0077 | June 24, 2019

Donald Trump:
Bring the System Down and What?

The hosts’ extend their diagnoses of the intellectual misanthropy that has helped make Trump’s populism palatable, by working through the arguments for civility in the public sphere.

[music]
C.T. WEBB: 00:19	Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening. And welcome to the American Age Podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor of the American Age, and I am speaking to you from Southern California, where the summer has finally arrived.
S. FULLWOOD: 00:31	Hi. I’m Steven G. Fullwood, and I’m coming to you from Harlem, and I’m mixing this up, and I’m also the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project, and I’m using my NPR voice, as well [laughter].
S. RODNEY: 00:44	I am Seph Rodney, and I am always amused, pleasantly surprised by my co-hosts Travis and Steven. I am a senior editor at the Hyperallergic blog and recent author of The Personalization of the Museum Visit, and I’m speaking to you from the South Bronx.
C.T. WEBB: 01:08	This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of what we like to call intellectual intimacy which is giving each other the space and time to figure out things out loud and together. And we are picking up from our last podcast as closely as possible, so we kind of– we’re talking about positive aspects of Donald Trump’s election, and we started to get in– and so, depending on your orientation, either abstracting or, for me, getting into the meat of it. So the weeds are the meat. So for me, I see this as kind of the meat of the problem, which is that intellectuals on– progressive intellectuals in the academy where the world– and the academy is not invented in the world, but intellectuals have invented the world. They haven’t necessarily– haven’t done the work for it, but the world, as it currently stands, nations, states, big monetary systems, all the rest of it, are the products of thousands of years of intellectual work. And I’ve made the argument that Donald Trump’s presidency is a consequence of intellectuals abandoning that responsibility en masse. Now, not to a man or woman. Clearly, there are people that are still fighting that fight. But I feel like we have left– we’re not captaining the ship anymore. We’re not even navigators anymore. We’re basically just interested in tearing the whole thing down. And Seph was sympathetic to that position, I think, and you were talking about– I think you had mentioned something about if we’re deconstructing history, what are we doing after that? And Steven, I think you had some thoughts or you don’t– I’m not sure if you thought they were fully formed yet, but–
S. FULLWOOD: 03:02	So what I heard Seph say was in place of what– deconstruct this, tear it all down, burn the house down, and in then in lieu of what? Or what would you replace it with? And I was thinking that deconstruction, for me, never felt like it was the total destruction of anything. It was the acknowledgment of systems and thought processes and wanting to see what the thing was made of from a variety of perspectives. And so– this is so odd. I was trying to do something earlier with my recording, and I just saw two of my things jump up. It’s very strange. At any rate [laughter]– I looked down and go, “No. That’s not supposed to be on.” So I was thinking. I went and looked and I said, “Well, I’m going to just look at this idea of deconstruction,” and it’s Derrida, Jacques Derrida, an approach to understanding the relationships between text and meaning. So maybe– Seph, I wanted you to kind of talk a little bit more about that example that you gave when you were talking about the sky, people wanting to burn things down, but then they didn’t have anything in place of it or they weren’t salvaging part of the house. Could you talk a little bit more about that and– I don’t really know how to get it because these are just half-thought-out thoughts that I’m still thinking.
S. RODNEY: 04:22	Yeah. Yeah. No. I am with you. And, in fact, I’m looking up–
C.T. WEBB: 04:30	Well, let me– while you look it up, let me jump in with something to add. So for Derrida, the world is a text. Right? So for him to say that there is an instability between text and meaning is actually a more profound critique of the rupture between what we think we mean and what we actually mean and that there is a gap in that rupture. For Derrida, it was play. Right? He claims in a number of interviews and in some of his texts that there’s a play in that gap. So Seph, did you find your thing yet?
S. RODNEY: 05:12	I did. I did. [crosstalk].
C.T. WEBB: 05:13	Okay. All right. So– no, no no. I was just going to say– so text and meaning, I think holding Derrida something closer to, “Sure, you can play with that instability between the signifier and the signified.” Absolutely. Right? So I have no problem with that. It’s that the critique was broadened out by Derrida at times, and by those people that followed him, to undermine the entire humanistic, intellectual process.
S. RODNEY: 05:46	Right. Right.
C.T. WEBB: 05:47	So I’m sorry. But Seph [crosstalk].
S. RODNEY: 05:48	Yeah. No, no. But that’s exactly it. And to say, essentially, that the whole intellectual humanist product was so flawed that you can’t even– what was it? You can’t something the master’s house with his own tools. Dismantle? Is that right, Steven?
C.T. WEBB: 06:03	Yeah. That’s Audre Lorde. That’s Audre Lorde.
S. FULLWOOD: 06:04	Yes. That’s Audre Lorde. You can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s own tools.
S. RODNEY: 06:05	Right. You can’t dismantle– right. Exactly. So that is a kind of cogent sort of aphoristic encapsulation of what Travis is getting at, what, in essence, I’m getting at, too, which is the idea that– and this is happening in [art?] production throughout the ’80s and ’90s and the 2000s where people were making these sort of revisionist histories. Right? Making these sort of– constructing these kinds of projects which were built on these subaltern, right? They sort of marginalized stories, histories, making these things representative of how that humanistic project had failed and basically saying– and what the premise that sort of united all this work was that we need to make new histories if we are to be centered in his culture. We being the marginalized people, people of color, people who are marginalized by their sexuality, by their disabilities, blah, blah, blah. And my question was always, “Well, great. You destabilize history. But then what happens now?” I mean, I don’t see people being moved to the center. I see the center collapsing. Right?
S. RODNEY: 07:32	And the thing that I was looking for was a passage from Bruno Latour’s 2004 journal article, Why Has Critique Run Out Of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Right? And there’s a moment in it where he says, “Well, we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements.” Do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet, entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good, American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there’s no such thing as a natural unmediated, unbiased, access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint and so on while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives.
S. RODNEY: 08:31	And I think that is a nice summary of what the problems with this kind of mass critique have been which is essentially that yeah, we’re still learning that facts are made up. We get it. Yeah. Yeah. Social construction of knowledge is clearly the bottom truth of our history. Right? We reject some knowledge that makes us uncomfortable, and we accept the narratives that make us feel comfortable in our place, in the grand scheme of things. Class, and race, and gender, essentially. But what happens now? What do we now? Because we can say, “Yes. All of history is just biased. It’s terrible and really discriminatory and prejudicial ways of looking at human beings that exploit them and disadvantage them.” Okay. What now? What do we do now?
C.T. WEBB: 09:35	Yeah. No, no. Steven, do you have something?
S. FULLWOOD: 09:38	I do. I’m just thinking about this idea of the FreedomProject, and I don’t know if it’s a cogent enough thought to sort of express, but this idea– earlier on, you were talking about the center collapsing, and I was thinking, “Are we just–” so in order for the body to build muscle, you have to tear it. You have to exercise it. Right? So the tearing of it, to me, feels like what you’re talking about, that discomfort, because I don’t think it’s possible to disregard all of history or even parts of history. I think that we’re constantly negotiating spaces on how to make history better and also useful to people rather than just one group of people, and also, legible in a way so you have your heroes and your heroines and your other folks, whatever. I think– because when you said it, the first thing I thought about was pronouns and this idea of people becoming who they are. Right? And the critique and the pushback and even the violence against people who decide to perform a different gender identity than the one people say you were born with so that the idea is moving and is contentious and is growing. I mean, it continues to fascinate people. But if you were born to be–
S. FULLWOOD: 10:55	There’s a quote from Alice Childress where she says– and Alice Childress is a playwright, an actress. And at the age of– in her 60’s, she wrote a book called, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich, and it was about a 13-year-old heroin addict by the name of Benjie in Harlem. This book was banned almost immediately, but she was trying to show– she kind of helped invent the young-adult gritty novels that really kind of dealt with what people were actually dealing with. And on it, the quote she says, and it’s not from the book. It’s like 1992, actually. “Everyone benefits from being allowed to be their best self.” And I hold to that, and it might be a bit Pollyanna-ish, but I’m really excited about the idea that if people were who they really were, and maybe they are already, but don’t we have a society that we’re looking to birth into change? I like the deconstruction part of just being able to identify and see the board light up and go, “Okay, [inaudible] that has been described as this, but maybe we should look at this.” That’s exciting to me, but I don’t feel like that there is a center. I feel like that there is a set of platforms of ideas and one gets more broadcasted than the other and one is really, strictly enforced even by people it oppresses.
C.T. WEBB: 12:09	So I am sympathetic to that idea, and I think there are aspects of it that are true. But you had called it Pollyanna-ish and I– or maybe it’s Pollyanna-ish. And I don’t think it’s Pollyanna-ish, but I do think that at the very sort of– you can’t reinvent everything because there have to be touchstones. There have to be points of agreement. There have to be points of contact.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:45	I agree with that.
C.T. WEBB: 12:45	Yeah. I know you do.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:47	Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 12:48	What I think– let me give an example. Thomas Kuhn has this idea called the Auxiliary Hypothesis. Right? So the auxiliary hypothesis is the hypothesis that has to be true in order for your primary hypothesis to be correct.
S. RODNEY: 13:04	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:04	Yes.
C.T. WEBB: 13:04	Now, so your primary hypothesis is that the best version of ourselves can only be arrived at by a certain kind of play in freedom and we can’t lock down our identities too firmly, whatever those identities might be, in order for you to be your true self. So I’m actually willing to grant all of those. I mean, I know that my own process of discovery and sort of self-discovery and self-realization follows something like that. There’s ways in which I have to play with expectations in order to do that, so I’m completely with that. The auxiliary hypothesis that’s unstated in that situation is that we have to assume that freedom is valuable. We have to assume that–
S. RODNEY: 13:54	Oh, wow.
C.T. WEBB: 13:54	–that kind of liberty has any social value, broadly. And that’s an idea. That is not a guarantee. That’s an assumption that you are bringing to the table, that I’m bringing to the table, that people who share our politics bring to the table, that many people in the world do not bring to the table–
S. RODNEY: 14:16	Right. I completely agree.
C.T. WEBB: 14:16	Have no interest in bringing that to the table.
S. RODNEY: 14:18	Right. Right.
C.T. WEBB: 14:19	Two scoops of ice cream for me, one scoop of ice cream for you. Right?
S. FULLWOOD: 14:22	Right.
C.T. WEBB: 14:22	That belief undermines the thing that you value. And here’s where intellectuals have, I feel– again, humanists, in general – I’m making a broad generalization – that play too earnestly with deconstruction and post-colonial critiques– they’ve totally taken for granted the auxiliary hypothesis. They believe that it will always be there, but it’s not.
S. RODNEY: 14:50	That’s right.
C.T. WEBB: 14:51	Kids got their heads bashed in the 1950s and ’60s. To assume that the three of us could be sitting here talking as equals– right? The two of you– just this would not have happened 60 years ago. 60 years ago. That’s just nothing in the span of time. That auxiliary hypothesis has to be protected and defended and fought for, and it needs a container. And for me, that container is the idea of the United States and other ideas like it.
S. RODNEY: 15:26	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 15:26	[crosstalk].
S. RODNEY: 15:26	Which is a very clear and convincing articulation of what I was calling the center. That’s the center.
C.T. WEBB: 15:34	Okay.
S. FULLWOOD: 15:35	Yeah.
S. RODNEY: 15:35	Right? That’s the center.
S. FULLWOOD: 15:35	Yes. Yes. Yes.
S. RODNEY: 15:37	If we don’t all come on and sign on for that project to say, “Actually, in this civic space, you and I are going to look at each other as equals regardless of what gender we appear to present as or what ethnicity or what height or what level of ability–” None of that matters. If you’re a grown-ass man or woman or anyone else, intersex, whatever, if you’re a grown-ass human being, you show up, you deserve X, Y, and Z.
C.T. WEBB: 16:11	Absolutely.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:11	Yeah.
S. RODNEY: 16:12	Because you’re here.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:12	Right.
C.T. WEBB: 16:13	Yeah.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:13	So I’m going to use the law term good faith. We’re all working with this idea of good faith. Right? I’m not going to break into your house while you’re gone. You won’t sleep with my wife.
S. RODNEY: 16:22	That’s the center. That’s the center. Absolutely.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:24	Okay. Okay.
S. RODNEY: 16:25	Yes.
S. FULLWOOD: 16:26	Good.
C.T. WEBB: 16:26	I do believe in that.
S. RODNEY: 16:27	Right. And the problem now is that if you collapse that center, right? If you say, “Okay, none of y’all–” let me say it in this way. If we’re negotiating, right? Like Congress is negotiating the adoption of a new law and it’s– in essence, congressional members say to each other, “Ain’t none of you mother fuckers bargaining in good faith.”
S. FULLWOOD: 16:55	Right.
S. RODNEY: 16:56	Shit is not going anywhere. Right? It’s just not. Right? And this is essentially what we have now. Right? We have a kind of congressional stalemate in that the House is run– it’s not run, but it’s dominated by Democrats. So their agenda of checking the kinds of corruption, the myriad forms of corruption that are happening through the executive, is being stymied by the Senate– is being stymied by the Senate. So you basically have no legislation going anywhere except for, I think, maybe Mitch McConnell suggested raising the age for use of tobacco products to like 21, which is kind of a thing that–
C.T. WEBB: 17:39	[crosstalk].
S. RODNEY: 17:38	–everybody else is like, “Yeah, okay. Fine. But you can get e-cigarettes that make nicotine taste like bubblegum, so what’s the point of that, anyway?” So that’s the state we’re in. Right? Because none of us believe that the other side or other sides will bargain in good faith, we have no center. That’s a problem.
C.T. WEBB: 18:00	Yeah. And I think so– we had talked about transitioning away from the Donald Trump topic. I mean, I see– for me, one of the most positive aspects of his election has been a wake-up call to the responsibility that I, personally, have to put– Seph and I like to– to put my shoulder to the wheel. Right?
S. FULLWOOD: 18:24	Yes.
S. RODNEY: 18:24	Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 18:25	To do something to make the space and time where I live– to build that project and not just to throw stones at the edifice, as Seph said in the last podcast.
S. FULLWOOD: 18:40	No, absolutely. No, absolutely.
C.T. WEBB: 18:43	That’s my responsibility because other people don’t share the auxiliary hypothesis that we share.
S. FULLWOOD: 18:50	No. No.
S. RODNEY: 18:52	Yeah. Is it Allen Ginsberg that said it, that I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel?
C.T. WEBB: 18:55	Yeah. Yeah. In the poem America, he says that.
S. RODNEY: 19:01	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 19:01	Okay.
S. RODNEY: 19:02	Right. And it’s a beautiful phrase, a beautiful poem. And I actually ran into someone the other day, someone I worked with at Hyperallergic. I edited his piece. That’s his actual email handle is queershouldertothewheel [laughter].
S. FULLWOOD: 19:16	Great. Great. Great.
C.T. WEBB: 19:17	Oh, that’s [crosstalk].
S. RODNEY: 19:17	I just thought, “I immediately like you.” See, even in that sort of ridiculously sort of obvious or maybe even you could call that vapid way, I recognize someone as sharing that auxiliary premise with me. Right? If he has that as his–
C.T. WEBB: 19:47	Email handle?
S. RODNEY: 19:48	Yeah. I just think, “Okay, you and I– we can talk. We might not agree and everything, but we can talk.”
S. FULLWOOD: 19:55	We can at least talk.
C.T. WEBB: 19:55	Yeah.
S. RODNEY: 19:56	Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 19:56	Although I want to believe that, and then I also understand that people who don’t share that hypothesis use Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA as their anthem, not at all understanding.
S. FULLWOOD: 20:10	Yeah. Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 20:12	So I suspect you’re probably right, but floating signifiers. Right? People take these things and they use them for different things.
S. RODNEY: 20:20	So let me ask a question to both of you because I think this is a really useful way to end is do you think Steven G. Fullwood–
S. FULLWOOD: 20:31	That’s me.
S. RODNEY: 20:31	C. Travis Webb. Do y’all think that we’ve collectively, since that degenerate was elected president– do you think that the public has gotten generally smarter about what constitutes our politics in the US? Or they’ve gotten more– well, I don’t want to say dumber, but they’ve gotten more ignorant or more willing to turn a blind eye to what the rest of us recognize as truth? I mean, is the net negative or positive since his election?
C.T. WEBB: 21:08	I am agnostic. I don’t know yet. I don’t mean it as a cop-out. I really– I don’t know. I don’t know.
S. FULLWOOD: 21:17	I was just thinking. I think people have gotten more fearful. I really couldn’t go to the intellect part. Just more fearful, a lot more mean. Yeah. That’s all I can– that’s what the antennas are telling me.
C.T. WEBB: 21:32	Yeah.
S. RODNEY: 21:32	But what about– okay. So our little group, I know, is not representative of the general population, but we haven’t become more mean. We haven’t become more fearful. Just the other day, Travis said, “I read more Fox news, now.” Just the other day, you said, “Steven, I pay attention more to the people around me and what their projects are and how I can sign on.” And me, I’m the one who’s like, “Ugh. I can’t even read Google news.” I’m afraid. I’m fearful, and I’m less enamored with my fellow citizens now.
C.T. WEBB: 22:15	I have more modesty than I did before 2016, though. That has definitely been how I’ve responded to it. I agree that that’s a pretty clear assessment of how Steven and I have– and I would even say maybe you, too, Seph, even though you feel slightly more misanthropic than us. But I also thought there was no chance that Donald Trump was going to win in 2016, and I was totally and completely wrong. So I’m more modest about my judgments about things like that.
S. FULLWOOD: 22:45	I just think that living in New York and also the kind of person I am, I see good in people. I see the light. I do see light.
S. RODNEY: 22:53	Good.
S. FULLWOOD: 22:54	And I operate under good faith that even if you don’t say, “Good morning,” back to me or whatever, I don’t know where you’ve been. I don’t know what your struggle has been. Why take that personal? But I’d rather not take it personal and then it metastasize into something else. Do you know what I mean? So I’d rather be on your side. I assume being on your side because I think there’s so much more that binds us in loving ways, not just in terrible ways. So I actively look for that and operate out of that.
S. RODNEY: 23:25	That’s great.
C.T. WEBB: 23:25	All right.
S. RODNEY: 23:25	[I love?] ending right there. Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 23:27	Yeah. I was going to say– I was going to say, that’s the best ending I think we could have, so gentleman, thanks very much for the conversation, and I’ll talk to you next week.
S. FULLWOOD: 23:36	Sounds great.
S. RODNEY: 23:36	Take care, guys.
S. FULLWOOD: 23:37	You, too.
	[music]

References

First referenced at 3:02

Jacques Derrida

“Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), was born in Algeria, has been called the most famous philosopher of our time. He was the author of a number of books, including Writing and Difference, which came to be seen as defining texts of postmodernist thought.” Amazon

First referenced at 7:32

Bruno Latour

“Bruno Latour (/ləˈtʊər/; French: [latuʁ]; born 22 June 1947) is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.[3] He is especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS).” Amazon

First referenced at 10:55

Alice Childress

“Alice Childress was an American novelist, playwright, and actress, acknowledged as “the only African-American woman to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades.” Wikipedia

First referenced at 12:48

Thomas Kuhn

“Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)was professor emeritus of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His many books include The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912, both published by the University of Chicago Press.” Amazon

Donald Trump: Bring the System Down and What?

0077 | June 24, 2019

Donald Trump:
Bring the System Down and What?

References

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