Whether it was 18th-century British literature or 20th-century European critical theory, Montag approached the syllabus with rigor, grace, warmth, and plenty of deadpan humor—and he supported his students unceasingly
(Editor's note: Our interview with Professor Montag will be posted shortly.)
Lynn Ta: I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Warren Montag played a significant role in my life’s direction. I was Warren’s student over two decades ago and during the course of my four years at Oxy, he became a friend and mentor to me. I took several classes with him and he ultimately became my adviser for my honors thesis on Michel Foucault.
In class, Warren opened my eyes to the rich and deeply profound world of critical theory. Marx, Foucault, Althusser, Spinoza, Fanon: They were portals to a mode of analysis that did not take anything as a given. And Warren, in turn, was my portal to them.
I remember first reading Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish in Warren’s class, Literature and Philosophy. It was a revelation. These texts inverted and subverted so many of the dominant paradigms that I could up until then, only intuit to be deceptive fallacies. The materialism of Althusser and Foucault (and Marx and Spinoza) asked piercing questions about freedom and servitude, traversing concepts that were at once provocative and unsparing: Subjectivization as a form of subjection. Free will as a fabulous ruse. Our bodies held captive by the internalized authority of our minds.
As a teacher, Warren was unsurpassed. With his immense intellect, he demanded the same level of rigor from his students, but he also imparted his knowledge, wisdom, and insight with grace, warmth, and plenty of deadpan humor. He has supported his students unceasingly, whether it was an undergraduate conference presentation, a Gaza solidarity encampment, or even just hard things we were going through.
After college, under Warren’s guidance, I started a doctorate program in literature, but I found that the ivory tower made me restless and did not have the kind of real-world impact that I was seeking. I eventually left academia, trading in literature for litigation. I am now a labor lawyer, with a side hustle in criminal defense. In these spaces, it’s hard to escape the foundational ideas that I learned from Warren. In the criminal courtroom, how have Black and brown bodies been targeted for surveillance and interpellated as culpable subjects within a system that has already determined their criminality? At worksites, how have laboring bodies been disciplined for optimal docility and maximum utility? What does resistance and revolution look like when our bodies have been committed to subjugation? How, indeed, do we get free?
I had learned so much theory from Warren, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned about his praxis. In a guest lecture I attended, Warren shared about his experience with labor organizing, including his time organizing with Justice for Janitors. Ever the sage, Warren reminded us that in the struggle to transcend our domination, showing up, day in and day out, to do the often prosaic, unglamorous work of the movement can form the bedrock of our most sweeping victories.
And perhaps, this is the enduring lesson of our beloved Professor Montag: just as he has done for his students, for his community, and for the movement, we have to keep showing up, for ourselves, and for each other. It is the only path to our collective liberation.
An English and comparative literary studies major at Oxy, Lynn Ta has been a field attorney with the National Labor Relations Board since 2017.
