The CMU D.O.G.

Dis-Orientation Guide

Issue #3

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Welcome to the CMU DOG (Dis-Orientation Guide). Unless another group of, motivated and outraged or inspired, students take up the next issue, this will be the last issue for some time. However, this may be one of the most important issues. We encourage you to question your education, life, and disorient yourself. Uncomfortable? That’s ok, healing and re-learning what life is really about takes work and mindfulness.

The following issue is about education. In this zine is a compilation of doodles from class and writings from current, former, and dropout CMU students.

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Symbolic Violence and the University

by a CMU Graduate

Democracy don’t rule the worldYou’d better get that in your headThis world is ruled by violenceBut I guess that’s better left unsaid

Bob Dylan, Union Sundown1

Though violence is largely associated with physical coercion, much of one’s experience is subject to a

number of incorporeal coercive mechanisms that influence the individual’s decision making processes in

manner that contradicts the individual’s best interests. Likewise, it is important to note that violence of this

non-physical nature is frequently misrecognized, and therefore, its means of implementation remain

unchallenged despite its evidential regulatory in our daily experience. Unfortunately, this narrow conception of

violence is, at times, present in academic discussions regarding the instruments used to create institutionalized

social domination. An example of this tendency is found in Iris Marion Young’s working definition of violence

in her analysis of legitimate power in her work, Power, Violence, and Legitimacy. According to Young,

violence transpires through human actions and/or active threats “that aim physically to cause pain to, wound or

kill other human beings, and/or damage or destroy animals and things that hold a significant place in the lives of

people”. However, despite Young’s intention to fully comprise the physical and psychological aspects of

violence engagements, Young’s description of violence as a principally physical mode of coercion is perhaps

“one dimensional” in theory and neglects what is undoubtedly a more penetrating aspect of violence that

transcends a basic conception of power as merely the capacity to exercise domination over the subordinate in a

manner contrary to the subordinate’s interests. With Steven Lukes’ third dimension of power in mind, as

formulated in his work, Power: A Radical View, Young’s definition fails to address a means of coercion

necessary to satisfy Lukes’ notion of power –“the capacity to secure compliance to domination through the

shaping of beliefs and desires, by imposing internal constraints under historically changing circumstances”.

1 Bob Dylan, “Union Sundown” (song lyrics), © 1983, by Special Rider Music, QC-38819; Vinyl LP.

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Moreover, such definitive mastery over subjects can only be exercised through a sort of “second dimension” of

violence in which coercion is subtly exerted through unrecognized symbolic mechanisms operating as

instruments that both constitute and sustain social patterns of domination and subordination and the ensuing

complacent dispositions unconscious of the structured inequalities and institutional domination experienced in

everyday life.2

This issue of the D.O.G. (Disorientation Guide) endeavors to explore the dynamic functionality of

symbolic violence as manifest in institutionalized higher education within the social criticism of French

philosopher, Michel Foucault, and discuss the manner in which Foucault detects the disciplinary processes by

which authorities enforce their power over the subordinate in order to preserve their predominance within

society. In doing so, this brief overview will firstly incorporate the political analysis of French sociologist,

Pierre Bourdieu, whose systematic theory of hegemonic power and coercive cultural institutions constitutes the

2 Power, Violence, and Legitimacy: A Reading of Hannah Arendt in an Age of Police Brutality and Humanitarian Intervention, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum, Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 263; Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, (New York: Plagrave Macmillian, 2005), pp. 143-144.

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theoretical groundwork upon which this studyof “symbolic violence” and the University as a conventional

means of domination is structured.3

Underlying the core of his social theory, Pierre Bourdieu devises an interlocking set of conceptual terms

– symbolic capital, symbolic power, and symbolic violence – in order to demonstrate the functionality of

authoritative power within a cultural framework and its capacity to impose symbolic violence upon the

dominated members of a society.

According to Bourdieu, symbolic power, is present in an entity’s ability to impose dominance upon the

subordinate via symbolic classifications (e.g. nationality, race, sex, etc.) and meanings (e.g. beliefs, gestures,

language, etc.) as configured, legitimized, and authorized through the entity’s symbolic capital (e.g. respect,

prestige, confidence, etc.).

Moreover, symbolic power is ultimately implemented through the enduring socially constituted

dispositions that are generated and further fashioned by symbolic social structures (e.g., power, prestige,

culture, etc.) and practical existence that generate both the subjected individual’s natural intuitions and

perceptions of place – despite how institutionally unequal it may be – within the social hierarchy. Interestingly

enough, as mentioned by David L. Swartz, such deep seeded perceptions, once internalized, are subsequently

“resistant to conscious articulation and critical reflection”, and therefore remain “misrecognized” by the

subordinate practitioner who simply adapts to the dominate view of reality that he or she is oriented to accept.

In fact, it is by way of this vast social “misrecognition” that forms of symbolic power encoded in the habitus

and embodied in social patterns are quietly reproduced and perpetually sustained within interrelated social and

institutional arrangements.4

3 Keith Topper, “Not So Trifling Nuances: Pierre Bourdieu, Symbolic Violence, and the Preservation of Democracy,” Constellations vol. 8 (2001): p. 30; David L. Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 1.

4 David L. Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals, pp. 82-83, p. 39, p. 85, p. 38, p. 89, p. 39; Keith Topper, “Not So Trifling Nuances”, p. 43; David L. Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals, p. 39, p. 45.

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For Bourdieu, this capability to subtly orient an individual’s perception of existence in a way in which

the subordinate not only misperceives the origins and structures of symbolic power, but likewise persists in a

society that neglects the subordinate’s interests, is the very essence of a form of violent domination. Thus, as

understood by Bourdieu, symbolic violence is the imperceptible exertion of symbolic power that encourages

subjected individuals to accept the conditions of their subjugation as legitimate and self-evident realities that

ultimately result in the misrecognized obedience of the coerced. According to Bourdieu, symbolic violence

affects the cognitive as well as the corporal aspects of the subordinate, and is most apparent in both bodily

dispositions and body language.5

Relatedly, this Bourdieuian arrangement of inherently violent coercive symbolism, again, as neglected

by Young’s conception of violence, is very much reciprocated within the social theory of philosopher, Michel

Foucault. According to Foucault’s theoretical “political economy of truth”, dominate discourses, as

manufactured by the Bourgeoisie through phrases, ideas, and symbols, create popular knowledge, the mass

acceptance of social circumstances, and cultural perceptions of truth within a particular society. Foucault

further argues that such manufactured perceptions reality are then employed by the Bourgeoisie to infiltrate the

mind of the subordinate and thus mechanically generate oriented consciousness and automated persons deficient

of their own free will. In fact, as similarly argued within Bourdieu’s social framework, the hierarchical

perceptions of existence, as constituted in the dominate discourse of the Bourgeoisie, function as a coercive

instrument of symbolic violence formulated to construct a predisposed obedience and acceptance of what is, in

all actuality, an inherently unequal social arrangement.6

In fact, it is the inherently unequal social configuration of Bourgeois society that leads Foucault in his

masterpiece, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, to analyze the methods in which elitist societies,

though social institutions orientate the subjugated citizenry into unconscious forms of obedience that ultimately

5 Ibid., 39-41, 83, 39, 84, 89, 91-92. 6 Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001), p. 213; Ernst

Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 423; Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader, pp. 213-214.

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strive to establish habits of self-governance transmitted, of course, through elitist ideologies implemented by the

structural manipulation of Bourgeois institutions. Foucault begins his work discussing the historical evolution

of punishment emphasizing the enterprise’s once primarily physical form of coercion that eventually developed

into a modern non-corporal method of psychiatric rehabilitation and ideological reconstitution that, the student,

worker, or patient undergoes before the individual’s reinstatement into society. Foucault theorizes,

If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion, which to a certain extent provided the model for the general form of the great confinement, then the plague gave rise to the disciplinary projects. Rather than the massive, binary division between one set of people and another, it called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, and organization and depth of surveillance and control, and intensification and a ramification of power.

As recognized by Foucault, manufactured cultural knowledge and elitist ideologies function within

society as a type of non-corporal penal system in which the instructed, the employed, the institutionalized (the

dominated) are socially, economically, and politically constricted – though unknowingly – within the

framework of their own conscious existence. To further illustrate the functionality of such social domination,

Foucault employs the analogical use of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon penitentiary. According to Foucault,

such violent domination is analogically represented in the multi-layered annular configuration of the Panopticon

whose optimal capacity for surveillance provides the omniscient observer – located in the watchtower at the

center of the facility – the ability influence the inmate’s perception of reality through the guard’s aptitude to

punish undesirable conduct and shape inmate behavior. Routinely, prisoners, through their own observation of

punished behavior, orient themselves according to their violent experiences or the witnessing thereof. Though

the guard may not always be present (for belief in the consequences of prohibited behavior is enough to refrain

the individual from elicit conduct), the imprisoned, again, through their learn reality, develop a system of self-

governance – totally manipulated by the indoctrination of Bourgeois ideology – by which they unknowingly

accept to abide by thereafter. According to Foucault, Bourgeois society, as represented by the Panopticon,

functions as a mechanism of “real subjection” used by the elite as an operational instrument capable of altering

behavior and correcting “otherness” which affects the individual as to “induce in the inmate a state of conscious

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and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” This is, of course, the very

manifestation of symbolic violence Bourdieu perceives in the exertion of symbolic power imposed upon the

dominated in which obedience is unconsciously learned and sustained through misrecognition.7

It is with the entwined framework of both Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault that the reader may use

this scheme as a lenses through which the University functions as an institutional mediums of domination and

an instrument of symbolic violence by which the subjugated are both bodily and cognitively fashioned to

become subordinate citizens of an unequal society.

With this violent method of coercion in mind, let us analysis the overly romanticized bourgeois

mechanism that is institutionalized higher education as exemplified by the collegiate model. The University, as

a corporate agency motivated by the increase of economic gains, is an emphatically violent social institution

primarily concerned with bodies. This highly ambitious capital scheme is a twofold endeavor motivated firstly

by the University’s obligation to utilize methods designed to increase its revenue via an intense effort to expand

student enrollment; while jointly functioning within bourgeois society as a conventional means of

manufacturing predicable bodies – that is, a disciplined capitalist workforce of complacent consumers and

indoctrinated capitalists so concerned by their immediate economic circumstances, especially once graduated

and desperately seeking employment admits a lacking job market, that insists on its own economic exploitation

as a wage slave willing to work for the master’s price. It is, of course, the role of corporate education, as an

instrument of violence, is to perpetuate the socioeconomic and sociopolitical inequalities inherently formulated

within the social infrastructure of American corporate state capitalism. That is to say, the University acts as a

coercive institutional mechanism by which bourgeois domination may be further exerted upon the citizenry in

an effort to guarantee the subsequential economic and political self-governance of the subordinate population

through the perpetuation of our current consumer culture and wage slavery.

Feudalism --- bodies owned by the government…..

7 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 16; Caroline Hoefferle, The Essential Historiography Reader, p. 224, pp. 226, p. 227, p. 226.

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Disillusioned Distractions

Bibliography

Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Dylan, Bob. “Union Sundown” (Song lyrics), © 1983, by Special Rider Music, QC-38819; Vinyl LP.

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Edited by Paul Rabinow, Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” Translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Hoefferle, Caroline. The Essential Historiography. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011.

Lukes, Steven. Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. New York: Plagrave Macmillian, 2005.

Swartz, David L. Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Topper, Keith. “Not So Trifling Nuances: Pierre Bourdieu, Symbolic Violence, and the Preservation of Democracy.” Constellations 8, no. 1 (2001): 30-56.

Young, Iris Marion. “Power, Violence, and Legitimacy: A Reading of Hannah Arendt in an Age of Police Brutality and Humanitarian Intervention.” In Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair, edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

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“Amidst all of the confusion and pitfalls of the College corporation; some of us find that our biggest enemy or barrier is the institution itself.

Our allegiance to specific institutions is mandated by non-transferable credits and the like. This discourages students form diversifying not only their college experience, but themselves too.

For those of us that find a way through the maze of red tape that is College, and receive that magical piece of paper, we have one more enemy to cross: ourselves.

Some students today simply want an easy pass. If an instructor is tough, they are given poor ratings, if the receive poor ratings any number of actions can be taken by their superiors. We encourage those that teach us to be lax and our education suffers!

What do we need from our educators? College is now a business, so help the consumer realize the worth and uses of the product. If you study psychology, take a film course, you just might learn something new! If you are going to spend thousands of dollars on school, you might as well learn as much as you can, about as much as you can.”

– CMU Student

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"Success- Is this why I came to college? To pay all this money and gain no knowledge? Maybe I should have spent more time paying attention to my classes, a little less time staring at different asses.

I focus too hard on trying to conform, trying to be another kid fitting into the norm.

Many belong to a cubicle. Some are meant to climb the corporate latter. Few belong to canvas and paint, a passion of art can never shatter.

Artists share a lifestyle, with so much time given away. Such magnificent talent they have, what will they make today?

Whether its earth in their hands formed into bowls or echoes of harmony singing of souls, the artist will never ask you pay tolls.

The carpenter is carving; Nobody knows he is starving- though he doesn't care, he just wants the praise. The file pusher careless, he just wants a raise.

Don’t let society tell you who to be or what to do, whats always important is that you're true to you.

Always be heartful, never be hollow. Stick with your passions and the money will follow." – CMU Student Alex Mackey

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“It's nearly been a year since I dropped out of college and took my education into my own hands. On paper, college was a thoroughly successful experience for me - I was a Centralis Scholar and McNair Scholar, I had a high GPA, I held several leadership positions on campus, I studied abroad, and I kicked the GRE's ass. But it's not until now, a year removed from spending 4 long (and quite frankly exhausting) years at CMU, that I'm finally flourishing as a scholar. More importantly, I'm happy.

I've always taken school seriously. Some of my grade school classmates might tell you I was a teacher's pet, others might say I was a perfectionist about my school work. In high school, my classmates deemed me "Most Likely to Succeed". These sentiments reflect my long-standing dedication to the sorts of successes formal education promotes and rewards: memorization for the sake of memorization, obeying authority, and earning high test scores to prepare for the next step in the education pipeline. In high school it was college and the ACT, in college it was graduate school and the GRE.

School sucked. College especially. Most classes were boring and washed out to suit the masses. Most teachers appeared worn out and unenthusiastic, and others were unforgivably detached from their students and teaching responsibilities. That's not to say some professors didn't convey excitement about their specialty or engage their students in meaningful discourse. Some did, but they were rare and mostly found in the philosophy department.

What if rather than bearing 12 years of public school and 4 years of college, I spent that time reading, questioning, and exploring independently? What if I had spent all that time creating, writing, and dedicating my energy to things I found interesting and important rather than sitting through gen ed and UP courses? What would I be like now?

It's hard not to feel bitter about wasted time and brain development, but bitterness does not serve anyone's goals. I can only share how I feel now and hope I'm heard.

Surely college can be conducive to innovation and learning in some cases. But what about those students whom it fails? What about those who find the dotting of "i"s and crossing of "t"s involved in college bureaucracy unbearably inefficient, or their instructors disrespectful of their intellectual advancement? Should we be quick to dismiss their complaints as aberrations, or might their experiences highlight areas for improvement?

If you want a genuine education, understand that while college may facilitate that in some ways, ultimately you need to provide it for yourself. How? Read a lot, ask questions, and make things. Repeat. For the rest of your life." -Tara Vancil, left CMU two weeks before graduation

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“Standardized Tests-What do they really say about you? Nothing!

I am a Biology: Natural Resources major graduating in May, so the majority of my last year has been full of difficulties in trying to figure out my next step in life. Graduate school is my goal, to get the experience I would need to have the edge required to land a decently paying and interesting job. I have an awesome resume with a bunch of extra experience, so I thought I would be a shoo-in for graduate school, but so far my efforts have failed to be accepted and I was unsure on the reason why for a long time.

First, some background information. In order to get into a biology graduate program, you have to talk to professors to be accepted into their lab with a research project in mind. After all that work, you can then apply to the school, and wait to see if you are accepted.

Therefore, after emailing 11 professors from 9 different Universities and repeatedly getting replies saying things like “Sorry, I have chosen someone else” or “I think you will fit better somewhere else”, I was losing hope. I did receive a couple of positive responses, but they ended up not getting funding lined up for the fall semester (thank you government shutdown for messing up the funding process). Hope was returning when I found a project at Central that I felt highly qualified for, so I went to talk to the professor in charge, only to find out that his response was an automatic NO for having GRE scores 14 points lower than the other candidates! I have spent my entire undergraduate career building up experience, only to find out that a standardized test that costs almost $200 to take and is practically impossible to study for, could be my downfall. Being the typical “poor college student,” in addition to application fees for graduate schools, $200 is not an easy thing to throw towards a test that I might not even do any better on.

I understand the need to have a way to compare every applicant based upon one item/test, however, something else besides a 3-hour test with parts that are not even graded is not very effective, especially when there are many students who are brilliant but suck at taking tests! When a student with a good deal of experience, decent GPA and excellent recommendations comes across your path, should a silly standardized test be the main factor you look at? HELL NO!” –CMU Alumni

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It is discouraging for a student to be in a “learning” environment where everyone is just doing what they can to get a good GPA. Education has turned into a job filled with deadlines, strict instructions, and authority figures telling you if you are right or wrong.

Isn’t education about gaining knowledge? I know we have to be prepared for the work force but it feels like we are already in it. We are working day in and day out on these time filling assignments that do nothing to stimulate us intellectually. I would say about 75% of the assignments given are busy work assignments that a 5th grader could do.

Where is the critical thinking? Where is the engagement?

Can they blame us for getting distracted when they still expect students to sit quietly and stare and a board for hours?

It’s time to find a new way to teach students. Our world is changing rapidly so our education system should be adapting and changing with it as well.

If professors can’t adequately relay information to students in an exciting, thought provoking and creative way, they should not be a professor, end of discussion. Just because someone is an expert in their field does not mean that they know how to teach. It is time to start holding our staff to a higher standard and demand that they treat us fairly and teach us the right way. These people are making a living off of our growing debt; I think it’s reasonable to ask them to shake it up a bit.

We can’t put this all on the faculty and administration though. We are students who are here at a University and if we don’t like our current situation we should demand change. This is our time, money, and effort so let’s show how valuable that is.

Quotes heard/told in classes:

“I feel like we should just stick to the outline, if we don’t I’m scared she’ll take off points.”

“This class is completely pointless.”

“This exam is going to be so easy, I should just stop coming until the next one.”

“How has she not been fired yet?”

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“I don’t feel like I am learning anything in these classes, we keep covering the same material. I am wondering when we are actually going to use this information.”

“What happened to hands on learning?”

-CMU Senior

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A note from the editor:

Can you hear us? Through this loose compilation of notes, doodles, and essays, we are the guiding forces of the future. Life is changing quickly; we are at a critical moment in history.

What will you choose to do? Fall in line or fall in love?

This project has been the most, and last, important one I have ever completed for CMU. Before anyone, get to know yourself deeply and intimately. Heal in the ways you need to.

Know what you love to do and DO IT. Life is short. Your heart pumps real blood—feel the warmth. There’s a difference between existing and living.