What do you do? Why?

Instead of asking obvious questions like why the interest in masterbating females — hello, Dave Chappelle — MLA members ought to ask themseleves the aforementioned questions used often by Peter Drucker.

Is your work merely self-indulgent? Or for some weird, select group of self-indulgent academics? Or (hopefully) for those outside a very small academic clique?

For more on Drucker and academic entrepreneurship —

http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/meyergd/entrep.htm

A.D., Peter Drucker devotee at Small college, at 9:18 am EST on December 29, 2005

speaking to colleagues or claims to the bully pulpit

the question that the humanities faculty need to address is whether they want to exchange ideas with fellow academics or lay claims to the public pulpit. In the former case, the question of public coverage becomes less relevant.

Science fought the battle in the 17th century when it bested the Church as a way of interpreting the world. The success was noted by the social philosophers during the Enlightenment when they adopted the idea of “progress” and the scientific method as a way of studying the social sphere. That position is open to challenge, today

Much of the humanities has tried to find a spot on the platform with its left of center cultural studies. But both Marxism and Democratic Capitalism have failed the challenge.

Where this leaves the MLA in particular and the University in general is problematic in a world more than ever driven by the scientific paradigm which still commands the bully pulpit.

Perhaps, for the humanities, the phrase publish or perish might be rewritten as publish and perish?

thoughts?

tom abeles, editor at On the Horizon, at 2:14 pm EST on December 29, 2005

Begging for mockery?

Why do journalists say such mean things about humanities professors? Maybe some professors beg to be made fun of. Scholarly writing—about literature, anyway—is so bad, so incomprehensible, and so just plain silly that a journalist who can’t mock the writing and its perpetrators belongs in the obituary department of a small-town paper. Imagine how much fun H. L. Mencken or Dorothy Parker (both of whom knew a bit about literature) would have with today’s critical journals and scholarly conferences.

The main problems with scholarly writing these days are that too many people are doing it and too many of them do it for the wrong reasons. People who write poorly and have little or nothing to say must nonetheless churn out mountains of copy. They must write to get the doctorate, to get the job, to get tenure, to get the promotion, to win at the game of academic oneupsmanship. Academic writers just might be the most venal scribblers of all.

Journalists have keen noses for pompous, self-serving, vapid bullshit. That’s why some of them mock humanities professors. And they should. Stop writing and saying nonsense, and y’all might see a change in the perception of people in the humanities.

Baktu Basix, English instructor, at 7:18 pm EST on December 29, 2005

Perhaps Alisoun has resisted influence by the humanities community, but “It is fantasy to believe that the ‘humanities community’ has public influence or hope of gaining any” seems a bit of fantasy itself. The machinery of ridicule so often deployed by the right against the humanities is reacting pretty strongly against _something_, after all.

I have seen the teaching of critical thinking ridiculed here at IHE, for example, and think it’s pretty clear that right-wing political viewpoints in particular have benefitted a great deal from UNcritical thinking. Any untestable and unverifiable belief system is threatened by systematic consideration of the dependency of notions of truth upon historical period, geographic position, economic class, etc. Certainly one can view time, position, class, etc. as variables and teach critical thinking as part of multivariate calculus, but most Americans will never attempt to understand multivariate calculus, so they’ll learn critical thinking in the humanities if they learn it at all.

Once demonstrated a few times, the statement “All binaries tend to collapse” becomes quite powerful, as well. Even if one feels that “all” makes it an overgeneralization, once one starts using it on human problems, one finds it infinitely applicable, and childish aspects of political thinking and discourse reveal themselves constantly.

I would agree that one shouldn’t expect much public influence to descend from a discussion of country/western vs. blues harmonica- playing styles illustrated by Slothrop in _Gravity’s Rainbow_, for example, but properly used, methods of critical thinking—the intellectual tools of the humanities—can have quite significant public influence.

Among the scandals of public education in the US is that it is so poor that utterly uncritical thinking (or lack of thinking at all) can dominate political discourse without its perpetrators ever being shamed. The “trickle-down” hypothesis has failed repeatedly for a quarter of a century now, but Congress is coming back to pass more tax cuts based upon it. Kudos to Paul Krugman for pointing out that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is one definition of insanity (he refers to “tax cut zombies"), but why is this even an issue today, when it was disproven in the Kennedy administration even before it was called “trickle-down"?

Alisoun might point to the political insistence upon never jettisonning behaviors that damage the largest part of the populace as long as they benefit the part that pays the most to influence politics as evidence of the lack of public influence of the humanities, but I think nouns along the lines of “horror” and “alarm” would accompany such an assertion much better than “narcissism” does.

Thane Doss, Yomiuri Culture Centers, at 10:00 am EST on January 2, 2006

Uncritical elections?

“Among the scandals of public education .. utterly uncritical thinking ..”

Why, yes .. party primaries (e.g., GWB v. McCain) and elections (e.g., GWB v. Mr. Teresa Heinz) are nothing but sweet interludes of agreement and kind words.

.. aided, of course, by the 99% Dems-Socialists-Commies in soft-side academia, who objectively encourage free, open debate on U.S. life.

We know what is going on. We’ve seen your kind before — cult of victimhood and complaint. Unfortunately, we’ll probably always have your kind, wandering about, begging for a government hand-out/grant. Life will go on.

Art D., at 10:17 am EST on January 3, 2006