Chapter 21 and Anti-Street Harassment Week

We learn in almost all intro-level courses the meaning of "public space". The "public space" is the man's haven; while the "private space" is the woman's haven. Sometimes I question whether or not both spaces are considerably man's haven. I think that this dichotomy reflects the current (and former) political foundation -- man's voice over woman's voice.

This upcoming week is "Anti-Street Harassment Week" in which various organizations discuss the complexities of street harassment. I would like to share a few thoughts pertaining to street harassment. Street harassment is a form of power (man over woman; perpetrator over victim), of maintenance of a patriarchal system, of disrespect of another's personal space, and of alienation over another. I, also, would like to acknowledge that street harassment can occur to both men and women; yet, most documented street harassment is towards women. Street harassment occurs in a public arena - streets, buses, taxis, etc.

A little anecdote: When I was studying in Costa Rica, I experienced street harassment multiple times per day. My host mother told me to ignore those who chose to spend their day harassing others. I questioned whether or not my silence served as a political voice. Is it possible to render change in silence? I was frustrated when I would hear someone whistle from a bus, cat-call from across the street, the list goes on. One evening, when my friends and I were walking out from a bar, a man began to cat-call directly at me -- I chose to ignore him, as my host mother told me to. However, this time, rather than re-directing his attention elsewhere, he came up behind me and pulled the strings from the back of my shirt. I was exposed involuntarily. Was silence the best way to combat street harassment?

Chapter 20

I thought Chapter 20 was interesting for two reasons: 1) it is blatantly present at most tier 1 & 2 universities including Emory, and 2) it wasn't so much directly a discussion of feminist critique but more of a "big tent" discussion of how knowledge is being institutionally limited to those within the perceived normative group. I realize universities are a business, but at the same time, with over $7 billion in endowment funds, could Emory not afford to return a little bit more to it's liberal arts roots? I think there's always been an emphasis on pre-professional programs, and the implicit connotation that classes within the college are inherently easier to do well in because they are more opinion based than fact based. I really admire the program Stanford is implementing where if your family makes less than $125k, then you only have to pay $5k a year to cover room and board, and if your family makes less than $60k, you don't have to pay anything. But I also think it's interesting that at the same time Emory is closing the opportunities to those who don't have the money or want to pursue a liberal arts education, they are also profiting from and advertising based on the percentages of "others" that they either accept or enroll with. You never see Emory list the percentage of white males enrolled, but you always see the percentage of women, racial minorities, religious minorities, etc. So at the same time they're being limiting, they're also benefiting from the token few they do allow access for.

Ch. 20 "The University, the Humanities, and the Book Bloc"

In chapter 20, Athanasiou and Butler discuss the rendering of universities into marketable and profitable goods. Because critical thinking is becoming "unfundable within institutions driven by market values," students are forced to perceive post-secondary education as a commercial asset, as an investment (189). The "substituability" of professors who teach the humanities, languages, or critical thinking is reflected in the fact that the number of academic workers in the United States has grown "exponentially" in recent years (191). Butler very poignantly argues that when universities are unaffordable, the university becomes a "site that reproduces and hardens rigid class stratifications."

I was particularly interested in this chapter because I see this phenomenon happening at Emory. Though Emory claims to focus on the liberal arts, and often uses it as a selling point for prospective students, I think that the hard sciences and the business school are typically more "respected" by the students and the administration. Besides the cuts made in the journalism and visual arts departments two years ago, business school activities and events are often more well-known than events for humanities departments, even though the majority of undergraduates are in the college. I think that this can be attributed to the fact that the administration makes the business program a priority through funding, but it also has to do with what majors are "fundable"and which are not. The problem is inherently cyclical: Emory puts funding into the business school and sciences because those departments are perceived to be the best investments for their money. The high price on tuition only urges students to choose a marketable career that will allow them to spin a profit off their expensive education.

20- "The university, the humanities, and the book bloc"

Caleb Parsons

Chapter 20 "The university, the humanities, and the book bloc" engages in an evaluation of the corporatization of the contemporary university system. Athanasiou asserts that the development of the university system has commodified knowledge, and made it into a product for students. By placing emphasis on the profitability of knowledge, the humanities have fallen under increased pressure and scrutiny. The nature of the humanities is not to accumulate capital, rather the humanities explore the intricacies and nuances of human existence. If anything the humanities undermine the goals and vision behind corporate universities.
With the rise of tuition costs, access to higher education reaches fewer people than ever before. The class of "educated" people becomes smaller, thereby restricting who possesses "knowledge" in our society. Such a limited recognition of knowledge prevents other forms of knowing to achieve legitimacy. Since universities define and outline the limits of knowledge, a vast majority of people find themselves outside of the realm of socially endorsed knowledge. Butler advocates for the liberation of knowledge from the corporatized universities. This made me think of the Freedom University project taking place in Georgia currently. Georgia legislature banned the top five public universities from admitting undocumented students, on top of legislature preventing undocumented students from receiving in-state tuition. These policies withhold socially and culturally sanctioned "knowledge" from these individuals. In resistance of these measures Freedom University provides classes outside of the university system that inform and educate undocumented students. By removing learning and knowledge outside of the university, these students unveil the exploitative and oppressive nature of the university system in the contemporary context.

Resistance and Freedom

In Chapter 20, “The Political Affects of Plural Performativity,” of their book Dispossession: The Performance in the Political Butler and Athanasiou discuss revolt: “…revolt emerges as a reconfiguration of the normative operations of power that regulate the limits of this context, signifies affecting and being affected by the corporeal dynamic of relatedness, mutual vulnerability, and endurance” (177). This one quote, seems to imply many of the key aspects of personal revolt discussed by Kristeva in “The Forms of Revolt” including the purpose of revolt—to question norms on a societal and individual level, and that this questioning results from identity and relations to these norms—as well as the ideal of revolt as a never-ending necessity for humanity.

The revolt that Kristeva and Butler and Athanasiou discuss is not purely individual, it is public and it is not just one individual and one act. While some acts of political protest may seem connected, “this does not mean that everyone acts together and in unison, but that enough actions are interweaving that a collective effort is registered. The ‘I’ is not dissolved in such collectivity…” (180). This reminded me of the discussion of the individual identity in relation to other—a discussion which has been prevalent since the beginning of the semester—and this passage provides what seems to be the clearest version of how an being can be both individual and relational, as we all are.

Ending the chapter in a discussion of freedom—what and why and how—Butler and Athanasiou conclude that freedom needs to expand beyond “liberal individualism” (179), and revolt is ultimately a struggle for the survival of freedom. Revolt (and the questing of norms that coincides) should be an instantaneous action to maintain freedom and continually open the platform for new forms of the “other” to protest oppression. Freedom requires the power of resistance; resistance is the power of freedom.

Chapter 21: Spaces of appearance, politics of exposure

Sammy Karon
5 April 2015

            In “Spaces of appearance, politics of exposure,” Butler and Athanasiou discuss what it means to appear politically. In other words, this issue is about how we, as beings with bodies, use a physical presence to convey theoretical topics. To have our thoughts heard means to have some extension of our body exposed to the listener—our voice, our face, or even our entire body marching on the street. However, as Athanasiou questions, “Can ‘anybody’ (any body) appear then?” (195). On the one hand, not all bodies are equal, so not all appearances can be equal either. Additionally, Athanasiou notes that sometimes public spaces are already occupied by certain actors, so there is less room for different actors to appear, like in the “(Un)occupy Albuquerque” movement (195). Butler responds to this by noting that the purpose of democratic politics is “to represent the people, and to do so in ways that establish equality as a presupposition of social and political existence” (196).

Ideally, I agree with Butler: this is what democracy should do. But even considering the people who wrote the American Constitution, I have trouble believing anyone who already appears would willfully try to themselves less visible so others could become more visible. I am not sure if I feel this way because of the democratic reality I have observed growing up in the US, or because of my overall doubts of human nature and whether or not humans can ever be fully good. This brings me back to Mary Dietz’s “Context is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship” where Dietz discusses what it means to be human in political language. Specifically in America, existing as a physical human has never gotten in the way of being politically labeled as less than human. The examples of the Three Fifths compromise demonstrates this fully: ones body does not innately prove one’s life to other humans. Thus, I struggle believe in Butler’s idealistic definition of democracy because that definition is as old as the wrongs that have occurred under the actual system. In this way, I see the non-political element to appearance as perhaps stronger and more honest than political appearance. As long as you are alive, you appear to yourself. For some people, as long as they are alive, they will never appear to anyone but themselves. In some ways, I believe that disconnected reality is made possible through politics.

Chapter 20: the university, the humanities, and the book bloc

“We are in a terrible conundrum when in order to underscore the importance of critical theory and critical thinking more generally, we have to prove its marketability.” Butler.

I was a sophomore when Emory decided to shut down the journalism, Russian literature and visual arts department. I was very much shocked as it was a direct reflection of the university’s corporate interest and its importance over student interest. I double major in computer science and visual arts and was able to get away with the closure by doing study abroad and cross registration in order to not sacrifice my major, but I have friends who had to re-decide on what they want to pursue with life. For instance, one of my friends wanted to study journalism and visual arts. Even though she stated this on her statement before attending the university, she was not able to pursue the majors she wanted. It is a cruel thing to do as Emory accepted her as a student and during her first year the college shut down both of the majors that she was interested in pursuing. Now, she is an English major. This is an example of JB’s statement “And students who are coming up through university, watching language classes being cut, finding themselves in over enrolled courses or shut out of their majors, also recognize that their lives and educations are being sacrificed for a set of market calculations.”

Another example for the corporatization of higher education would be my cousin’s experience who studied at Cooper Union College. Athanasiou says “… many European and US cities have been recently pulsating with massive protests at their universities, against the cost of tuition, against regimes of university governance, and against the marketization of higher education.” Well, Cooper Union is an art and engineering school that did not charge its students tuition fee until 2014. The current president of the university received a lot of backlash on his decision to charge students because CU’s mission statement says education “should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be ‘open and free to all’.” My cousin stated that there was mass protests against the president but the school chose to charge its incoming students anyway in order to continue providing “quality education”. At CU, none of the undergraduates had to pay for tuition for more than 100 years. I think the global increase in corporatizion of higher education is alarming as it reinforces privilege and educates masses according to the agendas of global corporate interest.
Lastly, I think chapter 20: The University, the Humanities, and the Book Bloc relates to The Speculum of Ignorance: The Women's Health Movement and Epistemologies of Ignorance,” by Nancy Tuana as making higher education only accessible to middle or upper middle class and cutting off critical thinking and humanities from the curriculum would directly result in the production of greater ignorance within society. “In a context of marketability and bottom line efficiency, the humanities are rendered redundant. I am wondering how we might imagine an alternative future for the university in these anti-intellectual times?” Athanasiou.