The End of Term

            There is no good reason why students should learn more at the end of term. By this time in the semester, pulling all-nighters has become standard. The pressure of final papers had rendered them unsteady on their feet. For the final class, they stumble heavily to their chairs as if their shoes were made of granite. Not ten minutes into the class, a few heads start bobbing as the sleepwriters surface in and out of consciousness.

When I first started teaching, I used those final moments as a Grand Summary. I’d write each author’s name on the board hoping to extract precise comments which would finally illuminate how John Dewey’s thought was alive and well in Cornel West’s formulations and how Emerson might have disagreed with Richard Rorty’s conclusions. But the Grand Summary, so ripe in my own mind, was barely a seed in the minds of the sleep-deprived students. The skulls bobbed, the eyes struggled to focus on the board, and all my hopes for a collective creation of the Big Picture were inevitably dashed. By the end of the embarrassing exercise, most of the words on the board were of my own making.

But at least I had their papers, pages that promised words of their own making. And the words revealed in a few of those nocturnal creations pointed to a type of learning that my Grand Summary hadn’t recognized. In the moonlit hours of mid-December, the connections being forged between the various authors had gone right through a student’s soul. Some of them didn’t just think differently about the works they had read, they thought differently about themselves.

After four months of reading American pragmatists, Sarah, a junior from Florida, discovered a term that changed the way she thought about her intellectual strengths. The term is “fallibilistic pluralism” and the idea comes from Richard Bernstein’s essay “Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Healing of Wounds.” Bernstein emphasizes fallibilism as an essential part of pragmatist thinking, “where we realize that although we must begin any inquiry with prejudgments and can never call everything into question at once, nevertheless there is no belief or thesis ­– no matter how fundamental–that is not open to further interpretation and criticism.”

In this idea of fallibilism, Sarah found permission to take herself seriously as a political thinker. “It is in the midst of all of this,” writes Sarah, “that I find a place for my own theorizing. I do not wish to prescribe absolute certainty, or promise revolutionizing reforms. But I do take my voice seriously, and that is how I want to make my work meaningful, thinking hard about these difficult, multi-faceted problems.” If none of us can claim certainty then all of us should at least try to think hard about the complex political problems of our time. “Taking my thinking seriously,” continues Sarah, “encompasses openness to the revision process, where I submit my ideas to the criticism and scrutiny of others, to the suggestions and interpretations of the thinking community that surrounds me.”

My hunch is that Sarah would not have been able to articulate this at an earlier time in the semester. In the first few months, the authors are imposing and distant. They are discovered in published works, most of which have been around long before this generation was born. But as the words become more familiar, and the ideas more internalized, the possibilities inherent in these passages become more personal. The question, “What are the pragmatists saying?” is eventually replaced with “What are the pragmatists saying to me?”

It is in the nature of endings to provoke retrospection. I had initially understood that as a process of standing back from the texts and getting an overview. But over the years I’ve come to find out that retrospection may be a far quieter process, one that can only happen in those quiet hours when the moon makes shadows on these frozen hills. This quieter retrospection takes in how the student was changed by the education, how she came to see fallibilism as part of her “revision process.”

But it’s not just students who change by education, we teachers are transformed as well. Were it now for these nocturnal musings, I might still be ending the term with a Grand Summary of all the Great Men we’ve read. As it is, I’ve come to look for the bobbing heads around the seminar table and to listen for the stumble in their steps. The great retrospection happens beneath the surface of glazed corneas and beyond the reach of chalkboards. It happens on these thoughtful pieces of paper crafted in the still of night.

Altruism and Afghanistan

 

            The military has always provided a safety net of sorts for Americans slipping through the cracks. If you want an education but can’t afford the high price tag, consider joining the army.  If you can’t support your wife and two small children on a minimum-wage job, there is always the option of signing up for a few tours in Iraq. Particularly when jobs are scarce and government subsidies for social programs are even scarcer, the military provides many of us with a way out of a bad situation. Sure, there are some risks involved ­– many a soldier does not make it back from Iraq, or comes back in pieces ­– but for those who survive, the military provides a dignified way out of an undignified situation.

            There are, of course, less dignified ways out of bad situations, but most of them are illegal. After two or three years working in the marijuana fields of Humbolt County, a person could probably afford the University of Vermont. But even with the rise of medical marijuana, that enterprise still carries the risk of spending time in a federal prison. The pornography industry is another place where people with debt and no capital can earn enough to fund college aspirations and support growing families, but that line of work has its own limitations: not everyone is cut out to be a porn star.

While pornography and the drug trade may be far more lucrative than the military, neither of those occupations carries much honor. It’s hard to make the argument that porn stars and drug dealers are doing the right thing, even if their ends (college education, raising children) are good. But most soldiers, despite skeptical rhetoric from the anti-war movement, are in the business of fighting because they believe they can do something good.

In a study of US military bases overseas, anthropologist Catherine Lutz discovered that the high point of the training for the young men and women was the outreach programs. “This is why I joined the army,” explained one cadet after repairing a classroom. “This is what the military service is really all about,” explained another while performing free dental checkups for the locals.

I first read about Lutz’s study in a 2007 article by David Graeber in Harper’s Magazine. “The case of the military bases,” writes Graeber, “suggests the possibility that in fact Americans, particularly the less affluent ones, are haunted by frustrated desires to do good in the world.” Graeber describes this phenomenon as an “army of altruists.” Young men and women join the military not just because they are hoping to escape the brutalities of the poverty, but because they want an opportunity to make the world a better place.

Up until now these young people have not had much opportunity to put their outreach training into practice. Some of the conditions in Iraq seemed to have sucked the altruism out of their souls and pushed them closer to pornography. Investigations into the Abu-Graib prison scandal suggest that the reason for the camera had to do with a brisk on-line trade in the sexual humiliation of dark-skinned prisoners. The time it takes to go from altruist to pornographer is a surprisingly short time.

I don’t pretend to know whether the surge of troops in Afghanistan will do all the things the Obama Administration wishes it to do.  I do know, however, that altruism is under attack and that pornography seems to be getting the upper hand. In order to turn that tide around, it would seem that we need to give the army of altruists opportunities to do what they do best: provide outreach to the civilian population by building schools and offering free healthcare.

From what I can gather from Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates, that appears to be the goal of the troop surge in Afghanistan. The scope is local, the efforts precise. Clinton talks about creating security in order to enhance government operations and promote legal forms of agriculture. In other words, it sounds as if the administration is trying to create the conditions where altruism might have a chance.

I also don’t get the sense that the administration is being overly idealistic. Even with an army of altruists, the Iraq war showed us just how easily things can go awry. Wars are terrible things even without being horribly botched and both Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates know the details of that particular hatchet job. That isn’t to say that improved strategies will necessarily bring improved results but the chances are greater. The key piece, however, that the Administration can control is the opportunity for altruism for our soldiers.

Graeber ends his article by examining the widening gap between low-income voters and the academic left. In the wake of campus unrest in the 1960s, radicals were “offered a kind of compensation: the privilege to use the university system to … be supported in one’s material needs while pursing virtue, truth, and beauty, and above all, to pass that privilege on to their own children.” In other words, altruism became a high-priced commodity available only to the privileged class. “One cannot blame them for accepting the offer,” writes Graeber. “But neither can one blame the rest of the country for hating them for it.” As far as Graeber is concerned, the poor’s right to do good had been alienated from them.

Afghanistan offers an opportunity to restore to the working class the basic right to do good in the world. The sons and daughters of middle-class homes may have their voluntary internships in the developing world, or their community service program in the inner city, but the sons and daughters of the less affluent can’t afford that basic right. The way things are now, the only way to pursue noble ends without money is through the military. Perhaps, Afghanistan will allow these good men and women to be materially supported while they pursue the higher things in life.

The Result of Reading Theory in a Canoe

            I first saw the poster at my sister’s apartment in Central Square in 1978. A young couple, dressed in summer Edwardian attire, stood drenched on the bank of a river. Both looked sheepish, she in particular. The rest of their party, seated around a picnic basket, laughed at their misfortune. A distant group of proper women with parasols demurely disapproved. The caption read, “The result of reading poetry in a canoe.”

My sister and I were big fans of poetry, whether it was the kind that spilled from a folk guitarist’s lips or the kind bound in thin-spined paperbacks. We loved it so much that even flat-bottom boats were occasionally overturned. We said we didn’t care if our frocks got wet, if our friends laughed at us, or if other women disapproved. As long as the line was well-wrought, we were willing to go overboard.

            Our susceptibility to poetry, however, created certain problems for us. Some young men seemed to think we were willing to take the plunge at the first sign of turbulence. Indeed not! We wanted words that undid the sordid circumstances we inhabited – minimum wage jobs, shabby apartments – and recast them as lyrics good enough to be played at Passim’s in Harvard Square. We wanted meandering metaphors, subtle sub-clauses, and something more complex than “Let’s go!” The poster reminded us of our priorities: We were moved by poetry not persistence. “Let’s not go there,” we told any suitor who tried to use poetry to reach an ignoble end.

            Thirty years later, I notice a similar phenomenon, only this time the ends aren’t private but political. In place of sweet verses designed to unleash the passions, I hear postmodern invocations that reveal the pernicious side of authority. Instead of John Keats and Richard Brautigan, I hear passages lifted from Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. Theory has replaced poetry. Now in the early twenty-first century, canoes are more likely to be overturned by political passions than by sexual yearnings.

            Political passions are not unlike romantic passions. In each case, some convention is disturbed, some sensibility comes undone. Those of us who teach radical thinkers find ourselves in an odd position. At first glance, the words in the texts seem to suggest that all social norms are suspicious. If that’s the case, then the classroom is suspicious as well. Efforts to reestablish norms are seen as tactics to render young radicals impotent. “Let’s go,” they start to murmur. “Let’s jump out of this boat with its disciplinary apparatus and normalizing tendencies. Let’s get really wet!”

At this point in the process, the professor of political theory has several options. (1) She can jump in with them, citing passages about the pernicious ways of power; (2) she can raise her parasol in alarm at their radical passions; or (3) she can call for more thinking and fewer impulsive actions. “Please, please,” she urges, “let’s not go overboard. Let’s go back to reading.”

But it’s not just undergraduates under the influence of French thinkers who want eschew all convention for the thrill of a plunge. Michael Bérubé, who came to speak at Marlboro last month, finds that many intellectuals on the left wing of the political spectrum are abandoning careful thinking in favor of impulsive forms of anti-authoritarianism. Eight years of the Bush-Cheney regime cultivated the habits of simplistic knee-jerk reactions. If the CEOs in Washington said something was good, the Manichean left determined it to be bad. What Bérubé described in his fast-paced lecture was a tendency on the American left to make political decisions on impulse. What he didn’t consider, however, is how good it feels to go overboard.

My sister and I figured out pretty early that suitors use beautiful sentences to seduce the susceptible and that even the finest stretches of poetry are not necessarily worth the trouble of getting one’s frock wet. We learned to look beyond the machinations of the mouth and into the eyes of the speaker. Are you thinking about what you’re saying? Are you aware of the consequences of these wonderful words? We wanted to be sure that the suitor was as willing to be as changed by the power of verse as we were.

This sort of suspicion might be useful in our current political crises, where passionate people on the left and the right quote beautiful and complex language in order to serve simple and immediate needs. Conservatives quote the Bible and leftist intellectuals quote Marx (although nowadays it is more likely to be Foucault). Passages rich with multiple meanings are reduced to imperatives – go ahead and jump! The temptation to follow one’s impulse is strong. For those watching from the shore, the temptation to stay away from all dangerous forms of poetry is equally strong.

Poetry and theory have always been appropriated to serve ignoble ends. But maybe the answer is not to give up on either of them but to recognize just how good it feels to compel another to follow our desires. We seem to be hardwired to take pleasure in controlling others, but this unfortunate fact of human existence shouldn’t put us off poetry or theory. Indeed, there is something very insightful about our all-too-human condition in these great works of the human imagination; great enough that we go back to them time and again, even as our clothes are still drying.