Current college classrooms resemble old-fashioned communist party cell meetings for a very good reason: They are run by the same type of people, no matter how cutting edge their output looks.
“Even if the subject is within the historical system, it can still influence it if it knows its limits,” Professor Philip Goldstein told an audience of 25 at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference. “Equally diverse black, ethnic and post-colonial studies are manifestations of Marxism.”
Dr. Goldstein is an English professor at the University of Delaware at Wilmington, where he also moonlights as president of the faculty senate. He presided over one of several panel discussions of Marxism showcased by the MLA at its Washington, D. C. conference.
“In the early 21st Century, black, cultural, women’s studies and studies of post-colonial programs and movements have supplanted literary studies,” Dr. Goldstein noted of modern-day college curricula offerings. It is a shift in which the MLA has played a major role.
Its annual convention draws thousands of English professors and teachers from across the United States. This year’s annual meeting took place in two hotels in our nation’s capital.
The MLA is mostly known for its language and writing Stylebook. The topics discussed at the group’s annual gathering bear a remarkable resemblance to catalogue course entries at most colleges and universities.
Take the case of Kevin Floyd, an English professor at Kent State. “He specializes in Twentieth-Century U. S. Literature and Culture, Marxism, Gender Studies, and Queer Studies,” his faculty web page reads. “He typically teaches courses in literary criticism and contemporary U. S. literature.”
“He is the author of Reifying Desire: Capitalism, Male Sexuality, and Modern U. S. Culture (Minnesota, forthcoming), and of articles in Cultural Critique, Science and Society, and Social Text.” Dr. Floyd did not reveal whether he has viewed the film Brokeback Mountain at least once.
He spoke at the MLA conference on “Simultaneously Marxian and Queer Comments on Jameson, Allegory and Method.” Dr. Floyd’s big complaint is that gay rights groups are spending too much time on ballot marriage initiatives and not near enough effort on trying to overturn “neoliberal” municipal ordinances such as the one passed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani ten years ago.
That regulation forbids businesses that cater to the gay community from operating within 500 feet of a school. Dr. Floyd views the 1995 rule as a “gross human rights violation.” “Alternative sexual communities are formed by commercial public outlets,” he said.
Dr. Floyd rejects what he calls “the privatization of social feelings.” “Gay promiscuity is irreducibly political and social,” he explained.
At these MLA sessions, as at most academic conferences, the presenters present papers previously written. The young lady chosen at the last minute as a respondent to the two panelists on this panel would have provided necessary comic relief had the audience been of a more whimsical cast.
“What I got out of your paper was that if we take the private public we can mobilize for change,” she said to Dr. Floyd. He and the audience nodded vigorously.
“What I got out of your paper is that if we know our limits we can achieve significant change,” she said to Dr. Goldstein. Then Dr. Goldstein and the attendees bobbed their heads up and down enthusiastically.
Then the perky Ph. D. candidate exclaimed, “I really wish I had had the chance to read your papers.” At this point, the crowd at the lecture looked like the answer to the rhetorical query posed by stand-up comics of yesteryear: “Are you an audience or an oil painting?”
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
