October 18th 2024,

Today I was weirdly annoyed and I do not know why. I was just in a bad mood.

My professor began with asking us if we considered ourselves “middle class.” Most students put their hands up, I did not. He then goes on to say that our families most likely have wildly different incomes from each other and yet we consider ourselves part of the same class. So maybe class has more to do with culture and what not rather than income. A person working at 7/11 and a surgeon making half a million will both consider themselves middle class. With this I thought to myself “I wonder if the labelling of oneself as middle class has to do with perceived morality.”

This lead into a discussion on linguistics and how the interpretation of language changes things. For example we were shown a sign on an elevator (a crude drawing) that said “seeing eye dogs only.” Students were then prompted to give their own insights as to what the sign meant. Most people agreed that it meant only service dogs for the blind could enter the elevator, no normal dogs allowed. Others chimed in about how the sign could be misinterpreted as meaning only dogs with clear vision could enter, or it could mean only seeing eye dogs can use the elevator (no humans allowed). It was a strange discussion and since I was already in a bad mood I was more annoyed at this than I should’ve been. The whole point was to illustrate that language is imperfect.

We had to read an excerpt from Imagining the Middle Class by Dror Wahrman, which is a different narrative from E. P. Thompson’s. We were asked what the difference is between “making” and “imagining,” one is material while the other is subjective. According to the book by Wahrman class is not material, but rather a discursive construct that is deployed in different ways. This is why I do not like the term “middle class,” it is just too vague for me and is weaponized a lot in politics (i.e. “we need a strong middle class”).

My professor then drew two rectangles to show how the language of classes is different. One rectangle was separated into three even parts with the top labeled upper class, the middle labeled middle class, and the bottom was labelled working class, an arrow pointing both ways with the top labeled rich and the bottom labeled poor. The second triangle was similar except the two bottom rectangles were combined to be just the working class while the top smaller rectangle is still called upper class. Is this confusing? I hope not. It’s literally just a visual representation of rhetoric around class structure, Marxists would see the two classes while others might see three.

We finished the lecture with comparing Wahrman and Ranke, and discourse analysis using the French Revolution. Was there a big middle class leading it or not? Well, he showed us quotes from two politicians at the time that share different yet similar sentiments. One politician said that the revolution devolved into terror because there was a lack of a big middle class, while the other said the revolution was a success because there was the presence of a middle class. Both agree that the middle is good, but neither can say whether it actually existed. The middle class is considered “moderate” and is used by both radicals and conservatives, the social meaning is meaningless, but politically it’s everything. With comparing Wahrman and Ranke, the former uses a wide array of sources while the latter focuses on sources from/about elites. Why is language usage important? Returning back to Marx, why was there no proletarian revolution in Britain? According to one student the English were trained to be obedient and educated, while in Russia the hordes took over and it had a larger population. This was a wild thing to say, I did not appreciate the word “horde” being used. My professor didn’t seem to approving of this answer but also didn’t outright dismiss it. Another student said that in England there were small changes made to appease the masses while nothing of the sort was done in Russia. I think that one was a better answer.

After class I went to office hours, it was meant to be short meeting but it actually took up the entire time slot he has which was insane. I first asked him about what the term “middle class” means and whether it was a measurement of morality. He told me when h asked the class if we considered ourselves middle class he noticed I was one of the very few that didn’t raise their hand and that he totally expected that from me. I told him I did not put up my hand because the term means nothing to me, it is not a good descriptor because anyone can call themselves middle class. He agreed and then answered my question saying that the term cold be used for morality, because it can be noting and everything. I then led him my last question which was about Marx and Russia, because that whole thing was brought up during our Marxist unit and it bothered me. I had already asked my modern Europe professor this same thing but because I heard it AGAIN I figured I would bring it up. I asked him why this same thing is being said by three of my professors (includes him)? Yes, Marx was looking towards the industrialized countries in his younger years as the source of revolution but in his later life he actually had an interest in Russia. He said that early Marx believed that revolution in Russia would be sparked by revolutions in England and Germany first. I do not think this answered my question well, but it is what it is.

He then went on to talk about Marxism being quite popular early on but died out later in the 20th century, except when it comes to Africa as Historians of the continent are wedded to Marxism (he also brought up David Harvey and Joseph Schumpeter’s creative destruction). I asked in a sarcastic tone “I wonder why that is,” with regard to Marxism dying in the West, and immediately tried to cover my ass by saying I was asking sincerely, although I definitely think he saw past it as he literally told me he assumed I was asking a rhetorical question. He then told me that France still has a fairly prominent left, he even saw red banners around Paris, and Canada has a party but it only gets a few hundred votes. I was tempted to bring up Portugal’s Communist Party but held my tongue.

He kind of grinned at me (not in a sinister way) and asked what I thought of that. I said that I think whatever the school approves of, he was clearly disturbed by this because his grin fell almost instantly. He expressed that I didn’t need to do that but I just kept pushing that I only say what is allowed, as a professor he tried to convince me that I was free to think what I wanted (within reason) but I argued that it didn’t matter what he thought and said as a professor, I had heard the same thing from my Modern Europe professor so I get it, because while I believed he would not hurt me the people above him will, especially with regards to CISIS (I briefly told him about the PhD candidate that was detained by CISIS and how I didn’t want that to happen to me).

He asked who I was afraid of and I refused to say, so he went through all his higher ups (head of the department, the Dean, the president of the school, etc.) and what they can do, none of them have to ability to sick CISIS on me (unless I was uttering threats which he doubts I would ever do). After he was done listing them he asked if it was any of them, I said no. Because it wasn’t. While the person I am worried about isn’t any of those people, he still has a powerful position that I am not willing to challenge because I am just a student, without school I have nothing going for me, this is it, this is all I have. That is what I told him. He understood what I was saying but was still quite sad about it. He then asked me if I knew who Antonio Gramsci was, I said I was aware of him and “cultural hegemony.” He took that as a jumping off point to explain that yes, the school does have its own cultural hegemony that can be hard to deal with but there are people who work for the school, professors, who go against it and are fine.

The school doesn’t control what he can teach and lecture about. He also expressed sympathy about my fears of CISIS, that when it comes to his new book he was worried about the Chinese government being mad about the cover depicting a drawing of the Uyghur camps but he also believes he is not important enough for the CPC to care. At the end of the day I would be fine, but I told him I didn’t want to do anything to get me another email, and it clicked for him. It always comes back to that email. I pressed on him that I wasn’t mad at him or anything, I understood why he did it but that left a huge mental scar on me that I don’t think I will ever recover from, not while I’m still in Canada anyway. Because I used to be open about my thoughts and interests, but ever since that day I’ve never been the same. I still write about topics I want but there is great hesitation and fear whenever I do, I can’t even speak in class anymore (I seldom did before, but my first two semesters I did speak here and there), talking about my interests and the like are off the table, and I am also unable to speak without a monotone. All of this was because of that damn email. He apologized again, which I didn’t ask for nor was I looking for it (he had done so previously), and told me the email guy was a sociology professor (he also has a powerful position outside of just being a prof.) and that maybe it would be good for me to take a class from him. I immediately shut that down because, while I am A-okay with differing opinions, I do not have the space in my schedule for a sociology class. He then told me of a Russian professor here that strays away from the cultural hegemony of the school (and the sociology professor) and yet she is still employed, he encouraged me to take a class with her. So far the classes i need are not being taught by her in the next coming semesters but I will try my best to secure something with her, she seems cool and when I looked her up she lived in the USSR! We finished office hours when I asked him about the independent study course.

It might sound like I haven’t forgiven this professor, but I truly have, I would never speak to him again if I didn’t. He apologized and I know he wont pull the same stunt again, I am just deeply damaged from that whole fiasco. I actually cried when I read the email and haven’t really recovered. I believe that my whole momentum was permanently ruined just by that one event. And that really sucks. Maybe you can relate, maybe not, but it is what it is…

(Sorry this post is super late, I had to go to a baptism on Sunday and school got overwhelming, Day 32-36 should be out soon)