A friend of mine was conducting an interview for their doctoral thesis with a tenure-track professor at a mid-western university. During the interview, the professor bragged about how she wouldn't teach Judith Butler in her class anymore. For those small handful of people who aren't already aware, Butler is one of the best-known gender theorists of our era. She's written lots of books about it and everything. So why wasn't the professor teaching her? Because Butler had authored a letter of support last year for an NYU professor that had been accused of sexual harassment by her grad student. As far as this professor was concerned, Butler was siding with the powerful over the powerless, and therefore she could not, in good conscience, continue to teach her ideas in her class.
The NYU professor's name (the professor in our story, the interviewee, is going to remain anonymous, because really she's just here for rhetorical purposes) is Avital Ronell. The grad student was Nimrod Reitman. So we've got a female professor accused of sexual harassing, assaulting, stalking, and retaliating against their male grad student. And we've got Butler believing the woman, or at least arguing that she shouldn't be punished because her work was so important (not a good look, there Judith, in any era).
This story is glorious for the way it encapsulates the bullshit insularity, the simultaneous hyper-seriousness and pointlessness, of academia. It's also funny that Butler, then the president-elect of the MLA (don't even fucking ask), later apologized and resigned from her presidency after being criticized for her letter.
But getting back to the anonymous professor, the one that stopped teaching Butler in her classes after the controversy. I can't help wondering about her motivation, especially her motivation in telling my friend, a mere doctoral candidate working on their doctoral thesis, about it.
It was all social positioning of course. The term "virtue signaling" is vague and overused. Isn't signaling virtue better than signaling being an asshole? Is it really worth criticizing someone's motivation, or more accurately, what we perceive to be somebody's motivation, when there are literal countless raging shitbags all around us screaming as loud as they can? I'm not interested in virtue signaling, but I am interested in the idea of using social justice--the loosest strands, most likely to be governed by fashion--to stake out a claim for one's self as being more virtuous (this professor implied) than any fucking philistine fascist who continues to teach Judith Butler in their classroom. It reminds me less of virtue-signaling, and more of like indie rock in the 1990's or something. I will now demonstrate my purity for all to see.
Because I can't help thinking, that despite whatever misguided, strongly worded letters Judith Butler might write, her philosophical writings on gender are relevant and essential in her field. Even the parts that might be, uh, questionable, have to be questions, and argued with because of her position within the field. If we assume this professor's students aren't being taught about Butler (though I imagine she would pop up in other writers' work, such is her influence) are they being done a disservice?
This got me thinking about cancel culture in general. Is it kinda arbitrary who gets cancelled and who doesn't? Pretty much, especially in music, where most critics and listeners have the critical thinking ability of an unopened bag of Doritos. The guy who provided the soundtrack for our post? Not canceled, despite sleeping with girls as young as 13. Axl Rose was a notorious woman-beater who used racial and homophobic slurs in his songs (when asked, Axl expounded upon the difference between a black person and a n***er). Appetite In Destruction got a 10 just 18 months ago by Pitchfork. I'm not saying David Bowie and G'N'R need to be taken off the air, and canceled, or that well-meaning people who proudly proclaim they'll never listen to, say, John Lennon again because he hit women are all hypocrites who--I don't know--need to be forced to listen to John Lennon or something. I'm just saying people are taking something really complicated--the creator of the work vs. the work itself--and treating it like it's really simple. And any time you do that, in any kind of arena, you're going to risk looking a little foolish.
Cancel culture abounds, carried out (mostly) by people with good-intentions, and sometimes a little bit of social positioning, but the question remains what to do with the works of canceled things like Cosby, Louis C.K., Roseanne, the entirety of The Dukes of Hazard. On one hand, it's not fair to Malcolm Jamal Warner (Theo Huxtable) to have to lose royalty checks because his boss was a gross pathetic rapist. On the other, it's pretty awful, as a rape victim, to see your rapist on TV all the time. Well you'll be pleased to know that I, with the help of a friend, came up with a solution. All works by problematic people come with an introduction, either through voiceover or a person addressing the camera--it could even be one of the victims--informing the viewer/listener what the canceled person said or did. So for Louis C.K., it might go something like this:
The person you're about to see can be very funny at times, with insights into the human condition and the struggle to become a better person, particularly a better father. However, he also liked to take out his penis in front of women who worked for him and pleasure himself in front of them, oftentimes without permission. That's pretty skeezy, but here's the worst part, and the part he's never apologized for--when these women told somebody what Louis C.K. had done, he accused them of lying. He used his power and influence within the industry to punish these women, and he got his powerful friends to defend him in public. It was only when so many came forward that he could no longer credibly deny it that he finally admitted what he had done. He is a horrible person, but he did make a couple of decent TV series, and a handful of standup specials that are really good compared to, say, Dane Cook or something.
See what I mean? If we have to trim a couple of minutes off the original show to make this work, I think it's worth it. I know this might sounds like I'm joking, or trying to make some kind of satirical point, but I am 100% serious. This would work for Butler, for G'N'R, even The Dukes of Hazzard. Wouldn't a brief five minute lecture about the causes for the Civil War and the history of the Confederate Battle Flag be more productive for society than simply pulling the show from circulation because it prominently displays a hate symbol?
I'm saying that the problem with cancel culture is that both the canceling and the culture being canceled are problematic. I'm into critical culture, a less extreme, more fair, more educational way of engaging with cultural stuff that is problematic. We could append people's twitter bios, author bios, etc. in this same way. They get to lead a public life, but with the story of their monstrosity trailing along behind them.
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