It's less abstract than you think . . .

I catch a lot of crap for spending my time reading ideas that others perceive as "having very little to do with the real world," and whenever I hear this argument I know (I KNOW) that it comes from a larger cultural belief that academics live and work in some ivory tower. The truth, however, is that we work in asbestos filled buildings whose brown carpet has existed since the Nixon administration, but that isn't the point. The point I wish to address is that academics don't care about the real world and what they read has little to do with the everyday lives we lead unless they choose to make it so vis a vis protest or business writing. My argument, of course, is that we care very much about the real world and that is precisely why we do what we do. For example, those who have talked to me recently know that I am in a bear of a course on the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Of late, we have been talking about governmentality and the care of the self which is fancy for - paying attention to how you conduct yourself and what that says about the way power functions in our culture. So think about it in this way, our everyday lives are not influenced by a kind of State based oppression where police make us do things with the threat of violence. Instead, we know how we are supposed to act and do so even though no gun is at our head. I was thinking about this when the power went out around the block of the university campus. The traffic lights, I noticed as I drove home, were out (not flashing, out) and people were acting so politely, each taking their turn to ensure proper traffic flow. Here's what I thought: what makes people do this? Seriously, what makes people adhere to the rules of a traffic light, when the traffic light is not there? The answer, I would argue in light of this Foucault seminar, is governmentality: we have been made automated and docile through governmentality. Now, if you really think about this, it applies in a lot of other places as well: things that we take for granted or merely don't pay attention to. What would happen, though, if we stopped and thought about the process by which we were made docile and whose interests those serve? Wouldn't that be an interesting conversation to have? Post if you think of something.

I just thought of something! When the power went out, I assumed it was a fire drill and walked outside with my peers. AUTOMATION!