Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 18:39:08 +0200
Subject: this kind of thing
From: Geoffrey Gilbert <gilbertge-AT-wanadoo.fr>


This kind of thing is beginning both to frustrate and to interest me. Two
things: first, the 'inside/outside of academia' thing. How does this operate
in THIS PARTICULAR space - a list server? On one hand, there seems to be an
energetic interest - as displayed below - in maintaining the distinctions
between 'the institution' and its exterior as somehow primarily defining of
_this_ space, so that the kinds of domination encoded by that distinction
are imagined to be 'reflected' here. This looks difficult to sustain, from
here. The movements of force through the academy depend on a kind of context
(proximity to particular state institutions; relation to particular economic
institutions) that's at least hard to be precise about here. One of the
things I learn most readily from bourdieu is the value of a fair whack of
sociological spade-work before the big black lines get drawn: Homo
Academicus may have analogical applicability to educational institutions
other than those in France, but its real force (or at least the part of its
real force that is hardest to fake and most urgently in need of emulation
rather than just adoration) is derived from its slowness in moving towards
general theory. How do we define - both in terms of ideals and in terms of
relative autonomy - the position we're speaking in here?

The second thing that interests me here is the strange belief that academic
cultural capital is powerfilled. I'd have to say that, in a range of cases
in Britain for example, the exchange of the capital accrued in universities
into ANY other sort of capital (into economic capital or into more general
forms of cultural capital - the kinds that bear weight on television, for
example) is pretty difficult. Crudely, more arguments are won and won fast
by saying 'I'm not an academic' than by saying 'I'm Professor B from the
American University in Paris'. I quite like this state of affairs: it allows
me, for example, to present my position in a classroom - teaching students
who will generally start in their new jobs on twice my salary (this isn't a
complaint, my pay is OK, thanks) - as perverse: whatever I can transmit to
them is quite obviously worthless in their terms; the processes of
reflection I make them go through are MERELY obstructive to their getting
the degree certificate which CAN then be transformed into money or power. It
looks to me - of course this isn't wholly true, but it isn't wrong either -
that the critical force of some academic statements at the moment depends
upon this disillusioned perversity, rather than on a more integrated
relation to 'power'.

Geoff Gilbert

le 16/05/01 16:52, Bob à suannschafer-AT-earthlink.net a écrit :

>>> And what's wrong with people looking for citations, when all too
>>> frequently posts are made in such general terms that if one IS
>>> interested in learning something one IS hard-pressed to determine the
>>> source ....
>> 
>> 
>> What's wrong is that the sources are not hard to find anyway
> 
> I beg to disagree.  The generalities I've observed frequently make it
> impossible to find sources.  Individuals frequently do not even
> bother to cite the name of the text ... they offer their febrile,
> half-formed, half-baked conclusions as "facts" about Bourdieu and
> others ...
> 
>> and one knows very
>> well that this obsessive citation-mongering is just a substitute for real
>> work
>> and thought; i.e. part of the apparatus and paraphernalia of bogus
>> scholarship.
> 
> What constitutes "real work and thought"?  It frequently appears to
> me from your posts that you apparently think you own the monopoly ...
> 
>> This is homo academicus at his most comical and unlovely worst, revealing
>> himself to be exactly as Bourdieu portrays him: preening, self-basting,
>> self-regarding, puffed up and swollen with excessive amour propre,
>> ludicrously
>> quick to drop the mask of rationality when he feels his sense of dignity and
>> authority are challenged.
> 
> And your point would be?
> 
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