tobis@meteor.wisc.EDU (Michael Tobis) (06/20/91)
"To one whose only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." It began when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad. My fiancee (now wife) and I were discussing the folly of war, and she read me the famous poem "Dover Beach". I was deeply moved. A few weeks later, I was astonished to read (in Harper's Magazine, April, 1991, pp 31 - 35) of a debate on the "actual" meaning of "Dover Beach", in which an old male professor, cast as something of an old fogey, was weakly defending the poem against a torrent of outrage from a young female professor. While the article proposed carrying the debate into the classroom, I was morbidly fascinated by the young female professor's (YFP's, the article has it) position, to wit: "Take the lines addressed to the woman by the speaker, she said: "Ah love, let us be true to one another...", and so on. In other words, protect and console me, my dear - as we know it's the function of your naturally more spiritual sex to do - from the struggle and flight of politics and history that we men have regrettably been assigned the unpleasant duty of dealing with. YFP added that she would have a hard time finding a better example of what feminists mean when they speak of the ideological construction of the feminine as by nature private and domestic and therefore justly disqualified from sharing male power." Well, now, the thing has been successfully deconstructed, apparently, and the true meaning, yet another reinforcement of male dominance is revealed. Or is it? I had been read the poem by a woman, and was unaware of the name of its author. (A failure in my own canonical education apparently, but no matter) Accordingly, I had heard the poem as A WOMAN SPEAKING TO A MAN. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever in the poem of the gender of either the speaker or the listener, as a close rereading, which I warmly recommend to you, will reveal. In fact, if you are sympathetic to deconstructive arguments, I recommend you read the poem as a communication between lesbian lovers, and pretend it was written by a woman. Does the meaning of the poem change? My question, then, is whether it is not possible that the idea that everything is about the relationship of men to women is not, just a bit, overdrawn. It is not unreasonable to dedicate one's life to examining and redressing the imbalances in the relation between the sexes. It is however quite ridiculous to proclaim that this is the only issue worth pursuing. I suspect that it really is getting difficult to consider the works of the great (white, male) authors of Western civilization in the political climate of many North American Universities, other than by trashing them for incidental and largely irrelevant flaws. To the extent that this is true, it is a great loss for the undergraduate population. What I find even more astonishing and disturbing is that these approaches are now being applied in an attempt to deconstruct the content of the physical sciences! This has been one of the threads in a vigourous discussion in the computer-related newsgroup comp.risks, on the relation between women and computers, which readers of this group may find of interest. I started that aspect of the discussion with a somewhat hot-headed posting, parts of which I now regret. However, I stand firmly by my principal point, that science is not about the relation between the sexes, any more than "Dover Beach" is, and that any attempt to bend science in keeping with one group or another's political sympathies or intuitions is profoundly dangerous. mt Michael Tobis tobis@meteor.wisc.edu
lkk@zurich.ai.mit.EDU ("Lawrence K. Kolodney") (06/25/91)
In article <9106190543.AA01879@meteor.meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.EDU (Michael Tobis) writes:
[Talking about a feminist critique of Arnold's "Dover Beach"]
I had been read the poem by a woman, and was unaware of the name of
its author. (A failure in my own canonical education apparently, but
no matter) Accordingly, I had heard the poem as A WOMAN SPEAKING TO A
MAN. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever in the poem of the
gender of either the speaker or the listener, as a close rereading,
which I warmly recommend to you, will reveal.
Maybe so. But isn't the point that the poem is, in fact, taught as
an expression of a man toward's a woman? You saw it otherwise. Maybe
that's to your credit. But how many actual poems by women which
express those kinds of sentiments towards men are in the Canon?
I think you do have a point that, in this example of DWM (Dead White
Male) literature, we have an expression of a sentiment which need not
be exclusive to White Men, and thus might be considered "universal."
On the other hand, the fact that the gender of the writer and object
of the poem is not clear seems accidental. In a real English class,
the genders will be obvious in most writing, either explicitly or by
way of background. If only DWM's are read in class, doesn't this tend
to reinforce the view that only White Men have agency, and that
[because gender *is* known], a certain view of the world (associated
with White Men of privilege, but not exlcusively theirs) will be
considered universal?
larry kolodney
--
larry kolodney The past is not dead. It's not even past.
lkk@zurich.ai.mit.edu - William Faulknergcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) (06/25/91)
tobis@meteor.wisc.EDU (Michael Tobis) writes: | ... | What I find even more astonishing and disturbing is that these | approaches are now being applied in an attempt to deconstruct the | content of the physical sciences! This has been one of the threads in | a vigourous discussion in the computer-related newsgroup comp.risks, | on the relation between women and computers, which readers of this | group may find of interest. I started that aspect of the discussion | with a somewhat hot-headed posting, parts of which I now regret. | | However, I stand firmly by my principal point, that science is not | about the relation between the sexes, any more than "Dover Beach" is, | and that any attempt to bend science in keeping with one group or | another's political sympathies or intuitions is profoundly dangerous. I think I'll approach this by starting in left field. Here's how I see the current situation: the society of the West, or at least of the United States, is dominated by an elite which can be called the Military-Industrial-Academic complex, or the New World Order, or the Organization. Domination by an elite requires authoritarianism. The power structure, in all its parts, is authoritarian. That includes the academic system, just as much as the government and the corporations. This authoritarianism contradicts some of its own public- relations stances. For example, the government is supposed to be democratic, the corporations are supposed to be competitive, and the academic system is supposed to harbor free inquiry. The way in which both the stance and the inherent authoritarianism have been preserved is mainly by informal agreement in fairly high places. A certain amount of non- authoritarian behavior is permitted, as long as it remains at a harmless level. In fact, it is the job of the various branches of the system to ensure that dissidence and originality are absorbed and defused, with use made out of their content when possible. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the academic branch of the system was severely challenged by the various components of the "New Left" as it was called. The New Left included feminism, which was itself divided into many subcurrents. The accepted truths and received wisdom of most fields of study were attacked. In many areas, the authorities found it prudent or necessary to retreat from the overt appearance of authority. Besides, they felt they could rely on established methods to absorb their antagonists. And they were right. As time wore on, most of the activists of the old New Left, and this included feminists, found their way into niches in the academic system, and their politics, having left the streets, became suitably abstruse. However, their thoughts remained virulent, from the point of view of the center. One of the thoughts which has been especially distressing has been the questioning of the sanctity of the physical sciences, long held to be models for their less rigorous sisters. How can a science which can be used to incinerate a city in the twinkling of an eye be wrong? Science is a set of theories about the behavior of the universe. A theory is considered successful when it "works", that is, provides consistent explanations and predictions of phenomena. However, our ability to form theories, and what we choose to form theories about, are unquestionably informed -- given form by -- the cultural context in which they arise. Being land-based animals, and used to a fixed frame of reference, it took many generations for theorizers to come to the conclusion that the earth moved. Even when that idea had been accepted, several centuries went by before physicists realized the fact -- which seems obvious now that Einstein has thought of it -- that the universe has no preferred, fixed frame of reference. Again, the discovery of evolution was first resisted by people who wanted to see a human-like intelligence guiding creation from a central point, and then accepted only as a war to the death between competing species. The idea that organisms also cooperate and even may coalesce was too difficult for the 19th-century mind to accept, just as previous centuries had found the idea of a universe without a central, self-conscious authority too difficult to accept. Even the most rigorous science is influenced in several ways by its non-scientific context: in the areas of what is considered important enough to think about, what theories are considered worth pursuing, what is considered "proof", and what applications are subsequently made of the theories. Considering that all of us live in a web of social relationships and concepts of those relationships, it seems almost certain that gender, class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and other categories of relation are going to come into play in every human enterprise, including science. Certainly, it seems worthwhile to look for such relations, even if some of the investigators come up with silly results. If we are afraid of errors and silly results we will never learn anything. But that's not really the problem. Philosophical attacks on the methods of science have been around about as long as science. In fact, they're a part of science, part of the way it proceeds. These attacks would probably not be noticed if it were not for the larger war which is raging in the humanities, and in those sciences like economics and psychology which have humanistic dimensions. Earlier in his article, Michael Tobis wrote: | ... | I suspect that it really is getting difficult to consider the works of | the great (white, male) authors of Western civilization in the | political climate of many North American Universities, other than by | trashing them for incidental and largely irrelevant flaws. To the | extent that this is true, it is a great loss for the undergraduate | population. .... The problem is not deconstruction but the authoritarianism of the academic system, which arises out of its role in supporting a mandarinized, class-based system of social power. In an authoritarian system, only one set of thoughts can be right. Thus, if someone deconstructs one of the struts of Western Civ -- in this case, good old "Dover Beach" -- it is an attack on Western Civ itself, not just someone's odd opinion, as it would be out among the peasantry. Usually, this sort of thing has been tolerated and absorbed, finally becoming yet another strut. However, outside Academia, significant changes have been taking place. Throughout the 1980's, right-wing capitalism fans and reactionary social authoritarians gained political supremacy. Those in power see no need to absorb or compromise with the remnant of the New Left still holding out in Academia, and have begun a campaign to extrude or neutralize them. Thus, the sudden interest in the term "politically correct" which was originally an ironic _leftist_ phrase criticizing orthodoxy in other leftists. The effort has been helped by the mistaken Leftist strategy of using authority -- for example, the attempt to prohibit racist or homophobic speech on campuses. This move has made it possible for George Bush, who has never to my knowledge evinced the slightest interest in freedom for anyone but his class and their agents, to make himself out to be the supporter of free speech, a truly astounding exercise which leaves Reagan, even at his most mendacious, in the dust. Western Civilization will not be destroyed by deconstruction. In fact, if an educated, literate person like Michael Tobis has never heard of "Dover Beach" before, it is already being ill served and is in need of some confrontation and controversy. If the Right has its way, however, we may in for a season of enforced blandness in the media and in our academic institutions, a sort of rerun of the 1950's where only a few dissidents suffer. Never fear. The physical and social infrastructure is dissolving apace, and change is gonna come, as the song says. -- Gordon Fitch * uunet!cmcl2.nyu.edu!panix!mydog!gcf Bx 1238 Bowling Green Station / NYC 10274 "All that is put together falls apart. Work out your salvation with diligence."