Lying and the Politics of Representation
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • Summer/Fall 1997 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 5, No. 2 (pp. 54-56). | ||
| • September 29, 2003 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.7) from original. | ||
ONE: Holstun and His Politics of Truth
Representation is not a transparent vehicle reflecting the “phenomenal universe” or a transcendental moral truth, but is itself “political” — in other words, the so-called "facts” of the “phenomenal universe” are always “produced” by the exercise of institutional power as "the facts” within a particular institutional context and the interpretation of those “facts” is inseparable from the exercise of power. The politicality of representation is not only acknowledged in the dominant bourgeois theories of representation which we oppose (such as those of Derrida, Baudrillard,... ) but also in Marxist theories (as when, for instance, Voloshinov argues that “Sign becomes the arena of class struggle"). While Derrida argues that semiosis is an unstable and fragile process because of the inherent properties of language, Marxists argue that semiosis is fragile because of the contestation over social meanings produced by the class struggle. Modes of intelligibility are different not simply because of differences in “terminology” or “style” but because they depart from different questions.
In his post of 21 April 1997 ("your imaginings"), Professor James R. Holstun once again — rather than opening up questions for further critique and interrogation — attempts to suppress the politics of power and representation by insisting that we have “no connection to the phenomenal world” and/or no “integrity”. In other words, instead of answering our critiques of his understanding of the “phenomenal universe” (and that of Ellen Meiksins Wood and the Graduate Group in Marxist Studies) with a critique of his own, he draws a firm and “commonsensical” binary between his practices/discourses (which are full of “truth” and “integrity") and ours (which are nothing but “lies” and “non-integrity"). Rather than explaining/theorizing his position, he relies on a set of self-evident points which serve him in the locality of the institution in which he has power and a ready-made network of supporters. He doesn't even explain the assumptions he is making about “truth” and “integrity," but simply offers instead a “narrative” of “what happened” according to his “understanding” and assures everyone — in tones of moral outrage — that his “understanding” is the only understanding — a bizarre claim for someone who represents himself as a principled defender of “pluralism” (which is really the basis of his attack on us as “enemies” of pluralism).
In his haste to demolish our “quasi-Leninist” explanations, however, Holstun gets confused and doesn't realize that his own words belie what his discourse claims: his narrative falls apart and collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. He did indeed originally (by his own account) try to prevent the videotaping of the conference. Which is exactly what we said. So, who is lying here?
There is a pattern here: Holstun's actions, like those of the GGMS, are basically aimed at preventing any open interrogation of the assumptions of their practices. Were Holstun serious about the urgency for Marxists to engage in critique-al exchanges in the public sphere, he would have arranged to have the conference taped himself so as to extend the productive life of the exchanges. Indeed if he were really serious about intellectual exchanges, he could have structured the conference as an “open” occasion for critique. Instead he made it a “closed” occasion such that anyone who tries, as Stephen Tumino did, to “open” it is charged with making a “nuisance” of himself because he is “unable to ask an intelligent question." We leave aside the question of “intelligence”: the way that Holstun's argument (about intelligence) is identical with the argument of Murray and Herrnstein (in The Bell Curve) that intelligence is in fact what shapes the social. In complicity with Murray and Herrnstein, Holstun does what all bourgeois pedagogues have done: he deploys “intelligence” in order to erase the question of class. We have argued that the GGMS conference ("Between Capitalism and Democracy") is a symptom of the performative left's practices of making exactly this substitution: providing late capitalism with the concepts and strategies that allows its transnational expansion by stifling the question of class struggle.
On the contrary, the vigorous set of exchanges now going on the Marxist-International and Marxist-Thaxis lists proves the effectivity of the questions we are asking. Just like Holstun's current e-mail post which takes charge of the truth in an authoritarian manner and as his private property, his failure to request the taping shows that he sees such public occasions not for critique-al exchange but as ritual moments for confirming his version of “truth."
Like all retrograde pedagogues, Holstun's strategy is to erase any discussion of the “politics of power and representation” by invoking “aesthetic ideology” (the fusion of language and the phenomenal) and set up a violent binary in which his own “truth” has a transcendent status and is not open to discussion or critique. He follows his untheorized “narrative” of “truth” with a demand that we accept his version of “truth”, confess our “untruth” and “apologize”. In other words, readers are to set aside the question of how his truth becomes truth by a quiet reliance on the self-evident righteousness of his understanding of the phenomenal. The attention is instead focused on extracting consensus on the correctness of his understanding by insisting that all heretics (those who dare to differ and offer a different reading) “confess” and “apologize”. Pedagogy, critique, philosophical debate are all reduced to a brute exercise of power: apologize, apologize, apologize, apologize, apologize.... His readers are urged to suppress the politics of truth and instead to focus their attention on extracting an “apology” from us. What Holstun is doing here is what we see him doing elsewhere: trying to control what questions are asked (foreground some, erase others) so that he can control the answers given. He counts on the commonsensical reader to support his binarization of the world into liars and truth-tellers rather than the conditions of possibility under which he constructs himself as the truth-teller and we as the liars who should apologize, apologize, apologize, apologize, apologize...
Holstun relies so completely on commonsense and the self-evidency of the “phenomenal universe” that it doesn't even occur to him to offer an argument, analysis or any seriously considered evidence to support his claims. Prof. Holstun “owns” the truth and the main aim of his letter addressed to us is to reassert this brute fact of his institutional power over oppositional knowledge-practices and to demand that we “confess” and “apologize” as though we had committed a crime. The “other” in the bourgeois academy is always a liar, an unreliable disseminator of falsehoods and untruths and as such is not to be trusted. We are the lying, deviant and criminal-minded “other” in the discourse-universe of the GGMS/Mark Frankel/Prof. Holstun/Ellen Meiksins Wood (the keynote speaker at the conference who branded our initial critique a “hoax”—the ultimate in non-knowledge and falsehood). As we have already indicated, what is suppressed in their narrative about “truth” is that “truth” is always a social truth and is the site of class struggle.
We reject the authoritarian mode of intelligibility they deploy in their discourses and the self-evidency of their questions and pose these questions instead: Why is it that our collective which has publicly demonstrated its interest in videotaping an academic symposium and opening it up beyond the university to a wider circle of exchanges — also providing a copy of the video to the GGMS for themselves and the academic community — our collective that is interested in making this symposium as public as possible (even engaging it and critiquing it at length in an international forum—the Internet) is accused at nearly every turn of subterfuge, evasiveness, deceit and subversion ? Why is it that our collective which has repeatedly called for a “public university” — the university as a place for an opening up of the historical conditions of possibility of knowing and not for private pursuit of profit — is itself accused of “privatizing” acts, intellectual criminality and academic terrorism? The truth of the historical record, Prof. Holstun, testifies against you.
The problem for Holstun is that we have upset his ritualized plans: we have problematized (and problematized in advance) the assumptions of his conference. Although, as a professor, he has tremendous institutional power over us as students, he has basically lost intellectual control over the kinds of questions being put forward in the public space. In his desperation over this loss of control over questions and political credibility among his local constituency, he is in the current e-mail trying (by retelling a “story") to regain that lost political credibility by seizing control over representation and establishing "truth” as his “private property."
