For the life of me, I will NEVER understand what goes on in his head. Number one, if he hadn’t noticed: the people that he defends are academics all of whom are smart enough to know one really important thing:

what some buttwipe named “shag” has to say on a blog, the name of which references some shit that probably makes sense to no one who doesn’t follow The Coup, is of no never mind to them.

For pity’s sake, if one of you lamers is actually reading this blog, will you take TINA aside, as his friend, and point this out for him. I mean, I’m certain you already have. But try a little harder, for the sake of his mental and emotional health.

that he gets upset about anything I have to say is quite beyond me as well. I mean, I could possibly understand if he had any respect for my intellect whatsoever, but he made clear that he never did and certainly doesn’t now. So why on earth does it even matter.

See, when I had the old blog where I’d get all kinds of weinies showing up, I’d just flush their posts and move on, saving my breath to cool my porridge. TINA’s friends are wise enough to spend their energies on the people who matter: other academics and the occasional non-academic who’s a public intellectual – like a C Hitchens or something.

TINA: you need to do the same. Life is way too short.

i work from home once a week on a special flex schedule the new boss introduced. boss likes to work from home himself. this is fun b/c R and i get to work together. Things were rough for us a year ago and more but things have change 100 million percent. It’s the little things. Like today: I had a meeting to prep for. As I did, I looked out the window and saw him taking apart my bike, cleaning and polishing it. So, I wrote post it notes with a message, “I love you,” and posted ‘em to the window. Now that seems stupid to an outsider. But this is the kind of thing he’d closed himself off from for awhile. These days, without the booze, he’s opened up again, willing to be loving like that, in little ways, after shutting it down for three years.

Yesterday, we were sitting on our bikes in rush hour traffic, waiting for a light. We’d been in a hurry to meet a friend for a ride, so when we met at the parking garage, there was no time for greeting each other with a kiss. So at the light he said, “Oh, I forgot.” and then leaned in for a smooch right there in the middle of rush hour traffic, cars all around us. Near us, a little girl was hanging out the window staring and grinning at the old farts kissing in the middle of a three lane highway. lol

(double aside: speaking of which, later, some other little girl is hanging out the window while we’re waiting for a light to turn green. We smile and wave at her, as they drive off, she shouts at us: “I love you bicycle people.” We are traffic, motherfuckers.)

Anyhow, it’s really kind of amazing about R – considering the hell that was the last three out of four years. Take the booze away and all this little romancy stuff – real honest deep feeling and not just for show – is still there. The other day, walking out of BJs, the lady checked our receipt and then told us how in love we looked. We *had* been so in our own little world, walking closely together, really talking and listening, that her comment snapped me out of what felt like being in another world, just him and me, entirely engrossed in some conversation.

This happens, the therapist said, because people often drink to make them stop feeling. That is often what they mean by “medicating with booze.” When he stopped drinking cold turkey she said it must have been terrible because all of a sudden he was on a roller coaster of feeling. And yes, it’s true. He drove *me* crazy while he was on that roller coaster ride: highs really high, lows really low. But somehow he managed to get through it and learn to deal with those feelings, but without the booze.

So I’m thinking about all this, how lucky we are. He comes in to thank me for the note. I’d just got done following up on something with an IM to my boss. I tell R about this situation at work. I have a workmate who tried for another gig in the company. This is always a tricky gambit to put your hat in the ring thereby letting your own boss know you want to leave him. Workmate is a nice guy, but sometimes a little difficult to deal with. He’s kind of cranky and there are some things that he just doesn’t think he should have to do. Part of it is that he used to be a director of something or other and now, in his own eyes, he’s just a ‘lowly’ product manager/project manager.

So, this guy is offered the job in another unit. But then the next day, they rescind the offer realizing they don’t have the budget. fucked up, huh? So, workmate comes back on board and it sort of seems all hunky dory; but there’s this nagging…. something…. doesn’t feel right. I can’t put my finger on it but it’s clear there’s some tension. 6 weeks later workmate is again offered the job but under slightly less groovy conditions and there’s a tussle about not wanting the job anymore, being concerned that the unit had been doing poorly financially, so having second thoughts.

Ugh. Right? I feel bad for my workmate. What to do? turns out he doesn’t have a choice. Our boss basically tells him he has to take the job because, in the meanwhile, he’d gone ahead and scouted to fill is position and offered someone else a job. We all thought we were just bringing another person on board, 4 PMs instead of 3. Nope. Someone changed their mind or something. I have no clue. I don’t understand why the offer just can’t be rescinded to this other new guy that my boss is saying he has to hire.

Lord. what a mess. So I’m wondering about who is going to hold my workmate’s going away party. I ask my boss in an email. Boss says nothing. Busy day I guess. I ask him again today, in an IM. Nothing.

So I agonize about all this with R, trying to figure out if my boss – who ordinarily answers me immediately – is giving me the silent treatment so I’ll stop asking because he doesn’t want to answer. It had been clear that in the back and forth over the second offer of the job, there were some hard feelings. Because, sure, they made a job offer to someone, but they could have just as easily rescinded it once my workmate said he didn’t want to go to the other unit. It starts to seem like someone wanted to get rid of my workmate. That maybe my boss doesn’t like him very much, and wanted to be rid of him.

So, I’m trying to figure out what workmate had done to get so treated – pretty shabby to force him to take another position in the company, a position he no longer wanted. So I’m telling R some of the reasons why it could be that my workmate was seen as “difficult.” One of the issues is “attitude”. For instance, he was bitching to me about how he scheduled a meeting expressly because boss said to schedule it for two people. But once he did, both declined the meeting. My workmate is all pissed off, “What the fuck. I was told to have a meeting just for them. But then they tell me that can’t attend it. What the hell. They either want to come or they don’t. Can’t they change their schedule to make this meeting.”

Me: “Well, maybe they were just busy with previous meetings. When I have to schedule, I just plug everyone’s name into the calendar and then click the tool that says “find meeting”. The calendar automatically finds the meeting time all can attend.”

He looks at me and rolls his eyes and says, ‘I’m not a fucking secretary. Jesus christ. I’m supposed to schedule meetings now?”

Me? I don’t get his problem. As far as I can tell, that is part of the job. He’s a project manager/product manager. This means that he’s responsible for completing a project/product but doesn’t actually supervise the workers who do the work. Yeah: nightmare. But also: it *is* a well known aspect of the job. Plus, people came up with this approach for a reason. So, yeah, if he needs to get information from people who are stakeholders – invested in the project or product – but their primary task is in sales or marketing or whatever then he has to work around *their* schedules. If they are stakeholders, this usually means that their primary job function has nothing to do with the creation and maintenance of the technical aspects of the product – they just sell it or market it or use it. Which means that 99% of their day is spent doing lots of other things – like going to sales meeting, having one on ones with reports, creating marketing campaigns, whatever. So you have to encourage them to come to meetings in an environment where everyone hates yet another meeting.

I guess he doesn’t think that this is his job. *shrug*

So, I’m explaining all this to R, to explain why workmate can be a bit of a low grade headache if you are a boss. I can see where it would be an irritant. I wonder outloud, in other words, if he sorta got ‘fired’ without really being fired. I mean, kinda important to pay attention to this sort of thing – and why – so you don’t end up in same boat!

So, maybe boss was pissed at him. Maybe he’s not answering b/c he doesnt’ want to give a party. Should I just go ahead and organize his going away party? It’d be really shitty not to give him one. The situation was bad enough, the feeling that he was forced out so uncomfortable, that the least we can do is give the guy some respect.

In general, I’m not sure I understand what happened. One thing they taught us in management training a few years back was that you don’t just dump employees. Instead, you work with them. If there’s an attitude problem or whatever, then there is coaching and mentoring. That’s the company policy: they make it really hard to simply fire someone without trying to make things aright first.

yeah: go fucking figure.

(BTW, this is another reason why I kind of laugh about some of corey robin’s ideas on fear in the workplace. They only seem to apply to very specific workplaces – usually of the sort he’s most familiar with – or fancies he’s familiar with. go figger. ha ha ha!)

So, I tell R why it might be true that my workmate got squeezed out, using the “I’m not a fucking secretary” comment as an example. Should I go ahead and just give him a party, even if not authorized by my boss? Will I piss off my boss?

R says, “Hey, get him a card and on the inside write this, “I would have thrown you a birthday party but I’m not a fucking secretary so we didn’t have anyone to organize it.”

i just about had to fall on the ground laughing so damn hard.

Not many people are lucky to have this sort of relationship where you can talk shop about your jobs. It’s pretty nice. What’s also amazing is that R keeps it all straight, knows who is who, remembers foibles about this person or that. Remembers this incident or that. I only hope that, when he gets a job and brings home the same stories, I’ll be able to keep it all straight and listen with same attentiveness and interest – and still have enough energy leftover to crack a joke like that to boot.

1. one of the hazards women experience moving in male dominated circles is not always being socialized to read the signs of alpha-male behavior. One of the things I don’t read or notice is when a male boss or colleague is doing whatever it is that men do to indicate they don’t want to be fucked with. See, I can’t even describe it. But I’m reminded of it due to recent events b/c I noticed awhile ago that my initial reading of TINA’s “he’s my friend, don’t be mean to my friend” responses on the list were way off base. i’d initially seen that as protective mama-bear manevers: a serious register of agony that a friend is being put in the spotlight. Then, one day, after years of this sort of thing on the list, it dawned on me that it is alpha-male behavior: Don’t criticize this guy. I’m the list owner and if you do, you’ll have to deal with me. Stop it.

Apparently, I was supposed to be cowed and not continue discussing whoever Friend of the Month was (e.g., Walter Benn Michael, Corey Robin, Adolph Reed, etc.)

Alrighty then. But I’ve since been noticing it at work, in meetings with management types who all describe themselves as “assholes”. E.g., that is exactly what they were called by management consultant who came in and gave everyone personality tests and did some soft of analysis of management and how to communicate better, etc. I have forgotten the name of my “type” only to say that apparently I score fairly evenly across all four sections, which freaked out the consultant who said it wasn’t normal.

well. yeah. and?

Anyway, someone said that TINA looked pretty silly circling wagons. And I thought, oh hell now, one of the the things I like about TINA is that he’s never been shy about the need to promote himself, be a friendwhore on facebook, schmooze, wear nice clothes, snuggle up to the academic gossip crowd. I don’t think he makes any bones about wanting to be popular, influential, on CNN, etc. One of the things I like about that guy.

I have to write a blog rant one day about the uppermiddle classness of this protect-friends business. not that working class people don’t. it’s just that there are different reasons for it, mostly on the order of self-promotion. It becomes clear that, no matter how much you’d like to, it’s declasse to be honest with your friends about their beliefs. The reason why is, you might need them someday – as a job reference, job networking, etc. Working class folks have difference rules for who gets the ‘protect one of our own’ treatments, usually on the basis of daily interaction in a circle of friends, but also in terms of long-standing family relationship, as well as family alliances.

As for Robin, I actually think that MP did a disservice to the guy’s argument by reducing it to that blog post. He says more than what he said about the Sanchez douchebag. True, it’s rambling, etc. and not very well put together in his book. Meh. it’s a collection of essays. can’t really expet much else. I think it could have been done better with an explanatory chapter, connecting all the ideas in the chapters – a better one than he has now. But what he actually does in the first very long chapter is introduce new, improved ideas instead of weaving together a tapestry of essays. Alas, he had an offer to publish the book, so he did. Can hardly blame him for wanting to make a little cash money, contribute to the publication pile, etc.

Recently, Joanna said something in a review of Robin about how Robin can be used to understand the poverty of life under capitalism, that the worldview he outlines – the reactionary – is actually that of someone fucked up in the head by capitalism. she mentioned something about how living in such a world, you have absolutely no relations with others that aren’t relationships of exchange, reduced to a mere commodity exchange. Something like that. Robin never says anything like this, of course. But she extends his insights, using them as a weapon in her own analysis of life under capitalism. Some really great cultural analysis does this. In J’s case, I found it a troubling analysis because she made a generalized claim about how *everyone* exists under capitalism. We are all like this, she says. We all live a life where our relationships with one another are reduced to commodity exchange.

OK fine. But this bugs me because I want to hear the writer of such a claim show how it works in her own life.
This may actually be a hazard of sociology, where we do sociology of sociology, and tend to be a leetle inclined toward self-critical critiques of our own habitus. Still, I think that there’s a kernel of truth to what J may have been getting at, although I suspect that the issue is, again, not so much that our relationships were never this way, only that we have the belief that they shouldn’t be this way. I mean, 1000 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for people to marry purely out of the need to exchange property. etc. So the idea that capitalism has stripped away some romantic world where we always treated one another as ends in themselves instead of means to ends — kinda bullshit.

anyway, gotta run. just dropping off this placeholder to revisit.

i mean, I love JF, but I’m troubled by the desire to fire up coursework for the express purpose of easing your own troubled conscience. Really? This is about basically reproducing the same kind of schooling offered now, lecturer as font of wisdom, blahblah blah like an adult in Charlie Brown cartoon? Because, really, that’s not it.

There’s something missing. I’m not hearing a tone or attitude or something. Missing is an actual interest in students, the focus entirely on the content, the imparting of important knowledge is the focus. Students are empty vessels to be filled.

The idea that students have an ongoing life of the mind – knowledges and passions and experiences – seems absent.

Consider the story I just told in that post, about my question, “What is Culture?” In a traditional university setting, my question wouldn’t have been greeted with exasperation. It wouldn’t have been answered, not usually. It would have been sidestepped. Rarely would anyone expose to a frosh that the question they ask isn’t stupid or ignorant or even frustrating. What normally happens is a teacher is greeted with the question and doesn’t see it as a legitimate one but rather as an excuse , a diversion. They teacher will push you to work with the definition offered or used or will simply say, Here’s the course’s definition of culture.

But what a course that begins with the academic article problematizing the diversity of meanings of the word across different disciplines and lines of intellectual inquiry, nevermind competing marxist, weberian, durkheimian, etc. strands of thought. that is an approach that refuses to say, “this is settled. right answer; wrong. get it? got it? good? capiche?”

anyway, many errands to do today. i was just wondering if anyone else was troubled by the motivations behind teaching courses that seems to be about the instructors and not students. i guess there’s no way around that. to devote your voluntary time to something is to necessarily do so because you are getting something out of it for yourself. but i guess maybe it’s just that i feel that the concept of “student” hasn’t been interrogated, let alone “teacher”.

Last night, M Pollak posted an article about black bloc on facebook. I didn’t read it at the time. I just did now. Wow. What a ridiculous article. There have been exactly two ‘black blocs’ at Oakland — I don’t count the ongoing Fuck The Police marches as black blocs (or street fighting). Yet, the author seems to think that the entirety of OWS – apparently, everywhere an Occupy exists — is incapable of thinking of anything else but using black block tactics. Which, mind, is reduced to street fighting as tactic — which is patent bullshit. It would be nice to advance some evidence of all the black blocs that have been central to Occupy in order to make silly claims like this. Or, at least, show how you are in the realm of rhetoric, the realm of –say– opinionator obsessions as opposed to what’s happening at direct action planning meetings, etc.

Anyway, I had just finished up reading Graeber’s account of the movement from Ghandian non-violence to black bloc tactics among environmentalists (and other activists) in the Northwest, prior to the infamous Seattle.

Dork that I am, completely outraged by the horrible history that I’d just read in Graeber, I posted a short summary thinking, mistakenly, that the article was more along the lines of a tempered, insightful piece. Since the piece was supposedly about the history of black bloc in the u.s., Graeber naturally came to mind and I assumed my summary would just buttress the article. I tend to trust Michael’s judgement and level-headedness.

Anyway, my summary was of Graeber’s chapter which was about the events that lead environmentalists in the NW to decided to abandon the Ghandian non-violence that they’d been committed to and sign up for black bloc during the “battle in Seattle.” The NW environmentalists saw acitivists in lockdown tortured with liquid pepper spray, methodically poured or swabbed directly on their eyes, all done methodically and clinically with one cop holding the activist still and pulling back her eyelid, the other pouring or swabbing, all the while clinically describing the activities as if narrating surgery for an audience of interns. In addition to the torturous handling of lockdowns, a tree sitter was murdered by a logger. When proof that the police and media lied about the murder emerged in the form of video revealed the logger in an altercation with protesters just before the murder, nothing much happened.

Protestors had adopted Ghandian non-violence because they believed that they could present themselves as pure and just and deserving of public sympathy when cops inevitably used violence on them. This, Graeber says, worked for the Civil Rights movement, but hasn’t much since then. One reason is that there’s a sense that the media systematically ignores protests of any sort believing that to give voice to protest is to give air time to an illegitimate or non-institutional entity staging protests just for the press attention. Another reason is that its wildly believed that journalists think they contributed to the discontent of the 60s by covering protests. Graeber also suggests that people saw the South as another country. To see cops violently putting down civil rights struggle was to see the police of another country doing so, which meant people could identify with the protesters and object to the cops. Today, the situation isn’t the same. People see the cops as part of the country. They also think there are real alternatives to protest that should be used before anyone uses protest. Hence, there isn’t a lot of sympathy for protesters most of the time.

Anyway, I assumed that this understanding of the media and the police was a given – that both lied and both distorted what goes on during protests. I gave a quick synopsis, talking about how Earth First was once committed to Ghandian non-violence but, in the face of police abuse and media mendacity and lack of coverage, they gradually lost faith in Ghandian principles. Some gave it up entirely and participated in black bloc during Seattle 1999.

Now, granted it was a short paragraph. It relied on too much assumed and shared assumptions about media and police. But I don’t realy think my poor summary was the reason for the hostile response. Hostile to Graeber in so far as MP claimed that, while he intitially thought it made sense, I was wrong about Earth First: ostensibly they committed violence (tree spiking) and that it made no sense to complain about lack of media attention around tree sitting since it was such a solo activity there wouldn’t likely be much media attention.

Well, I was talking a wider set of circumstances, but mostly simply assuming that if I said that the media and public didn’t pay attention, the reader on the left would basicallly agree. I think most would but in the context of Graeber? apparently not.

In fact, MP went on to suggest that Graeber fabricated most of what I summarized, suggesting not only that they were lies but that Graeber had a knack for lulling the reader into believing what he’s saying. Luckly, MP caught himself and came to his senses before being manipulated by the likes of the mendacious Graeber.

Seems that some folks just can’t handle what Graeber says on this particular ntopic. I think they believe that no good and decent person would ever advocate violence of any sort, not even property destruction, so they simply don’t believe Graeber on the topic.

This is the kind of thing, though, that Graeber was pointing out that was so wrong with the kind of scumbag article Hedges wrote. They poison the wells making it impossible to believe a black bloc participant is rational, worth listening to, does what she does for reasons, that it’s not just punk kids, etc. Graeber offers a direct counterexample to their lies and stereotypes, yet they lies and stereotypes continue.

The latest in Viewpoint magazine, above, is another good example of bullshit on stilts walking around, posing as “intellectual” and “scholarly.”

the very people, like Miles Jackson, who claim that schools can make you critical of education seem to be advocating that, therefore, we can be morons and be completely incapable of understanding a thing that’s been said.

no one is advocating the abolition of education. sounds to me like they’d like to see the abolition of schooling.

similarly, the idea that schools address inequality makes me insane. TINA will invariably trot out some bullshit about how I wouldn’t be anywhere without schooling. Which makes me laugh. I have a good paying job and it has very little to do with my schooling in college. I mean, I’m actually working on making it have more to do with it, but I could have stayed where I was and made just as much. Meanwhile, the real point is: I’m a software engineer with a degree in the social sciences. I got a job because ravi told me to play around with blogs – as did Dwayne. I got a job b/c I wanted to know how to make myown web page. Stuff related to college and beign in colege. I got a job, also, because peole I knew from being in college – lbo folks – told me how to game the job market.

in other words, i’m here not because of hard skills but the very fucking soft skills that people point out, over and over again, are one of the mechanisms for which schooling ALWAYS matters to success in terms of occupation and income.: social networks, connection, who you know and not what you know.

nevermind the fact that it surely irritates that education supposedly fixes income inequality. not the kind i’m thinking of.

i mean, yay for me. good job. but what about all the other equally talented and hardworking folks i left behind, eh? fuck. what about my dad, for whom a two year college degree did nothing? (for which some lamer from lbo would probably quiz on his hard workingness or deservingness..)

no really. the fact is, there’s still a core of people, lefties one and all, who really do ultimately pin lack of job propects, etc. on the individual: lack of motiviation, etc.

TINA used to hint around in offlist email that I couldn’t find work because I didn’t hae enough self-esteem. Go fucking figure! Which is why every fucking time he tries to tweak me for being a smarty pants, I laugh. It makes me realize that he’s reaching real hard to score points in a debate. TINA also used to bag Chuck for not finding work, too. Oh, and then JB who, twice, chalked up my situation in life to the fact that I was paying off karmic debt.

yeah. no shit.

I know it is water weight gain b/c it would be humanly impossible for me to have gained weight on a diet of 1400 cals per day with exercise at 500 cals per hour each day.

I would fucking like to know WHY the fuck it’s possible to gain that much water in those few days. I could feel it to boot because my fluttering heart beat problems largely subsided for the past two weeks. But they were back with a vengeance Sunday evening. Woke up feeling like my heart was beating out of my chest this morning too. I assume this is due to the water retention or something.

Meanwhile, on the way to dinner yesterday, R and I were talking about the crazy that are republican candidates for president, which got me ranting about Corey Robin.

I’m explaining the problems I see with the book, the slippery shifting between conservatives and reactionaries, especially focusing on the way that using Robin’s framework, you can’t really address the “partial” reactionaries: namely, progressive men and women who for one reason or another can deal with leveling among *certain* groups or attempts to level hiearchies when the person happens to think those hierarchies are legitimate.

R: So you are gonna sit in the car and read a book which sounds stupid?

Me: Well, it’s interesting for tidbits of intellectual history. Certainly the situationality (word?) of reactionary thought is a proposition worth examining even if it remains unconvincing as a sweeping claim about all conservatives, though it may be applicaple to all reactionaries… But yeah, there’s something weird about this book. There are so many inconsistencies. There’s no rigor when it comes to defining terms, which is weird for a book if targeted at an academic audience. Characters from intellectual history are introduced with little explanation which is weird for a book targeted at general audience…

R: So, you are gonna sit in the car and read a book which sounds like the only reason it got published is that the author just happens to know the right people to get crap published? (Being a non-academic who likes to deal in cliches, just to get a laugh, sometimes R cuts to the chase.)

Me: Well, exactly! To borrow TINA’s characterization, Since I’m a smarty pants, I want to read it to find out why all these people think it’s so great and then reveal what a piece of crap the book is. Sheesh. Isn’t that obvious? (R tries to maintain a stone face as he stares ahead at rush hour traffic, but I see a smile curving his lips beneath the mustache and beard that needs trimming.) I mean, it’s like TINA said, I’m a smarty pants right? Of course I have to read a book that lots of lefties think is effin’ brill, just so I can explain why it isn’t effin’ brill. Duh!

And to that, we start laughing. None of which stops me from complaining about the whole gender issue that troubles me. As I noted on FB recently, I’m really irked by the way Robin writes about women’s oppression in the book.

First, he tends to want to be so sweeping in his claims, not just about reactionaries and conservatives, but about pretty much everything he writes about. Again, I’m only 25% into the book, but like Michael Pollak said, why waste a perfectly good opportunity to spout off?!

So, early on in the book, Robin writes about a social process whereby oppressed people, defined in relations of subordination to those considered their superiors, press against those constraints and rebel. This causes a reaction and we call these people reactionaries. He then speaks of the way secretaries must deal with bosses, much as workers in factories must deal with managers, serfs must deal with lords, even wives must deal with husbands. Now, the first time I read this, the word “even” jarred me. Initially I thought, well, it’s a book written to a general audience, so he might have to hold hands on that topic, warm people up to the idea that oppressive relations exist within a marriage. Good on Robin!

But then I wondered, why are factory workers the default male here, while one has to point specifically to the existence of female workers, secretaries. And then I thought, why are there workers in factories — kinda generic — but a specific occupation, secretaries. WEll, obviously, he wants to be incluuuuuuuuuuuuusive.

But then he repeats this way of listing illustrative oppressions throughout the rest of the introductory chapters where we lose the pairing secretary/boss and the only one preserved to point at gender is husband/wife. So, I keep reading sentences that include pairings like this: worker/boss, serf/lord, husband/wife. And I’m all like, wait a minute. He is ignoring all the interesting work done on oppression, for one thing: theorists have delineated the way different oppressions work and where those concerned with structural accounts of society have pointed out the problem with individualizing assumptions. I mean, if you are trying to list oppressions with illustrative pairings, then you run into some problems with, say, race. or with heterosexuality. disability. You get my point? Robin is pointing to social roles — as we might call them in sociology– but there isn’t a corresponding social role that makes sense to his formulation for other forms of oppression. Slaveholder/slave might make sense, but what about white/black? Whiteness/race? Heterosexist/homosexual? Ablist/disabled? Even women/men doesn’t work when you have a list composed of serf/landlord, worker/boss, etc.

Basically, he’s trying to say something while preserving some sort of literary decorum – where people get the basic point with gestures at social phenom. I guess. It’s like he’s trying to point at a complex issue without having to get into the boring details, without having to disrupt the grammatic flow. (tee hee, like that phrase or what?) I get the sense that this is to preserve, what?, the integrity of the writing? So you don’t let the demand for intellectual precision trip up the flow of the sentences?

Dunno. All I know is, it seems a huge shame to ignore a rich body of literature from Eric Olin Wright, Iris Marion Young, John Roemer (I think, I’m pulling this out of memory and not googling), feminists on the topic of oppression and how it works, etc. Wright, for instance, talked about people in different class locations to capture the phenom of occupations and social roles where individuals in them didn’t necessarily benefit from the direct exploitation of labor but who nonetheless existed in relations of superordination to subordinates.

Blah blah. But this constant reference to wives and husbands continued to bug the shit out of me. So I did a search on Kindle to see if women were mentioned elsewhere. As I said to R in the car, why on earth constantly refer to husbands/wives as a signifier of gender oppression?

I mean, I don’t have to be married to you to experience oppression such as when my old boss always asked me, the only woman in the room, to do secretarial type things. Or the time one of the guys told me that women weren’t good at computing. Or listening to the guys, day in and day out, make jokes about sleeping with each other’s wives. As in, “Yeah, that’s what your wife told me last night.” As in, “Where you at?” “Over here with your girl and a forty o’ beer.”

So, WTF? Searching on the words woman/women to see where gender might be dealt with in a more careful way in the book, I note that a later chapter deals with heterosexism. So, clearly, he must have concerned himself with the difficulty of individualizing relations of oppression such that labor and capital becomes factory workers/boss (I mean, why not computer programmers and boss?), such that men/women become for a moment, secretary/manager, but mostly is simply described as husbands/wives (and one, IIRC, it becomes men/wives). You can’t really do that with other forms of oppression which operate by constituting hierarchical relations between groups of people but simply don’t do so necessarily through relations of superordination/ subordination.

As I said to R, I don’t understand how such sloppy thinking gets a pass. I guess I’m used to political theory written by people with some training in the rigors of analytic school of philosophy. Those folks lay out an argument and then always present the counterarguments, and their objections to them — if they can mount an objection. If they can’t, they simply list them as noted, as problems for their account. But even the supposedly sloppy continental philosophers seem to be a bit more disciplined than what I find in this book. And even when they aren’t, it’s generally because the audience is assumed to be acclimated to the specialty and thus in no need of coddling. References to certain technical bits and uses of certain words/refs to authors are shorthand arguments for the continentals. Which is why it frustrates people who read them without the background in the lingo.

One of the reasons why he does this is that he has an “issue” with the operations of power in civil society – in the “private” sphere. He seems to think that too much attention is paid power as it operates in the “public” sphere. Which I’ll get to in another post. For now, here are some quotes to capture what I mean:

“One of the reasons the subordinate’s exercise of agency so agitates the conservative imagination is that it takes place in an intimate setting. Every great political blast …. is set off by a private fuse: the contest for rights and standing in the family, the factory, and the field. Politicans and parties talk of constitution and amendment, natural rights and inherited privileges. But the real subject of their deliberations is the private life of power.” (I have no idea what page this is b/c I’m using a Kindle and haven’t figured out how to figure out page numbers as they correspond to a print version. *sigh*)

That pretty much captures the obsession with private life. It also captures the simplistic dualisms. There’s “political” deliberation, constitution, amendment, rights. And then there is “private” stuff which is, apparently, not political. Alrighty then. I mean, to interpret this in a better light, you could say that what he’s trying to do is capture the always already political character of private life to begin with. But why write as if this is a new insight? Why deploy the dualisms at all, why deploy them without interrogation if he felt he must make use of them. Perhaps it’s important to deploy them, in order to demolish them via your theory? This is like a little kid putting up blocks to smash them, no?

More on the private sphere and conservativism:

“Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty — or a wariness of change, a believe in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism… But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalist, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force – the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of superiors, particular in the private sphere. “

Ahh. see? You can see the problem, right? His fetish for the private, and his fetish for individualizing relations of oppression starts here: he wants to be interesting and different in his focus on how these things take place in a private sphere by which he means intimate relations (such as that between husband/wife, boss/secretary, slaveholder/slave). Relations of superordination/subordination are intimate, individual, personally felt. In order to constantly strike that iron, you have to constantly retreat to this issue of the personal, private, individual, emotional, felt, feeling to make a point thereby. Your sieve captures nothing else.

“Despite the very real differences between them, workers in a factory are like secretaries in an office, peasants on a manor, slaves on a plantation — even wives in a marriage — in that they live and labor in conditions of unequal power. They submit and obey, heeding the demands of their managers and masters, husbands and lords. They are discplined and punished. They do much and receive little.”

Which is interesting because the formulations seem so archaic. No one calls themselves a secretary any more. LOL. But the funnier thing is, why not just say computer programmer and manager? Why is a factory worker perceived as fitting into this relationship of superordination/subordination. Why call out secretary? Why not insurance sales rep? Why not graphic designer? Or marketing event manager? Copywriter? All jobs that tend to be held by women. Why are managers and bosses seen as people who think they are superior to others. Really? These days? Even long ago? I’m reminded of the book, Foreman’s Empire. Factory workers and foreman, who definitely had more intimate one on one relations with line workers but whose role just doesn’t fit into this framework.

And then there’s this bit that reminds me of the famous essay “and some of them were brave”. Elizabeth Spelman and Maria Lugones called it the “ampersand problem in feminist thought.” It was a reference to the way oppression subtly worked among men and women leftists during the 60s. The list of oppressions would proceed as: women, blacks, workers, homosexuals, hispanics, aboriginals, etc. The point of the title was to underline how the word “women” was used in a way that revealed the author’s unconscious thought: that the identity woman could be separated from race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sexuality, etc. Are workers women? Why is it “blacks and women”? Should it be, more accurately, “black men and women and white women”? etc. (Sorry, again I’m being lazy and not looking up exact details of essays here. I believe the ampersand problem was in an article called, “Have we got a theory for you!”, which was also a reference to the way white women in feminist thought tended to theorize *for* women of color….)

So, I’ma gonna hit the gym. It’s pouring, so no ride today. But you can see why I was disappointed in this book. I wanted to like it, but so far I’m disturbed by what in yesterday’s entry I described as “platitudes.” It feels like these essays trade in platitudes carried around by well-meaning liberals where the struggle against oppression is something other people do and worry about, and about which they like to expound, but do not get themselves too dirtied up in the details to worry about things like the ampersand problem in their thought.

was diagnosed with a metabolic condition earlier this year. lately, the medication change seems to be associated with some health issues such as – love this! – 8 lb weight gains in 5 days. a gain that came on top of another 5 lb weight gain a couple of weeks before. Now, if I were stuffing doritos into my face and not exercising, that might make sense. but even if I were, it still doesn’t make sense. 8 lbs in 5 days would require eating 28,000 extra calories in 5 days.Lovers, that would mean, what?, about 12 large sausage pizzas in addition to a normal diet over the course of 8 days. Like I told my doctor, OK. I gained weight. But shouldn’t I have had a LOT more fun than I have had during those five days! Instead, I’ve been exercising regularly and eating, if not a balanced diet, then at least not one where I was eating almost 7000 extra calories a day than I need!

So, I’ve been in and out of doc’s for tests, medication tweaks, etc. For awhile, my heart was racing here and there, issues with fluttery/uneven heart beats, and awaking in the middle of the night or the morning feeling as if my heart stopped. That’s happened in the past but I chalked it up to a stressful lifestyle and the fact that congenital heart disease runs in the family. All my great uncles died before they were 45 and my great aunt and grandma all had heart attacks by the time they were 55.

Alas, in spite of exercising 5 days a week and biking to work regularly, including 1.5 hr rides on weekends, gaining weight steadily. So, I’m on this protein sparing modified fast and have upped the gym routine so that it’s at least an hour of stair mistress and rope training, an hour and twenty when R doesn’t come along, 6 days a week. It’s not the kind of casual stuff that will allow for reading. I’m telling ya, the stair mistress – couldn’t read if I tried on that suckah. Definitely can’t on the rope trainer. It’s one of those marpo kinetics dealios, http://www.marpokinetics.com/. Lately, to mix it up, I’ve been pulling rope up (backward) for five minutes for every 40 minute session. Then, I mix it up with a little kickboxing movement because, as Tae Bo always says, any time you get your knees above your waist, you’re killin’ the abs man. This is kinda fun to do, though kicks my ass, when I pull down on the rope, I kick up pulling knee into chest. Goal: make knee level with boob for the win! Then, I do it on one knee, so I have to balance the pulls. The reason why I do all this rope training business is because a long time ago I heard that it’s good to exercise with arms above heart – good for heart.

It’s also because, being a biker, I get way too much action on my legs. Speaking of which, one of the things I do when mashing the stairs on Stair Mistress is do it backwards. I grapevine it as well, but backwards always gets comments to the effect that people think the old broad is hard core. To which I laugh and say, “no way man. It’s easier.” Last night, some musclehead tells me that’s not true. So I look it up and by damn, he’s right: it’s harder. But I don’t understand why it *feels* easier. To some extent, it may be because you can rest on your arms, making your arms take up the burden of holding your weight, rather than legs. Which was def. true in the beginning. Sometimes, I think it’s just pyschological. Feels easier because it’s different and new. So, you are concentrating on the movement, taking your mind off boredom, pain, clock-watching. This translates into the psychological experience of feeling something is “easier”?

Beats me. Still, I have calves that make guys at the gym drool in jealousy, I’m tellin’ ya. I mean, all muscle heads want calves like chicks have, meatier and more curvaceous. But mine have now developed three tiers of bulging muscle – I know, I brag! — and in the front there is a nice ridge that pops out when I’m bulked up mid-routine. Ab muscles kick ass too. It’s the layers of fat in between them that are Teh Suck! Meanwhile, it turns out that this metabolic condition is so awesome that it makes me gain weight concentrated in one area: the gut! Isn’t that great!? Which is so cool because it increases risk of heart attack. So awesome!

So, the exercise schedule, uh, cuts into the book reading even more than the old exercise schedule did. Of course, since I’ll be riding in the centuries again this summer, I guess I’ll be that much further ahead in my training. Oh, and the other thing that cuts into reading time is the tracking of everything. Looking up calories, entering ‘em into a fitness diary, recording how many minutes of exercise, how many watts, and then assessing mood and shit. ho hum. The doctor said the results of an echo and other tests were all ok, except that she needs to up dosage for the metabolic condition. Still, she also thinks I should wear a heart monitor for a month, to get a little deeper into the whole irregular heartbeat problem. So, no heart failure showed up on the Echo heart test, but she thinks maybe we should weird out another possibility around heart conditions.

So, where the hell was I? Oh, about Robin’s book. It occured to me, in his passage on Hobbes, that one thing that is confusing is that he’s writing about reactionaries and the reactionary mind. As such, he tells us that Hobbes was an example of a reactionary disliked and distrusted by conservatives. Hmmmm. OK. It’s clear that reactionaries are this interesting breed of thinker on his thesis, people who are situational: they react to events around them and, in doing so, cultivate a reactionary ideology. And as much as Robin, in the book, wants to distinguish between reactionary and conservative, I’m afraid that, since he’s trading on interest in *conservative* thinking, then he muddies the water. This is especially true in his appearances on t.v, radio, and in published interviews where, to my mind, he doesn’t do enough to make the distinction. In fact, he appears to be guesting places in order to be the resident liberal expert on the conservative mind. This confusing things because when he starts asking or people start asking, they tend to confuse reactionary with conservatives. REactionaries, on Robin’s view (so far in my reading), are the ones who espouse an activist ideology of struggle to resurrect in modified and radicalized form the past. But conservatives, he says, don’t trust reactionaries. But what happens when he’s asked to speak is that people don’t quite grasp the distinction so that everything he specifically says he’s applied to conservatives. This happened on Up with Chris Hayes awhile back, where he was resident expert on cons, where little was said about the distinction between cons and reactionaries.

Oh shit! TBC. I have to hit the gym because I have dinner date this evening. The company, after making a team of developers work 12 hr days 6 days a week for 8 weeks is springing for dinner out with their families. I asked my boss if he was sure he wanted wives and children to be there. Really? You want dagger eyes to be tossed your way? Reallly? LOL

p.s. one thing that bugged me was the doctor asking if I wanted flomax (sp?) I think that’s the name brand she used. She asked because she said that the diuretic would relieve what has got to be water weight gain. I said, but I want to find out why this weird water weight gain, not treat the symptom. I mean, if it’s heart failure, then it’s blood cells leaking (something like that, google it beeeyotches) which is different than retaining water in my muscles and organs because of, say, a salty diet – for which diuretics are used. Yes, she said. So, wtf recommend fLomax. Hmmm. Grrrrr.

ho hum.

i just don’t get what it proves. Duncan suggested that what I see as Robin’s sloppiness, the lack of precision in his definition, might be a feature in so far as he’s writing to a general audience. Which is fine. I write to a general audience too! But if what you do is string one author together with others in order to make a grand claim about what conservativism is, without providing much of a sense of where your position fits with others, then how can it be written to a general audience? I have a vague understanding of the common claim that conservatives are opposed to change in general. The only exposure I’ve had to that idea is through reading LBO, specifically Carrol Cox writing that. After that, I have no idea what a body of literature on conservative thougth has had to say about it. Which means, I would guess, that I’m a general reader, a typical, educated reader of the leftist persuasion – precisely the kind of audience to which the book was marketed. Judging by the places where I saw mention of the book – interviews on TV, book reviews online and in print, guest appearances on radio shows – then I, perhaps egotistically, think the book is targeted at people like me.

But if I have little clue as to what are the general claims made about conservativism, then while it’s certainly possible to read and understand this book, what isn’t possible to do very well is have any handle on whether Robin is full of shit or not. Apparently, you just have to trust his reading.

But why should I? Robin doesn’t give me any reason at all to trust that his particular interpretation is worthy. He tells me that he’s making an intervention, providing a new improved way of looking at conservative thought, but I am never really given any sort of literature review so as to have some sense of where Robin’s intervention fits.

The other thing that’s missing is why? Who cares? Why the fuck should I care, why should it matter that Robin has come up with a new improved way of looking at conservative thought. When I switched to drinking diet soda made with Splenda, I had a reason to prefer it to saccharin and aspartame. Splenda = tasty. Aspartame = bitter. I would have lived with the saccharin and asparame, but Splenda = much more tasty.

So, with Robin, since I don’t really know what the alternative thoughts on conservativism were – except some vague claim once made by Carrol about conservatives not liking change – i have no idea why the other views were ok and tolerable, but just not as great at Robin’s. I don’t even know what they were, actually, since Robins doesn’t really going into them much, except for fleeting gestures at the others who say this about conservatives not liking change.

The other thing is, I have no idea why it matters politically. At least not so far. But you’d think that, in abook like this, there’d be some glimmer, early on, why I should see a political or practical or something advantage to seeing things Robin’s way and not, say, Carrol’s way. Or, perhaps, seeing things Carrol’s way AND Robin’s way. Maybe Robin addresses this later, so my comment might be premature, but so far not a peep.

So, I really have no reason why this book is compelling – haven’t been told it anyway. It’s interesting to read, but Robin strikes me as a frustrated novelist. Someone who knows how to pick up interesting phrases from other books and then ties them into his own work. Sometimes, I feel like a whole passage was written just to say something slightly clever. The tendency to stroke the phrase also suggests that this is a person who wishes he could write more of what the cook kids these days call “creative non-fiction.”

Also I find some of the approach suspect, especially when he says things like “People on the left often fail to realize this, but conservatism really does speak to and for people who have lost something. It may be a landed estate or the privileges of white skin, the unquestioned authority of a husband or the untrammeled rights of a factory owner.” (I’d quote the page but I’m reading on a kindle and haven’t figured out if there is such a thing as figuring out the page number were this print! )

First of all: really? The left doesn’t understand that conservatives are bummed because they’ve lost a way of life, status, money, whatever? I find that hard to buy.

I find it hard, second of all, because Robin tells us that leftists used to be the ones who understood that politics was a zero sum game, and in the same paragraph as the above claim. Thus, “It used to be one of the great virtures of the left that it alone understood the often zero-sum nature of politics, where the gains of one class necessarily entail the losses of another. But as that sense of conflict diminishes on the left, it has fallen to the right to remind voters that there really are losers in politics and that it is they – and ony they – who speak for them.”

*shakes head*

wuh?

OK. This slip sliding business. Wooo. making me dizzy, man.

Does anyone see what I mean? There’s no fucking there there? It’s a lot of empty nonsense. No rigor. Like not a soul called him on a shittin thing he’s supposedly ever typed. How could anyone have let that slide?

what he really wants to slip in there is a jab at fellow leftists. *rolls eyes* So, apparently, the entire pointing of writing this is not so much to understand conservatives, but to understand why there are problems with leftists and maybe even some leftists’ views of conservatives. So, while you’re busy thinking about the nasty leftists who’ve forgotten all about *real* class conflict and *real* class politics you’re not really paying attention to the fact that he’s just figured out a way to take a jab at leftists while making hearts bleed for misunderstood conservatives who really do suffer….

oiy. lord. poor misunderstood conservatives. they really do suffer under a radical regime.

and then there is the problem he, so far, hasn’t addressed. what about white “liberals” and “progressives” – are they somehow magically free of the human tendency to love most what they no longer have – which is, in this case, white privilege?

I say in this case, because this is a formulation Robin makes frequently: we love most what we have lost, what we no longer have. Really? I lost my virginity. Sorry! I don’t miss it that much! I’ve lost my water bottle quite a few times. I mean, I’ve lost about four water bottles. Don’t miss a blessed one!

I’m no longer in povery, don’t miss that.

I mean, what kind of pap is this: we love most what we have lost?

Really? It’s .. what is that? A platitide…. unthinking. Just said because he thinks it resonates with people. but what the fuck does he mean by it? Is it a statement that holds up to scrutiny?

But, back to what I was gonna say about identity. What happens when you are a white woman leftist? Are you a conservative on race, a leftists on gender? class? Is it possible to be a reactionary against the process of dismantling white privilege and, at the same time, be a big lefty who advances all kinds of other leftists causes in the name of leveling hierarchies? Well, of course it is possible. We see it all the time! And of course there are people, like Phyllis Schafley, who are women who embrace conservative views on gender even though they haven’t appeared to lose anything. OF course, he has a disclaimer in there that it could just be the perception of lose. There’sno objective criteria for measuring if someone has really faced loss. So, then I guess we’re talking about something beyond the level of the individual psyche and the individual’s experience of loss and on to some meta-individual experience or something?

This is just one of the examples that drives me insane. Platitudes. He’s dealing in platitudes.

Then there is the slippery problem of just who can be called a conservative.

Why can’t Robin, himself, be seen as conservative. If it’s possible that a white male leftists be conservative wrt women’s liberation, but not conservative about eberything else, then why not Robin be conservative in his opposition to anarchists. I got to thinking about this reading TINA’s response to any reading of Robin to suggest that he might be sympathetic to anarchists.

Now, if anarchists are opposed to all forms of hierarchy and if TINA is right that nothing about Corey’s politics should suggest he’s a supporter of anachists and is, in fact, a firm supporter of government/state, then what makes Robin not a conservative. Why is supporting the state and representative democracy against radical democracy and full democratic participation in the decicions that effect our lives not a conservative position.

After all, Robin uses the word hiearchy and says that social struggles have been fought against social hierarchies such as patriarchy, white supremacy, nationalism, ethnocentricism, etc. If movements to dismantle hierarchies are, thus, progressive and radical – revolutionary in their desire to level hierarchies between people– if what scared people during the Seattle General strike of 1919 was that people themselves took over the functions of government so that people showed that they didn’t need government to provide services, then why isn’t Robin’s (and others’) resistance to an anarchist politics a form of conservative reaction?

I think it is. Naturally, they do not. Even so, to strengthen his argument, Robin would have to address that issue. OBviously, there are differences over what constitutes a legitimate hiearchy. Robin uses the term hiearchy, but clearly thinks that some are the object of legitimate opposition while others are not. Let’s assume for instance that as a parent, he happens to be for hiearchies of authories between parents and children. There are people who advocate dismantling hiearchies between adults and children. Why is one struggle legit and not others.

Duncan mentioned that he didn’t think that the lack of rigor was necessarily a drawback. Sure, writing to an educated, popular audience doesn’t require the rigors required of academic scholarship. Still, Robin never really tells me why his book matters. He’s clear speaking to, positioning his book as an advance over, other competing treatments of conservativism. But he never goes into detail as to what those competing positions are, and why they are flawed and what his position offers to the discussion. I also don’t know why it matters politically or practically. Will something be better about political life or political debate if we elect to use Robin’s ideas?

I also feel as if he’s just stringing together quotes from conservatives. I have no idea whether he’s cherry picking or not. That’s clearly on me: I don’t know the literature well enough to make this judgment. Then, why is this book written to a general audience who, like me, won’t know the literature either. So, it makes me wonder if he’s just confused about who his audience is. The general reader? Who is just there to be massaged with quote after quote. Here, lookee me. I now know some quotes from Joseph de Maistre. Not that Corey Robin ever bothered to explain who Maistre is, mind. He drops one name after another, most of whom ring bells, but nearly all of whom I could have used a bit of a backgrounder. D’israeli? Heard that one. But that’s about it. Anyone writing to a general audience would not just use a last name and would provide a wee bit of a bio/intellectual history to position the guy.

This reads like a book for someone who wants to appear clever at dinner parties. Oh, as Maistre said of the French Revolution…..’ tee hee, ho ho, hee hee hoo ha. Try some hummus dahlink? Dim sum? Oh, can’t. Watching my carbs.

Or