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November 2004, Week 2

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From:
kenneth harrow <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 9 Nov 2004 08:46:26 -0500
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here is a suggestion for mike. instead of dropping theory from your course,
create a glossary of terms appropriate to the readings you assign. it is
incomprehensible to me that difficult concepts, grounded in a tradition of
philosophical thought, anthropology, political thought, and so on, are
necessarily inaccessible to students because of its so-called jargon. this
is a cop-out for those unwilling to make the effort to teach difficult
theory. i would add that any glossary you create could easily be extended
by google searches where there are wonderful sites available for any term
you can dream up.
i looked at the passages cited below as too difficult, and can't quite
understand why a student who makes an effort can't stretch himself or
herself and use words like immanence or transcendence. you could be selling
the students short by assuming they won't work on these terms or concepts
and ultimately be able to understand them
lastly, it is this "jargonistic echolalie" that has produced some of the
most exciting work on culture in the last 30 years, which has attracted
wonderful scholars and entire schools of thought into cinema studies....
ken harrow

At 11:59 PM 11/8/2004, you wrote:
>Bravo, Mike!
>
>You have eloquently hit the nail on the head.
>
>The descent into jargonistic echolalia began thirty years ago. It may
>take another generation to restore reasoned discourse. That is likely
>too long to save us.
>
>If the know-nothings still know nothing the educators bare at least
>some responsibility.
>
>What you outline here is worth a book -- and it's own listserv.
>
>Thank you for taking the time to describe this desperate situation.
>
>(As for feminism, start at the beginning with Molly Haskell's "From
>Reverence to Rape."  Haskell was sane then and has -- somehow --
>managed to retain her good sense.)
>
>James Monaco\
>Card-carrying member of the east coast elite
>
>
>On Nov 8, 2004, at 11:46 AM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>>Do we have to talk to each other this way?
>>
>>Do we have to talk to each other this way?
>>
>>This message is a follow up on one I sent last week in which I asked
>>for
>>bibliographical suggestions that could help introduce feminist film
>>criticism and theory to bright but totally uninitiated young
>>undergraduate
>>students.  As has happened in the past when I asked similar questions
>>there were very  few responses, and of those few most were patently
>>unsuitable [such as asking them to read Camera Obscura].
>>
>>One of the better suggestions was to use the volume on Feminist Film
>>Studies by Janet McCabe in the Wallflower Press series of introductory
>>texts, and
>>it's true that this volume at least tries to accommodate readers with
>>no
>>previous experience of film theory.  But I have to emphasize "tries"
>>because, at least from my point of view, it is only partially
>>successful
>>in this effort.  Here, for example, are some phrases chosen from just
>>the
>>first two pages of Janet McCabe's introduction, that part of the book
>>that, presumably, should work hardest at inviting in the uninitiated:
>>"new
>>knowledges concerned with deconstructing representation";
>>"de Beauvoir genderises transcendence and immanence"; "self-confirming
>>parameters that institute gender hierarchies."  It's not at all clear
>>to
>>me how I can expect my students to make any sense at all of these
>>locutions.  These pages also seem to take for granted that the reader
>>will
>>have some familiarity with such concepts as post-structuralism,
>>post-colonialism, queer theory, transnationalism, to say nothing of
>>ideology.  My students, usually eager to learn, struggle with these
>>terms
>>and concepts,  but sooner or later they give up, for without lots of
>>help
>>this stuff ultimately becomes impenetrable to them.
>>
>>This raises three questions for me, and it is these questions that I
>>want
>>to share with the list.  First and most immediate, is there anything at
>>all out there that will ease my students into this stuff?  Perhaps in a
>>course introducing feminist theory, or even film theory, I could devote
>>lots of class time to talking about this.  But my courses are usually
>>much
>>more broadly based and I can barely find the time to explore such
>>things
>>as the studio system, continuity editing, and auteur politics.  Film
>>theory, not just feminist theory but theory in general, has to get
>>whatever little time is left over after working on more fundamental
>>matters.  So when some students, picking up on the little we can do in
>>class, want to go further in this direction, where can I send them?
>>[To avoid misunderstanding let me be more explicit about the audience I
>>have in mind.  Imagine that you're trying to explain your work to
>>someone
>>whom you like and whose intelligence you respect, but who has
>>absolutely
>>no experience of the kind of discourse we take for granted ? including
>>such things as using the term "discourse" to talk about what I'm
>>talking
>>about now.  Think of a teen age cousin,  or your significant other
>>whose
>>moves in entirely in non-academic circles, or your jogging partner,  or
>>your grandfather.  Think of someone who has probably heard the term
>>"patriarchy" but isn't sure what it means; someone for whom
>>"intervention"
>>is anything but a discursive act; someone who perhaps, on hearing the
>>word
>>"argument," immediately thinks of an angry dispute and not of a
>>reasoned
>>exposition of an idea.  This is the audience I mean to address.]
>>
>>Second, if?as I suspect?there is little out there that systematically
>>introduces these terms, premises, concepts, and arguments, then it
>>would
>>seem most students and scholars in the field [and I suspect this may
>>well
>>mean you] learned this stuff the way I had to, more or less piecemeal,
>>on the fly,
>>improvising as we went along, hoping to get it right but often unsure.
>>The
>>result is?and here let me speak only for myself?that while I can talk
>>the
>>talk I sometimes find that I can't really walk the walk.  I can
>>certainly
>>sound as if I know what I'm talking about,  but while I usually have a
>>pretty good idea of what's going on in any theoretical discussion, too
>>often I find that my understanding is not as solid, not as
>>comprehensive,
>>not as clear as I want it to be?and, not coincidentally, not as clear
>>as I
>>expect my students' understanding to be when they write papers for me.
>>[And this may well account for a peculiar and ironic pattern I've
>>repeatedly discovered in young scholars over the years:  as a member
>>of my
>>department's hiring committee, I often get to interview job candidates
>>with sterling credentials, candidates who?judging from their CVs?seem
>>to
>>have a far more acute understanding of the issues that concern me than
>>I
>>do.  Reading the applications I find myself thinking, "wow!!! -- we
>>must
>>have this person here."  But then in the interview, when I begin to
>>explore the issues and raise problems that I myself face in the hope
>>that
>>the candidate will be able to address them, I too often find that the
>>candidate understands less than I do, and  has merely mastered the
>>sleight
>>of language that counts as a sign of one's being an initiate.  ]
>>
>>I wonder to what extent this kind of discourse is necessary, and to
>>what
>>extent we [and here I certainly include myself among the guilty] use it
>>largely as a way of affirming our belonging to a specific scholarly
>>culture and?more perniciously?as a way of excluding those who can't
>>talk
>>the talk.  I of course know that some jargon, some terms of art, are
>>not
>>only inevitable but necessary.  That's not the problem.  The
>>problem?actually a set of interrelated problems?is that no one seems
>>prepared to introduce this discourse from the ground up; that those who
>>use the discourse may have learned it in the most haphazard way; that
>>at
>>least some of these people have a less reliable understanding of this
>>discourse than they should.
>>
>>There's one other aspect to this set of problems that seems to me
>>especially compelling and troubling in the wake of last week's US
>>elections.  One midwestern voter was quoted in the NYTimes as saying,
>>in essence "We don't need no east coast elite telling us
>>what's good for us and who to vote for."  While it's not likely that
>>the
>>discourse of film theory is the cause of this voter's distrust of an
>>"intellectual elite,"  the remark?like the election results?has a wider
>>resonance.  For it suggests that, despite the importance of
>>contemporary
>>marxist thought in the university, we still have not figured out a way
>>to
>>make our most challenging and important work actually seem important to
>>those whose lives and destinies we are programmatically engaged with.
>>
>>This is obviously a big, messy problem, and I don't suppose this is the
>>place to explore it in detail.  But it did seem to me to be worth
>>flagging, and I'd be most eager to hear how others on the list feel
>>about
>>it.
>>
>>And, by the way, if anyone can tell me how to explain "new knowledges
>>concerned with deconstructing representation" to my students, I'd be
>>most
>>grateful.
>>
>>Best
>>
>>Mike
>>
>>--
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Kenneth W. Harrow
Professor of English
Michigan State University
[log in to unmask]
517 353-7243
fax 353 3755

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