- Email: [email protected]
The politics of geography:
Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12 www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
The politics of geography: hate mail, rabid referees, and culture wars Michael Dear Southern California Studies Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1696, USA
Abstract The politics of the discipline of geography contains an unacceptable measure of hate, reflected in the antagonisms that I have experienced, and in the more serious attacks endured by others. Hate is situated most tellingly in personal identity and antipathy, but also in the culture of professional practice. Its consequences are so dire that a discipline-wide response is urgent and imperative. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Subversive scum UnAmerican trash Eco-freaky New Age naturalist Academic charlatanism Self-indulgent pompous pontification Evangelical zealot Brooks Brothers, Wall Street ad man Postmodern dementia Quasi-colonial[ist] These are a few of the none-too-subtle terms that have been used to describe me and my work by anonymous and signed critics, in published and unpublished communications, since I began collecting ‘hate mail’ in the mid-1980s. Tradition has it that academic discourse is a fairly civilized process of argument and counter-argu-
E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Dear). 0962-6298/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 3 3 - 0
2
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
ment toward some greater consensus on understanding, a progression even toward truth. Truth be told, however, it has been anything but that in my experience. For the past decade-and-a-half I have remained silent about these attacks, assuming they were aberrant events that I and my weirdness had somehow brought upon myself. But as the file on ‘hate mail’ thickened, I began a series of conversations with other victims, and it quickly became clear that oftentimes vicious personal attacks are a commonplace experience among geographers. (My assumption is that they are pervasive in other disciplines, too, but I have not attempted to verify this inference.) I had also recently completed the manuscript of my latest book, The Postmodern Urban Condition, in which I had begun an attempt to build a politics of postmodernity, starting from a personal politics of identity and proceeding towards a geopolitics of postmodernity (Dear, 2000). This work had made me very sensitive to the fundamental role of the personal in politics. And so, I undertook a more directed inquiry into mine and others’ experiences of ‘hate mail’ in geography. The word ‘hate’ is defined in my dictionary as having “feelings of hostility or strong antipathy towards.” This is an exceptionally broad remit, which I shall deliberately exploit to emphasize the continuum of emotions that may encompass the transitory rebuff as well as the sometimes lethal actions of criminal behavior. I shall use the term ‘hate mail’ loosely to describe correspondence of a professional or personal nature that intrudes in a hurtful, damaging or threatening way on the reputation, conduct and well-being of the targeted individual. I realize that these are somewhat tenuous points of departure, since there is much ambiguity in what constitutes ‘hate.’ For example, there are many degrees of antipathy, ranging from irritation, through harassment, to murderous intent. In addition, one’s personal response to a hate event can be highly variable; what is hurtful to one individual may be laughingly dismissed by another. Irritation, antipathy and hate are also manifest in a myriad different contexts, including the refereeing process, sexual harassment in the office, letters of reference, tenure and appointment practices, personal interactions, and so on. In short, hate is a messy business, difficult to discuss, and sometimes seemingly impossible to address head-on. In this presentation, I shall begin simply and personally. I want to explore the nature of the various kinds of personal attacks I have suffered; to try to account for these attacks; and to contextualize my experiences with the experiences of others who have endured much worse than me. I shall end with some suggestions for combating hate, and a warning that everyone in the discipline needs to take seriously these ‘politics of geography,’ which at one level are a reflection of a common (though regrettable) humanity, but at another level have no place in academic life. In my experience, these tirades have reached such a volume that they are now an almost daily presence in my professional life. The individual events that I report, taken separately, may seem inconsequential, and I have no intention of presenting my experiences as worst-case scenarios. Before beginning, I should mention that although I have talked with many individuals and consulted many sources, the people who appear in this presentation by and large remain anonymous. I have taken this unusual step sometimes out of necessity, since certain materials have been delivered unsigned, but (more importantly) I have
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
3
felt it necessary to protect the identity and respect the privacy of my informants. Even in the case of already-published materials, I maintain the cloak of anonymity in order to preserve the focus on issues, and not on personalities. Let me also make clear that if I deal with these issues in a light or even humorous fashion, this is simply my own way of dealing with an angry and difficult topic. In no way is it intended to diminish the anguish and seriousness of people’s experiences in this realm. Hate mail, rabid referees, and culture wars During my academic career, I have been branded with many names — all intended pejoratively. These appellations include Marxist, postmodernist, liberal, and corporate apologist, together with other names of more generic insult, such as freak, zealot, and Eurotrash. Everyone who is in some way engaged in scholarship has experienced the rough-and-tumble of academic life. For instance, a lot of personal pride and ambition gets squelched during the infantilizing process we call tenure; and few of us have avoided the (usually fleeting) outrage sparked by an injudicious referee’s report, or the casual cutting comment at a conference. Yet life has a way of preparing us for unwelcome slights — on more than one continent have I been invited to go back to where I came from! Let me begin by selecting some of the choicest morsels from my files. Some of these will seem to be relatively mild, part of the regular process of academic dispute. Other instances will appear more bruising, a distinct escalation of the stakes. But this is precisely the point that I will seek to establish in these introductory remarks: that there is a gradation in the hate attacks, and it is a far from simple task to determine exactly where the division lies between acceptable debate and unacceptable slur. I shall also argue that the culture of criticism that encourages debate is also one that, unchecked, may actually promote hate. In recent years, my efforts to engage the postmodern seem to have elicited the purplest prose. Many referees greeted my article on ‘Postmodern Urbanism’ with gleeful poison (Dear & Flusty, 1998). One stated: “This is the worst paper I have reviewed in the past 25 years.” Another commented: “This paper sets us all back many years…the paper has no redeeming scholarly value.” The latter part of that paper, it was claimed, goes really “wacky,” with an “eco-freaky New Age naturalist frenzy of neologorrhea.” (This last complaint — quite a clever coinage, I thought — was in response to the rash of neologisms that were introduced in the essay.) There is also an “anti-Los Angeles” seam coursing through many of these criticisms. Critics refer to the “alleged ‘LA School’,” for instance, or my “most precious LA area.” Some inspired antagonists even managed simultaneously to put down the LA School and my treatment of it, as a: …misguided manipulation of the major works of the so-called LA School and an irresponsibly sloppy foray into a sort of postmodern dementia. Now, I am certainly guilty of living and working in Los Angeles. I am also aging
4
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
on a daily basis. But I like to think that I resist the onset of dementia with some panache, even as I labor to set the discipline back several decades! Regional animosities form a small but significant part of this story. One of my well-dressed colleagues (in another discipline) is known as ‘Professor Hollywood’ because of his attention to appearance. Of course, women regularly are obliged to worry about their appearance; the perceived merit of a female job candidate may stand or fall (quite literally) on the properly-chosen heel height. I was once referred to as postmodernism’s “best known Brooks Brothers, Wall Street ad man.” It certainly seems that attention to appearance is, for many scholars, ipso facto evidence of diminished intelligence; they appear to prefer a culture of austerity and asceticism more in keeping with a medieval monastery. The full-frontal attack from anti-postmodernists is undoubtedly linked to the broader conduct of the contemporary culture wars. In an article urging that postmodern urbanism was a dead end, one critic concluded: If Dear’s 1988 article served as a birth announcement for postmodernism in geography, Dear and Flusty’s Annals piece properly should be read as an obituary. This article gave us an opportunity to take a reasonably unobstructed look at the emperor, and yes, he has no clothes. It is time for the next generation of geographers to start putting the first nail in the coffin before the ghost of postmodernism comes out to haunt us again. The same complainant also betrayed a certain proclivity for medical metaphors, claiming that: “postmodern discourse has permeated certain subfields of geography like a virus.” In another blunt attack, my postmodernism was likened to a form of “academic AIDS.” The very explicit intent of such a metaphor is to sexualize my work and my person. Postmodernism, so the reference implies, is some potentially deadly contagion that I brought upon myself; and, moreover, I am now willfully going about infecting other people, most especially young students. The “emperor with no clothes” analogy is one more critical favorite. An outraged correspondent pleaded to be left alone to do his work, without being hounded by evangelical zealots because we are totally indifferent to the new religion, the new messiah, and his new clothes. Now, I had assumed that if one didn’t like a published paper, one could simply ignore it, turn the page. I have never hounded people to read my professional contributions. Nor did I imagine I had the power to impact an individual’s personal research timetable (to add to my already considerable powers to set the discipline on a backward track). But, once we leave behind prurient interest in my clothing and nudity, perhaps there is more to excavate in the evangelical trope? My persecuted interlocutor avows that he had until recently avoided postmodernism: “Not deliberately. I had just not
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
5
stepped in it.” (The choice of animalistic and excretory references are typical of the language of such missives). He complains: I suggest that your paper is best characterized by “evangelism”: or, “I am the way, the truth and the light.” If I wrote the same way, my ms [sic] would either be rejected, or dismissed as arrogance. But not you. Why? Instead the acolytes or disciples of postmodernism flock to hear you espouse the new religion. Why? What is the essential difference between your message and that of any other zealot? Am I correct in hearing the nails-on-blackboard screeching of an under-appreciated professional ego at work in this put-down? The need to cut me down for striving for something new and different is what Australians evocatively refer to as the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. Mere reputation becomes an invitation to hostility. Somewhere along the line, these kinds of diatribe become more insistent in their demands. An anti-postmodernist wrote to the Association of American Geographers clamoring that I be ‘invited to resign’ from my position as Associate Editor of the Annals. When such letters and commentaries contain threats, they leave behind the rhetorical flights of rabid referees and culture warriors, and enter the world of hate. One such letter threatened more direct actions by some unidentified coalition of opponents: I strongly believe that this matter cannot be closed like this. Further actions (I regret that sometimes may be unpleasant for the parties involved) will be taken…I trust you will cooperate with us to get this resolved via fair, civil discourse. Presumably the “fair, civil discourse” being advocated somehow accommodated the “unpleasant” actions that “will be taken” against me. The amorphous, apoplectic whirlwinds of insults that occasionally come my way rarely ascend to the level of coherence. A group of letters sent anonymously to the AAG and many of its members in the mid-1980s professed to recognize a cabal of Marxist geographers intent on destroying the discipline, the USA, and capitalism. In one letter, I was identified as “un-American trash,” and a “subversive scum.” Apart from complaints about political/ideological deviance, these letters are usually replete with reference to the alleged diseases, sexual perversions, criminal behaviors, and treasonous intentions of this “band of fraudulent and unethical Marxist academics.” It surprises me (although perhaps it shouldn’t) that ideological attacks are sometimes borrowed uncritically by mainstream media. In an unsigned article on Los Angeles (back again with everyone’s favorite dystopia!), picturesquely entitled ‘City of Frauds,’ The Economist of 12/12/98 (p.31) commented: …LA’s universities are full of left-leaning scholars who regard their city as exhibit number one in their case against capitalism. (Michael Dear, the head of USC’s Southern California study centre [sic], for example, argues that LA presents
6
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
“a superficial gloss of striking beauty, glowing light and pastel hues which together conspire to conceal a hideous culture of malice, mistrust and mutiny.”) (The Economist, 1998) Oddly enough, people on the left usually dislike my politics, too. In a contribution to a symposium on ‘Postmodern Urbanism,’ a commentator decried the absence of the real world from the article, and implied that postmodern theorists should stop navel-gazing and get on with grass-roots work that truly matters. He writes: Where in Dear and Flusty’s account are the voices from within the life world of Los Angeles?…[Theirs is] an arrogant perspective, a postmodern version of blaming the victim. It is entirely divorced from the vision of the city and its residents I have gained from working with community groups engaged in neighborhood-based revitalization in Newark, New Jersey, one of the most impoverished and disempowered cities in the country. This kind of crude credentialism (along with further echoes of regional antipathies) elevates practice over theory, and the critic’s commitment and experience over mine (though I doubt he knows much about the extent of Flusty’s and my professional practice). Neither tactic is a defense against the postmodern, attempting only to denigrate the thought by devaluing the person. In sorting through all these experiences, I believe I can recognize three kinds of attack: 1. from rabid referees, who (for whatever reason) decide to go overboard in their response to my writings; 2. from combatants in the culture wars, who declare that I am a prophet of evil (it doesn’t really matter what kind of evil) and consequently should be ignored or silenced; and 3. from hate-mongers, people whose intense personal antipathy seems to know no limits, and whose attacks employ any convenient cudgel to bash or otherwise threaten the victim. These complaints usually combine the personal and the professional. As part of the ongoing culture wars, my ostensible Marxism, postmodernism, and colonialist attitudes are variously invoked; and to buttress such academic deviance, personal qualities such as my national origin and style of dress are mobilized, along with negative perceptions of my zealotry, sexuality, health status, where I live, plus whatever else can be enlisted to devalue my self and my work. It is a slippery slope that begins with a grab-bag of seemingly minor complaints, only to descend into disdain, threat, and (ultimately) hate. I am not claiming that the experiences that I report here are indicative of a damaging, orchestrated campaign of hate; nor do I present myself as some kind of martyr to an intellectual crusade. My personal experiences are but a prelude to the more wicked attacks that others have suffered in our discipline.
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
7
Hate in geography and the geography of hate Hate is, as I have suggested, a difficult word, implying a broad continuum of antipathies and hostilities. Section 13023 of the California Penal Code defines a hate crime as any criminal attack or attempted criminal act motivated by hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability. The latest available statistics from the California Department of Justice reported 1750 hate crimes state-wide in 1998, categorized as follows: Hate crimes based on race/ethnicity: 65% Hate crimes based on sexual orientation: 22% Hate crimes based on religion: 13% Only 0.2% of reported hate crimes are based on physical or mental disability. Needless to say, these figures underestimate the true extent of the problem. As many as 60 percent of hate crime victims never report crimes to law enforcement agencies, and non-report rates vary significantly among victim sub-categories. For example, some estimates suggest that only 10 percent of hate crimes in lesbian and gay communities are reported. A hate incident is similar to a hate crime, in that it is based upon the victim’s actual or perceived race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. The difference between an incident and a crime is that the incident is technically a non-criminal act. Thus, a crime may include actions that result in injury or damage to person or property, or a threat that could reasonably be anticipated to be carried through (e.g. a threat to beat someone with a baseball bat that is actually being held by a potential assailant). Incidents may include hate mail, as previously defined, or non-specific graffiti posted in public places. Using these definitions (and recognizing, of course, that they may vary across state and national boundaries), the situations I have so far described all fall under the rubric of hate incident. Adapting the terminology of the US National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, they may also be characterized as harassment (i.e. using speech and/or gestures to denigrate or demean), or intimidation, when speech or gesture escalates into a threat against a person. The former is not a crime in most jurisdictions; the latter usually qualifies as a criminal offense. What is most interesting about these definitions, at least for present purposes, is their emphasis on various kinds of personal identity as the basis for antipathy: race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, and mental and physical disability. Antagonisms based in ideology, age, gender, and national origin are not included in the State of California anti-hate laws, although they certainly should be incorporated into any comprehensive taxonomy of sources of personal antipathy, and are occasionally covered by other statutes. Yet while I readily concede the importance of personal identity in generating hate, scholarly life is also inevitably overlain by another category: professional antagonisms. These may include personal jealousies concerning perceived or actual differences in scholarly or teaching reputations, in the distribution of resources and responsibilities, in power, in popularity with students, and so on.
8
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
I think it is important not to lose sight of the machinations of professional standing, even as we understand that workplace and personal antagonisms often become hopelessly entangled in real-life disputes. Our professional practice is founded in a competitive/careerist ethos that may have bred a culture of intolerance which is by now so endemic as to provide a breeding ground for hate. For instance, junior professors well understand that they must differentiate themselves from existing canons in order to gain prominence; silver-back alpha-males often crushingly dismiss challenges to their pre-eminence in hurtful ways; the culture of celebrity and renown encourage an ubiquitous ethos favoring competition over collaboration; and there is a permanent open season on tall poppies, who are axiomatically regarded as worthy of disdain. All these strategies are ‘successful’ to the degree that they advance the belligerent’s reputation, even though the recognition thus gained may be ruefully granted. And yet, within the discipline of geography, public discussion of hate crimes, hate incidents, harassment, and intimidation are rare. Moreover, it is impossible to obtain reliable estimates of the incidence of such events, given the victim’s understandable proclivity to silence, and our universities’ penchant for covering up awkward moments. But once in a while, an issue flares up to grab attention, even if fleetingly. One of the most notable recent examples is that of Michael Storper, whose academic reputation was smeared by anonymous complainant(s) who stole letterhead from the Association of American Geographers and Harvard University Press to use in forging official-seeming censures of Storper’s scholarship. A forceful response from the AAG and Harvard silenced this particular fabrication. But other attacks on Michael have not ceased. For more than 15 years, he has endured a firestorm of hate mail attacking every conceivable aspect of his personal and professional life. One of his principal crimes is to be part of what his anonymous correspondent refers to as the “California School,” described as a “network for intellectual racketeering,” with members capable of executing enemies “academically even intellectually.” A most poignant and courageous account of harassment in geography was published by Gill Valentine (1998). Hers is a shocking tale of malicious homophobic mail, silent telephone calls, threatening voice mail messages, and the ‘outing’ of Valentine’s sexual orientation to her parents. The nine anonymous letters she received attacked the personal and the professional, including her sexual orientation, research, teaching, and graduate student supervision. Gill was left in no doubt that “the perpetrator is a member of the discipline of Geography who is closely linked to my professional networks.” (Valentine, 1998:309) A similar dispiriting conclusion was reached by the happy band of Marxist geographers whom I earlier mentioned as desiring to smash America and its educational system: that the (anonymous) writers simply knew too much about our lives and activities to be an outsider. Gill Valentine’s reaction to harassment is telling. She reports that she felt “under constant surveillance from an unseen observer” (Valentine, 1998:316); that her personal integrity, home, workplace, parents’ home, and her neighborhood had been violated. She felt as though she was being pushed out of geography, and responded by voluntarily withdrawing from disciplinary networks, abbreviating conference
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
9
appearances, and finding difficulty in writing. Most chillingly, as her secure world diminished, she became practiced at self-surveillance, i.e., being vigilant about what, if anything, I say to whom, circumspect with my friends within the discipline about what I’m doing, where I’m going, about my teaching, my work, my students, my relationships, my family, and so on. (Valentine, 1998:317) Valentine’s responses to harassment well illustrate the inevitable imbrication of professional and personal in hate messages. Many others have remarked to me how self-conscious they became about their own behavior under similar circumstances: puzzling over which gesture, which opinion, which style of dress is today likely to cause offense. Analogous experiences are described in Vera Chouinard and Ali Grant’s narratives of the “disabled woman” and the “dyke” (their terms). Here I will focus on the farreaching implications of hate in their professional lives. Both disabled woman and dyke spend a lot of time fighting for “everyday spaces” in the geography department (Chouinard & Grant, 1996:174). They assert that the geographies of homosexuals and marginalized people do not attract career- and status-minded academics. And they point out how typical academic performance measures (such as attending a conference) can be discriminatory, and fail to concede just how difficult it is for a disabled person to “produce even a single paper” (Chouinard & Grant, 1996:181). In the same way that Reg Golledge drew attention to the difficulties of visionimpaired people in accessing a campus, Chouinard describes how her life is consumed by simply getting to her office, in a built environment that is inimical to the physically disabled. Now, it may seem that I have strayed far from the topics of rabid referees, hate mail, and culture wars; that access for physically-disabled people has little connection with the grotesqueries that Michael Storper and Gill Valentine had to tolerate. But I cannot agree. Hate is primevally sited in identity: in gender, age, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, and national origin. We might want to add height, weight, and other human characteristics to this list, since there seems to be no end to the list of characteristics people will employ to differentiate and discredit. There is, in my mind, no well-marked division along the spectrum of hate that leads progressively from difference to stigma, from stigma to discrimination, and from discrimination to hate. Ultimately, death threats become the backdrop to the lecture (Hirabayashi, 2000). The continuum that I am insisting upon is inseparable from the politics of the profession. It seems to be of a piece in understanding the genesis of antipathies, the poor letter of recommendation, the antagonistic work environment, hate mail, harassment, and threatening behavior. In some ways, this whole issue is about recognizing limits. And while it may be difficult to pinpoint the precise level at which legitimate academic discourse crosses the margins of good taste, it is not difficult to identify and categorize the injustices suffered by Michael Storper, Gill Valentine, Vera Chouinard, and Ali Grant. Moreover, it is easy to assert that while human nature sometimes incorporates vindictive
10
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
and dishonorable behavior, the culture of criticism in academic life plays an important role in generating hate.
Overcoming the silence Even though I am not as slim nor as youthful as I once was, I am still a white, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied male. Yet hate knows no boundaries; the privileged tall poppies and the beginning assistant professor are equal assault opportunities. So: what is to be done? I cannot claim to answer all the questions raised in this essay. But two things stand out in this inquiry: first, the silence surrounding the topic, including for instance the vacuum greeting Gill Valentine’s revelations; and second, the role that close professional networks have in harboring/generating the vilest examples of hatred. Silence is the ally of hatred, the enemy of tolerance. If a victim can be intimidated into silence, then s/he is defeated, left alone to inwardly digest the bile, and cower fearfully in anticipation of the next attack. This kind of secondary victimization can be as debilitating as the primary attack. (Gill Valentine refers to the way in which daily mail deliveries became a trial, instead of a pleasant diversion.) And it is easy to understand the reactions of more aggrieved victims who simply want to bury an unpleasant memory, not draw attention to themselves, and avoid provoking suspicions that where there is smoke there must be fire. If they respond to attacks, victims quickly become public figures, remembered principally as persons who suffered this or that indignity. They may even be blamed for the transgression of making themselves (or their experiences) the subject of public discourse. It is also easy to sympathize with commentators like myself who find themselves in difficulties as they write about the victims’ woes, striving to contain their personal outrage, wrestling to convert this outrage into measured tones, and struggling to avoid seeming to exploit or aggravate an already awful situation. Under these circumstances, the silence that greets hate is usually the sound of victim and commentator clinging yet drowning together in the sadness and confusions provoked by an attack. Such responses place an even greater responsibility on the rest of us, including the professional organization of geographers. In too many of the cases I examined, the perpetrators came from inside the professional networks of the victims. This surely amounts to something more than simply the density of personal pathologies within the discipline? Perhaps the culture of criticism in our academic life (impacted by the spiteful back-stabbing of electoral politics, as well as the vitriol spiking the culture wars) is simply too ill-mannered for its own good? Perhaps we should teach our students more about the value of civility in academic discourse, assuming of course that we know what it looks like? (It is certainly true that several senior academics have provided a poor lead in this regard.) Too many of the people I interviewed mentioned the lack of a respectful culture of criticism in geography. Without significant changes in our professional culture, our collective disciplinary memory is destined to coagulate into one of intolerance, discrimination, and marginalization. This is a distinctly unwelcome prospect.
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
11
But how is a poisonous culture of criticism to be resuscitated? In the final analysis, the apparently pervasive nature of hate in the politics of geography is everyone’s business. It undermines everyone’s personal and professional integrity. At a minimum, we should collectively, urgently undertake the following: 앫 Stop the ‘doubting game’ and substitute the ‘believing game.’ In a powerful critique, Deborah Tannen (2000) suggested that the ritualized oppositions that are endemic to academic life are actually bad for it. Conferences and seminars promise a public execution, in which the skill of the kill is hoarsely cheered by onlookers. Tannen urges us to stop looking for faults (the doubting game) and instead to search for strengths (the believing game). 앫 Move from a politics of ‘difference’ to a politics of ‘recognition.’ Hatred based on personal difference is corrosive to the human spirit, and is never the path to understanding. Its cumulative impact is to put everyone on the defensive, fearful of new ideas or of questioning received wisdom. Charles Taylor (1985) advocates translating difference into a positive asset, recognizing and embracing diversity as a source of knowledge and understanding, not a pretext to assault. 앫 Lead by example in classroom, seminar, and professional practice. Teachers should teach civility; referees should practice the believing game; editors should reject hateful tracts; professional organizations should promulgate and promote rules of honorable practice; and silent victims should scream their outrage. It is not hard to begin the process of outlawing hate in our discipline. Once, as a guest lecturer, I had just finished a presentation on postmodernism. The departmental chair rose to speak: “I liked your earlier work,” he opined and promptly sat down. All very witty, I suppose, but this opened the floodgates for intemperate attacks from many quarters in the audience, from emeritus professors and undergraduates, each one legitimized by the chair’s lead. Contrast this with another occasion when a brash graduate student greeted a presentation by a very prominent visiting professor with words to the effect that it was empty, even stupid. As the audience filed out of the seminar room, the departmental chair collared the student, and told him publicly and volubly in everyone’s presence never, ever again to speak that way to a visiting scholar. So, we can practice anti-hate daily in our personal lives. Today. But our professional associations should also respond to the poison. The Association of American Geographers’ Statement on Professional Ethics reads as follows (in part): …it is the moral responsibility of geographers to respect the dignity of persons, to value a diversity of intellectual commitments and projects, and to treat colleagues with civil collegiality. (Association of American Geographers, 1999:259) On the evidence of this essay, we do not do these things. My questions are: Why not? And what will we now do about it?
12
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to the many geographers who have discussed their experiences of hate with me, and whose insights form the basis for this essay. I have elected to retain the anonymity of my collaborators even when they have not requested it, in order to ensure that they do not become targets of hate in geography.
References Association of American Geographers (1999). Statement on Professional Ethics, Ethics, Place and Environment 2, 258–266. Chouinard, V., & Grant, A. (1996). On being not even anywhere near ‘The Project;’. In N. Duncan, Body Space (pp. 170–193). London and New York: Routledge. Dear, M. (2000). The Postmodern Urban Condition. Oxford: Blackwell. Dear, M., & Flusty, S. (1998). Postmodern urbanism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88, 50–72. Hirabayashi, L. R. (2000). How a death threat became an opportunity to connect with my students. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12, B10. Tannen, D. (2000). Agonism in the academy: surviving higher learning’s argument culture. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 31, B7–B8. Taylor, C. (1985). Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Economist (1998). City of Frauds, December 12, p. 31. Valentine, A. (1998). ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones:’ a personal geography of harassment. Antipode, 30, 305–332.
The politics of geography: hate mail, rabid referees, and culture wars Michael Dear Southern California Studies Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1696, USA
Abstract The politics of the discipline of geography contains an unacceptable measure of hate, reflected in the antagonisms that I have experienced, and in the more serious attacks endured by others. Hate is situated most tellingly in personal identity and antipathy, but also in the culture of professional practice. Its consequences are so dire that a discipline-wide response is urgent and imperative. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Subversive scum UnAmerican trash Eco-freaky New Age naturalist Academic charlatanism Self-indulgent pompous pontification Evangelical zealot Brooks Brothers, Wall Street ad man Postmodern dementia Quasi-colonial[ist] These are a few of the none-too-subtle terms that have been used to describe me and my work by anonymous and signed critics, in published and unpublished communications, since I began collecting ‘hate mail’ in the mid-1980s. Tradition has it that academic discourse is a fairly civilized process of argument and counter-argu-
E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Dear). 0962-6298/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 3 3 - 0
2
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
ment toward some greater consensus on understanding, a progression even toward truth. Truth be told, however, it has been anything but that in my experience. For the past decade-and-a-half I have remained silent about these attacks, assuming they were aberrant events that I and my weirdness had somehow brought upon myself. But as the file on ‘hate mail’ thickened, I began a series of conversations with other victims, and it quickly became clear that oftentimes vicious personal attacks are a commonplace experience among geographers. (My assumption is that they are pervasive in other disciplines, too, but I have not attempted to verify this inference.) I had also recently completed the manuscript of my latest book, The Postmodern Urban Condition, in which I had begun an attempt to build a politics of postmodernity, starting from a personal politics of identity and proceeding towards a geopolitics of postmodernity (Dear, 2000). This work had made me very sensitive to the fundamental role of the personal in politics. And so, I undertook a more directed inquiry into mine and others’ experiences of ‘hate mail’ in geography. The word ‘hate’ is defined in my dictionary as having “feelings of hostility or strong antipathy towards.” This is an exceptionally broad remit, which I shall deliberately exploit to emphasize the continuum of emotions that may encompass the transitory rebuff as well as the sometimes lethal actions of criminal behavior. I shall use the term ‘hate mail’ loosely to describe correspondence of a professional or personal nature that intrudes in a hurtful, damaging or threatening way on the reputation, conduct and well-being of the targeted individual. I realize that these are somewhat tenuous points of departure, since there is much ambiguity in what constitutes ‘hate.’ For example, there are many degrees of antipathy, ranging from irritation, through harassment, to murderous intent. In addition, one’s personal response to a hate event can be highly variable; what is hurtful to one individual may be laughingly dismissed by another. Irritation, antipathy and hate are also manifest in a myriad different contexts, including the refereeing process, sexual harassment in the office, letters of reference, tenure and appointment practices, personal interactions, and so on. In short, hate is a messy business, difficult to discuss, and sometimes seemingly impossible to address head-on. In this presentation, I shall begin simply and personally. I want to explore the nature of the various kinds of personal attacks I have suffered; to try to account for these attacks; and to contextualize my experiences with the experiences of others who have endured much worse than me. I shall end with some suggestions for combating hate, and a warning that everyone in the discipline needs to take seriously these ‘politics of geography,’ which at one level are a reflection of a common (though regrettable) humanity, but at another level have no place in academic life. In my experience, these tirades have reached such a volume that they are now an almost daily presence in my professional life. The individual events that I report, taken separately, may seem inconsequential, and I have no intention of presenting my experiences as worst-case scenarios. Before beginning, I should mention that although I have talked with many individuals and consulted many sources, the people who appear in this presentation by and large remain anonymous. I have taken this unusual step sometimes out of necessity, since certain materials have been delivered unsigned, but (more importantly) I have
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
3
felt it necessary to protect the identity and respect the privacy of my informants. Even in the case of already-published materials, I maintain the cloak of anonymity in order to preserve the focus on issues, and not on personalities. Let me also make clear that if I deal with these issues in a light or even humorous fashion, this is simply my own way of dealing with an angry and difficult topic. In no way is it intended to diminish the anguish and seriousness of people’s experiences in this realm. Hate mail, rabid referees, and culture wars During my academic career, I have been branded with many names — all intended pejoratively. These appellations include Marxist, postmodernist, liberal, and corporate apologist, together with other names of more generic insult, such as freak, zealot, and Eurotrash. Everyone who is in some way engaged in scholarship has experienced the rough-and-tumble of academic life. For instance, a lot of personal pride and ambition gets squelched during the infantilizing process we call tenure; and few of us have avoided the (usually fleeting) outrage sparked by an injudicious referee’s report, or the casual cutting comment at a conference. Yet life has a way of preparing us for unwelcome slights — on more than one continent have I been invited to go back to where I came from! Let me begin by selecting some of the choicest morsels from my files. Some of these will seem to be relatively mild, part of the regular process of academic dispute. Other instances will appear more bruising, a distinct escalation of the stakes. But this is precisely the point that I will seek to establish in these introductory remarks: that there is a gradation in the hate attacks, and it is a far from simple task to determine exactly where the division lies between acceptable debate and unacceptable slur. I shall also argue that the culture of criticism that encourages debate is also one that, unchecked, may actually promote hate. In recent years, my efforts to engage the postmodern seem to have elicited the purplest prose. Many referees greeted my article on ‘Postmodern Urbanism’ with gleeful poison (Dear & Flusty, 1998). One stated: “This is the worst paper I have reviewed in the past 25 years.” Another commented: “This paper sets us all back many years…the paper has no redeeming scholarly value.” The latter part of that paper, it was claimed, goes really “wacky,” with an “eco-freaky New Age naturalist frenzy of neologorrhea.” (This last complaint — quite a clever coinage, I thought — was in response to the rash of neologisms that were introduced in the essay.) There is also an “anti-Los Angeles” seam coursing through many of these criticisms. Critics refer to the “alleged ‘LA School’,” for instance, or my “most precious LA area.” Some inspired antagonists even managed simultaneously to put down the LA School and my treatment of it, as a: …misguided manipulation of the major works of the so-called LA School and an irresponsibly sloppy foray into a sort of postmodern dementia. Now, I am certainly guilty of living and working in Los Angeles. I am also aging
4
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
on a daily basis. But I like to think that I resist the onset of dementia with some panache, even as I labor to set the discipline back several decades! Regional animosities form a small but significant part of this story. One of my well-dressed colleagues (in another discipline) is known as ‘Professor Hollywood’ because of his attention to appearance. Of course, women regularly are obliged to worry about their appearance; the perceived merit of a female job candidate may stand or fall (quite literally) on the properly-chosen heel height. I was once referred to as postmodernism’s “best known Brooks Brothers, Wall Street ad man.” It certainly seems that attention to appearance is, for many scholars, ipso facto evidence of diminished intelligence; they appear to prefer a culture of austerity and asceticism more in keeping with a medieval monastery. The full-frontal attack from anti-postmodernists is undoubtedly linked to the broader conduct of the contemporary culture wars. In an article urging that postmodern urbanism was a dead end, one critic concluded: If Dear’s 1988 article served as a birth announcement for postmodernism in geography, Dear and Flusty’s Annals piece properly should be read as an obituary. This article gave us an opportunity to take a reasonably unobstructed look at the emperor, and yes, he has no clothes. It is time for the next generation of geographers to start putting the first nail in the coffin before the ghost of postmodernism comes out to haunt us again. The same complainant also betrayed a certain proclivity for medical metaphors, claiming that: “postmodern discourse has permeated certain subfields of geography like a virus.” In another blunt attack, my postmodernism was likened to a form of “academic AIDS.” The very explicit intent of such a metaphor is to sexualize my work and my person. Postmodernism, so the reference implies, is some potentially deadly contagion that I brought upon myself; and, moreover, I am now willfully going about infecting other people, most especially young students. The “emperor with no clothes” analogy is one more critical favorite. An outraged correspondent pleaded to be left alone to do his work, without being hounded by evangelical zealots because we are totally indifferent to the new religion, the new messiah, and his new clothes. Now, I had assumed that if one didn’t like a published paper, one could simply ignore it, turn the page. I have never hounded people to read my professional contributions. Nor did I imagine I had the power to impact an individual’s personal research timetable (to add to my already considerable powers to set the discipline on a backward track). But, once we leave behind prurient interest in my clothing and nudity, perhaps there is more to excavate in the evangelical trope? My persecuted interlocutor avows that he had until recently avoided postmodernism: “Not deliberately. I had just not
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
5
stepped in it.” (The choice of animalistic and excretory references are typical of the language of such missives). He complains: I suggest that your paper is best characterized by “evangelism”: or, “I am the way, the truth and the light.” If I wrote the same way, my ms [sic] would either be rejected, or dismissed as arrogance. But not you. Why? Instead the acolytes or disciples of postmodernism flock to hear you espouse the new religion. Why? What is the essential difference between your message and that of any other zealot? Am I correct in hearing the nails-on-blackboard screeching of an under-appreciated professional ego at work in this put-down? The need to cut me down for striving for something new and different is what Australians evocatively refer to as the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. Mere reputation becomes an invitation to hostility. Somewhere along the line, these kinds of diatribe become more insistent in their demands. An anti-postmodernist wrote to the Association of American Geographers clamoring that I be ‘invited to resign’ from my position as Associate Editor of the Annals. When such letters and commentaries contain threats, they leave behind the rhetorical flights of rabid referees and culture warriors, and enter the world of hate. One such letter threatened more direct actions by some unidentified coalition of opponents: I strongly believe that this matter cannot be closed like this. Further actions (I regret that sometimes may be unpleasant for the parties involved) will be taken…I trust you will cooperate with us to get this resolved via fair, civil discourse. Presumably the “fair, civil discourse” being advocated somehow accommodated the “unpleasant” actions that “will be taken” against me. The amorphous, apoplectic whirlwinds of insults that occasionally come my way rarely ascend to the level of coherence. A group of letters sent anonymously to the AAG and many of its members in the mid-1980s professed to recognize a cabal of Marxist geographers intent on destroying the discipline, the USA, and capitalism. In one letter, I was identified as “un-American trash,” and a “subversive scum.” Apart from complaints about political/ideological deviance, these letters are usually replete with reference to the alleged diseases, sexual perversions, criminal behaviors, and treasonous intentions of this “band of fraudulent and unethical Marxist academics.” It surprises me (although perhaps it shouldn’t) that ideological attacks are sometimes borrowed uncritically by mainstream media. In an unsigned article on Los Angeles (back again with everyone’s favorite dystopia!), picturesquely entitled ‘City of Frauds,’ The Economist of 12/12/98 (p.31) commented: …LA’s universities are full of left-leaning scholars who regard their city as exhibit number one in their case against capitalism. (Michael Dear, the head of USC’s Southern California study centre [sic], for example, argues that LA presents
6
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
“a superficial gloss of striking beauty, glowing light and pastel hues which together conspire to conceal a hideous culture of malice, mistrust and mutiny.”) (The Economist, 1998) Oddly enough, people on the left usually dislike my politics, too. In a contribution to a symposium on ‘Postmodern Urbanism,’ a commentator decried the absence of the real world from the article, and implied that postmodern theorists should stop navel-gazing and get on with grass-roots work that truly matters. He writes: Where in Dear and Flusty’s account are the voices from within the life world of Los Angeles?…[Theirs is] an arrogant perspective, a postmodern version of blaming the victim. It is entirely divorced from the vision of the city and its residents I have gained from working with community groups engaged in neighborhood-based revitalization in Newark, New Jersey, one of the most impoverished and disempowered cities in the country. This kind of crude credentialism (along with further echoes of regional antipathies) elevates practice over theory, and the critic’s commitment and experience over mine (though I doubt he knows much about the extent of Flusty’s and my professional practice). Neither tactic is a defense against the postmodern, attempting only to denigrate the thought by devaluing the person. In sorting through all these experiences, I believe I can recognize three kinds of attack: 1. from rabid referees, who (for whatever reason) decide to go overboard in their response to my writings; 2. from combatants in the culture wars, who declare that I am a prophet of evil (it doesn’t really matter what kind of evil) and consequently should be ignored or silenced; and 3. from hate-mongers, people whose intense personal antipathy seems to know no limits, and whose attacks employ any convenient cudgel to bash or otherwise threaten the victim. These complaints usually combine the personal and the professional. As part of the ongoing culture wars, my ostensible Marxism, postmodernism, and colonialist attitudes are variously invoked; and to buttress such academic deviance, personal qualities such as my national origin and style of dress are mobilized, along with negative perceptions of my zealotry, sexuality, health status, where I live, plus whatever else can be enlisted to devalue my self and my work. It is a slippery slope that begins with a grab-bag of seemingly minor complaints, only to descend into disdain, threat, and (ultimately) hate. I am not claiming that the experiences that I report here are indicative of a damaging, orchestrated campaign of hate; nor do I present myself as some kind of martyr to an intellectual crusade. My personal experiences are but a prelude to the more wicked attacks that others have suffered in our discipline.
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
7
Hate in geography and the geography of hate Hate is, as I have suggested, a difficult word, implying a broad continuum of antipathies and hostilities. Section 13023 of the California Penal Code defines a hate crime as any criminal attack or attempted criminal act motivated by hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability. The latest available statistics from the California Department of Justice reported 1750 hate crimes state-wide in 1998, categorized as follows: Hate crimes based on race/ethnicity: 65% Hate crimes based on sexual orientation: 22% Hate crimes based on religion: 13% Only 0.2% of reported hate crimes are based on physical or mental disability. Needless to say, these figures underestimate the true extent of the problem. As many as 60 percent of hate crime victims never report crimes to law enforcement agencies, and non-report rates vary significantly among victim sub-categories. For example, some estimates suggest that only 10 percent of hate crimes in lesbian and gay communities are reported. A hate incident is similar to a hate crime, in that it is based upon the victim’s actual or perceived race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. The difference between an incident and a crime is that the incident is technically a non-criminal act. Thus, a crime may include actions that result in injury or damage to person or property, or a threat that could reasonably be anticipated to be carried through (e.g. a threat to beat someone with a baseball bat that is actually being held by a potential assailant). Incidents may include hate mail, as previously defined, or non-specific graffiti posted in public places. Using these definitions (and recognizing, of course, that they may vary across state and national boundaries), the situations I have so far described all fall under the rubric of hate incident. Adapting the terminology of the US National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, they may also be characterized as harassment (i.e. using speech and/or gestures to denigrate or demean), or intimidation, when speech or gesture escalates into a threat against a person. The former is not a crime in most jurisdictions; the latter usually qualifies as a criminal offense. What is most interesting about these definitions, at least for present purposes, is their emphasis on various kinds of personal identity as the basis for antipathy: race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, and mental and physical disability. Antagonisms based in ideology, age, gender, and national origin are not included in the State of California anti-hate laws, although they certainly should be incorporated into any comprehensive taxonomy of sources of personal antipathy, and are occasionally covered by other statutes. Yet while I readily concede the importance of personal identity in generating hate, scholarly life is also inevitably overlain by another category: professional antagonisms. These may include personal jealousies concerning perceived or actual differences in scholarly or teaching reputations, in the distribution of resources and responsibilities, in power, in popularity with students, and so on.
8
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
I think it is important not to lose sight of the machinations of professional standing, even as we understand that workplace and personal antagonisms often become hopelessly entangled in real-life disputes. Our professional practice is founded in a competitive/careerist ethos that may have bred a culture of intolerance which is by now so endemic as to provide a breeding ground for hate. For instance, junior professors well understand that they must differentiate themselves from existing canons in order to gain prominence; silver-back alpha-males often crushingly dismiss challenges to their pre-eminence in hurtful ways; the culture of celebrity and renown encourage an ubiquitous ethos favoring competition over collaboration; and there is a permanent open season on tall poppies, who are axiomatically regarded as worthy of disdain. All these strategies are ‘successful’ to the degree that they advance the belligerent’s reputation, even though the recognition thus gained may be ruefully granted. And yet, within the discipline of geography, public discussion of hate crimes, hate incidents, harassment, and intimidation are rare. Moreover, it is impossible to obtain reliable estimates of the incidence of such events, given the victim’s understandable proclivity to silence, and our universities’ penchant for covering up awkward moments. But once in a while, an issue flares up to grab attention, even if fleetingly. One of the most notable recent examples is that of Michael Storper, whose academic reputation was smeared by anonymous complainant(s) who stole letterhead from the Association of American Geographers and Harvard University Press to use in forging official-seeming censures of Storper’s scholarship. A forceful response from the AAG and Harvard silenced this particular fabrication. But other attacks on Michael have not ceased. For more than 15 years, he has endured a firestorm of hate mail attacking every conceivable aspect of his personal and professional life. One of his principal crimes is to be part of what his anonymous correspondent refers to as the “California School,” described as a “network for intellectual racketeering,” with members capable of executing enemies “academically even intellectually.” A most poignant and courageous account of harassment in geography was published by Gill Valentine (1998). Hers is a shocking tale of malicious homophobic mail, silent telephone calls, threatening voice mail messages, and the ‘outing’ of Valentine’s sexual orientation to her parents. The nine anonymous letters she received attacked the personal and the professional, including her sexual orientation, research, teaching, and graduate student supervision. Gill was left in no doubt that “the perpetrator is a member of the discipline of Geography who is closely linked to my professional networks.” (Valentine, 1998:309) A similar dispiriting conclusion was reached by the happy band of Marxist geographers whom I earlier mentioned as desiring to smash America and its educational system: that the (anonymous) writers simply knew too much about our lives and activities to be an outsider. Gill Valentine’s reaction to harassment is telling. She reports that she felt “under constant surveillance from an unseen observer” (Valentine, 1998:316); that her personal integrity, home, workplace, parents’ home, and her neighborhood had been violated. She felt as though she was being pushed out of geography, and responded by voluntarily withdrawing from disciplinary networks, abbreviating conference
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
9
appearances, and finding difficulty in writing. Most chillingly, as her secure world diminished, she became practiced at self-surveillance, i.e., being vigilant about what, if anything, I say to whom, circumspect with my friends within the discipline about what I’m doing, where I’m going, about my teaching, my work, my students, my relationships, my family, and so on. (Valentine, 1998:317) Valentine’s responses to harassment well illustrate the inevitable imbrication of professional and personal in hate messages. Many others have remarked to me how self-conscious they became about their own behavior under similar circumstances: puzzling over which gesture, which opinion, which style of dress is today likely to cause offense. Analogous experiences are described in Vera Chouinard and Ali Grant’s narratives of the “disabled woman” and the “dyke” (their terms). Here I will focus on the farreaching implications of hate in their professional lives. Both disabled woman and dyke spend a lot of time fighting for “everyday spaces” in the geography department (Chouinard & Grant, 1996:174). They assert that the geographies of homosexuals and marginalized people do not attract career- and status-minded academics. And they point out how typical academic performance measures (such as attending a conference) can be discriminatory, and fail to concede just how difficult it is for a disabled person to “produce even a single paper” (Chouinard & Grant, 1996:181). In the same way that Reg Golledge drew attention to the difficulties of visionimpaired people in accessing a campus, Chouinard describes how her life is consumed by simply getting to her office, in a built environment that is inimical to the physically disabled. Now, it may seem that I have strayed far from the topics of rabid referees, hate mail, and culture wars; that access for physically-disabled people has little connection with the grotesqueries that Michael Storper and Gill Valentine had to tolerate. But I cannot agree. Hate is primevally sited in identity: in gender, age, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, and national origin. We might want to add height, weight, and other human characteristics to this list, since there seems to be no end to the list of characteristics people will employ to differentiate and discredit. There is, in my mind, no well-marked division along the spectrum of hate that leads progressively from difference to stigma, from stigma to discrimination, and from discrimination to hate. Ultimately, death threats become the backdrop to the lecture (Hirabayashi, 2000). The continuum that I am insisting upon is inseparable from the politics of the profession. It seems to be of a piece in understanding the genesis of antipathies, the poor letter of recommendation, the antagonistic work environment, hate mail, harassment, and threatening behavior. In some ways, this whole issue is about recognizing limits. And while it may be difficult to pinpoint the precise level at which legitimate academic discourse crosses the margins of good taste, it is not difficult to identify and categorize the injustices suffered by Michael Storper, Gill Valentine, Vera Chouinard, and Ali Grant. Moreover, it is easy to assert that while human nature sometimes incorporates vindictive
10
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
and dishonorable behavior, the culture of criticism in academic life plays an important role in generating hate.
Overcoming the silence Even though I am not as slim nor as youthful as I once was, I am still a white, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied male. Yet hate knows no boundaries; the privileged tall poppies and the beginning assistant professor are equal assault opportunities. So: what is to be done? I cannot claim to answer all the questions raised in this essay. But two things stand out in this inquiry: first, the silence surrounding the topic, including for instance the vacuum greeting Gill Valentine’s revelations; and second, the role that close professional networks have in harboring/generating the vilest examples of hatred. Silence is the ally of hatred, the enemy of tolerance. If a victim can be intimidated into silence, then s/he is defeated, left alone to inwardly digest the bile, and cower fearfully in anticipation of the next attack. This kind of secondary victimization can be as debilitating as the primary attack. (Gill Valentine refers to the way in which daily mail deliveries became a trial, instead of a pleasant diversion.) And it is easy to understand the reactions of more aggrieved victims who simply want to bury an unpleasant memory, not draw attention to themselves, and avoid provoking suspicions that where there is smoke there must be fire. If they respond to attacks, victims quickly become public figures, remembered principally as persons who suffered this or that indignity. They may even be blamed for the transgression of making themselves (or their experiences) the subject of public discourse. It is also easy to sympathize with commentators like myself who find themselves in difficulties as they write about the victims’ woes, striving to contain their personal outrage, wrestling to convert this outrage into measured tones, and struggling to avoid seeming to exploit or aggravate an already awful situation. Under these circumstances, the silence that greets hate is usually the sound of victim and commentator clinging yet drowning together in the sadness and confusions provoked by an attack. Such responses place an even greater responsibility on the rest of us, including the professional organization of geographers. In too many of the cases I examined, the perpetrators came from inside the professional networks of the victims. This surely amounts to something more than simply the density of personal pathologies within the discipline? Perhaps the culture of criticism in our academic life (impacted by the spiteful back-stabbing of electoral politics, as well as the vitriol spiking the culture wars) is simply too ill-mannered for its own good? Perhaps we should teach our students more about the value of civility in academic discourse, assuming of course that we know what it looks like? (It is certainly true that several senior academics have provided a poor lead in this regard.) Too many of the people I interviewed mentioned the lack of a respectful culture of criticism in geography. Without significant changes in our professional culture, our collective disciplinary memory is destined to coagulate into one of intolerance, discrimination, and marginalization. This is a distinctly unwelcome prospect.
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
11
But how is a poisonous culture of criticism to be resuscitated? In the final analysis, the apparently pervasive nature of hate in the politics of geography is everyone’s business. It undermines everyone’s personal and professional integrity. At a minimum, we should collectively, urgently undertake the following: 앫 Stop the ‘doubting game’ and substitute the ‘believing game.’ In a powerful critique, Deborah Tannen (2000) suggested that the ritualized oppositions that are endemic to academic life are actually bad for it. Conferences and seminars promise a public execution, in which the skill of the kill is hoarsely cheered by onlookers. Tannen urges us to stop looking for faults (the doubting game) and instead to search for strengths (the believing game). 앫 Move from a politics of ‘difference’ to a politics of ‘recognition.’ Hatred based on personal difference is corrosive to the human spirit, and is never the path to understanding. Its cumulative impact is to put everyone on the defensive, fearful of new ideas or of questioning received wisdom. Charles Taylor (1985) advocates translating difference into a positive asset, recognizing and embracing diversity as a source of knowledge and understanding, not a pretext to assault. 앫 Lead by example in classroom, seminar, and professional practice. Teachers should teach civility; referees should practice the believing game; editors should reject hateful tracts; professional organizations should promulgate and promote rules of honorable practice; and silent victims should scream their outrage. It is not hard to begin the process of outlawing hate in our discipline. Once, as a guest lecturer, I had just finished a presentation on postmodernism. The departmental chair rose to speak: “I liked your earlier work,” he opined and promptly sat down. All very witty, I suppose, but this opened the floodgates for intemperate attacks from many quarters in the audience, from emeritus professors and undergraduates, each one legitimized by the chair’s lead. Contrast this with another occasion when a brash graduate student greeted a presentation by a very prominent visiting professor with words to the effect that it was empty, even stupid. As the audience filed out of the seminar room, the departmental chair collared the student, and told him publicly and volubly in everyone’s presence never, ever again to speak that way to a visiting scholar. So, we can practice anti-hate daily in our personal lives. Today. But our professional associations should also respond to the poison. The Association of American Geographers’ Statement on Professional Ethics reads as follows (in part): …it is the moral responsibility of geographers to respect the dignity of persons, to value a diversity of intellectual commitments and projects, and to treat colleagues with civil collegiality. (Association of American Geographers, 1999:259) On the evidence of this essay, we do not do these things. My questions are: Why not? And what will we now do about it?
12
M. Dear / Political Geography 20 (2001) 1–12
Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to the many geographers who have discussed their experiences of hate with me, and whose insights form the basis for this essay. I have elected to retain the anonymity of my collaborators even when they have not requested it, in order to ensure that they do not become targets of hate in geography.
References Association of American Geographers (1999). Statement on Professional Ethics, Ethics, Place and Environment 2, 258–266. Chouinard, V., & Grant, A. (1996). On being not even anywhere near ‘The Project;’. In N. Duncan, Body Space (pp. 170–193). London and New York: Routledge. Dear, M. (2000). The Postmodern Urban Condition. Oxford: Blackwell. Dear, M., & Flusty, S. (1998). Postmodern urbanism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88, 50–72. Hirabayashi, L. R. (2000). How a death threat became an opportunity to connect with my students. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12, B10. Tannen, D. (2000). Agonism in the academy: surviving higher learning’s argument culture. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 31, B7–B8. Taylor, C. (1985). Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Economist (1998). City of Frauds, December 12, p. 31. Valentine, A. (1998). ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones:’ a personal geography of harassment. Antipode, 30, 305–332.