Thunderbolt for Mr. Obvious

Yes, it’s Saturday night and I’m home at 11:30 PM. In my defense, I went out tonight and had sushi (yes, we paid) and saw “Pirates of the Caribbean” with a friend. It was great fun, a fine time. Johnny Depp is the Only Living White Male (listen up young Trustafarians, I’m talking about you) who doesn’t look like a total dipwad in dreadlocks, and he’s the word-slurring scene-stealing bemascaraed hottie all the reviews say he is. I hope he ages better than Sean Connery, and I say it’s definitely worth at least the matinee price of admission, maybe even full price. The only drawback: having to watch, during the previews, the MPAA’s dramatized exploitation of wage labor to justify their war for profits in an “anti-piracy” spot. Thanks, Jack Valenti. I’m sure it’s all about the scene-painters, who somehow seem to be not getting a cut of your take from the snips of The Big Chill and Dick Tracy you played. Ahh, capital. It smells like — sniff — victory.

And, speaking of ideologies and the way they influence one’s perspective: well, gosh, Mr. Obvious just had himself a thunderbolt.

In my initial skims of these Intro to Sociology texts, I’m realizing that all research is research with an agenda, and that the method of analysis will fit that agenda as easily as possible. Curtiss’ reference to Occam’s razor is instructive: researchers make it easier on themselves by reducing variables. One might imagine how a sociological researcher of gender inequities in scientific and technological fields of education might easily ignore the experiences of transgendered students, to the detriment of those students (Harriet Malinowitz is again instructive here), because having two variables — boys and girls — makes the research much simpler. The same holds true for class. Researchers will rely on a single criterion for class, whether it be occupation, wealth (see Charlie’s essay on access), or some other variable, because it simplifies the analysis in powerful ways. This holds true for economic theorizing, as well, as I’ve seen with the useful ways in which Wolff and Resnick reduced the models they discussed to their most basic components. The problem then becomes that these models fail to adequately reflect lived experience. While individual lived experience is the richest model (bulletin for Mr. Obvious: it’s not a model, dummy; that’s the problem; the map does not equal the territory), it does not abstract well, and becomes problematic when one attempts to draw direct research conclusions, because authenticity claims from another perspective of individual lived experience can instantly shoot down any attempts at theorizing.

This is the sense in which Charlie’s question — will students claim these terms? — is important: my theoretical account of how class works in the wired writing classroom must be rich enough to accurately reflect the lived experience of students and teachers, while at the same time sufficiently consistent in its abstraction to allow the drawing of conclusions, both practical and theoretical, that may usefully intersect with other theories and pedagogies of class and writing.

Cripes. My knuckleheadedness is gonna make me spend all my dissertation time reinventing the flippin wheel. Where’s my pirate sword mascara eyeliner?