Share this page!

Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
Twitter logo
11 Feb, 13 tweets, 3 min read
1) I defend post-critique (not with any particular investment in it). But here’s a thread of some of my national media publications also defending left and PoC students and faculty against bullshit ‘free speech’ concern trolling. ...
2) Here’s where I take on ‘The Coddling of the American Mind,’ the ur-text of of this recent iteration of using appeals to free speech to criticize marginalized students who are just urging us to do better: newrepublic.com/article/122543…
3) Here’s my response to Bloomberg and Koch’s ‘free speech’ campus initiatives: newrepublic.com/article/133531…
4) Against the idea that not hosting low-quality gadfly campus speakers is tantamount to censorship or coddling students’ tender sensibilities. This is the one that moved the massive right-wing media machine to try to get me fired, prompting death threats: newrepublic.com/article/142218…
5) More on those death threats, by the way, which is why I’m going off in this thread: newrepublic.com/article/143558…
6) Against the Milo charade. I’m skipping a lot. These are really just the highlights. nytimes.com/2017/09/24/opi…
7) On how cynical ‘free speech’ proponents try to reduce the material complaints of students of color to ‘mere feelings’: academeblog.org/2017/10/29/the…
8) A more recent reprisal: washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/1…
9) I hope the sample is enough to convince that even though I defend post-critique (!) (what an absolutely ridiculous way to have to begin this thought), I’ve done more than you to defend the people you’re saying I wouldn’t because of...my part in online interpretive debates?
10) And I’m genuinely struggling to see how anyone could possibly think making snide crypto-allegations of suspect politics is a fucking response—befitting this profession—to a grad. student essay and the people defending it.
11) I’m actually shaking with rage right now as I write this out, because the actual enemy—not scholars interested in post-critique, mind you—actual white supremacists and other far-right extremists—show up at my doorstep because I’ve been hammering them on ‘free speech’ stuff...
12) And to have people out here imputing bad politics to even lukewarm defenders of an interpretive ‘method’....nope. That’s obviously my breaking point with this stuff. /end
N.B. I don’t assume OP was directed at me in any way. But I saw it and, after seeing so much bullying going on today in my academic twitter circles, I fucking snapped.

Correctly so.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Aaron Hanlon

Aaron Hanlon Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @AaronRHanlon

Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
11 Feb
1) Dreaded thread on why I think the response to postcritique is so vitriolic. Short version: Because literary studies is a discipline in search of an application.
2) Before I go on, I'll say from the outset that many in lit studies explicitly reject the idea that the field *should* have an application. My opinion is that's fine if you want to do book clubs, but if you want an institution you can't ignore that difficult issue. But anyway...
3) The evidence by this point is overwhelming that when lit scholars talk about 'method' we're actually just talking about ourselves: 'ways of reading,' 'how we argue,' 'phenomenology of reading,' etc. etc.
Read 24 tweets
Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
9 Feb
1) Let us pause to appreciate the sheer comedic majesty of the fact that French politicians are worried about the threat of US academic theories of race, gender, and post-colonialism.
2) On the one hand, in the US, you have a capacious grifting industry that pins the downfall of 'American values' and 'Western Civilization' on a handful of passé French philosophers ...
3) And on the other hand, you have the French president and education minister parroting nearly verbatim the same US-based grift, but reversing causality and blaming it on US intellectuals.
Read 5 tweets
Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
8 Feb
1) NFL thread from a guy who didn't watch the Super Bowl. Up until about 5 years ago I wouldn't miss an NFL game. Even when I lived in the UK--before the NFL conquered the UK--I'd find creative ways to watch NFL football. What happened? I have to admit: part of it is Tom Brady.
2) There are more substantive reasons why I turned off the NFL, of course. On the principled end of things--by no means my only reasons, I have to admit--I'm uneasy about CTE and the unconscionable League response to its players. ...
3) And on the less principled end of things, the in-your-face marketing that makes the NFL what it is just became so tedious. It's just hard to watch a game with so many stoppages in play, so many of them primarily commercial. It just got really, really boring. ...
Read 7 tweets
Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
30 Jan
1) ‘Literature and x’ works best when the thing being called ‘literature’ actually is or is doing the x, e.g. literature and philosophy where poem or novel is actually doing philosophy and that’s one of the purposes of poem or novel. ...
2) Or literature and science in a time and place (say ~ 1600-1800 in Britain) when ‘literature’ expressly included scientific writing. ...
3) ‘Literature and x’ where the relationship btw the two is ‘x is mentioned in literature’ or ‘here’s a ‘literary’ perspective on x’ is one area where people like to slip from the mere facts of ‘literature and x’ to ‘x is so important, so how could ‘literature and x not be?!’ ...
Read 7 tweets
Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
28 Jan
I don't mean this as a cheeky response (this is a great piece well worth your time), but suppose we see all of this--QAnon, culture wars, &c.--*as* *actual* *policy*. I think that's the way to understand it. It's not policy that helps people or helps the country, but it's policy!
E.g., the Trump admin. used executive orders to execute a lot of policy stuff on the culture wars front. And I think we should understand obstructionism as a policy choice, following a policy agenda that passed libertarianism long ago and verges into nihilism.
I guess I should say: I don't mean this as merely a semantic distinction. I think it's actually instructive to see GOP actions as steps toward fulfilling earnest desires and ideological outcomes (like any other party). The methods are cynical but the desires sincere.
Read 5 tweets
Aaron Hanlon Profile picture
24 Jan
1) A crucial insight here I'd like to expound upon. There's a fundamental mismatch between the purposes for which English departments were set up and the charges of knowledge work today. Neither avoidance nor activism can change that. ...
2) The institution of Literature is not the way it was when knowledge was re-organized and departments created to specialize in the study and close reading of Literature. That's not so say literature isn't important today, but that it's not an institution as it once was. ...
3) I know people think the problem is simply a lack of justice or appreciation for our work and we can awareness or activist our way out of the problem, but I think that's wrong. The institution of Literature is not coming back in the form that engendered our departments. ...
Read 16 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @AaronRHanlon has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @AaronRHanlon!

Read all threads by @AaronRHanlon