A tumultuous Fall term at California’s universities promises to give way to a new year of struggle in which tensions and divisions will only increase. There are as many ways to describe this conflict as there are students, but its basic contours are shaped by an economic system that demands a continuous and ever-increasing input of work and that, in return, concedes ever fewer tangible benefits, which can often only be wrested from the swirling vortex of value-accumulation via credit, obtained at the cost of…future work. The university student has, at least for the past two decades, faced a basic and worsening dilemma: given her dismal economic prospects, now and in the future, she must choose between working now for a pittance or deferring her labor to some later date that might offer her minimally better odds at a living wage, but at the cost of massive debt accumulation that will likely negate whatever salarial advantage her degree grants her. This situation has become increasingly worse of late, as rising costs (of living and tuition) far outstrip incremental gains in wages. Upon graduating from high school (if lucky enough, wealthy enough, or white enough to do so), young adults are faced with a miserable choice between seeking their fortune in a diminished labor market or obtaining an advanced credential that may qualify them for a more privileged sector of the same narrow and impoverished market where they must scramble frantically to auction off their ‘skills.’ Those who have chosen the latter option and walked through the doors of the casino of higher education (many pay, few win) face odds that steepen with every passing minute. Tuition and fees spiral ever higher; time-to-degree increases apace. Debt accumulates and the pressure to get ‘the job’ mounts. Most students work nearly full time to pay the bills while in school. As the anonymously-written “Communiqué from an Absent Future” aptly states: “We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we work toward are the jobs we already have.”
It is in this desperate context of debt, study, work, and uncertainty about the future that fee increases and salary cuts impact the students of California and the world. Every fee increase elicits a number of possible responses that can ultimately be reduced to two basic options: acquiescence or resistance. In some cases, out of inability or refusal to pay, students must abandon their studies and continue their resistance or submission to domination beyond the confines of the university. These comments are addressed to the students who remain.
Students face an uncomfortable choice: they can submit to the fee increases (which never stop increasing) or they can resist them. The reason this choice is uncomfortable is that it isn’t the kind of simple choice we are used to. It’s not a neat binary: McCain or Obama, ‘for here’ or ‘to go,’ Engineering or Psychology. It requires more than pressing a button on a Facebook poll or filling in a Scantron bubble. This is because the choice is not presented as a choice at all. The budget cuts and mismanagement, with their accompanying fee hikes and program eliminations are not presented as one option among several; they are presented as the way things are. Student input in these decisions is limited to a symbolic vote by the UC student regent, who recently demonstrated his courage by refusing to vote either for or against the 32% fee increase. The rest of us don’t have the luxury of abstention, however. We can either passively assent, or we can resist.
Resistance requires action, but this takes many forms, in part (and happily) because no ‘official’ channel of opposition exists. Sure, there are occasional polls whence easily manipulable statistics are derived, public fora which are open to five minutes of politely-worded questions from persons designated in advance, not to mention the ever-present possibility of sending a little email off to the spam folder of your state legislator. The belief that any of these ‘democratic’ processes has any influence on those who decide to raise fees and eliminate jobs is part of the logic of the spectacle, according to which ‘democracy’ is the free selection of preordained options. The university administration, in whom something like a class consciousness can be seen at work, is unified in presenting these false avenues as the only legitimate form of dissent. Protests are quickly denounced as criminal, destructive, and even as terrorism. The administration makes varied (sometimes clumsy, sometimes ingenious) attempts to divide students, even to the point of claiming that they arrest protestors out of a duty to protect the majority of students who are not protesting. That a majority of students are not protesting is certainly true enough, and perhaps regrettable, but it’s unclear why they need administrative protection. Have protestors attacked other students? Or is the administration protecting students’ right to pay an additional 32% in fees?
Only students’ passivity meets the criteria of authorized ‘dissent.’ Only students’ passivity allows the administration to appear benevolent. Every protest action has been met with police presence, persecution or arrests. Only action reveals clearly the lines between students, workers, and those who support them, and the apparatchiki who maintain the status quo with intimidation and force. Only action demonstrates the difference between students who resist and students who resist doing so out of fear, apathy or secret solidarity with the system. There are many who refuse to leave the roulette table lest they lose their chance at winning. But the ball on the wheel is, in fact, a bullet in the cylinder, and for every winner there is a loser. For every college graduate who obtains the golden parachute there is another who succumbs to debt, and there are many more who never make it through the casino doors. Those who cling to student life, refusing to rebel against it and what it represents, are often the most vociferous in their denunciation of the protestors. The protests, loud and indecorous, clash with the sensibilities of those who prefer to be lulled by the easy, false choices of the game, whose ludic nature has long since faded into a dull, compulsory and endless series of selections: red or black, hit or stay, call or fold. Make no mistake, these students’ passivity masks their hostility toward those who refuse to play the game any longer. The same students who now troll internet message boards to insult the protesters–many of whom, despite being portrayed by idiots as spoiled children, have made huge personal sacrifices to fight the callous dicta of administrators and lawmakers–are the same ones who will, in future confrontations, attack their fellow students alongside police. Students in the movement should harbor no illusions about the goodwill of those who claim to be part of the ‘silent majority,’ nor should they underestimate their unpopularity among anti-intellectuals who despise students merely for being what they themselves are not.
My statements here are intended as a call to action. This call is not coercive–from each, according to his (or her) ability. Our personal, economic, and physical situations are as diverse as we are. (I would not recommend, for instance, that an AB 540 student engage in civil disobedience or other actions which could provoke arrest.) Everyone has something to contribute, however. But this call is an injunction; it requires action or its opposite; it requires one to choose a side.
Solidarity is a fragile thing among students, especially in a university system as diverse as California’s. There are many divisive forces at work, besides those created by admins and cops. There are serious doctrinal differences among the protesters, as is to be expected of a movement that includes Marxists, anarchists, liberals, conservatives, queers, European Americans and students of color. No doubt some of these divisions will become permanent; in a fluid situation today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy. These fractures don’t mean, necessarily, the failure of the movement. Any movement worthy of the name contains internal tensions. In the end, though, the basic division will remain–between those who internalize oppression, forcing themselves to live within this form of society and to study in an increasingly corporate university, and those who refuse to acquiesce to this damaged life.
In the immortal words of Geddy Lee, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
Towards the end of summer I stumbled upon a gem of a book. Kepa Artaraz’ Cuba and Western Intellectuals since 1959 documents the reciprocal—often symbiotic—relationship between the Cuban Revolution and the loosely-knit New Left formations that arose in Britain, France and the United States during the late 50s and early 60s. Artaraz outlines a broad, yet coherent view of the New Left as a movement characterized by its rejection of traditional communist parties, too invested in the Soviet Union and its Stalinist orthodoxy, and by its identification of Third-World nationalist and “anti-imperialist” movements as the locus of revolutionary, anticapitalist struggle. Cuba, as the leading example of anti-imperialist nationalism, came to occupy a central, defining position in the New Left’s conception of the Third World. Likewise, the figure of Ernesto “Che” Guevera became synonymous with the notion of the “committed intellectual,” another key concept of the New Left. “Thus, the New Left can be understood to be a metaphor for a form of committed intellectual that belonged to the 1960s, whereas Cuba acted as a specific example of the Third World—a concept crucial to the definition of the New Left” (57).
The documental work that traces this reciprocity of influence is too rich and detailed to summarize here. Two examples, however, are worth mentioning: that of Sartre and the evolution of his understanding of the intellectual, and that of the Cuban journal Pensamiento Crítico, whose pages illustrate the considerable influence the international New Left had on Cuban theorists in the Revolution’s early years.
Artaraz glosses several New Left theories of the intellectual, citing thinkers like Gramsci, Marcuse, and Althusser. Sartre, however, occupies a key position among these thinkers, not least because he maintained close ties to Cuba. Artaraz reveals that Sartre’s attempt to maintain the individual freedom of the intellectual while simultaneously asserting the possibility for the latter’s solidarity with the masses, or universal class, was ultimately acknowledged to be a failure. In the wake of May 68, Sartre took an increasingly anti-intellectual position as he came to believe that the classical intellectual was inherently elitist and incapable of committment to the masses. “From this moment on,” says Artaraz, “the road was open to a denial of one’s own intellectuality” (157). This trajectory from a position of intellectual solidarity with the revolutionary class (however defined) to one of overt disidentification with anything that reeked of elitist or academic erudition, finds its parallel in the events that unfolded during the first decade of revolution in Cuba.
During the exuberant years after the fall of Batista, artistic avant-gardes thought of themselves as the cultural and aesthetic counterpart of the revolutionary avant-garde; groups like Carlos Franqui and Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Lunes de Revolución sought to transform art as radically as Castro, Guevara, and assorted barbudos were transforming society and politics. The euphoria of what the artists supposed was unlimited intellectual freedom was soon replaced by growing apprehension as functionaries in Cuba’s nascent state cultural apparatus began to proscribe works as “counter-revolutionary.” The banning of the documentary P.M., the closure of Lunes, and Castro’s famous “Words to the Intellectuals” led, finally, to the outright oppression of dissident artists and intellectuals culminating in the international scandal of the Padilla affair, with its grand spectacle of intellectual self-hatred and self-censure. By this time (1968), Cuba was nearing its rapprochement with the Soviet Union, patching up relations that had soured in the fallout from the October Missile Crisis.
As Artaraz summarizes, “[n]owhere was the transition from a Sartrean model of intellectual to a Marxist one more evident than in Cuba. The Cuban example exemplified a move from the first few years of the Revolution, dominated intellectually by a self-appointed group of young writers in Lunes de Revolución who radicalized at the same pace as the Revolution itself, to one that secured ideological control in the hands of the Party” (167). This movement, exemplified by Sartre’s theoretical shift and by the fossilization of the Cuban cultural sphere in the 60s, can also be seen in the fate of the journal Pensamiento Crítico, which Artaraz outlines admirably well.
Pensamiento Crítico (1967-71) was a publication of the University of Havana’s Philosophy Department, which was then dominated by a group of young scholars who had emerged from the Raúl Cepera Bonilla School of Revolutionary Instruction, formed in the early 60s to prepare lecturers in Marxism. Artaraz explains that these scholars had a “particular affinity with the European New Left” (39). The Department of Philosophy’s initial course offerings on Soviet-style dialectical materialism were soon replaced by a more eclectic “History of Marxist Thought” that included readings from Marx, Lenin, Lukács, Althusser and Sweezy, as well as “third-world” theorists like Frantz Fanon and Andre Gunder Frank. The university philosophers were even able to emerge victorious from an ideological battle with the more dogmatically orthodox Marxists who ran the Schools of Revolutionary Instruction, and who favored Soviet pedagogy over a more historically situated approach to Marxian theory.
In its first years, Pensamiento Crítico maintained an active correspondence with such New Left publications as Partisans, New Left Review, and Monthly Review, to name only the most recognizable. Gradually, though, even this most heterodox of publications was influenced by the growing climate of anti-intellectualism. As early as 1968, calls from the pages of Revolución y cultura to erase the distinction between armed struggle and intellectual struggle were denounced vehemently by many of the same scholars who, from their position in the Department of Philosophy, considered themselves the intellectual vanguard of the Revolution. Even among this group (which included renowned novelist Jesús Díaz), the same kind of guilty conscience that had plagued Sartre was at work. As Artaraz explains, “as in other historical examples of the relationship between power and intellect, the completeness of the intellectual-guerrilla remained paramount in Cuba where a sense of inferiority was pervasive in this generation as they accepted their secondary role to the ‘real vanguard’ embodied in Castro and Guevara” (172).
[As an aside, I should mention that this kind of deference to “real” revolutionary struggle has characterized much of Latin American studies in the North American academy. Scholars have had a decades-long obsession with testimonio as, supposedly, an anti-literary and authentically popular genre, unmediated by intellectual intervention. Recently, John Beverley has attacked Marxist-influenced theorists like Beatriz Sarlo for a “neo-conservative” preference for theoretical analyses of repression over more visceral, first-person accounts. Such attitudes may have their origins in the demise of the New Left: as a displacement of the anti-intellectual sentiments brought about by its failure to adequately account for solidarity (or lack thereof) between the masses and the intelligentsia, and as a reactionary defense of the “third-world” revolutionary subject that the New Left itself came to abandon.]
In the wake of the death of both Guevara and foquismo and the definitive rift between Western Marxists and the Soviet Union caused by the invasion of Prague, Pensamiento Crítico began to publish fewer and fewer contributions from the international New Left, and eventually reverted to an ortho-Marxist stance. The journal was terminated in 1971 and the Philosophy Department was reformed along lines more compatible with Cuba’s renewed ties to the USSR.
In sum, Artaraz traces the New Left’s trajectory as a rebellion against traditional communist parties and the role of pamphleteer generally assigned to intellectuals in these workerist organs. Heterodox theories of intellectual praxis and non-proletarian revolutionary subjects emerged, only to revert to more traditional, Leninist approaches to political engagement. The really novel contribution of Artaraz’ book is to show, quite clearly, how the Cuban experience informed the trajectory of the New Left. As Cuba itself moved to a more orthodox, working-class politics, so did the New Left.
Artaraz’ book illustrates a certain dilemma that exists for leftist intellectuals: how to speak approvingly of the New Left’s opposition to Soviet authoritarianism while simultaneously affirming (albeit tacitly) the return to the worker-centered revolutionary politics that underpinned the whole Soviet project? Artaraz, like many others, looks to recent developments in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America for inspiration. Despite the failure of third-world revolutionary movements and their attendant intellectuels engagés (which, according to Artaraz, “could not have possibly been otherwise” [173]), Latin America, at least, is still looked to as the site of alter-globalization and new proletarian formations. Fernando Ignacio Leiva’s Latin American Neostructuralism gives the lie to this kind of wishful thinking, showing how neostructuralism’s preferability to neoliberal regimes of accumulation depends largely on a discursive erasure of its own coercive violence.
Finally, an understanding of the New Left’s identification with the kind of warrior–intellectual synthesis embodied by Guevara qua third-world revolutionary as an alternative to workerist party politics leaves out the fact that Guevara’s politics, too, were labor-centric. A reading of El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba makes it clear that, for Guevara, social transformation would be catalyzed by work based on moral incentives. Although the New Left distanced itself from party-driven politics, it could never sufficiently distance itself from an understanding of the revolutionary subject as an identity-based (and, ultimately, class-based) grouping. To replace the Third World as the privileged site of emancipatory struggle with, say, the Global South, or the industrial proletariat with service laborers or other non-traditional (domestic or sex) workers, simply misses the point: that the New Left distanced itself from traditional working-class parties, not only to break with Stalinism, but because workerist politics had entered a very real crisis. Since the 60s, if not earlier, organized labor has ceased to be a viable counterweight to capital, even in appearance. What Artaraz describes as the New Left’s reversion to a labor-centric anticapitalism coincided with its decline as a political force. I would argue that what is needed now is not a theory of emancipatory praxis in which labor and third-world marginality somehow coincide. In other words, if we are to revive anything from the 60s, it shouldn’t be the New Left or the belief in the inherently revolutionary character of Latin America. Rather, we might benefit from an examination of a central figure (and one not typically thought of as part of the New Left) in one of the most tumultuous events of that decade, Guy Debord. Likewise, it now seems appropriate to ask whether (abstract) labor can emancipate us from the social bondage it perpetuates.
In a now-familiar series of events, the collapse of the housing finance bubble in 2008 led to what is generally considered the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In California, the recession has meant drastic losses in both state revenue (based primarily on personal income and sales taxes) and local revenue (based partially on property and other taxes). Some municipalities, which have a greater ability to raise user fees or surcharges to partially compensate for the loss of tax revenue, have been able to adjust to the economic downturn better than the state itself, whose tax provisions require voters’ approval in order to be altered. The inflexibility of the state’s tax code and its excessive reliance on personal income tax (due to cuts in property taxes implemented in 1978) have combined to make California extremely vulnerable to a recession.
One of the myths perpetuated by media is that California is a ‘welfare state’ with high taxes and that its budget crisis was precipitated by excessive government spending on education and social services. In fact, California’s personal income tax is below average for industrial states, its per-pupil spending for K-12 education is 47th in the country, funding for the University of California system has decreased by 40% since 1990, and uninsured children are being dropped from state health programs.
Much political hay has been made of California’s budget crisis. The state’s economic problems are not unique, however. They have only been exposed somewhat earlier than in other places, due to the state’s tax structure and legislative gridlock. As the world’s seventh-largest economy goes, so goes the nation.
In reality, California’s problems stem from a much broader trend. Since the late 60s, the global economy has undergone massive transformations, often subsumed under labels like globalization, deindustrialization, or post-Fordism. One interpretation of these transformations is that they respond to an underlying crisis of value, in which the efficiency of productive labor has developed to the point that the profitability of commodity production in general can no longer be sustained. Whatever the case may be, the global economy has grown increasingly dependent on speculative bubbles to create the illusion of growth. As the events of the past year have shown, this sort of fictional economic expansion does not lend itself to stability.
The University of California’s response to the current crisis has largely mirrored that of governments around the world, with an important difference. States can disguise the nature of their ‘stimulus packages’ by printing money or promissory notes to increase cash flow to moribund financial institutions. The real impact of these stimuli is thus deferred, and will appear sometime in the future in the form of higher taxes or runaway inflation. Unlike national governments, a university cannot set monetary policy and must simply adjust to the crisis by firing employees, slashing wages, cutting programs, and raising fees. Just as the UC system has inherited California’s budget crisis, it inherits many of its methods of dealing with decreased revenue.
The University of California has other revenue streams. A direct result of the state of California’s disinvestment in its public universities has been the privatization of higher education. Some campuses, especially the medical centers, receive considerable funding from industry. But corporate funding is no substitute for California’s commitment to providing quality post-secondary education to its residents. It favors certain disciplines (it’s hard to imagine Raytheon funding Berkeley’s English Department) and cannot hope to offset the decline in state support. Likewise, astronomical fee increases for students cannot prevent the inevitable decline in educational quality. Universities in dystopian, neoliberal Texas are already salivating at the thought of attracting top-notch faculty otherwise destined for UC. If the trend of privatization continues, the University of California will be public in name only.
The University of California Office of the President, in concert with the Regents and Governor Schwarzenegger, instead of attempting to reverse these damaging trends, have tried to accelerate them. By portraying a crisis that has been decades in the making and is the result of a policy of progressive defunding of California’s institutions of higher learning as an emergency, the board of Regents granted President Yudof ‘emergency powers’ to impose cuts without normal oversight procedures. UC faculty are now mobilizing against these administrative maneuvers which pay lip service to the ideal of shared governance while laying bare their fundamental fiction. With what remains of their illusory autonomy, professors are beginning to resist privatization, which has gone a bridge too far.
http://ucfacultywalkout.com/
Graduate students, under union protection and not directly affected by the imposed furloughs, are nevertheless organizing in support of the faculty walkout, scheduled for 24 September. We have already begun to see our funding move upstream to administrative units to protect the vested interests of managers in a process that employs accounting arcana to cloak the looting. We have seen the MENE, TEKEL, PERES appear before us as President Yudof promises to perpetuate budget cuts beyond the current academic year. We are forming a coalition, composed of students, faculty, and both union and non-union workers, to oppose the UC crisis administration. This coalition transcends mere class and labor interests and seeks to draw attention to the gaping abyss between economic pragmatism and the needs and desires of people. We must exhibit absolute intransigence in the face of the budgetary logic of the crisis managers.
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Davis Grads: There will be an assembly in Voorhies 126, Monday 9/14 @ 6p
We write because we’re concerned about the destructive cuts that the UC administration has begun to implement in response to declining state funding. Our experience of these cuts is various, as their application is diffuse. Some of us have lost teaching positions, or face steep pay cuts; some of us have lost fellowships; some of us are simply uncertain, and worry we too may soon face like losses; some of us see the wolves at the door. We all share concerns about what this means for our future prospects. The threat to our livelihoods—along with the livelihoods of undergraduates, faculty and staff—is equally real for all of us.
In this threat we face a crisis both real and artificial: real in that the severe recession and the regressive California tax structure has meant an $813 million drop in state funding; artificial in the sense that furloughs and layoffs for faculty and staff, as well as increases to undergraduate tuition and fee hikes—all mandated by UCOP and the Board of Regents—vastly exceed the $813 million shortfall. This is the case even as undisclosed and unrestricted funds remain allocated to revenue-generating wings of the university. The issues are many and complex, but depend upon a principal confusion: The state fiscal crisis and the “state of emergency” declared for UC are not one and the same.
These cuts announce an appalling retreat by the administration from the 1960 California Master Plan and its vision of tuition-free education for all Californians. The state of emergency declared by the Regents signals a drastic re-imagining of the mission of the University, under cover of a real economic crisis. The drive to privatize the University of California is an attempt to shift state costs of education and job training directly onto the shoulders of students and their families.
As graduate students, we are curiously positioned in this state of affairs. Currently staff, undergraduates, and faculty bear the brunt of cuts and job losses. It is clear, however, that as departmental budgets are slashed, faculty and lecturers released, staff laid off, and undergraduate tuition increased while enrollments are decreased, the precarious positions we occupy are being made less way-stations for us than permanent realities for everyone in the UC system. As a result graduate students systemwide have begun organizing in concert with faculty, staff, and undergraduate groups, to protest decisions made by the administration in our absence.
They made the crisis—as political as it is economic. We make the University.
Major collective actions are already being planned for the first day of classes: On September 24, UC faculty are planning a systemwide walkout, in solidarity with 12,000 UPTE represented employees who will strike that day. As TAs we can legally honor UPTE’s picket lines by refusing to teach on that day and by joining all workers, including faculty, in their protest actions. Graduate students at UCB and UCSC have already joined together to support this joint faculty and union action.
Never before have staff, undergraduates, graduate students, lecturers and faculty joined ranks to stand for the rights of all to education and decent treatment in the workplace. The crisis we face is already a major moment in the history of the University of California: The only question is what we make of it.
If you want to be involved, but can’t make this meeting, please send an e-mail to tckreiner@ucdavis.edu or jondettman@ucdavis.edu.
Sincerely,
The Organizing Committee
Paper presented April 10, 2008 in Flagstaff, Arizona.
EXTRACT:
“Mi análisis se centra en la relación de Papel picado con el género policial o, más bien, con la estética o el ambiente “noir”, asociado con la variante “hard-boiled” del género. La tesis que sustento tiene dos partes. La primera es que en Papel picado hay una serie de distorciones o desplazamientos de los motivos noirs tradicionales. Digo desplazamiento en el sentido sicológico, siguiendo a Fredric Jameson en este punto. Cito: “[i]t is in detecting the traces of that uninterrupted narrative [la narrativa de la lucha de clases], in restoring to the surface of the text the repressed and buried reality of this fundamental history, that the doctrine of a political unconsious finds its function and its necessity” (4). Sin adherirme necesariamente a la lucha de clases como fundamento ontológico para una narrativa histórica, postulo que el texto responde a su momento histórico a través de desplazamientos, distorciones, o fantasías de realización del deseo. La segunda parte de mi tesis es que la distorción de motivos noirs funciona como respuesta a una crisis de género en la que la novela negra busca adaptarse a nuevas circunstancias (la realidad latinoamericana, unas coyunturas socioeconómicas bien distintas de las que vio el nacimiento del género en los 30 o incluso antes si contamos con precursores como Poe) y, también a una crisis política en la que la izquierda busca encontrar una respuesta a la hegemonía neoliberal. La crisis genérica está imbricada en la crisis política, pues la novela negra se caracterizó, desde sus comienzos, por su temática y su compromiso sociales.”
Download “Extrañas formas de colectividad…” as a .pdf document.
Paper presented April 4, 2009 at the University of California, Irvine.
EXTRACT:
Wertkritik focuses its analysis on abstract value as a “real abstraction” that constitutes an end in itself and that generates capital’s overall dynamic. Anticapitalist movements have all failed because they have been unable to alter this dynamic, which would entail truly overcoming the commodity fetish by abolishing abstract value. I won’t go into more detail here, but will only say that, within this critical paradigm, Cuba, along with the former Soviet Bloc, is seen as a manifestation of a global trend within capital. This trend, dominant from the post-war period until the early 70s, can be called “state interventionist capitalism,” the two major variants of which are Keynesianism and “actually existing socialism.”
Download “Canary in a Coal Mine…” as a .pdf document.
El texto que sigue fue parte de una respuesta a una de las preguntas de mi examen de candidatura, en la que se me pidió identificar y analizar el poema “El cisne” de Delmira Agustini, situándolo dentro de la tradición literaria de su época. La falta de referencias exactas remite a las circunstancias del examen.
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“El cisne” de Delmira Agustini se considera un texto subversivo respecto a la tradición modernista en la que la poeta uruguaya buscaba insertarse. Agustini es asociada a veces con Gabriela Mistral, Juana de Ibarbourou y Alfonsina Storni, otras poetas que la crítica ha denominado “postmodernas.” Estas poetas, aunque muy diversas entre sí, comparten las circunstancias de ser mujeres en un mundo poético dominado por los hombres y por no encajar, por ésa y otras razones, ni en el modernismo ni en las vanguardias que vinieron después. Agustini, por ejemplo, aunque es, quizás, la más modernista de las poetas mencionadas, no suele incluirse en el canon modernista, en parte porque era muy joven, incluso con respecto a la llamada segunda generación modernistas. Storni, por su parte, aunque era muy leída, no encontró un espacio propio en el mundo literario argentino porque no se conformó con la estética dominante del momento. En aquel entonce prevalecían las ideas de Girondo, Borges y Ocampo. Borges, con su proclividad vanguardista a hacer declaraciones en contra de otros escritores, describió la poesía de Storni como “chillonería de comadrita” por su sentimentalismo, su tono a veces estridente y sus claras posiciones ideológicas. Afortunadamente, no toda la crítica está de acuerdo con Borges, y algunos críticos han insertado a Storni en una tradición muy importante de literatura femenina contestataria con raíces en el famoso “Hombres necios que acusáis…” de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Refiriéndome más específicamente a Delmira Agustini, hubo una tendencia muy marcada a representarla como una niña, tanto por su joven edad como por un cierto paternalismo por parte de la crítica. Estoy seguro de que se podría llevar a cabo una rica investigación psicológica de la crítica de la época; la yuxtaposición de la imagen infantilizada de la poeta niña con sus versos muchas veces eróticos de mucho en qué pensar. Hay que reconocer que fue Emir Rodríguez Monegal uno de los primeros en señalar el constante “aniñamiento” de Agustini. Su análisis de la crítica temprana de la poesía de la uruguaya tiene el mérito de aclarar que la imagen de niña no era tan sólo obra de la crítica, sino que también fue cultivada por la poeta misma, como estrategia de enmascaramiento que le permitía enfrentar tanto un mundo que no la aceptaba como una poeta seria como una madre dominante e inestable. Que Rodríguez Monegal la convierte luego en otro tópico modernista, la mujer fatal, o pitonisa, que se escondía tras una fachada infantil, no reduce la importancia de su hallazgo.
Tras este descubrimiento, Sylvia Molloy ha podido descifrar un importante intercambio de cartas que Agustini sostuvo con Rubén Darío. Siendo gran admiradora del poeta nicaragüense, Agustini le mandó una carta, no como fan, sino como poeta que luchaba con problemas artísticos. Lo que Agustini buscaba eran consejos de un colega mayor sobre cómo sobreponerse a la angustia de fallar (como todo poeta) en el intento de trasladar los sentimientos a la página escrita. Lo que Darío le mandó como respuesta fue una carta en la que le dijo a Agustini que se tranquilizara, y que contenía la condescendiente aseveración que las mujeres poetas no sabían sentir el peso del genio encima de sus hombros. La segunda carta de Agustini es de tono más ligero, aparentemente inocente, pero contiene una burla del paternalismo de Darío. Agustini se describe a sí misma como una niña; eufórica al recibir la respuesta del Maestro, se había sentado con una muñeca y un dulce para leer la carta en su cama, rodeada de ositos de peluche, o algo así. Esto permite ver que había “cuentas pendientes” entre Darío y Agustini (por lo menos desde la perspectiva de ésta última), lo cual hace posible leer algunos de los poemas posteriores de Agustini a contrapelo de la estética modernista. Trataré de señalar algunos ejemplos de esto en “El cisne.”
En cuanto a su forma y su lenguaje, “El cisne” sigue muchas de las convenciones modernistas. Hay una atención al metro y a la sonoridad o musicalidad de los versos. El cisne es un motivo típico, reincorporado a la poesía moderna por los simbolistas. En la primera estrofa aparece una metáfora compuesta que puede considerarse típica también del simbolismo y que enmarca la lectura del resto del poema: ojo/lago/espejo/página. Esta metáfora asocia el lago con la lectura, la palabra escrita y la autocontemplación o autoexpresión. La siguiente estrofa enlaza la última palabra de la primera para construir la metáfora pensamiento/flor/alma/cisne. Así se establece que el lago/la poesía es donde habita el cisne/el espíritu (utilizo “espíritu” aquí en el sentido alemán–Geist–que puede significar tanto alma como pensamiento o intelecto).
Lo que sigue es una transformación parcial del cisne, que aparece con atributos humanos (“pupilas humanas”, “filtros dos veces humanos”, etc.). Esta humanización del cisne ya subvierte los códigos parnasianos, según los cuales el cisne representaría el ideal puro de la belleza, la poesía o la divinidad (como en el mito de Leda). Luego presenciamos la erotización del cisne, ora con el color rojo, ora con el uso de símbolos fálicos (“pico quemante”). Finalmente, el cisne y la voz poética se copulan en una escena que rompe con las representaciones contemplativas de la escena de Leda y el cisne (como la que escribió Darío). En vez de ser un mero observador pasivo, la voz poética es un sujeto activo que participa del sexo. De cierto modo, también el cisne deja de ser el típico representante de la sexualidad masculina que suele verterse en la hembra, pues ése recibe su color y su substancia del deseo femenino. En el código modernista, las mujeres son siempre pasivas, cuando no medio muertas como las enfermizas mujeres prerrafaelitas. “El cisne” invierte la típica relación binaria macho/hembra, otorgándole el papel activo a la mujer.
Asimismo, es posible leer el poema de una manera que trasciende por completo esa relación binaria. Al final del poema, el cisne y la voz poética quedan claramente demarcados por la diferencia de color (“¡El cisne asusta, de rojo, / y yo, de blanca, doy miedo!). Pero si entendemos el cisne de la forma aludida, como una representación del pensamiento o del espíritu de la poeta, es posible ver el poema como una fantasía autoerótica: el espejo del lago (el poema) refleja el sentimiento de la poeta. En este círculo cerrado la voz poética se autosatisface. Aunque tenga que escribir “al margen del lago claro”, o sea, fuera del canon modernista, la poeta es autosuficiente. De este modo, “El cisne” contrapone el autoeroticismo femenino al voyeurismo masculino preferido por los modernistas y, especialmente, por Darío en su poema sobre Leda.
En uno de sus poemas llamado “Nocturno”, Agustini es aun más explícita sobre su intención de subvertir los códigos modernistas. En ese poema, la voz poética asume la corporalidad de un cisne y rompe violentamente en un típico tableau modernista: el lago cristalino bajo las estrellas. El cisne cruza el lago, manchando su pureza con un rastro de sangre–imputando de nuevo el color rojo al cisne, normalmente níveo–que contamina la puesta en escena tranquila.
El cisne
Pupila azul de mi parque
es el sensitivo espejo
de un lago claro, muy claro!…
Tan claro que a veces creo
que en su cristalina página
se imprime mi pensamiento.
Flor del aire, flor del agua,
alma del lago es un cisne
con dos pupilas humanas,
grave y gentil como un príncipe;
alas lirio, remos rosa…
Pico en fuego, cuello triste
y orgulloso, y la blancura
y la suavidad de un cisne…
El ave cándida y grave
tiene un maléfico encanto;
clavel vestido de lirio,
trasciende a llama y milagro!…
Sus alas blancas me turban
como dos cálidos brazos;
ningunos labios ardieron
como su pico en mis manos;
ninguna testa ha caído
tan lánguida en mi regazo;
ninguna carne tan viva
he padecido o gozado:
viborean en sus venas
filtros dos veces humanos!
Del rubí de la lujuria
su testa está coronada:
y va arrastrando el deseo
en una cauda rosada…
Agua le doy en mis manos
y él parece beber fuego,
y yo parezco ofrecerle
todo el vaso de mi cuerpo…
Y vive tanto en mis sueños,
Y ahonda tanto en mi carne,
que a veces pienso si el cisne
con sus dos alas fugaces,
sus raros ojos humanos
y el rojo pico quemante,
es solo un cosne en mi lago
o es en mi vida un amante…
Al margen del lago claro
yo le interrogo en silencio…
y el silencio es una rosa
sobre su pico de fuego…
Pero en su carne me habla
y yo en mi carne le entiendo.
-A veces ¡toda! soy alma;
y a veces ¡toda! soy cuerpo.-
Hunde el pico en mi regazo
y se queda como muerto…
Y en la cristalina página,
en el sensitivo espejo
del algo que algunas veces
refleja mi pensamiento,
¡el cisne asusta, de rojo,
y yo, de blanca, doy miedo!
Nocturno
Engarzado en la noche el lago de tu alma,
diríase una tela de cristal y de calma
tramada por las grandes arañas del desvelo.
Nata de agua lustral en vaso de alabastros;
espejo de pureza que abrillantas los astros
y reflejas la cima de la Vida en un cielo…
Yo soy el cisne errante de los sangrientos rastros,
voy manchando los lagos y remontando el vuelo.
Paper presented June 19, 2009 at Portland State University.
EXTRACT:
“In an essay written against Thorstein Veblen’s theory of ‘conspicuous consumption,’ Adorno expressed disagreement with Veblen’s characterization of luxury consumption as an unequivocal manifestation of bad faith, because the consumer does, in fact, derive real satisfaction from the object consumed. This negative appraisal of Veblen is based on the insight that the latter’s critique is one-sided— it understands conspicuous consumption only as the use of products which benefits the needs of the system, but not of people. According to Adorno, luxury consumption must also be seen as “the use of parts of the social product which serve not the reproduction of expended labour, directly or indirectly, but of man in so far as he is not entirely under the sway of the utility principle.” The extent to which Adorno’s Kulturkritik itself maintains this double vision vis-à-vis the sphere of consumption, particularly in regards to cultural or aesthetic consumption, is not immediately clear, especially when one considers that Adorno’s theory of the Culture Industry is a relentless attempt to show that the “utility principle” has, in fact, extended its influence into the domain of the useless.
This paper attempts to think through and critique Adorno’s view of consumption as expressed (with Horkheimer) in Dialectic of Enlightenment and other essays related to the Culture Industry. Marx’s theory of consumption as outlined in the Grundrisse and Moishe Postone’s account of the Frankfurt School’s “critical pessimism” serve as points of departure.”
The Ph.D. qualifying exam generates a different kind of anxiety than a typical test. Other exams can be stressful and, depending on the subject matter, very difficult, but there is an element of the unknown that makes the qualifying exam unlike any other test I’ve taken in my long career as a student. Other exams are usually based on syllabi or even study guides which help narrow the scope of the material. Success is largely a matter of memorizing the information likely to appear on the test or, in an approach I prefer, of mastering key concepts that allow one to extrapolate answers, even if one’s memory fails. The qualifying exam seems very different, though, and many students wander aimlessly through their preparations or, worse, allow themselves to be intimidated by the unknown. I have met doctoral students who dropped out of their programs to avoid facing quals. In this post, I will try to demystify the qualifying exam by explaining what it is and how to prepare.
I should begin with a couple of caveats. First, I’ve never had to evaluate anyone’s qualifying exams, so I don’t claim any professorial authority. However, I did pass my own exams. Second, I am a student in the Humanities, in the U.S. academy, so my experience may not be generalizable beyond those disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Even within the Humanities, qualifying exams vary widely in form and content, depending on one’s institution and academic unit. My quals consisted of a written exam completed over two eight-hour days without the use of notes or reference materials, and a two-hour oral interview with the members of my committee. Many departments now prefer a take-home format, which seems more humane, but still requires a tremendous amount of preparation. Readers should adapt my advice to the particular characteristics of their own disciplines and exam formats.
What is the Qualifying Exam?
In the simplest possible terms, the qualifying exam requires you to demonstrate competency in your field. Your professors will not care about your “potential” or your work ethic. You must be able to discuss a range of topics with clarity and profundity, thus proving that you are prepared to enter the field as a specialist. Those who prefer to think of themselves as “generalists” may bristle at the word “specialist,” but that is the disciplinary reality in which the Ph.D. qualifying exam functions. Quals may also evaluate one’s proposed research in terms of its value and its practicality, i.e. whether the dissertation will contribute to existing scholarship and whether or not it can be completed in a reasonable time. In sum, a successful examinee will exhibit the abilities to analyze and/or critique particular works or concepts within the broader framework of his or her field and to successfully design and complete a major research project.
Departments usually make sample questions available. Reading these is perhaps the best way to understand the kind of questions that you will be expected to answer accurately and thoroughly. Don’t panic if you have no idea how to answer the sample questions. Quals tend to be highly individualized since professors typically write questions based on students’ reading lists and dissertation proposals. Try to identify recurring topics and themes and prepare to answer similar questions about the material on your list.
Step 1: The Reading List
I suggest preparing the reading list as far in advance as possible. Six months to a year out seems reasonable. Think carefully about the works you will include. Try to choose works that you have already read and that connect closely with your research interests and dissertation proposal. If your area is literature or cultural studies, for instance, you will need to read as much criticism and secondary material as possible. You won’t have time to read or view new primary material. For example, my list included 76 titles, the majority of which were novels or book-length works. I could not have read or re-read that much material in an entire year. Think about how the works on your list dialogue with each other and with your dissertation topic. If your reading list is tightly constructed, your study will be more focused and you will be able to draw connections more easily.
Step 2: The Dissertation Proposal
Some programs don’t require the dissertation proposal to be completed until after the qualifying exam. Even in that case, it helps to have a clear idea of your research topic, and you can expect your exam committee to ask some questions about your plans. As with the reading list, timely completion is paramount. A delay in the dissertation proposal will limit your time to prepare for the exam and, just as importantly, to reflect on the proposal itself. Distance and critical reflection is important because the professors on your committee will home in on the proposal’s weaknesses and ask very pointed questions. It helps to have anticipated objections and to have thought about how to address them. Your proposal should include a representative bibliography. I suggest not making the bibliography exhaustive because the exam may require you to answer questions about the works you list there. Don’t make yourself responsible for more material than necessary.
Step 3: Systematic Study
Manage your time. Whether you like to study in the morning, late at night, in the office, library, or café, block out your study time and don’t let anything interfere with it. It’s important to be consistent because, if you start skipping study appointments, you may find yourself insufficiently prepared on the eve of your exam. Tempus fugit.
Create a system for tracking your reading. Set a reasonable goal to read, as a minimum, two or three substantive articles about every work you have on your list. My method was to put my reading list into a spreadsheet column and, alongside every title and in separate columns, to list at least two journal articles or book chapters containing a significant discussion of the work. If you have tailored your list to your strengths, you may be able to do much of this from memory. If not, don’t worry, but be aware that you have a lot of ground to cover. If you are unfamiliar with the secondary literature on a particular work, do some preliminary research and list the most promising titles. Once I had identified sufficient background material for each item on my list, I marked all the secondary literature by coloring the spreadsheet cells red. I did this even for materials I had already read, unless I had prepared reading notes. I did this because, without a set of condensed notes, I was not going to be able to assimilate all the material. I would unmark a title only after reading and taking clear and concise notes on it. As I studied, I could visually track my progress as the number of red cells in my spreadsheet gradually decreased. This worked as a good motivation tool. I should confess, though, that I never reached the end of my list. There were a few red stragglers at the end, because I discovered more sources as I read, and I would add them to the spreadsheet. The task became rather Sisyphean, but the silver lining was that I read far more background material than I had initially planned to do.
As a general rule, you should begin with the works you are least comfortable with. This will give you more time to address your weaknesses. As you read you will discover that there is a lot out there that you don’t know. It helps to remember that you are expected to demonstrate competency, not absolute mastery or omniscience. If you can speak and write clearly and accurately about each work on your reading list, you will be in good shape.
Step 4: Know When to Stop
It’s a good idea to stop reading new material at about two weeks before quals. This is especially important if your exam format prohibits support materials. You will need time to return to the notes that you have collected so faithfully. All your reading should be condensed in these notes, and you will need time to review them. I wrote around 250 typed pages of notes; to review them completely took me about two days. You will want to give yourself enough time to go through all your notes several times. The goal is not to memorize your notes word for word, but you should be able to recall, more or less automatically, all their major points. Thinking about a given title should create a mental image of your notes about it, and hopefully also of all the reading that went into your notes. This may seem impossible, but if you put in the hard hours of study, you will eventually reach this point. Memory, if exercised, can do incredible things. In Golden Age Spain, rival theater companies would steal scripts from each other by sending professional plagiarists, or memoriones, to the theater. After sitting through a performance, these mnemonic superheroes would hurry home and write down every line in the play they had just seen.
You should also spend part of your last two weeks revisiting your dissertation proposal. Chances are that many of the exam questions (especially on the oral portion) will be related to your proposal. Think about how the works on your list connect to your proposal. Try constructing some narratives about where your research fits into the field as a whole, which, after so much reading, you should be able to picture with some clarity. Read your proposal critically. What are its defects or controversial aspects? Try to come up with some clear answers to this sort of question. Don’t forget to review key works in your bibliography. Be prepared to summarize and/or critique them.
Step 5: The Exam
If you are well prepared, the exam takes care of itself. You may be surprised at how easy it seems. This doesn’t mean that the exam really is easy, just that you worked extremely hard to get ready.
Take a day or two off before the exam. Exercise. Distract yourself from obsessing over details by staying active or by forcing yourself to think about other things. You’d be surprised at how effective a couple of days of memory supression can be for ensuring that those memories come surging back.
Don’t rush. When you are writing your exams, be as methodical as you were while studying. Create a brief outline of your answer, list a few bullet points under each outline section, then expand each point. Soon you’ll have a short essay. Divide your time equally among questions.
During the oral exam, stay humble. Your professors will not be dazzled by your brilliance. Their primary concern is to make sure that you can, in fact, complete a dissertation. This means ascertaining your competency in the field and the viability of your research proposal. Many of their concerns will be pragmatic. Be prepared to explain, in practical terms, how you plan to complete your research.
Afterwards, celebrate.
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