People do not understand why I turned down both of the full scholarships I was offered to law schools in the 1990s. Judith explains:
[A] law full scholarship means tuition only, and an obligation on top of that to do a part time research appointment (you do get a stipend but it’s minimum wage). The only benefit is a health insurance subsidy, which is cut off at any point where you aren’t doing the research work, meaning that if you depend on it like me, you’re forced to stay in town during the summer rather than take a (more rewarding career-wise) internship out of town.
I could discuss the problems that inhere herein, the intricacies of student loans, and the ways in which my study plan fits my specific career goals, in full detail (people, except lawyers, tend to assume I have not worked these things out), but this discussion lies outside the scope of this post. I do not have time to explain here but I am working on a revised plan. I do point out that this would be feasible were I part of a double income unit.
*
In the meantime, my current distillation of Reeducation is that its main goal was to rob one of authority. So I am transgressing Reeducation by taking that back. Authority means autonomy, flexibility, responsiveness, and freedom, not power over others as Reeducation thought. It means the authority to believe what you see and to question assumptions, but not every motivation or perception. It means meeting the day, which Reeducation in many senses disabled me from doing. It also means being a person for the people who need one to be such a thing, as opposed to not being one just to satisfy the endless demands of Reeducation and other whitemen.
Also transgressive is putting aggressive effort into my own work, while still claiming it as mine. This I see now that in many instances, long before Reeducation, I have been encouraged not to do. Research, except when I was using it to transgress my first job, but research in school and after that job was someone else’s property. Do not come out with what you actually think, or the axe will fall, I kept being told. Try to publish your actual results and nobody will believe them, because you have no right to speak. Publish, but let it be someone else’s results. Now MY authority is the phrase of the day, and I am putting it on this wall.
*
Next week I am going to track down some facts for my research project. Real, concrete facts. I was educated in the era of Theory and this is where I tend to go. I am all for it but from the blogs, of all places (I do find that blogs have replaced bookstores in many ways as places of serendipitous discoveries) I have discovered some historical intricacies which are very grounding. Running down facts is one of my secret tastes and I believe I am on the trail of some juicy ones.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Comment: people really, really do not know what abuse is, and they do not know what PTSD type reactions are, and they do not know how to approach them. They will do everything to deflect attention elsewhere, to bury them. Meanwhile Reeducation knew exactly how to reinflict it and to say “this is all you are.”
Also, the reason I think Reeducation cannot cover life is the rigidity. This is why it was so hard to talk to Reeducation and why it is so hard — pointless actually — to talk *about* it … it is like going back and forth between two rigid poles which constantly transform themselves into one another. The discussion is endless and also pointless.
So again, the plan is AUTHORITY. This starts every morning and lasts all day, and it is in everything. And no, I do not mean bossiness or inflexibility, or reinstalling the Western transcendental subject, or anything like that. I mean occupying one’s place.
And: I keep thinking I need a second ONE WORD MANTRA always ready to keep me off the road to the past which asks, unproductively and endlessly, how did I get off track?
But AUTHORITY is the good one, it covers so much.
The other thing to always remember is that Reeducation and my ill fated book manuscript coincided, and that was what was so distressing. I have discovered recently that it is more helpful to think of them having coincided, rather than attempt to see them as interrelated causally. Without Reeducation I could have focused on what to really do with that manuscript but I had relinquished AUTHORITY.
The other thing is that I could not control that situation. I keep thinking I should have somehow controlled it, had I been as wise as ideally one might have been I might have. Thinking about that era is in a way an attempt to control it. But the fact is I did not have control of it, I did not have the right kind of support to get control of it, I did not know how to get such support, and that is just how it was.
It keeps coming down to this: the error was having relinquished AUTHORITY and that, for the purposes of the present, is all one really needs to know.
And finally: the reason I thought it smart to go to law school THOSE times was to leave the scene of the crime. Staying in academia meant, as I knew it would (and no, that was not a “self fulfilling prophecy,” it was a realistic assessment), reinflicting a lot of stuff, going through a lot of stuff AGAIN that I had already done and was already tired of, continuing to look at the horror, continuing to have the flashbacks Reeducation infected me with, and so on. So the smartest way to get life back was to leave, even if that meant leaving some part of life.
People did not take this seriously and the Reeducated did not think it was a problem of a situation but a problem native to me that had only been revealed in Reeducation. I still disagree.
Nonetheless. I have been here, yet trying to evade being here because of trying to control/evade PTSD, all of this time. I have to just jump back and not evade. I have said this before KNOWING it was the only answer but also KNOWING I did not have the strength — which is why it kept coming down to, the only sensible thing to do is leave. But now the plan is different, under this AUTHORITY mantra!!!
I am plagued with insomnia today — it was so hot, and the night coolness keeps me awake.
It is authority, which includes confidence and rights, the right to be doing one’s work, the right to one’s own work for oneself, the idea that it will not be ripped from one’s hand and destroyed before it takes root.
The other mantra is PEACE OF MIND, or just peace. With so many exterior pressures Reeducation or the 12 Stones just adds to the harassment, becomes a way to internalize it and go round and round. Creates restlessness and jumpiness. As it falls away you get PEACE and this is a place to work.
That Blackguard, all the assistant professors and graduate students with their TRULY exaggerrated fears, have unsettled me. I will go back to yoga, I think. I am so tired of external and internal needling and of having to present as one who does not go through all of that.
(I kept telling Reeducation, but you are destroying me and yet not supporting me, and I cannot have this situation because I must pay bills. At least in my first education the people who destroyed you paid your bills so you could afford their destruction, but Reeducation did not. Reeducation did not get this point, however.)
Authority and its attendant concepts, and seeing Reeducation shrink in the distance and be replaced by peace.
(And I think I do understand why people like religions, if they get PEACE from them … even though at a theoretical level I point out how they work sadistically, so that that peace really is just endorphins kicking in after a wicked storm passes.)
[Now taking Excedrin PM *during the day* because it keeps Reeducated ideas away from me. I think this is part of why some people drink — reeducated ideas are very nervous making and you need some sort of opiate or central nervous system depressant if you are going to listen to them.]
Anyway, one of my Facebook Friends just said this: — “Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.” ~Anais Nin — and I realized, yes, but Reeducation was about relinquishing courage and learning to live in fear and second guessing.
Louisiana’s motto is “union, justice, confidence” but mine could be “authority, confidence, peace” or “centredness, confidence, peace” or “knowledge, confidence, peace.”
(Hello. I found you through a link from one of the feminist blogs and have been reading through your archives.)
Reeducation seems to have been oriented toward getting people to tolerate the situations they’re in: stay and cope in abusive relationships, stay and cope in alcoholic families, stay and cope when alcoholic ‘friends’ are thrust upon you by others, stay and cope with a hostile environment in academia. And it always said that the problem was you, that the circumstances could never be labeled impossible or unjustifiable. So, basically, training you to be a good victim, and to accept the blame if you weren’t perfectly able to meet the bullies’ expectations.
Hi Kathmandu and welcome! Yes, that is basically my view on it, or my experience of it.
I never used to have the kind of anxiety attack this thread documents — started getting them during Reeducation because I knew it was so wrong and dangerous, yet could not find anyone who would confirm this.
A big part of what was behind Reeducation, although I did not realize it, was Melody Beattie’s 12 step derived theory of women (and here I thought I was talking to someone educated in *real* psychology!!!). I have figured out that people who like the 12 steps either:
a) now have an addiction problem and need to learn to admit it, to accept that it is something that does happen to people and face it, and to realize that dealing with it is a daily struggle; also to admit that it does seriously harm others and realize that is a good reason to take care of it
b) are now dealing directly with an addict and fully haven’t figured out how it is affecting them / how to handle it, can get valuable insight by talking to others with experience at this, and / or have figured it out but just need a space in the day to regroup and reinforce
c) are in fact the kind of chaotic, freaky, power mongering, manipulative, controlling type of person Reeducation wanted to find me to be, and which I suppose it is true I could have become had I not chosen my models very specifically, and rejected others very purposefully, practically from birth.
These people apparently DO need to learn not to invade, judge, boss, manipulate, infiltrate, undermine, control, power over, condescend, assume, presume, and so on and so forth, and they also DO need to put order in their OWN souls. I mean, they really exist, I have seen them, and they really do seek out alcoholics and other addicts to be with so that they themselves can appear to be the virtuous ones.
At the same time they are very subservient and are often involved with people who have their own characteristics, so the couple abuses each other. Then the addict retreats to their drug while the other pursues them. I’ve seen relationships where the addict was the worse problem but I have also seen the opposite — and those last really do need to learn not to be “codependent.”
Finally, and this was my main argument with Reeducation, addiction is in my view NOT the worst thing in the world to have to deal with, it’s abuse. Often they go together, sure, but in my case abuse is #1 by far and it is NOT well understood / I haven’t found people easily who know how to deal with its effects. Being told one is just an aggressive “codependent” because one MUST BE due to having had an alcoholic parent 20 years earlier is quite abusive to someone who is actually coming for advice on the effects of abuse, past and present.
I just wanted to say, from experience, that I think you made the right decision by refusing the full scholarships to law school. I took one. I hated it the whole time. I tried to practice law. I hated that too. And everyone around me thinks it’s what I *should* do–even it makes me totally miserable and cry every day. So then I suffered (another) extended period of severe depression because I didn’t know what I wanted to do professionally, but I still have thousands upon thousands–like too much to even count!– of dollars in student loans to pay back from the living expenses of 3 years in Boston.
My law degree is a thorn in my side. Plus everyone hates lawyers, which isn’t pleasant either. I would never last in academia either because I’ve lived with my mother’s struggles regarding publishing, research, tenure, blah, blah, blah. At least there’s money in being a blood-sucking lawyer!! Anyways, the point of this rambling comment is that taking that full scholarship to law school, then convincing myself that it would be unwise or ungrateful to give up such a “gift”, is probably the thing in my life that I most wish I could go back on. Because it forced me into a box that I just DON’T fit into and that simply CANNOT make me happy. Hopefully, I’ll feel differently when I’m, like, 20 years out, the loans are paid, and my mind still works. Regardless, YOU ARE WAY SMART. And I am just tickled to have stumbled across this post that spoke so intimately to my own experience (at least in respect to the law school part). Thank you.
The abuse is so terrible. And it is life threatening. At my age I can’t take it at all and simply must avoid toxic people and situations.
One of our friends recently stopped smoking and drinking and decided to take up giving me a hard time by way of compensation. I told him two things:
I don’t like it when you try to push my buttons.
I am very glad I am not married to you.
Hattie – well I’m glad I’m not the only one who has drawn the line at a friend or two this spring. It’s true, abuse is really bad and it’s life threatening and too many people do not realize this, or recognize it for what it is.
Undercover – well I’m glad you think I’m smart — I don’t feel that smart having stayed in MY box!!! Although in my case I really do think academia could have been right. It’s just another one of those things people don’t like to admit, all academic situations are NOT just slight variations on one. Are you working as a lawyer? (Don’t listen to the people who hate lawyers, they’re silly.) If so there has GOT to be some better situation than the one you have … I wouldn’t just tough it out. A job hooked into a loan forgiveness program???
No, no, I am not practicing law. Thank GOD! And it’s totally wonderful. My current position *sort of* uses my law degree; I’m certain that having the degree helped me get the job–I just don’t *need* it to DO my job. I don’t share with most people that I’m a lawyer unless it’s relevant to the conversation (as here), or if my audience is being irritatingly elitist and I need to let them know that I have some Patriarchy-approved credentials.
In regards to academia, I much prefer my own brand of “intellectualism” wherein I can study or not study whatever I want, whenever I want, for as long as I want. (Is that was Reeducation is?) Structured edu-ma-cation is just not my bag. ESPECIALLY the Socratic method– that’s some domination bullshit.
I replied more extensively below but now I am trying the Reply button for fun, which I usually ignore or which didn’t use to be there, or something.
The other thing I am trying to figure out is field. Is my dissatisfaction actually about field? is the question. Ultimately field doesn’t matter much *if* you have a good situation. One field that’s *not* mine is foreign language teaching — I’m good at is a trade but it’s not a passion. Literature I really waver about — it’s an interest but it does not seem urgent the way some other things do.
Hmm. I really need to put serious effort into this book, because if I do that will show me some answers to these questions.
I love the Socratic method. It gets my adrenaline going. It jump starts my brain. What I don’t like are personal attacks.
Punk – O good. So do you think I’ll hate law school? One of my former students is in it and hates it, and another friend is one of these lawyers who doesn’t like it and barely practices. I originally wanted to do it for capital defense / fighting the prison industrial complex but I’m also interested in trade (NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT) and other things like that (migrations, indigenous rights, etc.).
I like academia at high levels, or on the other hand if you are allowed to really engage people at lower levels and not just pass them through. But this is only at the best places (and I won’t work for private schools) and the expectation in the places I’ve worked is mommy teacher who also publishes nice little things and I have always felt like the little mermaid (but instead of a prince I’m in love with to motivate me, I have family and friends guilt tripping me and so on).
Reeducation was a combination of commercial psychotherapy (I didn’t realize it was commercial at the time) and Al-Anon, which I undertook because I had always planned to — my family always said I was uncomfortable with them because I was crazy and should go to therapy so I did when I finally had a job and the money for it.
It said the family was alcoholic and abusive — TRUE — and this was a revelation so I trusted Reeducation — and/but then Reeducation started to work its program on me which was REALLY destructive, TRULY disabled me from success in my field, which was why I wanted to switch to something more businesslike, namely, law.
Right now I am interested in my research project and classes — work hasn’t been so good in a long time (not that it’s great, it’s just a lot better) — and/but time is short, I’m 50, and it is scary because life doesn’t seem to stretch out forever any more, and people don’t want to hire me at entry level positions any more. I am thinking about quitting (or retiring early?) to do landman work (for the oil and gas industry, yes), which is lucrative, I could pay my debts and save money, and go to school IN STATE at the CHEAPEST place, Southern U in BR, which is a HBCU and won’t be snooty in the way LSU is (I really don’t want to go to LSU law or even Tulane, and deal with what the general population is there).
From experience, do you think this sounds bad? I *really* am too old to be playing around like this, which is why it may not work, but I don’t feel like submitting to that somehow, 18 years of life went to dealing with Reeducation and its consequences and I just don’t want that to be what determines everything else. ????? If I can help it.
What an active thread!! I don’t think you’re *ever* too old! I had a friend in law school who was in his 50’s, quickly approaching 60. The thing that bothers me about the legal field is the HIERARCHIES. As with every field, there’s a lot of intellectual elitism–which I despise. Additionally, there’s a strict hierarchy in law firms (partners, associates, etc.). And finally, there’s a clear power differential between you and your client, which also makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I worked int he field of Social Security Disability. I wanted to do *Good* work, you know? But unfortunately, no matter how hard you advocate, the law does not always fall on the right side. So what do you say to your client when *you’ve* done your best, yet the system STILL fails them?! It’s emotionally tortuous for me. That’s what I think people should know or think about. Also, it’s alike a million dollars to get that degree/license, but short of actually standing before a judge and calling yourself a lawyer, you can do pretty much ALL the other work that lawyers do without the paper. That’s my view, anyways. But it’s NOT the majority view.
Thanks for your comment! Hierarchies, power differentials, yes I am used to that from academia and so on. The fact of the law not always being on the side of your client, I know that generally and also in practice from all the prison work. It is really hard for people to accept, I know. And yes, you can do all the work without being a lawyer but a legal education really would help, at least from what I’ve been able to gather from what I’ve done without being one. But mine isn’t the majority view either. And I don’t know that I’d be able to handle social security disability, either — couldn’t / wouldn’t, actually, it would be too much like teaching the kind of students I teach now, too much of a helping profession, I’d rather process paperwork for MALDEF if I worked at that level… anyway this is all very interesting and I thank you for it…
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the Socratic method but think I know what Punk means about domination, manipulation, etc.
And — related — personal attacks, no, I don’t like those, either.
And. I keep seeing how Reeducation was trying to train me, did try to train me, to the habits of an unmoored and depressed person … so it could then direct me and also take credit for anything good I did.
I learned that I did not deserve the life I had given myself.
I am still trying to unlearn that and still trying not to have the habits of a depressed person.
[My mother, of course, was also always against my not having those habits, and this is one of the ways I know Reeducation was gender education, and I could go on and on, but that will be for my novel.]
And. I keep seeing how Reeducation was trying to train me, did try to train me, to the habits of an unmoored and depressed person … so it could then direct me and also take credit for anything good I did.
Perceptive! I had an acquaintance online that was trying out the same thing on me. He wanted to take credit for my successes whilst attributing my failures to me alone. I felt sorry for him, so I sent him a book that I thought would help him see the error of his ways. (Why does he need my energy, or to play the degrading role of parasite when the world is so great and large?)
****
PS
Jennifer F. Armstrong said…
The important thing about the review is that it has to be controversial. I’m no longer interested in anything that doesn’t scandalise people, left, right, and centre.
I’ve got a new reader, Samia, whom I quite like and who recently blogged that she admired me for trying to educate some of my male readers. This fascinates me because I don’t realize I am trying to do that — but I guess she’s right! I remembered then that originally, readers took me for a man, and that more men commented on my blog in those days. Funny.
The other thing Reeducation does is get you depressed and then tell you you always have been, you just didn’t know it. Oppression or unhappiness about a specific situation is rearticulated as free floating depression, and well founded fears are rearticulated as baseless anxiety.
All this when actual therapy or healing or whatever would go in the opposite direction, from what I understand from my small reading in clinical literature, at least.
Review — well I keep waiting on it to strike the right balanced tone, as one does in official letters and so on. Actually I could post some things quite quickly if I wrote them like little blog posts and didn’t try for balance. Two things about the book related to Reeducation, actually, are: (1) all the pleasures in a childhood that later is supposed to have been bad, so that the good parts get stolen in a way. I, for instance, didn’t actually have a bad childhood, despite everything bad in it, there were all sorts of great aspects to it and they are why I wasn’t the mess Reeducation wanted to see; and (2) culture shock upon going elsewhere — and I had lived abroad by then in five countries, all different, but the thing was that nobody there to speak of ever tried to convince me that I was not who I was but it was the academic cultures of the Eastern U.S., the US Catholic culture of the Louisiana countryside, and the Reeducated idea of women that threw me for a loop. That was because of all the projections. Hm.
I’d suggest that instead of waiting until you can strike a balanced tone, you do the opposite entirely, and focus in on one micro-point, which you blow out of all proportion.
Really, I am seriously suggesting that this is the way to split the atom. You must make the focus entirely subjective on the key point that relates to you. And then. Multiple riffs.
Here is Keletso on Facebook:
“Oh my God! you’re really turning into a Marechera right before our own very eyes! Love the poems by the way! Good job!”
PS
Also remember that “I shall not know myself” is the bourgeois mantra.
It’s more common than you think, and makes you ultra vulnerable (but only if you are one of the class of already vulnerable people). Otherwise, it just makes you impermeable to self-criticism.
So, know yourself. If you are not subject to freefloating depression, then know this definitely.
Reeducation as bourgeoisification, quite right.
Atom splitting strategy, maybe I can thus jam the Amazon site with multiple comments on the book from me! I’ll start this weekend.
Multiple comments is one way to do it.
The other is with an intense emotional commitment to your perspective. It can be enough to throw conventionally minded thinkers into uncertainty.
It is the beginning of ideological counter-attack for OUR cause.
Actually, that is the other thing I was waiting for besides balance — waiting to get hot about something and seeing the words to connect it with the book. So it may be the multiple comments or that too.
Meanwhile in this book I am reading a Black US Army commander in the 1870s characterizes Southern whites as “impulsive and ungoverned.” I instantly thought AHA, exactly what Reeducation expected!
Random postscripts on that.
Freefloating depression — not being of that type was one of the things Reeducation called “denial,” I have just realized.
And, on Christianity, a phrase from the book: “Christian universalism that gave rise to their self righteousness.” And I thought AHA: the universalism, the “inclusiveness,” it’s hegemonic — not only CAN everyone join, everyone MUST join, nay, they already are part of Us, even though they may deny it.
(This section is on Prohibition and how the anti alcohol movement got joined to growing racism, but that’s just lagniappe or an extra fillip — the main discovery is the working of that Christian universalism.)
And note: education is liberating, and it is why people are against it, and why Reeducation had this whole idea about how an overly educated person necessarily had no access to feelings and must be a “snob.”
(I can’t believe I didn’t recognize that for the simple small town prejudice it is, but I had no experience, and I still give people too much credit, it is said.)
Just woke up from an afternoon nap after imbibing Mad Fish white (a very pleasant drop, and I am no longer used to drinking).
I had a dream that you and I were sitting on a bedroom window. Outside was a huge toy clock in primary colours (evoking hickory dickory dock). And we were kind of abseiling down from the window (transgressively of course) with liquid resin in our mouths as from a jelly baby. And you had a two very long trails of jelly baby resin in your mouth and you abseiled down from the window. I waited my consecutive turn. I was thinking, “softer than a horse’s mouth’.
The dream also had resonances with “french skipping”.
Meanwhile in this book I am reading a Black US Army commander in the 1870s characterizes Southern whites as “impulsive and ungoverned.” I instantly thought AHA, exactly what Reeducation expected!
There’s some Jewish female liberal from the US who wrote a book on Rhodesia, and expressed a similar sentiment. That the white Rhodesians didn’t submit to any law, and so they were necessarily wrong.
I thought, “and that makes repression and authoritarianism, common as they are, right?”
Actually the rebellious aspect of being a Rhodesian was one of the most psychologically healthy aspects for adults that I envision being possible — and certainly from experience this was so.
check two moderated comments
They’re there! Good dream! I am not having enough dreams, or enough good shamanistic dreams, and this is a problem I must work on. I used to have lots of these and it was excellent. I am going to start using some simple techniques to get them (namely, to expect to get them, remember this, invoke them) and see what happens.
Southerners and Rhodesians — well that’s an interesting reaction. I instantly thought of Reeducation’s suppositions that, for instance, an unmarried, educated, unbaptized woman would have no control over the impulses to over drinking and random dangerous sex she *must* have, and the inclination to blame others for any problems these might cause she also *must* have. I also thought of all the people, including politicians, who sin Saturday and repent Sunday in an endless cycle.
However, what that Army commander was actually saying was that DESPITE the impulsive and ungoverned nature of the whites, Reconstruction was going well and the race situation was looking good — better than up North, too.
Authoritarianism and breaking laws. Well yes and no, it is hard for me to tell on this. There is that Peruvian professor who points out that not respecting laws is also an authoritarian trait. “I can litter – I can park here – I can pollute this river – I can do as I please, others be damned” is the attitude of someone who is used to being treated that way hirself and who only sees laws as forms of repression.
People in Louisiana are like this a lot, being late, parking cars in the middle of the street so people can’t get through, driving drunk, getting their uncle to fix their tickets, and so on, and so forth. It is why I feel by the end of each day that I have been pummeled, pushed upon, pulled upon, as if by toddlers with real bazooka guns, and why I am somewhat agoraphobic here (and thus feel restless, because in fact I like to be out and about … it’s just that if you go out and about in these big country towns it can be quite an energy drain).
Yes, I understand the trope of the rebel as protofascist type. I’m know there must have been these in the old Rhodesia, too, and in the South.
However, I am also quite aware that the kneejerk reaction of all too many is to go “rebel? Protofascist!” This is to lock the door to themselves against the possibility of transgression, the idea of which intimidates them.
Yes. And actually this is why I struggle over my colleague the Blackguard, and why I originally made friends with my X. They both may be protofascists (my X is, and my gut says the Blackguard is), but they *also* are rebels in the way one needs. So while I dislike them for the protofascism, I’m also sorry about it since everyone else dislikes them for the (correct in my view, and necessary) transgression.
I, of course, am also considered a protofascist by some because I believe in progress. And THIS, I just realized, may be the reason for the conflict between me and our British friend (on one side) and the Louisiana people (on the other) in those anti PIC (prison industrial complex) groups. Hm.
There is a certain kind of ‘arrogance’ that is just simply believing in oneself and defending one’s interests. It is the epitomy of psychological health. Unfortunately, in this day and age it gets INTERPELLATED as protofascism — and therefore almost always becomes socially tinged with it.
Yes — socially tinged due to interpellation, precisely. Therefore one must simply be forewarned / etc.