Intellectuals . . . and other figures of the underworld
February 28, 2011
by Anna Lemberger
Heather Love, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, presented her research as a keynote speaker for the Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference that kicked off this Friday, the 25th of February. I was very excited to hear Love’s presentation, “Sticking Together,” after seeing she was a fellow English scholar and that her work looks at stigma, queer studies, and deviant studies—all things I love. Then when the person introducing her mentioned that Love engages with Willa Cather I was totally sold. (As a side note, I highly recommend Cather if you have not read anything by her yet.) I have to admit, however, that I found myself getting a little lost during her lecture; I struggled to understand exactly what she was arguing and how all of her examples fit together—which I suppose is appropriate considering the theme of the conference is “Ambivalence.”
Love began by discussing the definition of ambivalence and brought up interesting ideas about its connection to ethics and politics. Love stated that “the ability to tolerate ambivalence serves an ethical function.” I would agree that many people, especially in political discourse, regard ambivalence as a dangerous position. Love argues that it is much needed and should be embraced. Her comments remind me of a recent Jon Stewart episode where he interviewed Donald Rumsfeld about his new book. Stewart quotes Rumsfeld’s book saying, “Certainty with power can be dangerous.” This seems to connect well with what Love is getting at when she argues for more political ambivalence. Recent political issues have also shown the turmoil of extreme certainty.
Love sped into her most recent research on Erving Goffman and his 1963 sociological study: Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Interestingly, she is more interested in the book’s footnotes and their references to other texts and groups of social outsiders. Somehow, this has provided her with a promising model of a coalition of social outsiders, groups that include (on Goffman’s list) homosexuals, prisoners, stutterers, intellectuals . . . “and other figures of the underworld.” From what I could gather, stigma creates spoiled identities because it creates and reinforces stereotypes.
She then referenced the It Gets Better Campaign started by Dan Savage and his partner in response the high number of suicides by gay teens. First of all . . . what? I have no idea how we got on this example or how it figures into her research. I mean, it was really interesting to hear her critique of the campaign but our transition to this example was abrupt. Her main critique is that the campaign is “massively condescending” because it assumes that teens can’t see positive futures for themselves. I think Love has issue with the fact that the campaign kind of ignores the root of these traumas and also ignores that fact that things might not get better. So then what? Where can these kids go?
I am very interested to read Love’s work after her studies are complete to see if I can better connect all the dots of coalition, ambivalence, deviance, affect, and stigma. I have also been inspired to read footnotes more closely since they may contain a wealth of untapped information.
