blogging – TROUBLE

Why Jay Smooth is awesome

I’ve been following Jay Smooth and Ill Doctrine for a couple of years now. His work is amazing…to watch and to teach. I’ve used his video, “How to Tell People They Sound Racist” in at least one of my classes (see here for the lecture). Yesterday morning, while reading my twitter feed (I follow him @jsmooth995), I came across his most recent video, “My Personal Pledge for the ‘Until Abortion Ends’ Movement.” After watching it, I noticed another recent video: “My TEDx Talk, ‘How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Discussing Race‘.” This video, from a talk given last month, is a follow-up to the wildly popular “how to tell people…” video (which is from way back in 2008). Check it out:

This brief speech is packed with great things to talk about. For now, I want to briefly highlight a few key parts of the speech (read the entire transcript at Ill Doctrine):

1. Race is a social construct that was designed not to make sense, but to rationalize and justify indefensible acts:

The first thing is that anytime we’re dealing with race issues, we are dealing with a social construct that was not born out of any science or reason or logic, we are grappling with a social construct that was not designed to make sense. And to the extent that it is the product of design, the race constructs that we live in in America were shaped specifically by a desire to avoid making sense. They were shaped for centuries by a need to rationalize and justify indefensible acts. So when we grapple with race issues, we’re grappling with something that was designed for centuries to make us circumvent our best instincts. It’s a dance partner that’s designed to trip us up. So just based on that alone we should be able to keep in mind that you will never bat a thousand when it comes to dealing with race issues.

2. We need to shift away from the tonsils paradigm of race discourse…

These are things that will just naturally develop in our day-to-day lives, so the problem with that all or nothing binary is it causes us to look at racism and prejudice as if they are akin to having tonsils. Like you either have tonsils, or you don’t, and if you’ve had your prejudice removed, you never need to consider it again. If someone says “I think you may have a little unconscious prejudice,” you say “No–my prejudice was removed in 2005! [Audience laughter] I went to see that movie Crash, it’s all good!”

…and toward the dental hygiene paradigm of race discourse.

But that’s not how these things work; when you go through your day to day lives there are all of these mass media and social stimuli as well as processes that we all have inside our brains that we’re not aware of, that cause us to build up little pockets of prejudice every day, just like plaque develops on our teeth. [Audience laughter] So we need to move away from the tonsils paradigm of race discourse toward the dental hygeine paradigm of race discourse. Basically, if I might just offer one piece of advice.

3. We also need to move away from the idea that being a good person is just what we are and shift toward the recognition that being good is a practice, one that we must work at everyday [note: hmm….see some connections to virtue ethics here; I really like the idea of repeated practices]

And in general I think we need to move away from the premise that being a good person is a fixed, immutable characteristic, and shift towards seeing being good as a practice, and it is a practice that we carry out by engaging with our imperfections. We need to shift from, we need to shift toward thinking of being a good person the same way we think of being a clean person. Being a clean person is something that you maintain and work on every day. We don’t assume that I’m a clean person therefore I don’t need to brush my teeth. And when someone suggests to us that we’ve got something stuck in our teeth, we don’t say “Wh-what do you mean? I have something stuck in my teeth? I’m a clean person! Why would you–” [Audience laughter]

4. Being good does not being perfect, but being willing to engage with our own and each other’s imperfections.

The belief that you must be perfect in order to be good is an obstacle to being as good as you can be. It would make our conversations with each other a lot smoother, and it would make us better at being good, if we could recognize that we’re not perfect and embrace that….So I hope that we can–if I could have one wish it would be that we would reconsider how we conceptualize being a good person, and keep in mind that we are not good despite our imperfections. It is the connection we maintain with our imperfections that allows us to be good. Our connection with our personal and common imperfections, being mindful of those personal and common imperfections is what allows us to be good to each other and be good to ourselves.

5. Having conversations about race isn’t enough to address bigger issues…

So I know that this is no small task, but if we could shift a little bit closer, toward viewing these race conversations the same way we view a conversation about something stuck in our teeth, it would go a long way toward making our conversations a bit smoother and allow us to work together on bigger issues around race.

Because there are a lot of–beyond the persistent conversational awkwardness of race, there are persistent systemic and institutional issues around race that are not caused by conversation, and they can’t be entirely solved by conversation. You can’t talk them away, but we need people to work together and coordinate and communicate to find strategies to work on those systemic issues. Because despite all of the barriers that we’ve broken, all of the apparent markers of progress there are still so many disparities.

…but it is a helpful way to bring us closer so we can work together.

If you look at unemployment rate, infant mortality rate, incarceration rates, median household income, there are so many disparities on the various sides of the color lines in this country that it is worthwhile for us to iron out these conversational issues if for nothing else so that we can get a little closer to working together on those big issues.

So many important themes here–willingness to be wrong/imperfect + emphasis on building connections/community + recognition that being good involves repeated practices–and delivered in a way that encourages us to laugh, think and act. Jay Smooth is awesome.

One other reason (among many) that Jay Smooth is awesome: He’s fostered a great community on his blog; the comments on his Ted Talk post are really impressive (full of love and support). With so much talk about how pointless comments usually are (with trolls and blowhard d-bags derailing or hating on important discussions), it’s always great to see spaces where comments work to build community.

Who cares? I do

It seems as if the theme for this summer is self-care and care of the self. I have brought it up several times on this blog, with entries about (feminist ethics of) Care of Self (help) sources, and personal reflections on my own need for care outside of the academy. It’s also implicit in my thinking through what a troublemaking app might look like. And, it has been a central part of my everyday (or, every other day) practices as I train to run a 5K in September (using a couch to 5K app that I wrote about briefly).

Self-care/care of self brings together many different ideas that I’m thinking about right now, including:

Virtue ethics VE is all about caring for the self; practicing/developing virtue involves cultivating certain attitudes and engaging in specific practices that promote living well (whatever that means…my current manuscript includes an entire chapter on critically thinking through the problems and possibilities of flourishing/living well as ethical goals, and on how living well relates to the good/livable/bearable/unbearable life).

Troublemaking/troublestaying Troublemaking and troublestaying are also about care: paying attention, being curious, caring about the world, and caring for self through self-critique and critical and creative self-reflection. I’ve certainly written about care a lot on this blog. Just check out my care tag.

Foucault Foucault is an important source as I think through my own vision of troublemaking as a virtue and its relation to feminist ethics. Foucault’s later writing on care of the self (and self-writing and technologies of the self) is central to my own imaginings of what an ethics of care that isn’t necessarily careful (or comforting) might look like. Plus, my biggest inspiration for troublemaking as a virtue is Judith Butler; she draws a lot of inspiration for her ethical projects from Foucault.

Feminist ethics of care One key tradition within feminist ethics is a feminist ethics of care. I am interested in positioning my own vision of feminist ethics beside/in relation to (but not necessarily within) this tradition. I aim to trouble and rethink what care could me and how it might connect with making and staying in trouble (yes! as a troublemaker, I like putting things together–like care and trouble–that seem to be radically opposed).

Self-help literature/products Self-help books and products (smartphone apps, websites, etc) are promoted as ways to care for your Self. In some ways, I was raised on self-help speak. Not by my mom; she liked to tell family stories and talk about literature, American history and art. But by my dad. An ordained Lutheran pastor with an MBA (and a PhD in church history with a dissertation on Finnish radicals, unions and copper mining in the upper peninsula of Michigan–what an interesting mix, huh?), he didn’t just read self-help books (a couple favorites: The Power of Positive Thinking, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff) he used their slogans to shape our family traditions. Every Christmas he would ask us to go around the table and answer: What 3 things did you accomplish this year? What 3 things do you want to accomplish in the upcoming year? I must confess that I liked this tradition, which ended a few years before my mom died, even as I dislike self-help books and their simplistic, business-oriented frameworks. I am not interested in using self-help logic (framework/language) in my articulation of troublemaking as a form of (self)care. However, I do need to come to terms with how self-help literature has shaped my thinking by engaging with it directly. Plus, I like making trouble for self-help (by disrupting it, playing with it, uprooting it) because I see its production of easy, soundbite answers that encourage us to stop thinking and just start doing as having seriously harmful effects for critical and creative thinking, feeling and engaging.

Blog writing/blogging For some time now, I have been interested in reflecting on how blog writing contributes to the development of moral/ethical selfhood. Based largely on my own experiences as a blogger, I see blog writing and engaging to be important ethical practices that encourage us to make/stay in trouble, and to be curious, critical and creative. These practices can also enable us to care for our selves–for example, writing/engaging on my blog has played a central role in my efforts to grieve/process/cope with my mom’s death in 2009. What would it mean to think of a blog (or blogging) as more than a space for superficial confession–a dumping ground for every thought and feeling that you might have, but as a critical and creative space that enabled you to engage in ethical practices that contributed to your own health and well-being?

I am in the process of researching/writing a chapter for my manuscript on care and troublemaking. One focus of this chapter will be on putting Foucault and his care of self into conversation with a feminist ethics of care (and also explicitly and/or implicitly bringing in the above resources). Right now, I’m especially interested in devoting attention to what Foucault’s care of the self is. Here are some sources that I will review in the next few days (or weeks, everything seems to take longer in the summer–especially when it is August 1st and I haven’t started prepping for the one class that I’m teaching this fall):

Foucault, Michel. “Self-writing” in Ethics.
Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self” in Ethics.
Foucault, Michel. “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom” in Ethics.
Crampton, Jeremy W. “Part II: Technologies of the Self” in The Political Mapping of Cyberspace. (includes a section entitled: “Resistance: blogging as self-writing”)
Fletcher, Peter. “Why I’m Interested in Self-Writing“
Theory Teacher’s Blog. “The Ethics of Teaching: Some Small Advice for New Teachers”
Heyes, Cressida. “Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers” in Hypatia (excellent article. wish I could get the image of Foucault at Weight Watchers out of my head…)

Note: When I first started writing this entry, I had planned to give a brief introduction to the topic of Foucault and care of the self and then a close reading of “self-writing.” That will have to wait for later. For now, I’m glad that I was able to articulate some of my thoughts about influences for my chapter.

The Value of Failure: Versions 1, 2 and 3

Note: This blog entry is posted on all three of my blogs: (making/being in/ staying in) trouble, It’s Diablogical!, and Unchained.

Right now I am attempting to juggle three different blogs. I really like how they highlight different aspects of my writing/thinking/feeling self. On trouble, I focus on giving critical (and serious, extended) attention to trouble in feminist and queer contexts. Frequently I write about Judith Butler and the ethical implications of her work. I also devote a lot of time to working through my own (hopefully) book project on trouble as a virtue. On Unchained, I experiment with developing/practicing virtue ethics (in relation to breaking, reworking, transforming consumption habits) through and in connection with blogging. I co-write this blog with my partner, STA, as we try to figure out ways to reduce consumption, make better (whatever that means) choices, and model “good” behavior for two crazy, yet wonderful kids, FWA and RJP. Finally on It’s Diablogical!, I diablogue with my writing partner and good friend, KCF, about blogging and feminist pedagogy. Our blog is part of a larger writing project on teaching with blogs and blogging while teaching.

Sound like too much? While it can feel overwhelming at times, all three of these writing projects inspire and invigorate me (at least, so far. I just started Unchained and It’s Diablogical! this summer. It is possible that my brain will melt once I start prepping for my classes later this month). The specific content of each blog is different, yet all three connect, sometimes in unexpected ways. Like right now. As I was preparing to write more on Unchained about failing, I realized that I have A LOT to write about the issue of failing and FAIL, and that what I want to write is relevant to each of the blogs I write on. With that in mind, I have decided to try an experiment in this entry. I want to write about failure in the context of each of the three blogs. If I like how this works, I anticipate experimenting with it more in future entries. I plan to post this entry in each of my blogs. So, here goes nothing…

First, my overarching statement: Failure is valuable.

VERSION 1: in the context of Trouble

Making, being in and staying in trouble is all about valuing failure: closely and critically examining it, learning from it, developing questions around how/why it happened, being devoted to claiming/exposing it, never concealing it. Throughout her work, particularly in Gender Trouble and Undoing Gender, Judith Butler discusses the potential value (and danger) of our various failures to fully embody/live up to gender norms and our proper gender roles/rules. Check out what she says about her parents’ gender failures in Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Close Kind. In the first 2 minutes of this youtube clip, Butler describes how her various family members were unable to fully live up to the gender/race/class norms as embodied by famous Hollywood actors. Then, at 2 minutes and 19 seconds in, Butler says:

My conclusion was that anyone who strives to embody them [gender norms–being a “proper” man or woman], perhaps also fails in some ways that are more interesting than their successes.

For Butler, failure is not just more interesting than success; failure is a crack in the system. When we fail we can begin to see the limits of the system and how/when it doesn’t work. Maybe, especially if we gravitate towards trouble, we might wonder about what these limits say about the system and why the system has to be the way it is or why it couldn’t function in a different way (perhaps in a way that enable our norms to be guided by our actions instead of our actions dictated by our norms). When we succeed at living up to gender expectations (what Butler might describe as achieving a proper gender performance), we aren’t prompted to ask questions about the system and how it might work differently or better. And we aren’t inspired to think about the gender binary system or its rigid rules about what it means to be a man or a woman. In fact, sometimes success is more of a failure; to succeed can contribute to a failure to think, to question, to wonder, or to resist. I could say more about failure in relation to Michel Foucault’s limit attitude, but I want to stay focused so that I don’t lose my various readers here (especially the ones who might read Unchained, but not trouble. Yes, STA, I’m talking to you…)

VERSION 2: In the context of It’s Diablogical!

To embrace failure, or to at least recognize that it is not something to avoid or conceal, can open us up to other possibilities and other ways of knowing and being. When we begin to understand that failure is inevitable and necessary, we can shift our focus away from always being right or having the right answer or even believing that there is one right answer. Instead, we can focus more of our attention on all the different ways that others could be right (or, at least not wrong). When we don’t worry so much about failing (and then being seen as a Failure), we aren’t as invested in proving that we aren’t ever wrong. This enables us to make room for exciting and inspiring conversations with others that involve much more than concluding who got it right and who didn’t. Failure also encourages us to experiment and be creative with how we approach ideas, problems and people. This is especially true when we don’t imagine failure as something that threatens to undermine us and our authority and when we embrace it as a necessary and invigorating part of the process (of thinking, writing, learning, engaging).

While there are many ways to practice and promote this vision of failure (as contributing to openness, as encouraging experimentation), I am particularly interested in how blogs (my personal ones and the ones I use in my class) can serve as powerful spaces for valuing failure (and valuing vulnerability, openness and experimentation). Here, let me briefly explain how I used my blog for my spring 2010 Contemporary Feminist Debates course to explore and practice the idea of valuing failure.

Instead of using the language of failure (which is negative and can immediately induce fear and suspicion amongst the students), I described the process of not being right or failing to be right in terms of uncertainty, contestability and curiosity. I reworked one traditional notion of debate by shifting our focus away from the contesting of competing claims to the critical and creative exploration of negotiating between (and living with) multiple visions of what is or should be right. In this way, I transformed the idea of failure from being wrong to not being the only one right.

The course blog played a central role in this process of imagining and practicing a new vision of feminist debate-as-curiosity. Because this blog entry is getting way too long (surprise, surprise), I want to highlight one particular blog exercise that I used to reinforce the idea of failing (that is, failing to know) as valuable. I developed a category on the blog titled, “This is a feminist issue because…”. Students were required to post one example of something that they believed to be a feminist issue and then respond to at least two other students’ examples. Here is my explanation :

So, this category is for posting images, news items or anything else that you feel speaks to issues related to feminism. It could also include anything that you believe especially deserves a feminist analysis. And it could include topics, issues, or events that you feel are connected to feminism or deserve a feminist response, but you are not sure how or why. Entries filed under this category should invite us to apply our growing knowledge of feminism/feminist movement/s to popular culture/current events or should inform us about ideas, topics, or images that are important for feminism. When posting an entry/example, you could pose a question to the reader or provide a brief summary on the example and/or why you posted it.

While the purpose of this blog category was to document a wide range of feminist issues and approaches, the unanticipated (and somewhat anticipated) effect of this category was to demonstrate to students that feminist movement is not any one thing and that we can’t ever fully know what feminism is or how it should proceed. While this made some students angry (“if feminism is too broad, it becomes meaningless!”) and many uncomfortable, it made other students curious and inspired them to rethink debate and feminism outside of its rigid borders. In the context of this blog, the failure to come up with any definitive or comprehensive conclusions of what feminism or a feminist issue is resulted in a larger success–it opened them to new ways of thinking about feminism and enabled (at least some of) them to embrace not knowing (check out what I write about this idea in my final thoughts entry).

VERSION 3: In the context of Unchained

Failure is very important part of the process of breaking old habits and creating new ones. So much so that I have included a category on that blog entitled, Failure. While there is much that could be said about how failure (that is, doing things in un-virtuous or out-of-balance ways) is an important part of our moral and practical education, I simply don’t have the energy to write much more about that right now. At some point soon, I would like to carefully read and maybe comment on Putting on Virtue in relation to this question. But, I digress.

From my perspective (STA has a different perspective), I am interested in exploring my/our various habits of consumption and how to break and/or rework them. Perhaps one of my central approaches to this breaking/reworking process is to give some serious attention to the moments when I fail. I like to analyze why it didn’t work and ask lots of questions–what happened? how could it happen differently? what are some of the deeper issues that prevent me from breaking habits that I know are bad, harmful, unjust? Why do I have so many half-finished bags of tortilla chips? Why did I panic and buy the processed ham? And why did I order the large beer sampler?

Some people might imagine such a focus on failure to be depressing or discouraging; I find that not focusing on how/when I fail to be unproductive, uncritical and (almost) a guarantee that I will fail again.