Author: Ophelia Benson

Okay, we need a little amusement to cheer us up after hearing the news about the pope. Although some people are pointing out that it’s good news really: that it’s the Vatican shooting itself in the foot, that now people will realize how authoritarian it is after all. But I don’t know – I’m never very convinced by that kind of thing. Partly because it never seems to happen. People seem so happy to say ‘Oh how sweet, a nice authoritarian pope again.’

So we could do with a laugh. I know I could. I’m wrestling with revisions, and I’m finding this patch a struggle. Paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, I’m having to drag them out by force, one at a time. I much prefer it when I get an idea and just re-write a page or two in one go. But on the other hand, I can always cheer myself up enormously by reflecting that I’m not having to revise such utter unmitigated bollocks as this:

What I will focus on here is Butler’s critique in Precarious Life of Georgio Agamben’s concept of the “homo sacer,” or “bare life,” which identifies the discursive limits of the Foucauldian concept of power as the sovereign exception over biopolitical life. I will argue that Butler, whose concept of the performative subject presupposes power to be the totalizing ground by which human subjects are made intelligible, perhaps unfairly rejects Agamben’s critique. His critique of power, I will argue, is much more in dialogue with Butler than she seems to allow, and arguably raises the stakes of Butlerian identity politics by illuminating the possibility that certain political subjects can be – in fact are necessarily, according to Agamben – erased entirely from biopower relations, or humanity itself, through what Agamben calls the sovereign exception over biopolitical human life.

Good stuff, don’t you think? Notice, just for one thing, how the hapless reviewer uses the identical emptily pompous phrase – ‘the sovereign exception over biopolitical human life’ – twice in the space of two sentences. (Okay not absolutely identical – he adds a word in the second appearance.) But notice more, oh so much more, the way the vocabulary is used as a little invisible pump to inflate some very obvious ideas into something that is meant to sound – like more than that. Like a great deal more than that. Wouldn’t you think people would eventually stop doing this kind of thing? Because people like me see them doing it and point it out and laugh raucously? Wouldn’t you think they would, some day, finally, embarrass themselves? I would. But they don’t. Why is that?

Judith Butler later clarifies Foucault’s theory of power, expanding upon its merely implied strategies for subjective resistance to dominant technologies of power and making the important intervention that subjectivity is not just an expression of the “top down” subjugation of an “individual” but is intrinsically performative. The performative subject is both inaugurated by power relations and at the same time is constantly recreating its discursive, epistemological law in dangerously supplemental, disruptive ways. Butler’s The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford UP 1997) explores in depth what she, after Foucault, sees as the total immersion of the subject in power relations without recourse to an originary “individuality” or essentialized political identity who exists prior to the subject’s inauguration into power.

Right? Right.

Butler’s conceptualization of post-structuralist identity politics, like Foucault’s, relies on a presupposition of “power” as the matrix of intelligibility, or ground by and through which biopolitical subjectivity is inaugurated and “exists.” This grounding in power, for Butler, extends to the very body of the subject. Recent criticism of Foucault’s concept of power by Georgio Agamben in his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford 1995), however, convincingly argues that power indeed has an outside – namely its “sovereign exception” over what Agamben calls “bare life,” or the homo sacer.

And so on. It’s all like that. None of it is any different. It’s all the same. It starts like that, and it goes on like that, and it goes on like that some more, and it ends like that. Somebody – a guy named Don Moore, in fact, a nice wholesome name, sounds like a baseball player – wrote it like that, presumably on purpose. Maybe it’s a parody. Only I doubt it, because if it were a parody, it would probably be a lot better, so as not to give the game away. It would be much less repetitive, for one thing. The baseball player is a graduate student in English and ‘Cultural Studies.’ I was just being abusive about the phrase ‘Cultural Studies’ in conversation with my colleague a couple of hours ago, and that was before I read the bottom of this review where it tells us that the writer of it is in ‘Cultural Studies.’ I already hated the very phrase (I have that reaction that Goebbels talked about, you know the one). Now I hate it even more.

I wonder what Ratzinger thinks of Cultural Studies.

I listened to last week’s ‘Start the Week’ yesterday. (I always listen to it late, for some reason.) I like Andrew Marr, but I didn’t realize how much I like him until I heard Sue MacGregor filling in for him. Dang, she made a mess of it. She kept interrupting – no doubt it’s the presenter’s job to keep things moving along and on track, but Marr manages to do that without constantly cutting people off in the middle of a sentence. And worse than that, she kept getting everything wrong, misunderstanding the guests’ books and what they said to her, and saying the silliest thing she could think of. She contemptuously told Jeffrey Sachs, who’s just written a book about how to end poverty, that we were always chucking money at Africa. He was so annoyed he repeated it back to her about eight times during the show, along with some full explanations of why it was bullshit. Come back soon, Andrew. Yes I know there’s an election, but all the same.

One of the guests was Cristina Odone. I wrote a N&C about her once, a long, long time ago. I don’t remember the details, but it was something foolish she said about religion, I remember that much. And she said more foolish things on Start the Week. She’s one of the ‘You may not say critical things about religion’ crowd. She’s very cross with her old colleagues at the New Statesman because of their cover story about the pope. She didn’t actually say that what the NS said – that the pope did more to spread AIDS in Africa than prostitution and the trucking industry combined, I believe – is not true, just that it’s bad to say it. It makes religious people angry, to see that kind of thing. Therefore we mustn’t say it. Oh. So we should just watch in cheerful silence then while the Vatican tells people not to use condoms, and even tells them that condoms don’t block the virus, which is a lie? Well the hell with that. And it’s not the NS that is wrong to point it out, it’s Odone who is wrong to rebuke them for doing so. This kind of authoritarian nonsense is increasing, it seems to me – this self-righteous ‘how dare you criticise religion’ rhetoric. Well how dare you not criticise it? Do you think the pope is right to ban condoms? If so, why? If not, why do you think we should be quiet about it?

Richard Dawkins wrote a terrific article on this subject in 2001. In it he quoted from a terrific speech by Douglas Adams.

Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, “Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!” If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says “I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,” you say, “I respect that.”

Exactly. Just what I’m always saying. You’re just not. Why? Because you’re not!

So popes can get away with murder and we’re supposed to just sit back and take it.

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking “Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?” But I wouldn’t have thought, “Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics,” when I was making the other points. I just think, “Fine, we have different opinions.” But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say “No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it.” Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe… no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so?

And of course because people like Odone (and even other people, of whom one would not expect it) get indignant or more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger about it, thus making sure that we keep on being used to doing so, keep on shying away from the ring-fenced holy taboo inner sanctum, keep on not saying the pope did a hell of a lot of harm for just one guy without nuclear weapons. It’s a bad arrangement. Ring-fence that.

Just a couple of comments on Katha Pollitt’s excellent article on Andrea Dworkin. One to quibble, the other not.

The antipornography feminism Dworkin did so much to promote seems impossibly quaint today, when Paris Hilton can parlay an embarrassing sex video into mainstream celebrity and the porn star Jenna Jameson rides the New York Times bestseller list. But even in its heyday it was a blind alley. Not just because porn, like pot, is here to stay, not just because the Bible and the Koran–to say nothing of fashion, advertising and Britney Spears–do far more harm to women…

Not to quibble with Pollitt’s basic disagreement with Dworkin. But – ‘to say nothing of fashion, advertising and Britney Spears’ – I’m not sure I get that. Is there a huge difference between porn and ‘fashion, advertising and Britney Spears’? Or at least, wasn’t some of the kind of thing Dworkin thought harmful to women about porn, the same kind of thing that’s going on in fashion, advertising and Britney Spears? I would have thought so, frankly. I disagree with plenty of what Dworkin said – but it depresses the hell out of me that most women from the ages of six to sixty-six seem to feel obliged to look as much like prostitutes or porn stars in a state of violent sexual arousal as they can possibly manage. No no, they would all tell me with one voice, they’re ’empowered’ and ‘sex-positive’ and I’m just an angry ol’ puritan. But if it’s so empowering to mince around in catch me-fuck me shoes and tiny little camisoles and makeup and ringlets and all the rest of the nonsense – why don’t men do it? Hah? Why do men still slouch around in baggy shorts and t shirts and their regular old faces? Because they know damn well it’s not empowering, that’s why. (Okay, okay, that’s not the only reason, it’s also because camisoles and ringlets aren’t considered sexy on men. But you know what I mean!) I heard something similar on Front Row the other day, in a farewell discussion of Dworkin. Someone said Dworkin’s views would never fly now, now that every advert you see has a hypersexualised woman in it (or words to that effect). Well, yeah! I thought. That’s just it. It used to be thought (by the people who thought that kind of thing) that those ads full of panting quivering women were, you know, kind of objectifying. They haven’t become less so now just because they’re everywhere instead of just almost everywhere.

Sigh. Obviously that battle is well and truly lost, which is dispiriting. Pollitt is dispirited too.

These days, feminism is all sexy uplift, a cross between a workout and a makeover. Go for it, girls–breast implants, botox, face-lifts, corsets, knitting, boxing, prostitution. Whatever floats your self-esteem! Meanwhile, the public face of organizational feminism is perched atop a power suit and frozen in a deferential smile. Perhaps some childcare? Insurance coverage for contraception? Legal abortion, tragic though it surely is? Or maybe not so much legal abortion–when I ran into Naomi Wolf the other day, she had just finished an article calling for the banning of abortion after the first trimester. Cream and sugar with that abortion ban, sir?
I never thought I would miss unfair, infuriating, over-the-top Andrea Dworkin. But I do. And even more I miss the movement that had room for her.

Yeah. Me too. Boy, do I miss that movement. Where did all those pissed-off feminists go?

Into the sunset, I guess.

Hurrah for Ian Jack. Hurrah for Polly Toynbee and now for Ian Jack. I love this comment on the Guardian’s popification – I feel like flapping my hands and saying ‘that is so true‘ like a Valley Girl. (I am a Valley Girl at heart, actually. I just cover it up well. But underneath the cynicism, the sneers, the bad language, the bloodshot eyes, the duelling scar – underneath all that I’m basically just a San Fernando valley high school sophomore who wouldn’t hurt a fly.)

The Pope — this is a crude and prejudiced paraphrase of the coverage — had ended the Cold War, brought down the Berlin Wall, and defended the world’s poor against the depredations of the world’s rich. He was ripe for beatification. No more humane, more spiritual or more important individual had recently walked the globe.

And that’s not new, either. It obviously got a lot worse when he snuffed it – a whole lot worse – it turned into a complete explosion of imbecility – but the kind of thing was bad before. I’ve been shouting at the radio for years because of the solemn pious deeply-impressed way it used to talk about the pope and his every move – as if – hello? – he were everyone’s pope, as if we were all Papa’s children. ‘Not this cookie!’ I used to yell at NPR, before changing the channel to the all-blues station. But what was that about? That childish uncritical worshipful tone that crept into papal coverage – as if the wretched man had never done a thing wrong, as if the Catholic church were an unmixed blessing, as if – oh never mind.

Jack compares the pope festival to the Diana festival.

There was no end to grief. It is worth recalling some details. William Hague wanted Heathrow to be renamed Diana Airport, Gordon Brown was said to be seriously considering the idea that August Bank Holiday be renamed Diana Day. Three foreign tourists were sentenced to jail for taking a few old teddy bears from the tributes heap. Newspapers instructed the Queen and her family to grieve, and to be seen grieving. Many people were recorded saying that they grieved more for Diana than for their dead mothers and husbands. Not to grieve was to be odd, cynical, wicked.

Diana airport!! That is hilarious. I didn’t know that. Can you imagine – Heathrow is bad enough just as a place to be – but can you imagine having to fly into and out of Diana airport?! The shame of it!

But anyway, I remember the frenzy very well. I was fascinated by it. I remember the insane stuff about the people arrested for taking a teddy bear or two. Because – what? Diana wanted them? All of them? To do what with? And how? And boy do I ever remember the stuff about the Queen. I found it sort of funny in a way – still do in fact. Because it was so Not One. One does not emote in public (or in private either actually). One certainly does not emote on television. A passing mention of an annus horribilis in an after-luncheon speech at the Guildhall (or wherever it was) is one thing, but a command performance of sorrow for a pack of drooling subjects is quite another, thank you. And One frankly does not feel all that much sorrow in any case, to be quite honest. One has known a good many other people whom One regrets more than One regrets One’s silly narcissistic publicity-mad daughter-in-law. One wasn’t made to go on television to emote for any of them, so why is One being made to do so now? One really finds it all quite insufferable, and One will read One’s careful speech with about as much emotion as One would read the breakfast menu.

Yep, that was pretty funny stuff, but it was also pretty disgusting. Because the whole thing boiled down to the fact that Diana took a good picture. Period. If Anne had been the one to get killed, driving the Range Rover 120 miles an hour and bumping into something, would there have been all that fuss? Would there have been a tenth of it? Don’t be ridiculous. No, it was classic pseudo-event, as Boorstin called these things (and he called them that a long time ago, before they’d really hit their stride. These days pseudo-events are really pseudo-events. Pseudo-events with hair on their chests.)

My resentment — a popular resentment, so far as I can tell — came from something else: an instruction from the media to have me see as hugely important something that I regarded only as reasonably interesting, and to feel something (sorrow, awe) that I didn’t feel. The more that television and newspapers leave cold information behind in pursuit of warm emotion, the more authoritarian they seem: their tone is not so much an invitation to know as an order to feel (which is a good definition of sentimentality) —there was, in Diana’s case, a dictatorship of grief.

Just so. There’s a lot of it about. Coverage of Michael Jackson, for instance. I always drop things in shock and surprise when I’m listening to the World Service on the radio and the news leads off with something about Michael Jackson – as if that’s the most important thing they could mention. For the whole world! Michael Jackson! We’re not ordered to feel grief about him, as far as I know, but we are ordered to be interested, and pruriently interested at that. We’re ordered to feel intensely interested in and concerned with various pointless celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brad Pitt and ‘J-lo’. That was the deal with the pope, I guess – he was famous. That’s all. He wasn’t quite as young or as pretty as Diana, but he was maybe even more famous. It’s a wonder nobody made the Queen go on television to say how wracked with grief she was.

That discussion of literary theory I mentioned a couple of days ago was in large part about the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics and whether it is a conservative organization and if it is who cares and if people do care why do they care. Kind of a ‘you have unfashionable trousers’ argument, as Chris Williams described it in a comment on ‘Not Either Silly.’ Bizarrely irrelevant. This is certainly not the first time I’ve heard the assumption, but it sounds just as fatuous the 500th time as it did the first. Henry makes the point in his post at CT.

Cultural Revolution then goes on to attack the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics for using such retrograde notions as “imagination,” “shared literary culture,” “serious,” and “classicists and modernists” in its statement of purpose, and to note how it received its initial start-up money from the conservative Bradley Foundation. So far, so pedestrian. What’s interesting about the post is not what it says, but what it assumes: that an interest in literature for literature’s sake is innately conservative. And, by extension, the question it doesn’t ask: why is it that an organization which is interested in studying literature and imagination is perceived as a conservative bulwark, and has no choice but to go to conservatives for funding and support?

Really. Very you have unfashionable trousers, if you ask me.

First, it’s by no means obvious that post-structuralist literary theory and its cousins are, in any real sense of the word, radical. Indeed, you could make a very strong case (Russell Jacoby is very good on this) that they’re substitutes for radicalism, and piss-poor ones at that…Second is the extraordinarily pervasive notion that there’s something inherently conservative about liking and valuing books for their own sake, rather than as grist for the mill of deconstructionism. I suspect that something like this is at the basis of Cultural Revolution’s suspicion of the Valve, and of ‘classicism,’ ‘imagination,’ etc. And it’s bullshit – there’s no reason why one can’t appreciate and enjoy cultural forms for their own sake…

So (I do have a point) it was interesting to read this article by Frank Lentricchia again (it’s in Flashback in case you ever want it and can’t remember who wrote it or how to find it) and see that it’s at the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics site. Because that’s what it’s about. The fact that it is possible to read literature without bothering about whether one is conservative or lefty or wearing unfashionable trousers. It’s interesting coming from Lentricchia because he was a fashionable trousers guy once, and then he got tired of himself.

I once managed to live for a long time, and with no apparent stress, a secret life with literature. Publicly, in the books I’d written and in the classroom, I worked as an historian and polemicist of literary theory, who could speak with passion, and without noticeable impediment, about literature as a political instrument. I once wrote that the literary word was like a knife, a hammer, a gun. I became a known and somewhat colorfully controversial figure, regularly excoriated in neo-conservative laments about the academy…When I grew up and became a literary critic, I learned to keep silent about the reading experiences of liberation that I’d enjoyed since childhood. With many of my generation, I believed that my ability to say the words “politics” and “literature” in the same breath was the only socially responsible way to affirm the value of literary study.

But, fortunately, fortunately, he did get over it. A lamb returned to the fold. A poor forlorn theorist escaped from the dungeon.

Then, seven years ago, I lost my professional bearing and composure. The actual crisis occurred in a graduate class, just as I was about to begin a lecture on Faulkner. Before I could get a word out, a student said, “The first thing we have to understand is that Faulkner is a racist.” I responded with a stare, but he was not intimidated. I was. He wanted to subvert me with what I thought crude versions of ideas that had made my academic reputation, and that had (as he told me before the semester began) drawn him to my class. And now I was refusing to be the critic he had every right to think I was. And I felt subverted. Later in the course, another student attacked Don DeLillo’s White Noise for what he called its insensitivity to the Third World. I said, “But the novel doesn’t concern the Third World. It’s set in a small town in Middle America. It concerns the technological catastrophes of the First World.” The student replied, “That’s the problem. It’s ethnocentric and elitist.” I had been, before that class, working hard to be generous. After that class, I didn’t want to be generous anymore and tried to communicate how unspeakably stupid I found these views, but had trouble staying fully rational.

So now he’s all like conservative and he eats lunch with Rush Limbaugh and stuff because he doesn’t think it’s interesting or clever to call Faulkner a racist or DeLillo an elitist. So much for black leather jackets eh.