We’re all presidents
We’re all congressmen
We’re all cops
In waiting.
We’re the workers of the world. (Against Me, “Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious“)
When I hear this song, I am reminded of what Foucault wrote about the origins of professors… they originate in the scribe to the king or the Church, in the enforcer of the system. Teachers are tools of the State, and I think part of my struggle is in not being this. I am also reminded of Foucault’s Panopticon metaphor, and how we are all training to become enforcers of a system. The idea that I have spent my life being trained to be a cop, to be an enforcer. This is, in part, why I left teaching middle school. The banal rules meant to enforce structure and order on an age of supposed chaos were draining when students were naturally going to resist what they knew to be frauds. Why the hell should you take your hat off in a building? Why the hell should you move from classroom to classroom where you sit and the teacher orders you to do things — the teachers whose training had included how to manipulate you to get you to do what they want — that in the long run you know won’t matter a lick?
You believe in authority.
I believe in myself.
I’m a molotov cocktail
You’re Dom Perignon
…
I burn down buildings
While you sit on a shelf inside of them.
You call the cops
On the looters and pie-throwers.
They call it class war.
I call it co-conspirators. (Against Me, “Baby, I’m an Anarchist!“)
I don’t want to be a co-conspirator. Perhaps all this angst inside me comes from how I can accept being part of a State Apparatus that I inherently don’t agree with. My tuition and my students tuition pay for war research….hmmm…
