Academic meddling and OWS: self-serving at best, destructive at the other pole…
January 22, 2012
[An open letter to Academics and arm-chair (onanistic) activism, riding a wave with…talk]
There are several dynamics in play here, which need not be conflated as one needful Left agenda.
As Chomsky notes, there is an abiding mutual disassociation present among the working class which inertia hinders, at the most essential level, even the possibilty of a nascent Left activism. That is, OWS has inspirited a massive segment of the population to—voila!—get out of the house and become involved!
This fact needs to be valorized as the incipient moment of what may potentially be a coalescing of many seemingly disparate causes: anti-war, universal health care, EFCA and card check, doubling of the minimum wage, worker control of the means of production, etc.
To aver that OWS is remiss, i.e., “they really need to be doing more,” is to overlook the dynamics of Left activism. For example, to argue that “The absence of demands isn’t a strength,” is yet more effluent (institutionalized logorrhea) from anxious careerists who have been found out—i.e., who haven’t been at the barricades. To compensate for this egregious moral lack they cover their—’smell’ via learned disquisition…
In a word: academics have been shown to be suffering from chronic disconnect, again, all in the service (read: self-service) of their ever-tenuous careers.
OWS has managed to effect an eclectic synthesis of the rank and file to make common cause for change, in toto. To argue that OWS “at this point, really needs to be clearer in just what it is that they are about”—i.e., they need to make specific demands “in order to succeed as a cause”—is at best, misguided conjecture, and at worst, presumption from non-participant mainstays of the status quo–i.e., presumption from just who/what it is that we are opposing.
There are discrete activist organizations in the US, with their coterie attending this or that action. They have, in fact, announced for all the world their specific demands. And, by the way, this ‘clarification’ on their part has not necessarily manifest itself as a catalyst for activism on a broad scale–not to the degree that OWS has accomplished in a brief four months.
The very first, overwhelmingly needful step is to get the disassociated rank and file involved. And this, OWS is accomplishing, as an ongoing necessity. Individuals see OWS as being a forum for making manifest their suffering—no mean attribute of OWS, as the state/MSM/Wall Street “trifecta of evil” has made eminently clear that individual suffering is utterly meaningless. This maintenance of the investor-class-configured status quo has underwritten every salient narrative here at Empire, with the insidious—but anticipated—effect of anomie, disinterest and depression, all serving to keep any incipient collective action at bay. And this effect has been accomplished to a distressful degree., with the undeniable, yet vital call for healing being paramount. Again, the ongoing necessity of healing-with-activism will occur as the participants are invited to engage the enemy in their own way. That is, OWS has created a space of action for everyone—i.e., not solely “activists”—quote-unquote.
This clearing of a space must not be eclipsed via well-meaning advisors–like you, Professor Jodi Dean.
That is, announcing one’s group as designed for ‘this’ (but not necessarily for ‘that’)—may in fact be the weakness that your argument seeks to warn us away from. And thank you so much for the warning—you, the academic, in your never-ending quest for self-preservation (q.v., the “publish/perish” dyad), have, indeed, managed to make yourself ‘necessary’. And, p.s., mind your business.
also…to address the claims of opaqueness, intrigue, hierarchy, and even “cabals” within the OWS movement, the following argument is posited:
Of course it will be the case that for organizational skills, direction, etc., some individuals will come forth to make those personal/professional skills available to the group. And how could it be otherwise? Or, said another way, someone utterly lacking those skills would certainly eschew any prominent role in such ’teaching’ activity—until such time that they develop themselves as individuals in those areas…
This isn’t a ”cabal” but, rather, an eclectic, dynamic mosaic of many, many persons, often from disparate walks of life, with a welter of experiences (both personal and professional), skill levels, etc., making common cause to address—what?—the abiding suffering caused by the investor-class-configured status quo. They conjoin to revolutionize—non-violently—a 236-year-old imperium wreaking havoc upon them, their families and communities. This is not a cabal.
Rather, consider that we are, each and every one of us, both students and educators—i.e., we all have something to share—as educators—as well as a need to learn. Let those deemed ’cabalists’ be henceforth viewed as only the first of many educators in a particular area.
Dean Taylor
