Institutions and hope

The idea of institutions paying for dissent that whatever its content, would have to be described as genuine-- to me that's a necessary idea for anyone considering the limited but actual conflictuality that governs the relationships between different sites and sorts of power

Thanks for this insight Bruce; you’re right, this is indeed an uncomfortable thought that forces a more nuanced view of institutional power and the clashes it produces within and between these bodies. Acknowledging salaried dissent as both limited by these sites of production and real is difficult to think, for me at least, because it inverts the kind of messiness that I am used to. That is, it has become rather routine and commonsensical, unfortunately, that dissent (especially the academic variety) is always already subsumed within the machination of capitalism and/or knowledge/power. Dissent, in this view, is not only limited by sites of production but to them as well; this is a mode of radical insularity that deadens any efficacy such efforts may have.

Ah, knee jerk nihilism.

To acknowledge salaried dissent––a weird, ill-defined term––as real complicates easy cynicism and cautiously grants agency to our work. I am still uncertain, however, if conflicts between institutions open spaces of intervention. My first thought is to think of Ranciére’s advice that one needs to declare one’s rights in a situation when the very possibility of being heard (and the agency to speak) is denied. This, it seems to me, may be available when there is an overlap in authority and thus conflict. A second possibility, one that pertains to our vocations more directly, is that the creation and sanctioning of dissent in one institution (e.g. the university) puts that body in conflict with other institutions (e.g. the military). Although this is a simplistic rendering, it does offer the possibility of seeing localized dissent create ripples in other spaces.

If Comedy Central foregrounds the polarization in order to undercut ironically the possibility of fairness and balance, does this strategy open a third space that critiques polarization?

I would offer that such a strategy reinforces polarization but in such a way that one no longer claims to be “fair and balanced.” Rather, do as Comedy Central does and own up to your political bias. Secondly, and rather oddly, while obviously mocking Fox News’ slogan and programming structure (Democrat show followed by Republican show), Stewart and Colbert are the balance to Fox News. That a left-leaning (I wouldn’t want to call them liberals) comedy duo balances a news channel is a troubling gauge of political discourse at the moment. I do, however, think that Colbert’s success is a mark of hope.


Excellence/ Prestige & relation to China:

I agree with you Ray that the non-referentiality of concepts like “fair-trade” and “excellence” serve as a mode of translation that ignores historical and spatial specificity; Bruce is maddened by this as well. Two thoughts: First, the interrogation of such terms as they appear in public discourse is a key site of intervention. Questioning the use of words like “fair” and “excellence,” it seems to me, would open up possibilities for interrogating (read: blaming) particular instances of, say, American gunboat diplomacy without excusing (or praising) Chinese labor or trade practices. Obvious perhaps, but I think academics should take on such projects, especially in public forums. Second, and more apologetically, these terms are a way, albeit a poor way, to negotiate the need for universal categories of judgment without falling into the trap of ethnocentrism. That is, they are part of the accessible cultural lexicon, which we have a particular expertise with; how we change that vocabulary and to what we change it to is an open question.