Here is my reading digest for Critical Social Theory that’s due tomorrow:
Habermas, Jürgen. “Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism“ and “Social Action and Rationality.“ Translated by Thomas McCarthy.
Marcuse, Herbert. “Liberation from the Affluent Society.“ in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner, 276-287. New York: Routledge, 1989.
A classmate began Tuesday’s class with the question that we hard largely left unanswered at the end of the previous week: where can we find resistance in today’s society, according to Herbet Marcuse’s vision? The class discussion that followed was a really good discussion, and as Orosco pointed out, was one that has been held among Marxists for quite a while. However, I was extremely frustrated during this discussion. The class, for the large part, seemed to want to focus the discussion on whether we should focus on reform or qualitative change, and how, and what acts constituted which. I thought this discussion was fruitful, but I was frustrated because I didn’t feel that we were enhancing our understanding of Marcuse’s vision of resistance and qualitative change, but rather continuing the debate between those in class who I might identify as liberals and those in class who are or have been radical.
I wanted to hear about, in particular, the ways in which we can change the ways our bodies function and move in society. How can we focus on desire and changing what/how we desire so that was can create qualitative change? I felt that this was central to Marcuse’s vision of qualitative change, and I even quoted it in class to try to move the conversation that way, but no one else wanted to go that way.
And I am left wondering why. I have three formulations to answer that why: 1) I am stressing Marcuse’s focus on bodies more than I should be; 2) everyone had moved on mentally to Habermas and his more reform-oriented model (at least more reform-oriented than the other theorists we have read); or 3) the class hasn’t actually undergone transformative change because this class hasn’t undergone bodily changes, only mental ones. If I am wrong in stressing Marcuse’s passages on the body, then I would greatly appreciate correction; however, I feel, after reviewing the text a few times, that I am correct in my reading. I would refer to the text now, in this moment, but I have left my book at home. As for the second formulation listed here, I don’t know if I believe that one because I had a hard enough time understanding Habermas, and this focus on reform in class discussion was occurring before the shift to Habermas.
So, I’m left with the third: this class hasn’t changed the way students’ bodies function, so the learning is all knowledge and not bodily. I’m reading a great book by Marshall W. Alcorn, Jr., titled Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Constructions of Desire, which discusses the way supposedly transformative cultural studies composition courses don’t incorporate changes in desire. Of teaching new knowledges and ideologies, Alcorn writes: “Such knowledge will always be used in accordance with existing ideologies and their respective desires and identities. In order to use knowledge for social progress, desire must bee mobilized to use knowledge. Desire itself must be altered if knowledge is to be effective in solving social problems“ (5).
As I write this, I worry that it might come across as a critique of the course, and I suppose it is, but more of transformative courses in general. Mostly, as I write this, I am trying to answer the question: why would we read all this, understand the way Western society works in a more complex, critical way, and still only call for minor reforms and not envision a society without suffering? And the only answer I can come up with is that our desires haven’t been altered. We still desire the restaurant down the street, to get an A and a degree instead of actually transformative experiences, to get a job when our degrees are over, to date and have relationships in the same way we did ten weeks ago. We still desire the same privileges that we have been desiring before the class. And when I consider who I think is grasping the material the best, based on my observations during discussion (I’m trying not to be too hubristic and assuming that I grasp it all), are those who have less invested in dominant culture: the queers and Dave (?), who seems pretty anarchist in his viewpoints. (An aside, as I think about it, I realize I could probably only name half my classmates’ names. Hmm… how could this class be more of a community, changing the way we function as students?) Well, this observation of who I think gets it is based on mostly Marcuse’s work, I think.
What would a classroom look like where desire was shifted? That I do not know. Perhaps and hopefully Alcorn’s book will help me address that (he comes from a Lacanian perspective, something I have little familiarity with). But I think I’m starting to formulate what I want to write my paper on for the course: transforming desire in the critical pedagogy classroom, drawing from Critical Theory.
Michael,
I think I’ve got to agree with you on this one: one class, even this one, won’t (usually) change people in such fundamental ways. It’s a much longer process. Think about how much you’ve read/said/done that has informed how you’ve understood the class, then try to imagine what it’s like for someone with only 5% of that background in common. To put it another way: Team Liberation training, as intense as it is, makes no claims about having lasting effects – it just hopes for them. Critical Social Theory can be a capstone, a catalyst, or a stop on the road, but it can’t be the whole journey. I don’t think any one thing can.
Part of it, too, is perhaps due to that same wildly varying set of backgrounds and circumstances that the students in the class bring. For example, you asked how the class could be more of a community. I always wanted to have class at Bombs or American Dream or something like that – the point being somewhere less formal, with a less formal class structure (multiple conversations at once, applying the class concepts to less formal topics, etc), but this was impossible not only due to OSU protocol, but perhaps to the fact that not everyone thinks that format is a good one for discussion. And not everyone is there for community.
I’m also beginning to think that such a fundamental alteration of our desires is almost impossible to do in one step – and that even if we imagine/envision a society without suffering, it’s so many steps away that imagining a society with *less* suffering is perhaps many peoples’ limits – or, at least, their sustainable limit. Or something like that.