. In "The First Time" we may not get to see the students lose their virginity on screen as the camera shows us only feet mingling and a little kissing before panning to the burning fire - forcing us to imagine the "fire" in the loins of these youth as they embark on their first "sexual" encounter. Overall, it was a rather sweet episode, filled with the typical anxiety and fears of losing one's virginity. It illustrated the similarities between the "hetero" couple and the "homo" couple as they decide to wait, then decide to experience this momentous moment with one another.

But, I don't care to write about that episode. While it was one of the first TV shows I can remember that showed gay teens deciding to lose their virginity, I want to focus on "Mash-Off". It is in this episode that Santana is rather violently outed by Finn. Finn in his attempt to strike at Santana because of her own mean ways attributes this meanness to her being a closeted lesbian. This is nothing new. The psychological attribution of "lashing out" is often seen as a defense mechanism against accepting one's sexuality - namely homosexuality.  As Finn exposes Santana in the hallways we are confronted with Santana face-to-face. We see, we think, the shame in her eyes as her "secret" is exposed.

While we might read this scene as exposing Santana's closetedness (outing her, have you), I want to read it slightly differently. I am not concerned with the obsession with "accepting one's homosexuality" and more interested in the process of "becoming a homosexual" - this of course reminiscent of Michel Foucault's own engagement with homosexuality, particularly in his interview entitled "Friendship as a way of Life". As he says there "we have to work at becoming homosexuals and not be obstinate in recognizing that we are" (136). Working with Foucault, I read the look in Santana's eyes as a look of loss. It was not a loss of her closeted identity, but the loss of having the space and time to invent herself. She became via Finn sedimented in her identity. Now, as we see play out in the episode, she becomes defined as a "lesbian". She did not seek to be obstinate in recognizing she is a lesbian, rather throughout the show she has been working on becoming  something as she navigated the terrain of high school life, love, friendship, and loss.

In the moment of her outing, she is not ashamed of that project of becoming. She is, I think, horrified that she has to, as it seems many "gays" must, be reigned in by the project of the closet. She must become intelligible as a subject and that requires an identification with the given identity categories (e.g., gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual). Her anger cannot be attributed to the normative drives of identity politics (i.e., that one should be "out" and "proud) or the homophobia that is seen as keeping people in the closet (i.e., fear of ostracism). Rather, her anger is attributed to her inability to "accept" who she is, to embrace her being a "lesbian".  Her anger is a personal issue according to Finn's psychological assessment. It, her anger, is not seen as an issue of the limiting ways in which she can imagine her life. Her account, an account she is not able to give, is foreclosed by the normative ways in which we allow "identities" to be claimed, particularly in high schools. We see here that it becomes the job of the straight white male, threatened by the woman's sharp tongue, to bring her back into line, even if the crooked lesbian line. It is far more dangerous to allow her to be unintelligible and for her sharp tongue to reveal that which is does explicitly rather than an hidden closetedness THAN it is for her to occupy the position of the lesbian. A position that then becomes utilized in a political campaign ad for one of Sue's rivals. The "lesbian" is by no means a "safe" identity to inhabit BUT it is more intelligible, something people can grasp onto, than the position of unknown that Santana inhabited before her outing.

As the episode ends this becomes even more visible. We see Santana's emotional struggle as she sings in the mash-up of Adele. She croons with her fellow ladies "rumour has it"putting to song the rumours that are now, in her paranoid mind spreading about her while she also sings "don't forget me, I beg". We might ask who it is she is singing to. Does she sing to her now negated self that worked or was working at becoming "homosexual", who must now become and struggle with the labels imposed on her by the outside and in doing so able to find love - perhaps in Brittany - but recognizing that such love is always, in part, a fantasy of the love she could have had if the world were different. She was, of course, in love with Brittany already but that love changes when it become defined by the outside - seen perhaps in her asking to hold Brittany's hand while simultaneously covering it up. She wants Brittany's love but it is a love she does not was limited by the normative gaze of the public.

The episode ends as she confronts Finn, paranoia full force, slapping him for what has become of her - a pawn in the political game that would have never recognized her before until she was, with his outing, made intelligible within the political sphere. She is a lesbian. A lesbian promoted to co-captain of the Cherrios and now disparaged for an identity she refused to take on entirely. Her refusal is not one of shame, but one of inventiveness as she refuses to go quietly into the state of lesbian-hood but prefers to struggle to invent new ways of relating to the other.

Hoarders and the Crisis in Capitalism

I really enjoy what some call "trash" tv. Some people upon hearing this look at me quite strangely. They wonder how someone with my education - I have a Ph.D. - could enjoy such pedantic, ridiculousness. I usually look back at them strangely, confused about how they could not enjoy trash tv. I imagine a part of such strange looks is the on-going struggles between "high" and "low" art where having a "higher" education than most of the world opens me up to understanding and appreciating "high" art and in doing so, leaving the vestiges of "low" art behind for the masses. Fortunately, I do not buy into the mystification that surrounds "high" art and therefore feel no need to posture like I get something most people cannot.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do enjoy what is called "high" art. I can watch foreign and independent films like any other and appreciate their differences from the "hollywood" cinema of today. I can even talk about them rather intelligently, much to the disdain of some of my friends who find such films mind-blowingly boring...which is usually the point. However, my heart lies with trashy tv and other forms of low art. There are perhaps two main reasons for this.

The first, I was raised in rural Iowa where there was not a lot of access to "high art". The closest thing we got to an independent or foreign film was Chocolat with Juliette Binoche, Dame Judi Dench, and Johnny Depp. Instead, I grew up on shows like Roseanne where I actually saw my own existence played out, except my parents were divorced and half of the family - my father's - are not working class. I more than often didn't get along with that side of the family and they more often than not pitied me for being from a "broken home". Broken as it may have been, it taught me the joys of trash. Perhaps, I realize later in life, it is trash that the masses have to embrace to illuminate alternatives to the capitalist American dream?

The second reason I enjoy trash is because of my most important idols is the Pope of Trash. I know, I know, I was raised Catholic and we are not meant to idolize, but I can't help it. At least I am idolizing someone with a nickname that include "pope"? Any way, John Waters is my idol for being the Pope of Trash, of showing me how to survive on the margins of respectibility or would it be the center of unrespectability? Either way, the Pope of Trash and his cinema have perverted my sensibilities to appreciate the innane, the perverse, the trashtatic revelry of queerness. Now, I might be able to sometime later be able to more carefully disintricate John Water's "trash" with contemporary corporate trash, but for now...I want to focus on one particular show that is often literally about trash, trash that has been hoarded, but in being hoarded illuminates the corporate trash that needs to be taken out.

Hoarders is that show that you really don't necessarily want to watch, but that you cannot turn off. I think for some such a show is watched to make one feel better about one's life. See honey, that is a real hoarder, I am not that bad. If anything, I am simply a fake hoarder. For others, such a show might be watched to reinforce stereotypes about various populations that are shown - often people from rural America. See honey rural American is filled with lazy people who do not know how to live a civilized life. And for others, not much thought is probably put into why such a show is watched, other than to pass the time. Some people's struggles are other people's entertainment.

I want to think about Hoarders in terms of how it exposes corporate hoarding. And this is what I think Hoarders is doing. Hoarders emerges at a time of incredible disparity between the rich and the poor - its first episode aired in August 2009 in the midst of the economic crisis. As a "documentary series" it focuses almost exclusively on the poor or middle class. Hoarding - or amassing a ton of "shit" - is pathologized as something that needs to be cured. Interventions are planned and the psychological problems of those hoarders are laid bare for all the viewing world to see. The vulnerabilities of an already vulnerable population are further exposed. Yet, such a move to focus attention on the plight of the poor grappling with daily survival takes away attention on the larger dare I say systemic issue of hoarding that has gotten the global economy in a tizzy.

You see, I think hoarding is ok if you are hoarding wealth. Well, I don't actually think hoarding wealth is ethical because of the ways it inhibits the possibility of inter-class relations. But, I do think we allow hoarding wealth because that is just a "part" of the capitalist system that goes unchecked. We might look to MTV Cribs for socially sanctioned hoarding, but even the celebrity culture of wealth usually pales in comparison to the wealthiest of the wealthy. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, hedge fund managers, Wall Street moguls, and corporate CEOs have spent years hoarding their wealth so much that the disparity between the rich and the poor is forever widening. See "Plutocracy Reborn" for a number of charts that nicely lays out the economic argument historically. And with the political scene in Washington such disparity seems more likely to be protected than challenged and (scary word) redistributed.

It seems to me then that when thinking about Hoarders we should focus less on what we see on the show, but on what the show is not showing us. There has been an explicit choice to focus on the hoarding of the common person and their "mental illness". And many an anti-psychiatric theorist from Eric Fromm to Michel Foucault have shown the use of mental illness diagnoses as a method to discipline the masses. And this seems to allow for those whose hoarding is not simply an "individual" problem as shown in the series BUT whose hoarding has had dramatic consequences for society to continue to hoard with no humiliation involved. We do not humiliate the wealthy who have for all intensive purposes wrecked the global economy. We do not create a show about their excessive lives filled with cars, houses, trips, clothes, and more. Well, I take that back, we do create shows about such things - think the Real Housewives series on Bravo and Logo's The A-List, but such shows focus on the frivolity of women or gay men. They reinforce the stereotypes of such populations allowing some to express anger at such extreme examples of wealth when many are struggling to pay bills. Yet, the Real Housewives of any city and the gay men of New York are not the problems although they are implicated. Those behind the scenes, those where such wealth has been hoarded to fund such projects are part of the elite that have hoarded and whose hoarding is inevitably a big piece of the problem. And the show Hoarding inevitably exposes this in its unconscious.

On Homophobic Jokes and Weiners

I was mildly disturbed recently when Tracy Morgan went on a comedic rant targeting the gays. The coverage of this rant, of course, did not call it a comedic rant but rather a “homophobic” one. And in doing so, a shit-storm emerged with many comedians and celebrities coming out to denounce his “offensive” jokes. Only a few came out in defense of Tracy and in doing so often became targets themselves of the backlash against homophobia. Roland Martin of CNN was the first I saw challenged for defending Tracy and once that happened I stopped paying attention.

I do not want to denounce Morgan’s “rant” nor necessarily defend it. Jokes are quite tricky – they sometimes work and sometimes fall flat on their face. I imagine Tracy would say these jokes fell and fell hard, despite him saying he is an equal opportunity jokester – no one or thing is off-limits. I appreciate such a sentiment mainly because I am a lover of inappropriate humor and trashy comments. What is interesting to me is the contradictions that emerge around jokes deemed particularly offensive versus rather hysterical. Morgan’s jokes did not seem to be anything out of the ordinary as far as jokes go about issues related to homosexuality. Joking about bullying – saying gays should stop being such pussies worried about “bullying” OR how he would kill his son if he were gay (the ultimate form of bullying) – is not statement meant to be taken literally. It’s a statement that is meant to be taken comedically to expose insecurities, contradictions, or to bring such an issue into the spotlight. The reality, if such a thing exists, is that many parents have an issue when a child “comes out” which is actually pretty funny once you think about it…NOT when someone is experiencing it. That is rather difficult and never enjoyable.

Bullying is a joke but the joke is not on those who bully or are bullied. There is nothing funny about individuals being violated, particularly it would seem when those being violated are not quite considered fully human but rather “children” in need of protection. The joke is rather on the inability and complexity of responses to bullying. Responding to bullying and bullies using the same logic does not actually disrupt bullying or challenge it. It simply maintains bullying but through the figure of the adult authority. Bullying becomes justified if those who are seen as or think themselves as being the moral compass are the ones doing it. This is itself shown in the responses to Morgan’s rant. Morgan becomes bullied by those who are “better” or “less hateful” than he is considered to be. This all in the hope that such bullying will stop Morgan’s hateful speech. Bullying by those in power becomes an issue of policing – policing the speech and the jokes that can be said and laughed at OR that become viewed as homophobic (or sexist, racist, xenophobic). There is no attempt to pay attention to what might be going on in uttering such jokes. Rather, there is an attempt to limit the ways such utterances can be understood.

This attempt to limit is perhaps one of the bases of bullying. Bullying seeks to limit some other from being recognized, from being a speaking subject, from being fully human. And bullying is a practice that goes back to the beginning. If we go with the Christian story of origin, God bullied Adam and Eve into not eating the apple (limiting their world view) and Eve fought back, eating the apple (breaking the limit) and bullying Adam into following her move (limiting his choice). It is perhaps these inaugural scenes of bullying and the responses to bullying that might allow one to argue that the human is constituted through this scene of bullying. And the issue central to this scene is knowledge. Who controls or has access to knowledge. God in all “God’s” glory decided that as creator he/she/ze would have access to knowledge setting up a system of inequality. God has knowledge, Human does not. Eve realized though that she was equal to God – a subject who could create and speak – and ate that which was forbidden to deconstruct this system of inequality. In order to maintain this equality she bullied Adam into joining her not allowing herself to have that which is forbidden and Adam remaining in the dar. And ever since this moment of wrestling for equality, the issue of equality related to knowledge has provoked millennia of fights.

Bullying then is comedic because it is one way we might see the human constituted as a subject. While we might wish we became a subject in a less “violent” way, we in fact become a subject through this wrestling, this bullying for something – God bullied for power, Eve bullied for equality. It would seem then that what Morgan’s joke exposes from my reading is that gays are in fact not pussies for confronting bullying, rather they are pussies who in struggling for equality (a contested term for sure) disrupt and make the social order much more complex that many can handle…unless allowed to handle it through the joke.

Speaking of jokes, there have been a lot of wiener jokes and puns in the news. I suppose I should say Weiner jokes since they are about a proper noun – namely Anthony Weiner – but they are also about Weiner’s wiener making spelling rather complicated because one really needs to know which wiener or Weiner one is writing about. The jokes are, it would seem, simultaneously about Weiner the person and his wiener making me realize that we cannot easily separate the person, usually represented by his mind from his body represented by his grey underwear clad wiener. I find this whole wiener-gate rather absurd which is great because the world is really just one absurdity after another. This is not to say that nothing matters, but that everything matters arbitrarily and thinking it absurd allows, at least me, to see things for what they are worth.

Yes, I am probably more astute than most and the world would be a better place if it followed my lead – a joke of course. But, if I was Wiener and sent a wiener picture, which I probably have in recent weeks to model myself off of yet another politician, I wouldn’t deny it. I would like Kanye West did own it and move on. Well, I wouldn’t totally move on, I would scour the blogs to see what people are saying about my picture – its artistic quality, etc. – and leave anonymous comments to sway people’s opinion in any particular direction. I believe in manipulation.

But, that’s beside the point. What Wiener-gate made me think about was not so much the new era of sexy-texting and the strange power dynamics (aren’t all power dynamics strange) that we are currently trying to theorize. No, what I have been thinking about is why such men are called pigs. Time magazine’s May 30^th issue was entitled “Sex, Lies Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs?” First things first, I don’t think it is nice to make pigs out to seem dirty. They cannot help that farmers and corporations put them into pens that 1) are not air conditioned and 2) do not allow them to primp themselves. I think pigs are pretty tasty and wieners too so I take offense to pigs being positioned as dirty.

Now, in popular parlance, all men are pigs not just one’s in power…although I imagine particular feminists would say all men have power (the joys of patriarchy) while I imagine other feminists would complicate such a notion since “men” as a category is, well, much too complex to reduce to swine. My interest here though is why are men considered pigs and women often considered cows? What is the gendered nature of this farm-animal comparison? Are men considered pigs because hot dogs are often made out of pork and hot dogs resemble an appendage that for many is a defining characteristic of “man” – namely the wiener? Are men pigs because one way of talking about sex is “porking”? Men use their wiener (made of pork) to “pork” some other? If so, why are women considered cows? Is heterosexual porking a strange zoological experiment seeking to produce a new type of species? Is homosexuality then more natural than heterosexuality because it actually occurs between members of the same species? I am not sure…

However, why is being a cow less demeaning than being a pig in some regards? I mean if you call a woman a cow, you will be slapped as you probably should be – unless it is a joke than it is perfectly fine unless you hurt her feelings which is probably also funny. Any how, if men who are powerful are pigs for sending sexy pictures will we one day call women who send sexy pictures cows? If Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin, or Hilary Clinton sent a naked picture would we call any of them a cow for doing so? Would Time have an issue called “Sex, Lies Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Women Cows” or since there is nothing sexy about cows would we call them sluts and move away from our farm-yard analogies? Would we say that these women had a “beef” with all the attention man-parts were getting and sought to udderly disrupt such images with some lady-parts? I am not sure but I hope in the near future female politicians will free themselves and start sexy-texting so we have some equality in sex scandals so that we can actually deal with the double standards that exist around representations of men and women…

Speaking of representations. Recently I read a piece that talked about gay men and a new cookbook coming out that relies on the image that gay men are skinny (we are).

Teaching Sex: A Lesson at Northwestern University

Controversy has emerged at Northwestern University after Prof. Michael Baily during an after-class lecture invited 4 members of the Chicago BDSM community to discuss “kink” which included an impromptu live sex-act demonstration. Initially, Northwestern supported the demonstration, but amid the growing outrage (from parents, alum, and Evanston community members) the university has decided to open an investigation to, as Northwestern President Schapiro stated “investigate fully the specifics of this incident, and also clarify what constitutes appropriate pedagogy, both in this instance and in the future.” (Chicago Sun Times).

Initially the university’s support for Baily’s after-class demonstration was defended using academic freedom and the importance to be able to teach controversial topics. Alan K Cubbage, vice president for University Relations noted “Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines. The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge” (Sun-Times). Baily’s syllabus for the course itself notes that the course is "skewed toward controversial and unusual aspects of sexuality." But, with potential bad press and loss of monies, the tune has changed - including numerous other critics - with the President of Northwestern saying he is “‘troubled and disappointed’ by the live sex toy demonstration in a campus auditorium last week, and that it was not in keeping with Northwestern's mission.”

Lance Gravelee, who teaches a human sexuality course at the University of Florida believes that Baily went to far stating “this case is so far on the other side of the line that it doesn’t strike me as difficult to figure that out” and that as a professor he “can’t imagine doing something like this in a classroom”. Gravelee has discussed the issue of female orgasm (one of the topics during the after-class demonstration) noting “you can do that and stop well short of bringing it into the classroom" and as such "they would have a hard time convincing me that this was an appropriate way to challenge misconceptions." Misconceptions it seem can be addressed by simply discussing them, but to illustrate the existence of and experience of a female orgasm is out of the question. Human sexuality, as an academic pursuit is, it would seem, purely a mind game, about acquiring knowledge and overcoming misconceptions without any attention to the physical or material complexity and experience of the body.

It is the body that is the problem in this case. To illustrate, with a real-life woman, particular sexual practices that bring about pleasure and orgasm is seen as one Evanston parent wrote a sign of “low-class depravity” - never mind that the female participant fully consented to and expressed her own enjoyment of exhibitionism. But the body is not always the problem in higher education - there are all kind of embodied demonstrations that take place on a university campus, from rock climbing to scuba diving. Rarely are there any controversies surrounding such demonstrations and actions. And it would be absurd, I think, to say it is perfectly fine to teach rock climbing or scuba diving by talking about how to do them without, at the minimum seeing demonstrations about proper techniques.

Sexual technique is, of course, a much more loaded conversation. Deirdre McCloskey, a UIC professor who has criticized Bailey in the past, said “he aims for shock over substance” (Chicago Sun Times). Such a view, while understandable, fails to grapple with why a demonstration of proper and alternative sexual techniques is not considered “substantive.” Is the female orgasm not an important and substantive topic that should be more engaged and thought about, especially in an age where women’s rights are being challenged on the floors of Congress? A Northwestern parent, Lynn Simmons thinks not, writing the demonstration “does not fall under the umbrella of education. It's demeaning to women. I just thought it was completely, completely out of line." (ABC Local). Now, I respect differing opinions, but I am not sure how a demonstration that was fully consensual and illustrating, through its very performance, a particular sexual fetish is demeaning to women? I find it actually, in this context, quite liberating and educational to see that women can 1) orgasm and 2) have control over how their body is pleasured by their partner(s) in non-normative ways.

This is not to say that women do not experience a disproportionate amount of sexual violence, but to note that it is important to recognize moments when female sexuality (and I would argue male sexuality via her partner’s pleasure in the demonstration) is shown as a positive and important aspect to a fulfilling life. As Jim Marcus, one of the presenters noted, "Everyone in the room consented to be there. Everyone on stage consented to do what they were doing. No one got hurt. Everything was done in safe, sane and consensual way," with such a demonstration providing an education (ABC News).

It is, no doubt, though shocking, to hear about a sex demonstration at a university. While everyone knows students have sex on campus, god forbid a university campus (consisting almost entirely of those who have reached the age of consent) actually teach a plethora of ways to get your rocks off. So, McCloskey is correct in stating this is “shocking” because we prefer sex to be the unspoken and are shocked when it is not. As CBS News reports:

Bill Yarber, a researcher at Indiana University's Kinsey Institute and author of the widely used textbook "Human Sexuality: Diversity in Contemporary America," said he's never heard of a naked woman being brought to orgasm in front of a class of students. "There's certain boundaries of things, I think, that are acceptable and that would certainly be pushing that," (CBS News)

And Bailey’s decision to allow this demonstration does in fact push the boundaries, but is that not the purpose of the academy - to push the boundaries of thought and pedagogy? Is this demonstration a rather explicit example of an erotic pedagogy?

In a time where sex education is abysmal, rates of HIV are on the rise in particular populations, notably youth, and the population lacks the access and ability to discuss the complexity of sex and sexuality it would seem the university is, at least, one place a part of the population might receive some “real” training in sexual technique. And it is for this reason, I found the statements from students to be quite illuminating and quite different than those of the “adults” aforementioned. Students who attended recognized the educational value of the demonstration. As Natalie Houchins said "We all learned some things. We learned about kinky sex culture, reasons they do it. We learned how these instruments work." And Sarah Lowe said she “was not disturbed by it,” but was “glad that it took place in an auditorium, rather than a smaller classroom, which would have been too close and awkward.” (Both from Sun-Times) Lowe further said

I was basically interested to see how it works. There wasn't anybody who was angry or expressed disgust. They asked questions about the lives of the presenters. It was very informational, I feel, about the sexual diversity that exists.

Not all students stayed for the demonstration. "For me, I'm glad I didn't see it. It was a little too explicit for me, and if I were in the class, if I would have stayed for the demonstration, I probably would have left. I know a couple of my friends did get up and leave," said Diana Lorenzini (ABC News). No where in this student’s view was the demonstration inappropriate or uneducational, rather it was not up her alley - to explicit.

Perhaps the students, who are themselves adults, in this after-class demonstration have something to teach those older adults about the value of an education. Perhaps their open-mindedness and general curiosity demands that the shock and awe around sexuality is outdated and in need of makeover. Or, that while such a demonstration might be too explicit for some, is still an important educational opportunity to be afforded those who are interested. Perhaps sex demonstrations, just like rock-climbing and scuba diving, deserve a place in the classroom to help students see the diversity of sexual possibilities and how to perform such possibilities in a safe and consensual manner. And, like those less “shocking” activities, perhaps such demonstrations for the time being, remain an “add-on” to the curriculum which is better than nothing.

We often hear stories emerging out of college campuses that involve sexual assault and violation. We can look at cases at Notre Dame, Drake University, Dickinson College and most likely any and all universities. Often such cases, while provoking outrage, fail to adequately address the issue of sexual assault. As Shirra Tarrant on Ms Magazine Blog writes there is significant silence around sexual assault on campuses and “sexual assault breeds in the Petri dish of silence.” Silence, in general, contributes to misconceptions, fears, shame, and potential harm around issues of sexuality. Not only should sexual assault be discussed and addressed, but so to should alternative, safe, and consensual sexual practices that allow all parties involved to experience pleasure and further learn how to live pleasureable, joyous lives.

References:

Kara Spak (3 March 2011). Northwestern University defends after-class live sex demonstration. Chicago Sun Times. Accessed at: http://www.suntimes.com/4099633-417/northwestern-university-defends-after-class-live-sex-demonstration.html

Barry Leibowitz (3 March 2011). Northwestern Sex Toy Demo: Univ. Kids get explicit lesson in human sexuality. CBS News accessed at: (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20038506-504083.html)

Stacey Baca & Eric Horng (3 March 2011). Participants call NU sex demo ‘educational’ ABC News accessed at: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7991736

Shirra Tarrant (8 Dec. 2010). Silence and Sexual Assaults on College Campuses. Ms Magazine Blog. Accessed at: http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/12/08/silence-and-sexual-assault-on-college-campuses/