Gramsci in the Classroom

An angry bull is loose in Columbia's china shop of an English department, and his name is Antonio Gramsci. According to The New York Times, there might not be much of an English department left when he is done wreaking havoc.

"Columbia Soothes The Dogs of War In Its English Dept.," ran the wordy Times headline on Sunday, March 17. The article went on to show how years of bickering and politicking between multiculturalists and feminists on one side and traditionalists on the other has left Columbia's once-esteemed English department "a deserted village." Thirty-seven tenured or tenure-track professors currently work in the department. That number should be 46.

"Since the 1960's," writes the Times' Karen Arenson, "fights to bring the perspectives of women, ethnic minorities and gay people into the academy have consumed colleges--at Columbia, the political debates turned personal, with each side accusing the other of no longer being able to distinguish the quality of a candidate from his or her ideology."

In other words, the study of literature turned into the peddling of politics, with traditionalist scholars fighting a rear-guard action against a new wave of postmodern activists-cum-academics.

The result? Columbia's English department has quit choosing its senior faculty altogether, handing the reins to a panel of outsiders from five other schools "who are picking candidates for the open senior positions," according to the Times. In the academic world, such a move is the equivalent of President Bush allowing delegates from Brazil, Lichtenstein, and Syria to select his cabinet.

While one might be shocked to find the study of Shakespeare, Austen, and Eliot turned into a battleground for ideologies and political agendas, such a brouhaha should come as no surprise to students of the culture wars. Making something as potentially revelatory and typically banal as English into a tool "all about politics, not about literature," as one unnamed source put it, is exactly what Antonio Gramsci had in mind.

Born in 1891, Gramsci was an Italian political thinker and a committed Marxist who in the Prison Notebooks redefined contemporary Marxism. As Hudson Institute scholar John Fonte writes in Policy Review, "Power, in Gramsci's observation, is exercised by privileged groups or classes in two ways: through domination, force, or coercion; and through something called 'hegemony,' which means the ideological supremacy of a system of values that supports the class or group interests of the predominant classes or groups."

Ideology is the mother's milk of the academic left. While Marx described economic chains binding the proletarian many to the whims of a privileged few, with Gramsci no chains are required. "Subordinate groups," Fonte continues, "are influenced to internalize the value systems and world views of the privileged groups and, thus, to consent to their own marginalization."

In other words, Gramsci replaced economic determinism with cultural determinism, making the conflict between oppressed and oppressor primarily a conflict of consciousness, not finance. In the battle to determine consciousness, all life--from comic books to television to science and the study of literature--becomes political.

Thus, when a professor of literature asks what a particular plot twist or costume has to do with the "reproduction of social relations," that professor exercises his Gramscian muscle. And with the ascent of classes, majors, and even academic departments devoted to alternative or "subaltern" studies, the Gramscian project--revolution through altered consciousness--presses forward.

This is not to say that dabbling in Gramsci is a bad thing. The principle of academic freedom says all forms of theory and criticism deserve attention in the classroom. But when one perspective threatens to crowd out all others--as is apparently happening in Columbia's English department--concerned students and professors alike should yell, "Stop!"

The question remains, is theory responsible for the English department's current fracas? Or are bad manners to blame? The Times article provides no easy answers. "Faculty members say the absence of two outspoken senior professors also made the department more peaceful," writes Arenson. This would lend support to the bad manners thesis. But the parting words of one professor, Carolyn Helibrun, are instructive on this point. As the noted feminist scholar left Columbia, she found time to say, "Columbia will continue to be run by male professors who behave like little boys."

Prof. Helibrun no doubt felt Columbia's tenured English faculty acted immaturely. But is it possible to separate Helibrun's accusations of indecent behavior from her own stated political objectives? In other words, how else would Prof. Helibrun expect Columbia's male professors to behave? Not well, one thinks.

This much is clear: if both sides renounced any political objectives and focused on the impassioned study of great literature, Columbia would be a healthier place to study and teach English. But one side wants to do just that: the traditionalists, who emphasize the normative and aesthetic values of literature, don't have their academic eyes on the transformation of society. Gramscians do.

As long as the battle over ideology continues, Columbia's English students must negotiate a schizophrenic, acerbic, and antagonistic department. And that is a bunch of bull.

Matt Continetti is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.