Carnal Reason

Stephen Bainbridge:

I saw this quote from a post by Robin Hanson:

If all we know about a view was that professors held it more, and elite professors even more so, we would be inclined to favor that view.

I’m 48 years old. I spent 11 years in college and graduate school, with the latter 7 years spent at elite institutions. I’ve spent 18 years teaching at law schools ranked in the top 25, which I think safely qualify as elite institutions. Having thus spent 60% of my life hanging out with elite professors, I feel confident in saying that: If all I know about a view was that professors held it more, and elite professors even more so, I would be inclined to be skeptical of that view.

For me it would depend on what the elite professor is a professor of. Engineers or chemists I would be inclined to believe. Professors of English or Women’s Studies I would be inclined to disbelieve.

And speaking of professors of Women’s Studies, two of them have kick-started the healing process at Duke University. Anne Allison and Margot Weiss are offering a new course, HOOK-UP CULTURE AT DUKE. The Duke Online Course Synopsis Handbook describes it as follows:

What is “hook-up culture”? What does it have to do with power and difference? Is the concept useful for framing gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized experiences at Duke?

This course, designed as a direct result of events last year on campus, will give students a unique opportunity to examine and reflect upon gendered/ sexualized life at Duke in relation to contemporary life in the U.S. We will ask: how has the history of university attendance in the US (in terms of race, class, and gender) impacted campus culture? Are new technologies changing intimate or familial relationships between people? How are distinctions between “at home” and “at work” (or public and private) linked to new kinds of subjectivity and sociality? How do particular bodies gain value in contemporary commodity culture? And finally, what does the lacrosse scandal tell us about power, difference, and raced, classed, gendered and sexed normativity in the US?

Each course unit will include theoretical readings that contextualize Duke campus culture within these larger US cultural and economic formations, emphasizing the ways that “hooking-up” at Duke must be understood in relation to larger intersections of sex, gender, power, and capital. To this end, in addition to theoretical readings, we will also devote a substantial portion of the class to both case studies (drawn from popular media, film, or ethnography) and to Duke-focused student ethnographic research projects.

The goal of the course is two-fold: 1) to understand “hooking-up” at Duke in terms of larger frameworks of race, capitalism/consumerism, class, lifestyle, identity, (hetero)normativity, and power, and 2) to enable students to critically assess both the nature of Duke hook-ups and the institutional setting of Duke itself.

The course strikes me as coals to Newcastle. Duke students already have the opportunity to study the Duke hook-up culture first hand. But the course synopsis is revealing, if read carefully.

What is “hook-up culture”? What does it have to do with power and difference? Is the concept useful for framing gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized experiences at Duke?

What student does not long for concepts with which to frame gendered experiences? Can we reasonably expect that a concept useful for framing gendered experiences will ipso facto be useful for framing raced exeriences? At Duke? And we have yet to consider classed experiences. Sexualized experiences need no longer be framed; it suffices to convert the video into an mp4.

This course, designed as a direct result of events last year on campus, will give students a unique opportunity to examine and reflect upon gendered/ sexualized life at Duke in relation to contemporary life in the U.S.

The only rational response to prosecutorial and faculty misconduct is to reflect on gendered/ sexualized life at Duke. The non-gendered/ non-sexualized life of Duke fungi, Duke protozoa, and Duke bacteria can safely be disregarded.

And finally, what does the lacrosse scandal tell us about power, difference, and raced, classed, gendered and sexed normativity in the US?

Recall that the concept of hook-up culture may (or may not) be useful for framing gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized experiences at Duke. But the lacrosse scandal may tell us something about raced, classed, gendered and sexed normativity.

Each course unit will include theoretical readings that contextualize Duke campus culture within these larger US cultural and economic formations, emphasizing the ways that “hooking-up” at Duke must be understood in relation to larger intersections of sex, gender, power, and capital.

That is a mouthful. A good way to approach a sentence like that one is to strip it down to essentials by omitting adjectives and such. Here is the short version:

Each course unit will include readings that contextualize culture within formations, emphasizing ways that “hooking-up” must be understood in relation to intersections.

Now that makes sense.

The goal of the course is two-fold: 1) to understand “hooking-up” at Duke in terms of larger frameworks of race, capitalism/consumerism, class, lifestyle, identity, (hetero)normativity, and power, and 2) to enable students to critically assess both the nature of Duke hook-ups and the institutional setting of Duke itself.

Goal 1) is perfectly natural. The first thing that comes to mind after a hook-up is how to understand casual sex with a near-stranger in terms of capitalism/consumerism and normativity. But that second goal strikes me as far-fetched. If you take a course like this one to asses the institutional setting of Duke itself, you are a chump.

Posted on January 20th, 2007 by pwyll
Filed under: culture