[Linganth] It turns out that Jane Hill is white(!)

William Leap wlm at american.edu
Sat Feb 7 10:00:32 UTC 2015


Mark, "theory" doesnt  "....try to differentiate its language from 
everyday terms... "   It is people that do that.   And that   question of 
agency and responsibility --  may be the central to the discussion here. . 


We have been struggling with this issue for some years at the Lavender 
Languages conference. how to talk about sexual transgression and  sexual 
"difference"  [different from what ? ] without falling deeply into an 
esoteric  vocabulary that   few  understand and fewer  value. . 
Conversations with the media about queer linguistics -- try it ! 

Hegemonies of whiteness and related issues are on the program., 

Join us next week (Feb 13-15, 2015) , 
www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/lavender-languages 

Wlm L. Leap
Professor, Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington DC 
20016
Co-editor, Journal of Language and Sexuality   
http://www.benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/jls

"It is not very hard to silence us, but that is not because we cannot 
speak."    --  a Bengali villager once remarked to Nobel prize winning 
economist  Amartya Sen  (The Argumentative Indian, Picador Books, 2005: 
xiii) 

"Don't be a drag, just be a queen."  Lady Gaga 




From:   "Peterson, Mark" <petersm2 at miamioh.edu>
To:     Frank Bechter <fbechter at gmail.com>, 
Cc:     "Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group 
\(LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org\)" 
<LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date:   02/06/2015 10:31 PM
Subject:        Re: [Linganth] It turns out that Jane Hill is white(!)
Sent by:        "Linganth" <linganth-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>



That's true Frank, but it is also strategic. Critical theory often tries 
to differentiate its language from everyday terms because those terms are 
weighted by their associations with positions the scholars are trying to 
critique. This kind of alienating vocabulary is common in any science 
where specialized vocabularies emerge. But when media coverage of physics 
or chemistry occurs, the media producers generally seek to translate the 
concepts for their audiences. Here, they were deliberately making use of 
Malinowski's "coefficient of weirdness" to make the discourse alienating.

Mark Allen Peterson
Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology
& Professor, International Studies Program
120 Upham Hall
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
513 529-5018
petersm2 at miamiOH.edu
www.connectedincairo.com

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Frank Bechter <fbechter at gmail.com> wrote:
Critical scholars, take a critical look at your own discursive practices. 
If the question is how to get the helpful message across, be willing to 
see your own bad chess moves. We see in this piece, 
http://jezebel.com/watch-these-two-white-ladies-freak-out-about-asus-white-1681368338
, that Fox leads with a string of specific words -- indeed, a string of 
specific *types* of words -- found in the *course description* of the 
disputed course, U.S. Race Theory and the Problem of Whiteness: 
"... postcolonialist, psychoanalytic, deconstructionist, feminist, new 
historicist." The anchor omits the lead phrase, "Major critical schools of 
recent decades," so as to make the wash of hyper-intellectual terms as 
incoherent as possible. They are as alienating as possible, thus allowing 
any construal of "whiteness" or "problem" to fly. One cannot stop Fox and 
misguided students from selectively omitting phrases, but one should 
wonder whether the string of words that Fox did latch onto for its own 
purposes are actually helpful in any other way, i.e., in the goal of 
greater critical awareness in the world at large, or especially in a 
course description. If your goal is to equip students with tools to fight 
institutional racism and disenfranchisement, these terms are not helpful. 
They are not tools. To the contrary, they -- especially when you rattle 
them off all in a row -- are the very discursive forms which can ensure, 
in the minds of many readers, your complete irrelevance and hauteur. To 
me, they ensure that you probably don't know what you're talking about. If 
critical scholarship is to be useful in the world (which, of course, need 
not be its function), then hit hard in your advertisements of it, explain 
any big term you use, or simply don't use it. Realize what you're up 
against. If a wash of such terms actually attracts select students and 
colleagues who are content to have this discourse remain provincial, 
consider how many more you will attract with terms that are designed to 
arrest a much bigger audience, which hopefully is the real goal.

Frank Bechter
Charlottesville, VA

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Matthew Bernius <mbernius at gmail.com> 
wrote:
On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Peterson, Mark <petersm2 at miamioh.edu> 
wrote:
What we think of as "objective" journalism evolved in a particular 
historical and economic context. Before that, it was not at all uncommon 
to have the Republican and Democratic newspapers in the same city, each 
sniping at different targets the other supported.

And to that point, when one looks at the entire history of American 
Journalism, the "objective period" (which I'd argue we are approaching the 
end of) is more of a historical anachronism rather than the norm. To 
Mark's point, the reality is that the Fox News approach is, in many 
respects, closer to the traditional form of the press.

Great discussion all,

- Matt

-----------------------------
Matthew Bernius
mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII

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