EXTENSION: TOWARDS A GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNTABILITY (THE CRITICAL [E] RACE [ING] OF MAD JEWISH IDENTITY) by Griffin Jaye Epstein A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Educational University of Toronto © Copyright by Griffin Jaye Epstein 2009 EXTENSION: TOWARDS A GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNTABILITY (THE CRITICAL [E] RACE [ING] OF MAD JEWISH IDENTITY) Master of Arts 2009 Griffin Jaye Epstein Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning University of Toronto Abstract: Can we be accountable to privilege? Can we find a space for coherent anti-racist secular Ashkenazi Jewish identity in North America, where Jews have been deeply implicated in structural violence? Can we be agents of both complicity and change? This auto-ethnography describes a haunting; focusing on the ghostly presences of my deceased uncle Larry Treiman and Bruno Bettelheim, child psychologist and director of the residential treatment facility where Larry was institutionalized as a child, it creates a deeply personal explanation for how the whitening of Ashkenazi North American Jewish identity, the shifts in discourses of madness and major sociological and economic change in Chicago and New York over the second half of the 20th century constituted my subjectivity and my privilege. This text proposes accountability through genealogy, teasing out the possibility for ethical thought and action through cultivating a deeply personal relationship to the ghosts that make us. ii Acknowledgements Dearest nearly-everyone: I've been singing your praises to oncoming traffic for months now. I have myself convinced that the gravity and depth of my thanks has already been shouted into the world – it is, right now, becoming blunted and easier to digest for all the sound-wave bouncing above Toronto din. And that's not poetry, friends; it's cold hard fact. I sing to myself on my bike. I've been writing these acknowledgements aloud, in tune, for months. Writing it down is sort of scary. I mean, the sheer volume of people from whom I have pilfered theory and lifted insight is alarming. I have been talking to all my ever-extending chosen family about this project since before I even started writing it. This whole friggin' thesis is more theirs – yours – than it is mine. This text is something of an offering. First and foremost, I wrote it for my mother and her brother and sister. It is about them, after all. My mom and Trudy have encouraged me, supported me, and graciously subjected themselves to interviews and prying questions, phone calls and emails. Thanks for that. It is also for my friends. Sometimes, I think I wrote all of this just to explain myself to them. Funny thing is, it also would've been impossible without their constant support, insight, conversation, challenge, home cooking. In Toronto, Guelph, Montréal, New York (both upstate and “The City”), Binghamton, Seattle and Berlin, they've been cheering me on, challenging me, listening patiently to my fears and providing crucial insights. They made this project possible. Of particular relevance to this project have been the residents of Shanly Street, folks I met at OISE, the rotating cast of characters at Arlington, and the kids still kicking around Guelph making glorious noise with guitars and voices, in kitchens and backyards. Sheryl Nestel, the world's most gracious and on-point academic, has been my motivator, incisive critic, audience, lending library, sometime-therapist, and, most of all, my compass throughout this process. She makes me want to write books; I want to write books with her. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez swooped in at the relative last minute to give me the feedback, thought and support that was instrumental in making the piece of work you're reading. He's also my new model for accountable pedagogical intervention. My decision to take his class at the very end of my MA program was a serious “right place, right time” decision. My work at PARC in Parkdale has changed how I look at the world, and therefore impacted this project deeply. Specifically, my ongoing conversation with Louis Dionne has provided me with some indispensable tools of ethical and emotional reflection that are embedded in this text. Here's hoping they leak out from it into the world. Andrew, my brother and, hell, my best friend, has – well – there are no words for what he has done for this project. We grew up in the same strange landscape of buildings and sky, but, for the most part, he thinks more clearly about it -and about most things - than I do. I consulted him explicitly on key points in this text, but his voice is present throughout. The conversations I've had with Ryan Newell about choice, privilege and the ghosts of our dead relatives have helped me to speak and write with more depth and deliberation. I've better learned the tools of self-positioning and critical reflection from my friend Chris Chapman. iii Sebastian Scheele has, with incredible patience, read and responded to everything I've sent him with care and attentiveness that I have come to expect – and yet still surprises me. Loree Erickson has, with wit, candor and unending generosity, equipped me with an incredible diversity of secret super-hero tools – like Pandora in reverse, she gave me a box overflowing with new paradigms of thought, analytic strategies, “feminist” serial television shows and a heaping dose of hilarity. It is apparently bottomless – I'm eyeball deep in it and there seems to be no end in sight to the gifts she keeps giving. David Parsons sat up with me until 3am on September 8th and formatted this entire thesis. It was serious business and I'm seriously grateful. ...and then there's A.J. Withers, without whom this project would not exist. I've given these thanks to A.J. in my head, in the moments before sleeping, and on the Toronto roads all squeaky with rain a hundred times, but I've never written them down. Here goes: A.J. is responsible, near single-handedly, for challenging and restructuring my thoughts on disability as a radical identity politic, life experience and socio-political category. Since we've met – and through our friendship – I've felt compelled to exercise more rigor of thought and speech and take myself more seriously than I imagined possible; I've felt both challenged and supported; I've been pushed to thinking at the very edges of my brain. If there is a radical disability movement, then A.J. is one of its greatest scholars; if there isn't yet one coherent or cohesive enough to take on that word, then A.J. is instrumental in building it. So: thanks. iv Table of Contents Extending Where We Think We Are Chapter One: Introduction Casper and Me..............................................................................................................2 Masters Tools, Masters House, Masters Thesis.............................................................8 The Conditions of Our Arrival...................................................................................17 Extending the Li(v)es of Others Chapter Two: Coming Down with a Case of Whiteness Griffin and Bruno, Sittin' in a Tree.............................................................................29 Semantics....................................................................................................................35 Structure.....................................................................................................................38 Rehabilitation.............................................................................................................40 The Man Himself........................................................................................................46 The Straightened School.............................................................................................59 Conclusion..................................................................................................................69 Extending Our Li(v)es As If They Were Our Own Chapter Three: What We Have Come to Know What We Talk About When We Talk About Larry......................................................73 v Facts in Story-Clothing...............................................................................................83 Stories in Fact-Clothing..............................................................................................87 Chapter Four: Madness and the Mensch Remembrance of Things Passed...............................................................................108 Oscar.........................................................................................................................113 Chapter Five: Critical Race/Erasure They're All Made Out of TickyTacky........................................................................133 And They All Look Just The Same...........................................................................143 1968..........................................................................................................................151 (Over)-Extended: Laying/Living With the Enemy Chapter Six: All My Ghosts Seconds.....................................................................................................................163 My Story/Their Story................................................................................................173 Chapter Seven: Conclusion, or Bless Me Anyway More Conditions, More Arrival................................................................................190