As Feminist Popular Culture students this term we are required to keep a weekly writing assignment schedule. We are to repeat the blog as practice throughout the term, and we are given a space where we all know our own place as students both in the public online and in the classroom. Additionally, we are punished or rewarded for our blogs in the form of grades that establish a normative dialectical discourse for the project throughout our term, and in the future of other Women’s Studies 320 classes. Indeed, the blogging assignment serves to regulate our student bodies so we will not resist, for to do so would cost us our grades. Does this all sound familiar? It should. This blogging assignment is a prime example of Foucault’s Science of Disciple.
Admitting ourselves as docile bodies allows for a reading of Adorno and Horkiemer’s theory of the Culture Industry, in which it would seem that we, as Feminist Popular culture students, are automatons alienated from our work because it can never truly be ours but only a representation of exchange value. Our blogs become false needs that are standardized and repeated, and through which we participate in our own oppression. That being said…I’m still going to do it.
3 comments:
You are right, we (students) are completely automatons alienated from work and the entire academic industry. What struck me most was you last comment; “I’m still going to do it”. I too will continue to enter this blog, week after week, for as long as I am told to. Rain or shine, midterm in 89 hours or not, I will fill in a total of three paragraphs, five to seven sentences each, every week, so long as it awards me a guaranteed 1% of my final mark. This makes me think; perhaps consciousness-raising, conscious subjects and awareness are not enough. Maybe, even with knowledge of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, we will all still participate in our own oppression. So long as I get my 1%, workers get their paychecks and women get taken out to dinner. This, my friend, to me, is one of the scariest thoughts I have ever had.
I love this post, and what it points out. However I feel even more conflicted and confused about what we are learning when we 'realize our own consciousness'. We realize that such a system works to oppress us, however we keep doing it despite the fact that it's been clearly pointed out. I think what you are trying to say also relates to Althusser's idea on ISA. The dominant ISA is now the school, which we are full-fledgy participating in recreating and perpetuating oppression. We know it, but we keep going to school. It is just this massive web of false needs regardless of our consciousness. *sigh* I think we, are a rare breed though. We love self-masochism, I mean we pay a high price (tuition) for it! :) So are we just a rare exception to this realization of our false needs or can people outside of the dominant school ISA can realize and change?
To add to the long list of automatons, I too will continue to blog it up, if i am given that 1% each week. Does this mean that I am a docile body, yes it does I guess. I am doing something simply because someone told me too, which in fact has been the story of my university career. I write because I have too, I study because I have too. All this in the hope that someday I will get to inflict this oppression on someone... namely jr/sr highschool social studies students. Maybe we need to change our education system so that this is not perpetuated. I have heard of some "radical" schools inwhich students study what they want, and learn about what intersets them. GASP... how crazy!! Well maybe not. These schools might be the key to bringing up a new generation of kids that actually question the culture industry, governments and other institutions. The funny thing is is that these schools are not recognized by the government, therefor one cannot get a valid dipolmma. Damn government standing in the way of pregression. They do it every time!
Post a Comment