Last night I saw Alexander Payne's Citizen Ruth (the first of his "Nebraska Trilogy") and I was struck by how much the film was about how class values help determine social values. Specifically, the film highligts the material conditions that allow one to take an extreme stance on either side of the abortion debate. I am happy to note that the film lampoons extremests on both sides. The problem is that the working-class character featured most in the film is also a drug addict and so many of her values get reduced to a personal jones.
Regarding your wanting to use Walter Benn Michaels' critique in the classroom, that's a tough one, because the values we teach (or are allowed to teach) our students are based on distinctions, many, most, or all of which are based on middle-class values (which is of course why middle-class kids despite race, gender and geography do so well at the university while working-class kids of all races, of both genders and of any geographical origin do so poorly). First, are you really gunna be allowed to teach working-class rhetoric, for instance, in the classroom? Second, how will you define, for instance, working-class rhetoric? (And how will you do so in a way that middle-class students will not take as an inferior form of rhetoric?) For any rhetoric text I've seen, good rhetoric is middle-class rhetoric. Third, what is your grading criteria gunna look like? And fourth--this is the larger and scarier question--how are you gunna counter charges of hypocrasy, by which many will simply dissmiss your position as overly ideological? Such a radical critique of difference will seem hypocritical to some because its own claims of superiority are based on difference. Put another way, if the goal is the to level the hierarchy, claims of a superior position from which to go about this dismantling run into a paradox / contradiction that some people give many a reason to simply blow you off.
(Regarding Greenblatt, his critics, and the popular press, I think the reasons for the "less-than-generous" things said about his mass-market book are a combination of , yes, that it's for "the people" (affluent, highly educated people, perhaps), but also part-and-parcel of his popularity in the academy and the backlash he's endured for quite a while now because of it.)
The Superior Position
doug Says:Last night I saw Alexander Payne's Citizen Ruth (the first of his "Nebraska Trilogy") and I was struck by how much the film was about how class values help determine social values. Specifically, the film highligts the material conditions that allow one to take an extreme stance on either side of the abortion debate. I am happy to note that the film lampoons extremests on both sides. The problem is that the working-class character featured most in the film is also a drug addict and so many of her values get reduced to a personal jones.
Regarding your wanting to use Walter Benn Michaels' critique in the classroom, that's a tough one, because the values we teach (or are allowed to teach) our students are based on distinctions, many, most, or all of which are based on middle-class values (which is of course why middle-class kids despite race, gender and geography do so well at the university while working-class kids of all races, of both genders and of any geographical origin do so poorly). First, are you really gunna be allowed to teach working-class rhetoric, for instance, in the classroom? Second, how will you define, for instance, working-class rhetoric? (And how will you do so in a way that middle-class students will not take as an inferior form of rhetoric?) For any rhetoric text I've seen, good rhetoric is middle-class rhetoric. Third, what is your grading criteria gunna look like? And fourth--this is the larger and scarier question--how are you gunna counter charges of hypocrasy, by which many will simply dissmiss your position as overly ideological? Such a radical critique of difference will seem hypocritical to some because its own claims of superiority are based on difference. Put another way, if the goal is the to level the hierarchy, claims of a superior position from which to go about this dismantling run into a paradox / contradiction that some people give many a reason to simply blow you off.
(Regarding Greenblatt, his critics, and the popular press, I think the reasons for the "less-than-generous" things said about his mass-market book are a combination of , yes, that it's for "the people" (affluent, highly educated people, perhaps), but also part-and-parcel of his popularity in the academy and the backlash he's endured for quite a while now because of it.)
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