When pondering theories, focus on getting everyone on the same page

The other week in my English theory course, we were talking about sexuality, feminism and the issues of gender. Specifically, we were dissecting works like Michel Foucault’s “The History of Sexuality,” Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” and Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble.” If you know any of the three of these works, then you’d know they all share one thing in common: density. These works are all so dense that it takes a significant amount of poise to parse through them, though even at times, I find the lazier side of myself resorting to calling their arguments “wack” and closing the book.

However, I’m not here today to talk about whether Foucault’s, Haraway’s or Butler’s arguments have merit or are worth the read for their volume. I’m here to talk about another thing I noticed that each of these works — and others — tend to share: topic.

I recognize that topic is quite the broad overlay, and well, it’s supposed to be. What I mean by topic is not that these three authors talk about sex, feminism or gender (as if those were all one topic), but that they all concern themselves, one way or another, with issues that concern the mass of people more than the intellectual. Let me explain.

While it’s not as timely to me as these three works, another work we’ve discussed in the recent months was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” among other works by both authors. A quick survey of “The Communist Manifesto” would discuss topics like the distinction of classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, wage labor, commodities and a manner of other things I’m sure each of us, as escapees of high school, have heard at one time or another. If you have not the slightest clue what I’m talking about, then I can only hope you’ve heard this one line before: “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” or something of that caliber.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I don’t think works like these — especially “The Communist Manifesto” — can do what they intended to do because of an obvious, but significant reason: They are about and for people who will ultimately never read them. Hypothetically, let’s say Marx and Engels’ sole purpose was as their final call to action stated, get the working (proletariat) classes of the world to unite against the oppressive or exploitative bourgeoisie. If that is the case, then they failed, as typically, working class people do not have extensive educations and cannot understand the perplexity that is “The Communist Manifesto.” Even further, for those who work from paycheck to paycheck just trying to survive, it would be even harder to sit down and have the time or energy to read.

I’m not saying that works like the ones mentioned are pointless — that would be the most foolish thing I could say. However, I feel that we, as intellectuals, run face-first into this problem when it comes to more recent issues like gender, health care, economics and more. How do you explain the vastness of sexuality to your parents who have only heard of anything-besides-straight as evil or a phase?

Whenever I’m at an event, rally, protest or what have you and I hear one person explaining something like gender to another person, it’s either aggressive and standoffish or esoteric and full of jargon. The jargon tends to come from studies of theory or thoughts about gender. While the theory of gender has been something of interest for the past few decades, maybe it’d be more important to focus on how we get most people — who don’t even understand the difference between sex and gender — onto a simpler page with us.

James Hardison is a UF English sophomore. His column appears on Tuesdays.