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Saturday, January 31, 2004

Why don’t liberals “get” disability rights?

Great question-- and a great new essay by Mary Johnson, available at Ragged Edge Online.  I’m (liberally) quoted in it, but that’s not what makes it worth anyone’s time.  It really is a vexing question-- and a crucial one for anyone who takes seriously the possibility of thinking in terms of universal rights.

As you’ll see (if you click the link, of course), I think there are many things that liberals just don’t understand about disability when it comes to civil rights-- it’s like it’s not even on the radar until it affects their lives or the lives of someone close to them.  This was certainly the case with me-- as I admitted some years ago in the introduction to Simi Linton’s book, Claiming Disability:

“I now believe that my resistance to disability studies is of a piece with a larger and more insidious cultural form of resistance whereby nondisabled people find it difficult or undesirable to imagine that disability law is central to civil rights legislation.  Here’s what I mean.  Just as I was ‘liberal’ with regard to disability, so was I ‘liberal’ with regard to gender and race:  I supported (and I continue to support) equal pay for equal work and initiatives such as affirmative action regardless of whether those initiatives would ever benefit me.  I did not fear that I would become black or Hispanic someday; I was not reserving the right to a sex-change operation; I simply supported civil rights with regard to race and gender because I regarded these as long overdue attempts to make good on the promise of universal human rights.  It is for the same reason that I support gay and lesbian rights today, with regard to marriage, housing, childrearing, and employment.  But for some reason, even though disability law might someday pertain to me, I could not imagine it as central to the project of establishing egalitarian civil rights in a social democracy.  Gender, race, sexual orientation-- these seemed to me to be potentially universal categories even if I myself wound up on the privileged side of each; disability, by contrast, seemed too specific, too . . . special a category of human experience.

“The irony, of course, is precisely this:  even though I knew that gender, race, and sexual orientation were unstable designations, subject to all manner of social and historical vicissitudes, I had yet to learn-- or to be taught-- that disability is perhaps the most unstable designation of them all.”

At the same time, there are some issues on which liberals and disability-rights activists will not agree, particularly with regard to what’s sometimes called “death with dignity” and (at the other end of the life course) the “ethics of selective abortion for fetuses with disabilities.” (Again, Mary Johnson’s essay is terrific on this.) And that’s because on such issues, the question of autonomy is a genuine conundrum.  Which is another way of saying that I do not know what to think about it.  And I’m willing to bet that if you consider seriously questions like:

--how do we proceed when confronted with a conscious incompetent patient who has previously expressed the wish not to be sustained in such a condition, but who might very well have “changed her mind” about living (with “changed her mind” in scare quotes because mindedness is precisely what’s at issue)?  (this was a question for one of the plenary sessions of the 2002 meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities, in which I participated)

or

--is it right and just to compel a person to take medication against his will if the effect of the medication is to render him competent to determine whether he should take his medication?  (this came up in two papers presented at the “Disability and Democracy” panel I chaired at the 2001 MLA convention)

or

--what is the best course of action for a pregnant woman whose amniocentesis suggests that her fetus, upon coming to term, will have significant disabilities that her husband is unwilling to care for?  (you might want to look here or here for examples of how people have handled this one),

you’ll wind up thinking more deeply and more confusedly about the liberal ideal of autonomy, too.  In the meantime, check out Mary Johnson’s essay.

Posted by Michael on 01/31 at 08:57 AM
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Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Literary theory is dead and I feel fine

Literary “theory” was pronounced dead today by the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics’ Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Interpretation.  “The news should come as no surprise,” said longtime theory-critic John Hollander at yesterday’s CSI press conference.  “Theory has been dying for years—the only problem is that the ‘theorists’ themselves have been in a state of profound denial about the fact.” In a separate statement, eminent Yale critic Harold Bloom added, “alas.”

Hollander pointed to the infamous 1997 “Paris video” in which postmodernist-deconstructionist-nihilist literary theorist Jacques Derrida is seen swimming in the Seine, but in which only his head is visible above water.  “The members of the Branch Derridean cult managed to convince themselves that they could keep blathering on about the contradictions between the ‘literal’ and ‘rhetorical’ meanings of words, even though their leader was obviously unable to distinguish fantasy from reality,” said Hollander.  “But now that even Marxist theorist Terry Eagleton has renounced ‘theory,’ it’s time for Derrida’s acolytes to give up the ghost—so to speak.”

Speaking from beyond the grave, deconstructionist and former Nazi collaborator Paul de Man agreed with Hollander.  “I was wrong from the start,” said de Man.  “And I want to give you all an example of precisely how wrong I was.  Remember that reading of Yeats’s ‘Among School Children’ I did many years ago?  The one that took the closing couplet of the poem?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

-- and suggested that ‘It is equally possible to read the last line literally rather than figuratively, as asking with some urgency the question . . . how can we possibly make the distinctions that would shelter us from the error of identifying what cannot be identified?’ Then I went on to say, as you might recall, that ‘the figural reading, which assumes the question to be rhetorical, is perhaps naive, whereas the literal reading leads to greater complication of theme and statement.’ Well, I must have been high,” de Man admitted.  “Frankly, there’s no way to read that line literally.  The whole premise of my argument was flawed, because, in the end, language just isn’t that ambiguous.  Obviously, Yeats’s point is that you can’t tell the dancer from the dance, because—if you’ll pardon the analogy—there’s no difference between the words on a page and the way they might be read, or ‘performed,’ by any given reader.”

Responding to reporters who found this “confession” too damn confusing, de Man tried again to simplify matters.  “OK, I understand that rhetorical questions in Yeats’s poetry might be a bad place to start if you’re looking for interpretive certainty.  Very well, then, take the simple question ‘what’s the difference?’ For a long time, I convinced people that you could read this utterance in two different ways—as a question that asserted a ‘difference’ when taken literally, and as a question that denied that very difference, or insisted on its irrelevance, when read rhetorically.  But that’s so much horseshit.  I mean, come on.  Words aren’t all that hard to understand, are they?  Really, we all know how to distinguish real from rhetorical questions, especially when they occur in written texts, don’t we?”

British Marxist theorist Raymond Williams, dead since 1988, concurred with de Man.  “I didn’t care all that much for deconstruction when I was alive,” said Williams.  “But I agree with Paul now—most of what we theorists were doing was bunk.  Take for example my book Keywords, where I provided a series of historical analyses of words like art, class, criticism, culture, experience, literature, masses, society, and work.  I predicated that book on the claim that ‘some important social and historical processes occur within language, in ways which indicate how integral the problems of meanings and of relationships really are.’ And I insisted on understanding these words not in terms of their origins or their current usages, but as records and palimpsests of social change; I really thought that I was undertaking ‘an exploration of the vocabulary of a crucial area of social and cultural discussion, which has been inherited within precise historical and social conditions and which has to be made at once conscious and critical—subject to change as well as to continuity—if the millions of people in whom it is active are to see it as active.’ But who was I kidding, really?  Words like ‘culture,’ ‘class,’ and ‘original’ have never changed their meanings, and most reasonable people know that those meanings have always been pretty clear.  I know it, you know it, everybody in the English-speaking world knows it.  I was just blowing smoke, and I’m sorry.”

Perhaps most strikingly, Eve Sedgwick has come forward to second the confessions of Williams and de Man.  “Queer theory is hogwash,” Sedgwick insisted at a recent conference, “Queer Theory: Nonsense or Hogwash?” “If you think about it seriously for a second, the homo/hetero divide isn’t an important conceptual division for contemporary thought in any sense of the term.  I know I made a big deal out of this in Epistemology of the Closet, but between you and me, I was just out of my bird.  Every sane person knows that gender and sexuality are pretty straightforward affairs—that is, I mean, we all know that people are pretty rational about these things.  They know what they want, and they work to maximize their interests, sexually speaking.  Cognitive science proves this.  And listen, while I have you here,” Sedgwick added, “I have to say that the literature of the past two centuries offers a pretty clear record of the facts.  Please don’t listen to these people who go on about the ‘homosocial-homoerotic’ dynamics in Victorian fiction, and please don’t read too much into poets like Walt Whitman or Hart Crane, either.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned since leaving Duke University, it’s that words and things generally are just what they seem to be.”

Blogging from a remote undisclosed location, literary critic and cultural studies theorist Michael Bérubé testified to his sense of relief at the news of theory’s demise.  “Irony died a few years ago,” he said, without “apparent” “irony.” “So it’s about time that these bizarre, elaborate queer-Marxist-deconstructionist theories about ‘meaning’ died too.  From here on in, things will mean just what people say they mean—and they better mean it this time.”

Posted by Michael on 01/28 at 04:22 PM
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Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Primary identifications

With 87% in, New Hampshire looks like this:

Kerry 71,536 39%
Dean 47,847 26%
Clark 23,153 13%
Edwards 22,357 12%
Lieberman 16,179 9%

My prediction was, let me see now,

Kerry 36
Dean 22
Edwards 20
Clark 15
Lieberman 6

All right, so I was skeptical of the “Edwards surge” in Iowa but I believed it here.  Oops.  Otherwise, I’m within 3-4 percent on everybody.  Including the Reverend and Dennis K, who should now think of themselves as free to develop their many other talents.  (Apparently Lieberman thinks he has enough Joe-mentum to keep going, but why can’t he take that Joe-mentum someplace else?  Like, say, the NBA’s Atlantic Division:  it’s Joe-tastic!)

I can’t wait for Missouri, personally.  Other than that, all I can say is that I have no idea how these results will play out when we head south and west in the next two weeks-- but I do think the next two weeks will tell us most of what we need to know, and one thing we need to know is whether Clark or Edwards will win one of these things outright.

In the meantime, one quick suggestion:  maybe we can’t win in November with Dean voters alone, but there’s no way we take back the White House without them.  (I’ve given the man $$$ on a number of occasions but will be happy to support any of the Plausible Four against Bush.) So let’s remember that Dean supporters-- partly by themselves, and partly by way of the response they’ve generated among nonsupporters getting out there in the cold to vote for somebody else-- are largely responsible for these record turnouts in the early states, for the emergency spine implant in Kerry (let’s hope the body doesn’t reject it!), for the decline of the DLC as a rightward force in the party (after all, you can’t even spell decline without DLC), and for Edwards the Happy Populist.  If you’re a Democrat, say something nice to (or about) a Dean voter today!  You’ll be glad you did.

Posted by Michael on 01/27 at 04:55 PM
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Blog about blog

I’ve updated the blogroll to reflect more accurately my current reading habits, and the “books” page of this site now includes pix of book jackets.  (That should boost sales by infinity percent or more!  Though Verso never gave me credit for designing the cover of Public Access, for some reason.) And I’m informed that we’re up from 37 visitors on January 7 to 600 per day since January 12, with over 50,000 hits for the month.  I think that’s the power of the mighty Altercation at work.  Thanks, Eric!

In February:  more improvements to come, and overdue updates to the “essays” page.  Sorry to say we still don’t have coffee mugs and T-shirts available. 

Update:  Kurt Nelson says, “you do know the ‘hits’ number is a meaningless statistic, right?  The important thing is the number of visitors-- 13,700 and climbing.” My response:  don’t talk to me about “meaningless statistics.” The important thing is that Iraq is better off without Saddam.

Posted by Michael on 01/27 at 09:13 AM
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Title VI update

In this post:  three recent essays on H.R. 3077, the bill that would create a federal Advisory Board to oversee international studies programs that are funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, and its prospects in the Senate.  The board in question would consist of seven people:  two members would be appointed by the president pro tem of the Senate and two by the Speaker of the House, on recommendations from the majority and minority leaders. The other three would be appointed by the Secretary of Education, two of whom would represent agencies with national security responsibilities.  That’s right-- a board determined mostly by Bill Frist, Rod Paige, and Tom DeLay, with Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle getting one recommendation each.  No reason for concern here, folks.

As a recent memo from the National Humanities Alliance puts it: “The House bill creates what it calls an ‘advisory board’ that in fact is much more. This board has the power to ‘investigate’ individual faculty members and specific classes on campus and it can issue reports. An advisory board ought to be truly advisory. It shouldn’t have broad, nearly unlimited powers and it should not be free of reasonable supervision by the Department of Education. What’s more, the composition of the board is too narrow to reflect the broad range of needs in international education.”

And as you might guess, the culture warriors behind this bill-- people such as Stanley Kurtz, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes-- couldn’t care less about the vast majority of work done by international-studies programs in the United States.  For them there’s only one issue:  Israel and the Arab world.  (Sad to say, the American Jewish Committee released a six-page single-spaced memo last week strongly supporting H.R. 3077.) But you can read the arguments for yourselves:  Martin Kramer’s, Zachary Lochman’s, and Todd Gitlin’s.

Posted by Michael on 01/27 at 08:13 AM
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Monday, January 26, 2004

Wait a minute-- there’s a presidential candidate who plays hockey?

Holy Mother of the Shorthanded Goal, this changes everything.  Why didn’t anyone tell me this?  Could it be that it’s completely irrelevant to the question of who takes the White House back from George Bush and his cronies on the Supreme Court who installed him there-- or could it be the result of the right-wing domination of American mass media?

So far the evidence points to the latter.  Apparently the transcript of John Kerry’s Sunday interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace reads as follows:

KERRY:  And yesterday, I got to be out on the ice with guys like Ray Bork (ph) and Cam Neely (ph) and Kenny Hodge (ph)…
WALLACE: We should point out (inaudible) Boston Bruins…
KERRY: I’m telling you, for a kid like me, who grew up with those guys as our heroes, I’m in seventh heaven still. I’m on a high.
WALLACE: You scored two goals. Did they let you score them, sir?
KERRY: If you play with the Bruins, they make you look good.

Over at Counterspin Central, Hesiod calmly points out (in comments) that this “means that whoever did the transcript has no idea who Ray Bourque is. Nor did the person who edited it.” To which another commenter replied, “‘Borque’ is kinda French, so I’m guessing that Fox misspelled it on purpose to annoy his fans.  Which will lead to the widespread use of this tactic, henceforth known as ‘Borqueing.’” Very clever (OK, I wish I’d said it first), but I think it’s obvious that the folks at Fox only know one Bork.

But seriously-- Kerry scored two goals in a charity hockey game?  I think that’s all I need to hear.  Never mind Iraq, universal health care, civil unions, the Bush Tax and the Bush Deficit.  I’ve found my issue.  I want the guy who can put the puck in the net.

For the VP slot, obviously, we will need an enforcer.  I’m open to suggestions, but remember, he has to be (a) born in the US and (b) not currently a resident of Massachusetts.  So Bruins toughguy Sandy McCarthy is out on both counts.

All right, enough of this.  Here’s a more sane and sober analysis of the Four Remaining Plausibles from one of my favorite journalists, David Corn.

Posted by Michael on 01/26 at 04:16 PM
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