Whose lives do we want to examine, anyway?

I confess, like many other class members apparently, I found “The Examined Life” rather uninspiring. While I liked pieces of it, on the whole it didn’t really get my mental synapses firing. Reading the other posts on this blog did, though; thanks for that, everyone. A couple of comments in particular really resonated with me. I had the same response to Annabelle’s rhetorical question: “Theory as guidelines on how to live a human life? I don’t think so”, and Camille’s comment: “I am scared by the seemingly required use / deferral to theory” articulated my own reticence about theory in a way I hadn’t been able to. I think what I sense in these comments, and in my own thoughts about the film, is frustration with the idea (which Hardt so well expressed) that humanity needs to be “transformed”, that somehow theory has a sense of what is right and how people should behave, if only the masses (or even the doctoral students) could somehow be molded to fit the right model, or ‘buy in’ to the right idea.

Now, I realize not all theorists agree with this. Martha Nussbaum, for example, took great care to express that social theory, if it hopes to be effective or sustainable, must look at how people actually are. A theory of justice that works for everyone requires consideration not only of the different challenges facing various members of society but the very real fact that people grow and age, that our bodies today will not be those we have indefinitely. For me, this idea tied in with Cornel West’s interrogation of the Romantic Ideal, an ideal much theory has failed to challenge (even Marxist revolution, advocate for change though it is, believes than an ‘ideal’ space is possible). The belief that there is or was some universal which can accommodate everyone is bogus; can we please stop believing in it now?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that theory, at least as I understand it, falls short of grasping life. I think it can be used as a tool to explain some facets of life (hence why literary scholars have embraced it as a way of reading texts). But if we really want to take the idea of ‘examining life’ seriously, doesn’t it make sense to stop thinking about how to express our own ideas and instead learn how to listen to what ‘ordinary people’ are trying to share with us? How do we know which ideas to teach ‘the masses’ if we don’t stop and hear the kinds of ideas these people are talking about on a daily basis? Rachel articulated a version of problem well in her discussion of West’s segment: “I found it kind of hilarious to listen to him offer these points as he sits ensconced in a car, driven by the director, making comments about the ignorance of people walking around him,” believing that “there’s a lot more going on in his mind than in those of the people going by in the street”. If philosophers in the academy continue to believe that they know more about life than those walking by them in the street (particularly those uneducated people walking by), then how can we trust their ideas? If they disdain the way most people live, why do we believe that they’re ideas are right? Doesn’t this fly in the face of the democratic ideal? Doesn’t the future of our discipline depend on understanding first and foremost where other people are at, rather than assuming a) we know they aren’t where they ‘should be’, and that b) we can help them get there?

What I’m trying to say here is: what makes certain kinds of knowledge, or even particular ways of framing that knowledge, ‘better’ or ‘smarter’ or ‘right’? Why do academics believe they are closer to this sense of what’s ‘right’ than the students, or members of society, they are trying to ‘teach’ (read: indoctrinate)? If Andy is right, that “for the most part, it seemed as though the academics interviewed just enjoyed hearing themselves speak” (I agree that this is a point of frustration!), can’t we at least stop speaking as if we know the answers?

On a total aside – I watched this with my husband and he said “I learned more in listening to these guys speak for 10 minutes than I would have in reading 500 pages of their work” (some of whom he has in fact read, so this isn’t totally pulled out of thin air). To me this raised the question of why the academic community continues, for the most part, to disseminate ideas in written form. Like Camille I found myself very interested in the peripheral aspects of each sequence, rather than (just) the ideas; clearly the human brain gleans a lot from visual cues, body language, setting etc. So why not explore film? It would at least help us get away from the academic penchant for “dollar words”…