by Christopher Chow

When the Modern Language Association (MLA) was founded in 1883, its purpose was to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature. This aim was not apparent when Campus Report attended this year's annual convention in New Orleans. Once a bastion of literary merit, and still the largest scholarly organization in America, the MLA has degenerated in recent years into a meeting ground for radical educators.

Panels like "Sex With Aliens," "Gender and Terrorism," and "Blackness and Heterosexuality" were commonplace during the MLA's more than 700 panels exhibited over a span of four days.

Conservative Speech=Hate Speech

A great number of MLA participants seemingly comfortable with censorship. Campus Report witnessed this during the panel, "When Hate Groups Target Campus Newspapers."

"We've never had free speech in this country," professed Patricia L. Keeton of Ramapo College, illustrating the, 'so why start now' attitude of the panel.

"What's Accuracy in Academia?" asked Bill Mullen of the University of Texas in San Antonio. Anti-Defamation League Director of Campus Affairs and Higher Education Jeffrey Ross answered his question. "It's a spin off of Accuracy In Media. A conservative group." Upon hearing this, the panel forbid Campus Report from recording the presentation, claiming it to be an MLA rule. Nowhere in the MLA's program does it say this. Other panels had no problem with being taped. Some sessions were even videotaped.

A flier passed out to the audience by Ross listed websites that oppose military action in Afghanistan. It also featured commentaries by Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader.

An advertisement written off by the panel as "hate speech" was David Horowitz's "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Are a Bad Idea for Black People-And Racist Too." Both Bill Mullen, and Kevin Borgeson of Stonehill College, made comparisons between Jewish conservative Horowitz, and National Socialist author of The Turner Diaries William Pierce.

As Mullen continued his diatribe against Horowitz he explained that free speech should not be a right, but the "prize to be won."

Things got heated as the panel opened the floor for questions and granted others the "prize" of free speech. English professor Dave Williams of George Mason pointed out the "hate speech" the panel had discussed could not be censored because it was not illegal. He admitted to being part of the Students for a Democratic Society in the '60s. He pointed out the hypocrisy of liberals who fought for free speech in the '60s and now censor ideas they do not approve.

Ross refused to address any further comments from Williams, forcing the professor to shout, "Tell them what really happened at Brown," referring to faculty members at Brown University who told students to steal campus papers containing Horowitz's ad. The school refused to discipline the student newspaper thieves, or their faculty.

"It's a question of power. And they were exercising power. They just don't want certain points of view put forward. Rather than attacking the hatefulness of the speech, they were attacking the method by which it was disseminated," Williams told Campus Report. "People were basically saying, there are race and class and power relationships here which have to be taken into consideration. Which is to say, the working class needs to seize power and tell people what to do and what not to do."

The call for political activism was also clear during "Ethnic Humor: Racial or Racist?" Elaine Safer of the University of Delaware devoted twenty minutes to making derogatory remarks about William F. Buckley, Jr. She characterized supporters of President Clinton's impeachment of having "a lynch mob mentality, aiming to cleanse the White House… the crazed actions of those who participated in the nation's purifying binge. When terrorism, which had replaced communism as the prevailing threat to the country's security was succeeded by cock-sucking."

Sodomy 101

The growing role of "queer studies" was evident by the MLA's 20-plus sessions to the subject. Most panels followed a similar routine of openly gay professors talking about sex acts and gay activism.

Among the most flamboyant of the programs were the three sessions of the "Perpetual States of Sodomy" trilogy, focusing on the history of sodomy. Nicholas Radel of Furman University, and James Douglas Penney and Robert Odom, both of Cornell, graphically described acts of sodomy committed during the Middle Ages.

Radel's paper "Speaking Sodomy: Early Modern Satire and the Castlehaven Case Revisited" discussed the sodomy trial of the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven. "I want to begin tonight with the question, can the sodomite speak… We cannot argue the issue that there is a sodomite in the early modern period, let alone ask him to speak." He went into great detail describing how sodomy at the time was not just defined as anal intercourse, but other sexual perversions as well.

Homosexuality and Marxism meshed during the MLA's "Queer Marxisms." Some speakers wanted an end to "gay pride" parades because they were not confrontational. They worried that the gay rights movement is being "encapsulated" by the "comodification" and "heteronormativity" of capitalism. The only way for gay activists to maintain the dignity of their cause is to embrace Marxism, they concluded. Elisa Glick explained, "The [gay] pride march has been criticized in recent years by some activists for abandoning the confrontational strategies of liberationists… Such calibrations serve as marketing events for electoral candidates, banks, and liquor distributors, and primarily represent those white gay male citizens targeted by the niche market. In short, identity politics and identity based consumption cohere in the new and improved gay pride, which thanks to corporate sponsorship is now brought to us courtesy of Bud Light."

At "Race-ing and Engendering Queer Pedagogy and Scholarship," the President of the MLA's Gay and Lesbian Caucus, Linda Garber of Santa Clara University, made the battle cry of "leave it to beaver," and talked about her experiences at the "Dyke 2K March" in San Francisco. She encouraged all women to go topless as they did at the march, arguing, "Think about gender fuck and androgyny… If men can do it, why can't we?"

"White women dream about half-bread Indian men from horse cultures. Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamy. When the Indian man unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of top soil," argued Stephen F. Evans, who added, "Fucking an Indian doesn't make me an Indian." His paper, "What is an Indian?: Sex-Gender Variability, 'Indianness,' and Sherman Alexie's The Toughest Indian in the World," called for society to create more genders, as he maintains Native Americans did. He claims that some tribes had six different genders. "American Indian groups have at least six alternative gender styles, women and men, not men, which are biological women that assume some aspects of male roles, not men which are biological men who assume some aspects of female roles, lesbians and gays."

Creating more genders was also discussed in "Butch Art." Here, lesbians called the two gender system "out dated," and accused it of "primitivism." Jamie Hovey of the University of Illinois, Chicago, professed in her paper, "Primitive Butch Gallantry," "It struck me that a lot about our theorizing about gender in the last ten years has actually been based on a queerization of gender based on femininity about masquerading and performance and preformativity." In her opinion, true courtly love was between people married to other people, therefore the marriage system should be done away with. "Courtly love can turn women into men and precisely allow women to desire other women as a man might… Lesbian love was a gallant love. The love that gives what man does not have… They try to redress the injustice of not having, by becoming a subject who has and who gives to those who do not have."

'Black Power' in Alien and Night of the Living Dead?

"Radical Renegotiations: South Asians and African Americans" featured an Indian American panel discussing the two men whom they feel understand India best, Karl Marx and W.E.B. Du Bois. Biman Basu of Hobart College and William Smith College, explained that Du Bois and other black radicals understand the "historicity" of the "undeconstructable" Indian culture. The panel encouraged Indian Americans to embrace Marx and become just a militant as certain black radicals, because it is only through confrontation that Indian Americans can achieve political power.

During a panel entitled "Sex With Aliens," Brooklyn College's George P. Cunningham spoke elequently to a packed audience about what he saw as the most important film to symbolize the Civil Rights Movement: Night of the Living Dead. According to Cunningham, Night of the Living Dead is not simply a horror movie. The zombies in the film represent blacks rising up against the white middle class. "Night of the Living Dead begins with the failure of community. Particularly with the failure of manhood." The main character Ben, who is black, denies his race and fights the zombies to protect his white girlfriend. But in the film's climax, Ben himself becomes a zombie. Cunningham explained how in Ben's transformation, he comes to terms with his race and turns to killing whites. The movie ends with the villagers cutting up zombies, a scene that Cunningham says represents the lynching of blacks.

Race and science fiction also played a role in a lecture by Curtis Frank Marez of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Marez's hypothisis is that Westerners who claim to be obducted by aliens are really imagining themselves as Native Americans being enslaved by whites. He concludes that since the aliens are more advanced than humans, they are natrally Marxists.

"Sex With Aliens" continued with Marie Lathers of Case Western University analyzing the "racism" and "speciesism" of Curious George. According to Lathers, Curious George is not an entertaining children's story, but a racist manifesto. In the story, George the monkey is brought to America from Africa and becomes a NASA test pilot. She explained to an enthralled audeince that the book is actually justifying slavery. Lathers believes that George is a black man who is enslaved in Africa and brought to America for labor. The story is also harmful to children because it portrays experimentation on animals as fun. This is what she calls "speciesism." Lathers criticized the story as "sexist" for showing a monkey as the best test pilot. According to her, NASA passed over dozens of women test pilots for apes.

Marie Lather also found fault with the film Alien for the same reasons. In the film an almost all white crew fight to kill an alien infesting their spaceship. However, according to Lather, the alien is really a black man, and the racist white astronauts are hunting him down because they don't want any blacks in space. She accused director Ridley Scott of pushing a racist political agenda of an all white future.

The positive side to Alien, according to Lather, depicts "species eroticism." She believes that the film's heroin, Ripley, is sexually attracked to the alien. For example, in one scene, Ripley undresses in front of the alien. But Ripley is in such denial about her infatuation that she must kill the alien.

The Language of Politics Not Literature

The founding goal of the MLA was to advance the study of literature. Now their purpose seems to be to push a political agenda. Social movements and not literature continue to be the center of the MLA.

As America's largest scholarly organization, the MLA has influence over English and literature at nearly every college in the country. Now these English professors will return to their lecture halls to preach the ideas fashionable at the MLA.