Good faith vs Bad faith

I would not have made it past the first chapter, unless I was warned it was bad beforehand & assured the rest of the book was worth it. surely someone must have questioned that stuff before it went to print

So it's not just me, that first chapter is just genuinely tone deaf and terrible and "learn what a soft No is, Schulman!!!"

(But I suppose some books do need warnings - like, everyone always tells people, "Read The Gift of Fear, but skip the chapter on domestic abuse")

However, there are enough good insights in the rest of it, that it's worth battling through the bad bits.

And it's a shame, because she is actually getting at the core of something important - *dealing* with collective trauma, among marginalised people, and explaining the mechanics of the victim-bully switch, how people who have been frequently bullied, traumatised and victimised, *DO* often turn around to lash out at others. This is a real and genuine psychological phenomenon - however, the psychological term for this phenomenon is not 'Triggering', it is a form of 'Projection'.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

yeah that is like the #1 thing i struggle with - i am really acutely aware of collective trauma and i am really acutely aware that i struggle with personal trauma and i work my ass off to deal with the personal trauma but the collective trauma is bigger than i can handle and it's kicking my ass

and a lot of times i try to reach out and it always turns into a big fight, and i don't know if it's because i can't keep my personal trauma out of it or if it's because where other people are at they can't allow themselves to admit to the collective trauma or because they just conceive of the collective trauma differently, for them it's a different problem with a different solution

and dividing the world into Abusers and Victims doesn't really work well for me either, it's important to me that i've been both, that i'm capable of both depending, i see it more as a cycle of abuse, my tendency is to act in accordance with the behaviors that were and are modeled for me, and a lot of those behaviors were and are pretty fucking awful

Whitney Phillips is so absolutely great on this stuff:

http://bostonreview.net/gender-sexuality/whitney-phillips-whose-anger-counts

She's honestly one of the best people out there studying the internet at the moment, including the darker corners thereof.

Re: Schulman, she should stick to fiction— her theoretical writings, with the exception of her strident take on pinkwashing in Israel, are mostly awful, liberal garbage, afaict.

I was once attacked during a question-and-answer period during a roundtable discussion that involved her and some other queer reformist types because they basically were going on tirades against people who shop at chain stores— this was when Gentrification of the Mind had just come out— and I raised the point that a lot of people don't have access to the capital and resources that allow them to shop at many smaller, mom-and-pop shops, and people acted as if I'd shit in their breakfast. Schulman included! It was the most classist, tone-deaf shit I've ever experienced in that sort of environment.

I haven't read Conflict because of that experience. TBH, other than 'Rat Bohemia,' I kind of think she sucks!

I raised the point that a lot of people don't have access to the capital and resources that allow them to shop at many smaller, mom-and-pop shops,

it's tricky! Because poor people don't all live in the same type of places. Like, you used to live in West Oakland ... how many chain stores were even there? You probably remember when they put in a Subway sandwiches on 7th St .... that kept getting robbed. I was telling a colleague the other day, about when a Quizno's opened near the DIY space I ran (this was back in 2002), and I was able to walk to get a vegetarian sandwich on a Saturday afternoon, which was very exciting at the time. A few years back a Walgreens opened in deep East Oakland (around 78th and International iirc) and people were stoked! ... Like, in certain areas, the only stores you have are mom-and-pop shops, because of poverty and disinvestment, but these are probably not the types of stores your fellow panelists regularly patronize.

Like are they saying, the virtuous thing to do is eat cereal, nutter butters, and canned goods from the corner store vs. buying healthy groceries from Wal-Mart?

See, this is to me, an absolute classic example of a bad faith discussion.

Where we don't end up discussing the author's work, her writing, her Theory - but instead, we end up talking about the emotional feelings, reportage of an event that took place a decade ago, where none of the rest of us were present, there is no transcript, there is just this emotionally charged reportage, hearsay, academic gossip, from someone who has already acknowledged that they dislike her writing, and thinks she simply "sucks".

We don't have the context, there's no way of ascertaining of there was any more nuance to what Schulman or other unnamed panelists were actually discussing - there's only Table's sense of being "attacked" (was this an attack, or merely a disagreement? This is literally the meat of Schulman's most recent book - she literally describes, in the book, having an experience at a public talk where someone takes exception to a mis-hearing and mis-understanding of what she said in her talk - but she is actually able to walk the questioner and the audience through a group session of "what did other people in the audience hear me saying? did they hear me saying what you've just quoted back to me, or something more nuanced?" so that the questioner actually returns to *what was actually said* and not their ~feelings about Schulman~ or their ~feelings about the conversation~). I get what you're doing, Sarahell, but you're not getting to hear and address what Schulman actually said, you're shadow-boxing with Table's mental image of Schulman.

And we end up discussing, not Schulman's work at all - but Table's ~feelings about Schulman as a person~ - that she's mean, that she's attacky, that she was tone-deaf and not a nice person.

I really do prefer to engage with theorists' and writers *work*, not peoples' ~feelings about the 'kind of person' the writer is~ (and that goes double when the theorist is a woman, especially a *difficult* woman, because we all know the standards of acceptable niceness for women are already warped to start with.)

No one cares about Phillips, huh. I'm surprised there's not more interest in her work on ILX, given how much she has studied 'internet messageboard culture' and Trolling in general as a phenomenon. I always find it weird, the highly relevant work that people on ILX prove weirdly incurious about.

Just not had time to read it yet

nothing to take issue with in the Phillips piece. Schulman is more contentious in what seems like an intentional way and she seems to ask for charitable readings of things which seem cruel or dismissive or which themselves seem like uncharitable readings. there is a lot of seeming and a lot of what seems like plausible deniability. have heard second or third accounts of her work being used to defend abuse (beyond conflict) which is obv not (mostly or necessarily) her fault- but combined with the accusations she acknowledges (as accusations) I feel pretty uncomfortable with the whole project. which may be the point

haven’t read the book so I don’t know how accurate this critique is but I feel parts of it https://thenewinquiry.com/trust-in-instinct/

Yeah, see, "Here is an essay by a person who has read the work, engaged with it, and flagged up some important flaws in the book's arguments" is a good faith discussion, in a way that "I met this woman and found her personally disagreeable, therefore her work - which I haven't read - sucks" is not.

Like, it is the job of theorists, activists, reformers, etc. to disagree - to *be* disagreeable.

It's kind of weird to read Schulman dismissed as this kind of classist, ivory tower 'panelist' with no experience of ~the real world~, given her own background. She didn't come from inside academia - she was born in the east village when it was essentially still a Jewish ghetto, didn't finish college, became a teacher *after* having been a working writer and an activist, through a loophole that she is the first person to admit no longer exists - the latter half of Gentrification of the Mind is about what a pyramid scheme the MFA-ification of writing and the teaching-of-writing is. If she's blinkered about chain stores or food deserts, it is because she is a lifelong New Yorker, and probably cannot comprehend what it is to live in a place where one needs a car to exit the food desert, or get to a large chain store.

A ton of the flaws of her writing, are about that - the specific contexts that she is discussing simply don't translate to other contexts. But what's important is to pull back and look at the context she *is* addressing, rather than dismissing her that she blanket "sucks".

The Phillips piece was well written, but was there anything new there? New information, new ways of looking at the landscape? It felt like a (long) rehash of discussions that have been had over and over, and everyone on one side is keenly aware of the parameters and is shouting "why won't you listen?" at the other side, meanwhile the other side (the David Brookses of the world, or the obtuse journalist Phillips mentions in her intro) is responding with bemused shrugs and keeping on doing exactly what they've been doing - making goo-goo eyes at Trump supporters, making sad faces about "cancel culture," and on and on unto the heat death of the universe. I mean, if I missed anything, by all means point it out.

I'm not getting into the Schulman thing because a) I don't have time to read an entire book this morning and b) Branwell, your own strong misgivings about her work expressed upthread make me think it wouldn't be worth panning through the slurry for one or two nuggets of gold.

I get what you're doing, Sarahell, but you're not getting to hear and address what Schulman actually said, you're shadow-boxing with Table's mental image of Schulman.

fwiw, I didn't intend my recent posts to be _about_ Schulman. I was changing the subject and wanted to talk to table (who I know irl) about the topic he was arguing about -- shopping at chain stores re classism.

Branwell, I just don't agree. If she's such an important thinker and her books get national of not international attention, then why should we engage with their arguments as if we all know she's talking about New York? That's ridiculous.

And it was audience members, not Schulman herself, who attacked me during that panel discussion. I don't have anything against her as a person, despite my saying 'she sucks' above. I just don't find much if the theory she's written worth talking about, BECAUSE it is so specific to certain geographies and situations.

Also, Branwell, for someone who claims that people create hostile environments for you on this board all the time, your denigration and questioning the reality of my experience is pretty rich.

i think her ideas about interpersonal conflict and how people's tendencies toward conflict avoidance are really interesting -- however, just because someone is otm in one area, doesn't mean they are universally otm. I have similar issues with David Graeber -- where there are certain things he's written that I think are great, and others where I am skeptical and people who are better versed in those areas are like, "he doesn't know what he's talking about."

still though -- the Graeber story and his analysis about the effects of someone donating a car to an anarchist collective is one of my favorite things and super insightful writing.

Re sarahell, yeah, you're right about the Bottoms, but this discussion was focused on SF. Took place in the old Luggage Store Gallery in 2012, I think.

Like many of these people were essentially saying that poor people shopping at Safeway or 7-11 instead of one of the local delis or Bi-Rite or the Co-op were wrongheaded.

hahahahahah -- so telling that a discussion focused on SF would not even consider the vast urban civilizations right outside its borders where the overwhelming majority of people that make San Francisco function actually live ... but the solipsism and arrogance of San Francisco is another topic ...

xp - didn't San Francisco only start getting a significant number of 7-11s only around 2012? Maybe a few years prior? ... Like, San Francisco's planning code is potentially one of the strictest in terms of banning chain stores in the country?

So Schulman’s work “sucks” because ... her *audience* disagreed with you?

Like, this is so far from a good faith engagement with Schulman or her work, it couldn’t even find one on a map?

Can you read?

Let's try and avoid a hundred-post pile-up, shall we?

It seems to me that table is going out of his way to separate his critique of Schulman from his critique of the hostile audience at a panel discussion where she was one of the panelists. His dislike for her work is detached from his anecdote about the event in question.

Am I right or wrong about that, table?

there are food deserts in nyc fyi

Over the course of several posts, I said I liked her fiction, which is actually quite provocative at times-- she wrote a novel about a precocious queer youth in a relationship with an older person that got her into a lot of trouble-- but that her theoretical writing seems mean-spirited and hyper-specific in its contextual framing. And that I don't feel the need to engage with it as a result.

And unperson, yes, that is what I was attempting

And re: BradNelson, I know that there are food deserts in the five boroughs, don't know who you were addressing.

just reacting to the idea that schulman is blinkered about food deserts because she's a lifelong new yorker

idk if it's a food desert issue and more about the prominence of mom-and-pop stores in NYC vs. in other parts of the country where there tend to be fewer of these, partly due to culture and partly due to population density

yeah lol i'm making a selective argument bc i'm annoyed. doing a really good job of living up to this thread, gonna bounce

I mean -- I kinda did a similar thing in terms of changing the subject to the chain store/classism -- so idk

I don't think it's bad faith to change the subject of a discussion ?

Right. Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.

What I object to is the idea that these are moral or ethical failings on the part of a beleaguered mass of mostly poor people rather than the hegemonic prowess of capital and its logistical frameworks.

One of the reasons that I am reacting the way that I am, is that there is a long history of judging authors who are considered ot be women by how *likeable* they, or their work are - whether they are agreeable, whether their work makes people feel good after they have read it. (And writers who are considered to be male are not expected to meet this 'likeable' criteria, not in anything like the same kind of way.)

And one of the reasons I like Schulman, and the reason I keep persisting with her, even though such a mixed bag as this book, is because she makes absolutely no pretense as to being likeable, or agreeable - which is an unbelievably freeing thing to read in a female writer, someone who doesn't GAF if they come across as likeable or not. There is no wink, no sugar-coating, there is no handholding or making you feel OK about challenging stuff. She *IS* disagreeable. I often come out of reading her theory books feeling like I have been challenged, maybe even called out - perhaps sometimes attacked.

And working through that feeling of 'why do I feel so attacked by this disagreement' is part of what *I* get out of it, puzzling through difficult and complicated phenomena, in which I feel I may be complicit. She's a really good author, for me, for learning to sit with discomfort, and winkling out discomfort from mere difficulty. And she works for me, because of those things.

Her arguments do not scale. They are not universal, and she falls down where she tries to make them universal. But that doesn't mean that she "sucks". And Table, your post really did seem to boil down to your finding her - or, it turns out, her audience - disagreeable. Which to me, is the point.

But I'm not actually interested in local politics of SF, so I'll bow out and you can carry on with your derail.

Your willful misreading of my follow-up posts is laughable.

Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.

<pedantic> actually one of the food banks has a massive site a few blocks past the co-op grocery as well and there tend to be long lines there. </pedantic>

Yeah, there's also the bank on San Pab at 34th or so, if that's still around...

Anyway, enough derail. After being accused of being a sexist because I don't like a famous author's theoretical frameworks, I'm going to leave this thread.

Yeah -- San Pablo & 34th! ... awww don't leave, let's just try to have better arguments.

Rhonda????

*sigh* ... where?

The real bad faith move was that bollox djp starting this thread during my hiatus imo

Thought this was a deems revive at first.

The great revivals of 2022 are in motion dont worry, rhonda has the green paper