@conor64 I think what would have the greatest impact is reversing the adjunctification trend. Particularly if we take seriously the conjectures about faculty self-censorship. About 75% of the professoriate works off the tenure track, not protected by academic freedom.
@conor64 Another, further afield idea would be to incentivize more collaboration between departments and divisions, such that the viewpoint diversity already present isn't concentrated in disciplinary enclaves. At present I think this has some negative externalities, including ...
@conor64 ...a distorted media image of what academia is like, which focuses on a few lefty depts. while giving e.g. biz schools a (relative) pass and a tendency to form disciplinary 'teams' with distorted impressions of people in other disciplines. No point in viewpoint diversity if...
@conor64 ...no systematic exchange and collaboration.
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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.
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…
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.
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. ...
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?!’ ...
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.