In Defense of Education

In Defense of Education/Propaganda/Art For the Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop meeting, October 5, 2007 Since the "Aims of Education" address is a forty-some year-old exercise little known beyond the College at the University of Chicago, let me start by noting that it is an annual address delivered by a faculty member to entering students—freshmen and transfer students. The faculty member is given no direction with respect to the content or the duration of the address. Even though the "Aims" is explicitly directed to new undergraduates at the University, my version of the address, dating to 1998, reflects urgently felt concerns derived from all aspects of almost fifteen years at the University of Chicago—as a teacher of graduate as well as undergraduate students, as a scholar, as a person interacting with other faculty members and staff during that particular period in U.S. and world history. This address was subsequently translated into Japanese and evidently read by people of various ages. In 2006, a portion titled "ONLY YOU" was reproduced in as the lead selection in a reader for a required English course for all University of Tokyo freshmen (and widely used in other colleges and some high schools). A DVD with interviews of each author was produced as an aural-oral supplement for the course at the University of Tokyo. That was in 2005, when I was in Otaru (Hokkaido, Japan) researching the writer Kobayashi Takiji, who was killed by police torture in 1933. That provided a first occasion for me to think about the relationship between the values professed in my "Aims" and my subsequent research interests. This workshop is the second. As I recall then, my interlocutor, Professor Saito Yoshifumi, believed that I had already been interested in Kobayashi Takiji and proletarian literature (the literature produced as part of a worldwide movement in the 1920s and 1930s inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917) at the time I wrote the "Aims." In fact, I had no idea that I would be committing myself to such study within five years. Rather, for numerous but related reasons, I was in a prolonged state of dispiritedness about the possibility for meaningful study as well as of teaching literature at a research university. Having embarked on the study of proletarian literature, I told Professor Saito, I had come to worry even more in 2005 than in 1998 about unequal access to liberal education. (This is also a period in which the student body of the College evidently became considerably wealthier than it had been in 1983, when I came to this University.) Now, more than ever, I would like to be able to answer my own questions posed in the 1998 reflection: The history of the word "liberal" helps, by reminding us that substantial resources are required to enable the development of autonomous individuals through the study of autonomous—intrinsically valuable—arts. Resources tend not to be fairly distributed in any society. That means that regardless of our equality before the law, only some of us are able to develop our autonomy through liberal education. What is the nature of an autonomy that is unavailable to some or many members of a given socie- ty? What is the nature of the learning that, by being free of the need to have external value, by being use-less, in other words, enables the development of that autonomy? The exchange with philosopher and education scholar René Arcilla also provides a link to my current preoccupations. Arcilla suggests that we can think of education noninstrumentally if we think of learning "as a dimension of what it means to be human that is coterminous with the beginning and end of our lives." If the affirmation of learning is "tied to an affirmation of our given humanity rather than of some eventual form of it," then "the politics of learning would be that of striving to reform society so that it supports this kind of learning, rather than using learning to support some vision of utopia that does not fully acknowledge our (learning) humanity." Now, I wonder if it is desirable or possible to separate the process of changing "society so that it supports this kind of learning" from the content of learning itself. I am not a relativist, nor am I likely to be neutral on questions I think, write, or teach about; I believe, moreover, that it is not inconsistent with such a self-understanding to avoid black-and-white, all-or-nothing questions and responses. Accordingly, it might be more appropriate to re-phrase the last question as "When, how, and for whom might the activities of learning/teaching and of changing society to support such learning/teaching be brought together?" Nevertheless, I do want to starkly foreground the question of the meaning and merits of uselessness, or noninstrumentality—of claiming that an activity is, should, or can be engaged in only for itself and for no end outside itself. As I made explicit in my query to Arcilla about how to think of education and its goals, I, like countless others, find this inquiry closely related to the question of how to think about art. What I have found most daunting about working on proletarian literature is the specter of being dismissed as naive. There are real-world histories behind this threat, beginning with the failure of socialist revolution in the socalled West and the overwhelmingly cultural development of Marxist thought, and finally (?) the collapse of the Soviet Union. What I would like to raise for consideration here, however, is the phenomenon wherein the enormous energy invested in ferreting out the politics of practically everything in humanistic study in the past twenty years or so was always a triumphantly denunciatory endeavor— one in which a deplorable politics pertaining to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and very, very rarely, class—was to be found lurking in every corner. Such interest in politics has not seemed to allow for discovery of a politics to be affirmed. Engaging with a body of literature intentionally produced—however such intention was elaborated or simply assumed—for social transformation, I have felt confronted by a wall, all the more insuperable for being unacknowledged, or even refuted, of continued belief in a Kantian "purposeless purposiveness" as the mark of a work of art. It has been hard to get past simple head-butting against this wall even as it has come to be less and less compelling as I have gained greater familiarity with the literature and the movement. Recently, in reading essays by David Levi Strauss in his collection, Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (2003), I felt I had received 2 clues for deepening my understanding the nature of the wall. In the first essay, "The Documentary Debate: Aesthetic or Anaesthetic: Or, What's So Funny about Peace, Love, Understanding, and Social Documentary Photography" (1992), Strauss suggests that a self-serving and sloppy use of Walter Benjamin on aesthetics and politics had contributed to the continued separation of art and politics by the right and the left: "The doctrinaire right contends that politics has no place in art, while the doctrinaire left contends that art has no place in politics" (9; the symmetry is ironic but note that the right, however, at least accords considerable power to art). In response to Ingrid Sischy's condemnation of a portrait by Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado for "aestheticiz[ing] tragedy," the "fastest way to anaesthetize the feelings of those who are witnessing it" (5), Strauss asks, "Why can't beauty be a call to action?" (9) He argues that "To represent is to aestheticize; that is, to transform," and that "Aestheticization is one of the ways that disparate peoples recognize themselves in one another" (10). In this essay Strauss refers to the Benjamin of "The Author as Producer," but I wonder if the famous formulation at the end of "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Reproducibility"—"Such is the aestheticization of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art" (in both the second version of 193536 and the third of 1936 or 39; here from the former, quoted from Vol. 3, Selected Writings [2002], 122; italics in original) hasn't lured leftist intellectuals to dismiss both with impunity thanks to the rhetorical form. As for the middle term in my title, "propaganda": Strauss is against it, as is practically everyone in the present day. (Please refer to http://www.nytimes.com/design for a rare, almost-affirmative use of the word in a review of the Spanish Civil War photography of Gerda Taro from Saturday, September 22, 2007 [A15, 1].) For Strauss, photography that is merely propagandistic has no tension; the "viewer's choice is reduced to acceptance or rejection of the 'message,' without becoming involved in a more complex response. Such images may work as propaganda (the effectiveness of which is quantitatively measurable), but they will not work at other points on the spectrum of communication." (10). I find myself wondering in what sense a response is "quantitatively measurable." In any case, in the essay "Photography and Propaganda: Richard Cross and John Hoagland in Central America and the News" (1987), the two photographers, who worked and died in Central America, are emphatically separated from propaganda. Hoagland himself is quoted as saying "'I don't believe in objectivity. Everyone has a point of view. But what I say is I won't be a propagandist for anyone.'" (14; italics in original) Strauss calls the two photographers "idealists in the traditional of earlier press photographers, who believed that by showing the horror and desolation of war they could hasten the end of war; by 'photographing the truth,' they could influence public opinion and public policy, and change the world." (20) Let me quote the online OED entry on propaganda here so that we might have a historical sense of the word: 1. R.C. Church. Usu. with the. (a) More fully Congregation of (the) Propaganda. A committee of Cardinals responsible for foreign missions, founded 3 in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV (officially known since 1967 as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples); (b) (more fully College of (the) Propaganda) a college established in Rome in 1627 by Pope Urban VIII for the training of missionaries. Now hist. [1668 T. ST. SERFE Tarugo's Wiles III. 22 This same round pile of building like a Pigeon-house is his Chappel of Ease,..and observe it is the exact Antipodes of the propaganda fide at Rome. 1679 J. GORDON Reformed Bishop ii. 31 And that the Roman Propaganda may not rise up in the Great Audit, against the Governours of the Reformed Church, they should be no less solicitous for it. 1718 J. OZELL tr. J. Pitton de Tournefort Voy. Levant II. 237 The Congregation of the Propaganda gives them at present but twenty five Roman Crowns a Man. 1766 C. STONOR in E. H. Burton Life Challoner (1909) II. xxvii. 84, I sent by the French post, enclosed to Dr. Howard, a letter from Propaganda to Bishop Challoner. 1819 T. HOPE Anastasius (1820) I. ix. 168 An Italian missionary of the Propaganda. 1869 W. B. ULLATHORNE Let. 2 Dec. in C. Butler Vatican Council (1930) I. ix. 160 Propaganda is working day and night to clean off its affairs. 1880 LADY A. BLUNT Jrnl. 17 Mar. (1986) 115 He is of the Syriac United Church, and was educated at the Propaganda at Rome. 1911 Catholic Encycl. XII. 169/2 He discharged the duties of theological professor at the College of Propaganda. 1957 Oxf. Dict. Christian Church 1112/1 It was not until 6 June 1622 that Gregory XV created the Congregation of Propaganda by the bull ‘inscrutabili Divinæ’. 1998 B. L. BASSHAM C. W. Chapman ix. 167 In 1833 he attended the College of the Propaganda in Rome, where he distinguished himself in languages. 2. An organization, scheme, or movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine, practice, etc. 1790 J. MACPHERSON Let. 27 Sept. in A. Aspinall Corresp. George, Prince of Wales (1964) II. 98 All Kings have..a new race of Pretenders to contend with, the disciples of the propaganda at Paris or, as they call themselves, Les Ambassadeurs de genre humain. 1800 Aurora (Philad.) 17 Apr., We have thrown some useful light upon the Illuminati of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and lately upon a similar propaganda in Delaware State. 1879 F. W. FARRAR Life & Work St. Paul I. III. xi. 208 It seems unlikely that Saul should at once have been able to substitute a propaganda for an inquisition. 1908 Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods 5 251 The entire attitude..of such books..seems to me unrelated to the procedure by which science expands, and seems affiliated to what is often termed a propagandum. 1946 J. CARY Moonlight 273 All these parties and isms and propagandums make me tired. 1963 E. TAYLOR Fall of Dynasties xiv. 263 The garrison troops in Petrograd had been exposed to many competing propagandas. 2001 Sunday Herald (Glasgow) (Nexis) 28 Oct. 18 The different propagandas of war and rampantly optimistic consumerism were being shovelled down audiences' throats. 4 3. The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view. Also: information disseminated in this way; the means or media by which such ideas are disseminated. Cf. black propaganda n. at BLACK adj. Compounds. 1822 T. CARLYLE Let. 7 Dec. (1970) II. 224, I think you have done well positively to decline any interference with their propagandâ purposes. 1842 Communist Chronicle & Communitarian Apostle I. v. 77 The propaganda fund shall be devoted to the propagation of the doctrines of communism. 1875 P. K. O'CLERY Hist. Ital. Revol. v. 165 The literary propaganda of Mazzinianism. 1886 tr. Marx & Engels Manifesto Communists iii. 27 Future history resolved itself, for them, into the propaganda and the practical realization of their peculiar social plans. 1908 A. L. LILLEY & G. TYRRELL tr. Programme of Modernism 102 The Church..soon felt a need of new methods of propaganda and government. 1911 G. B. SHAW Blanco Posnet 324 Though we tolerate..the propaganda of Anarchism as a political theory..we clearly cannot..tolerate assassination of rulers on the ground that it is ‘propaganda by deed’ or sociological experiment. 1929 G. SELDES You can't print That! 427 The term propaganda has not the sinister meaning in Europe which it has acquired in America... In European business offices the word means advertising or boosting generally. 1938 R. G. COLLINGWOOD Princ. Art ii. 32 Where a certain practical activity is stimulated as expedient, that which stimulates it is advertisement or (in the current modern sense, not the old sense) propaganda. 1957 R. N. C. HUNT Guide to Communist Jargon 132 The Soviet Government..has an elaborate machinery for conducting such propaganda abroad. 1976 A. J. RUSSELL Pour Hemlock xiv. 166 White propaganda, the truth; gray, a composition of half-truths and distortions; or black, a pack of lies. 1990 Times Educ. Suppl. 15 June B8/5 A central debate is about education as propaganda or as study. Strauss's concern in the essay above is to show the propagandistic use of the two young men's work by the media for which they worked, a propaganda all the more insidious for not trading in lies per se. I cannot help reading Strauss's discussion, however, as consistent with the view that propaganda is the thought and/or strategy of the enemy, never of those whom we endorse. What is at stake in so assiduously distancing one's own work and the work we espouse from propaganda? Is the disavowal of propaganda continuing to function, often covertly, to guarantee the ultimate separation of politics and aesthetics? If so, what are the consequences? Finally, let me make clear that I am not suggesting that everything is, after all, "only propaganda" and therefore not real or true (in the first place, I believe that entities and conditions exist independently of what we can say about them). Although I obviously find the domains of "education," "propaganda," and "art" to be profoundly interrelated, I am not seeking to collapse them into each other, to 5 suggest that there is or there should not be any distinction among them. I look forward to your thoughts on how we might understand these matters. Norma Field 6