i hate theory February 26, 2007

I’d like to start off with the fact that I’m sad I no longer get to look at pictures for my theory homework. It was a cruel step back into reality when I picked up this book last night. On that note, I think I hate Althusser.

I went into this with an open mind. How bad could it be? But after the first two paragraphs I was ready to punch someone. How many times can we fit production and produce and productive into a sentence? I’m beginning to hate theorists that decide to use one word to write their works. I feel like I’m back to Bakhtin where I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

I did kind of enjoy the part where he talks about school and education and children. “Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected ‘into production’: these are the workers or small peasants. Another portion of scholastically adapted youth carries on: and, for better or worse, it goes somewhat further, until it falls by the wayside and fills the posts of small and middle technicians, white collar workers, small and middle executives, petty bourgeois of all kinds. A last portion reaches the summit, either to fall into intellectual semi-employment, or to provide as well as the ‘intellectuals of the collective labouror’, the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional ideologists…” (1494). He discusses how children are brought up to go to school, but there is a point where they suddenly can break off and begin their own lives that don’t revolve around education. Some continue to learn, while others fill our world’s jobs. If we continue the way we are, the pattern will never be broken.

I really just didn’t like most of what I read. could be that I have theory coming out of my ears from the project this weekend, but I don’t really want to read anymore.