Reflections on Theory and Systemic Thinking

As the quarter comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on two important qualities of the course content and our class discussions. First, I really enjoyed the manner in which we started with theoretical texts and then moved into literary texts. We studied and discussed theory on its own terms, rather than simply applying it to fiction with the intention of utilizing fiction to confirm or demonstrate its efficacy. In this way, the class avoided the subordination of literature’s critical and political potential to a distinct form of intellectual discourse. For this reason, I found one its major strengths to be the illustration of the theoretical dimensions and potentials of fiction itself. There was, for me, something amazing about thinking with great complexity about labor and its many diverse racialized manifestations in a class discussion discourse that remained vernacular, direct, and concrete. Studying theory on its own terms first made it a jumping off point, a way to construct a grounding plane for our thought as a group, from or on which to explore and think through race, labor, and migration in the texts we read. But this never required speaking the language of theory, instead allowing us to speak as ourselves. Instead of talking about how we see Marx in the novels we read, for example, having read Marx undergirded and, in perhaps unnoticeable or imperceptible ways, inspired our ability to think critically for ourselves about labor when reading and discussing the course materials. The principle lesson of this organizational approach was, for me, the importance of the practice of observation. I gained an understanding of observation as the starting point for all argument, instead of vice versa. An awareness of how texts depict and argumentatively propose alternatives to the world or the dominant narratives about the world is less about understanding philosophical ideas and more about sensing and considering notable resonances between the text and oneself as a reader. It comes down to what’s interesting, remarkable, and sets your thinking in motion, and these are elements that are best rendered by speaking about fiction in terms of its own content and logic. Personally, this was a lesson I needed to learn.

            On a different note, I gained a great deal from the course’s multiple inroads to the questions under consideration. That is, surveying multiple racial-ethnic contexts—African slavery in the United States, Chinese migratory labor, (South) Asian “coolie” labor, Filipino experiences of imperialism and migration, and the racialized experiences of Mexican and Chicano/Chicana workers—in one course was especially productive because it dispelled any chance of thinking about these historical/literary realities as separate from one another.  Synthesizing multiple racial labor narratives together allowed for an incredible awareness of the interlinked nature of racialized labor and migration in every context. Reading similarities and differences between these phenomena—formations that have taken shape in very different ways—allows for a well-rounded understanding of their systemic interrelation. As a theoretical practice, I think this is the element I will value most after taking this course, and look forward to maintaining in my studies going forward. There is, naturally, a need for in-depth courses emphasizing one specific context, but having a broad, comparative study of labor literature allows analysis to perform a function that is constructively similar to the collective and solidaristic impulse of proletarian political thought itself.