File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9806, message 162


Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:16:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alexander Glage <glage-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Luba and Liano





I guess what I really don't understand about Liano's position is this
notion that learning a tradition somehow precludes or renders
impossible other kinds of learning/thinking.  Why not do both?  In
fact, is not being able to do both precisely to get the best of both
worlds?  Why would you set your aspirations any lower than that?  I
like to think that I do both, and without doubt all of my peers whom I
admire do both as well.  Surely, Deleuze and Derrida and Foucault and
Serres (etc.) all did both--in fact, in those cases the two kinds of
learning seemed to be mutually reinforcing (even if their
"traditional" education served no other purpose but to give voice to
what they thought was wrong with it).  I read their books with awe
both for their command of history, as well as for their creativity.  I
wouldn't settle for any less from my own work.  Yet Liano seems to
think that the two are not only irrelevant to each other, but are
radically incompatible.  I think just the opposite.

I am saddened that Liano seems to think that if, for example, you feel
obliged (by your professors, by your peers, by your field) to
understand the historical progression from Kant to Hegel to Nietzsche
to Heidegger (since the field you've chosen, say, modern Continental
philosophy, obliges you to know that progression), then you will
automatically be disqualified from other, more creative pursuits.  I
myself don't see this as any real threat.  If anything, learning that
history can only help one's creative pursuits, one's attempts to say
something new, to step outside of the accepted philosophical methods. 
Why?  Because those guys *were* creative thinkers, and they not only
enable us to think about things that we might never have thought about
on our own, but they enable us to think about ourselves, about where
we are, where we've come from, how we've arrived here, etc.  BUT--and
this is what Liano seems not to accept--learning that tradition in no
way precludes one from approaching things from a whole new angle, or
from reading texts that seem to have nothing to do with that
tradition, or with authors whose work does not fit in with the
"accepted" methods of one's field.  Again: Why not do both?  That is
precisely why one becomes an academic, it seems to me; because one
wants to do both.  It seems to me that, if ever there was a motto of
the student, it was just that: "Read everything, try everything."  

Of course, sometimes I get the impression from Liano that it's not
really learning a tradition that's bad or crippling to
thought/learning, but just the whole
proving-oneself-to-one's-professors aspect of it.  That is, that it's
not the delving into the history of one's field that we need so
desperately to get away from, but rather just the mindless repetition
of it, the "re-hashing" of it "adinfinitum" to the satisfaction of our
superiors.  I myself have very rarely felt that I was re-hashing the
same things over and over: in fact, each class I've taken and each
paper I've written has dealt with whole new perspectives, whole new
authors, whole new philosophical approaches, etc.  I tell you this:
you will *never* have read so much that you can say you've *exhausted*
a tradition (and what piss-poor tradition that would be anyway).  I've
never felt that I was just going through old and tired motions just to
prove my competence; I've always been taken in new directions (from
formalism to marxism, from continental to analytic philosophy, from
psychology to neurobiology, from Rawls and Rorty to Chomsky and
Mackinnon, from Eliot and Proust to Sade and Artaud).  If ever my work
became just dull and dreary repetition, you can bet I'd leave that
department for good.  

Furthermore, I've never felt so indignant towards my professors as
Liano seems to feel: for the most part they've all been really nice,
understanding people who I was happy to work with, who really
encouraged me to follow my passions, to do my own thing, and from whom
I learned a lot.  (I can only assume that Liano would not characterize
his/her professors that way.)  I concede that it has *not* been a
great wish of mine that all my professors bow down before me and learn
from me when I had something to say: I *do* think there is something
to the idea that students should be a little humble towards their
professors, show them a little more respect than they might expect in
return, and not because we should think of our professors as those who
by definition "know better" than us, but simply because they have
devoted their lives to something, and that they probably *do* have a
lot to teach us, and very likely more than we have to teach them.  And
if they don't, then argue your case--but still with the respect that
anyone would deserve.  

Still, maybe Liano *has* treated his/her professors with respect, but
they just insist on treating their students like dogs.  In that case,
I am tempted to say that it is Liano's department (if in fact its
professors have been so rude and authoritarian as to forbid any kind
of creativity or deviation from some highly restricted norm) that is
at the source of Liano's troubles.  Again, a genuine tragedy--but you
should have left that department long ago.  

Yet I still see a problem with what I can only call Liano's hubris--a
hubris which even outclasses my own. There is just something wierd
about refusing to do something *simply because* its a shared
practice--again, it's that attitude that all institutions, simply by
virtue of being institutions, are inherently oppressive and
terroristic, or that all knowledge kills.  There is something almost
contradictory here, a kind of arrogant knowingness, no? Isn't it odd
to criticize systems of knowledge for their inevitable oppressiveness
by diagnosing them with such a knowing, totalizing gaze?  You "know"
what the institution is about: it's all about objectifying and killing
and turning people into automatons (but not you, thank god), and
that's that.  It makes you feel better to be able to make such calm
pronouncements on things, to say what they're all about.  So obviously
you don't believe that all knowledge kills.  I know I don't.  Now this
might sound hypocritical, since I've been defending certain pracitices
as inherently valuable; but still, at the heart of my position is the
feeling that you really need to learn something *before* you can
criticize it (the value of knowledge).  If Liano has indeed learned
the tradition that he/she seems to find so oppressive, then there
should be no problem satisfying the requirements of his/her department
(and if those requirements are *so* terribly exhausting and tedious,
then yes: you landed in a shitty department). I guess I still sort of
feel that if you don't want to pay *any* kind of dues, then you
probably won't be happy at a university.  But seriously, what's
stopping you from doing independent work?  It didn't stop Sontag or
Marcus, or even Blanchot (though I'm not sure if he ever completed his
degree: I'm pretty sure, though, that he never bothered teaching in a
university...).  Maybe Liano is too intractable, maybe the professors
are just jerks.  In any case, I get the impression from Liano's post
that in his/her university, no one is showing anybody any respect
whatsoever.

Now, as far as earlier levels of education go (K thru college), I
*absolutely* agree.  I would say that there needs to be some *vast*
reform in the way education is practiced at those levels.  In fact,
that happens to be one of my own personal passions, something I've
always planned to do some work with: there is no doubt that years and
years of following orders, of doing whatever teacher says, of
pointless memorization and forgetting, do not do much to produce
reflective citizens, much less politically active ones.  There's that
organization in France (with which Derrida is/was affiliated), GREPH,
which was concerned to put/keep philosophy in lower levels of
education, and there is no doubt in my mind that we need such an
organization here: young students need to be encouraged from the very
start to *think* on their own, to think critically, to ask questions,
to be unsatisfied with answers that they don't understand or are not
sure of, etc.  So, no argument there.  

However, and again I'm sure to sound naive here, I think that graduate
school, at least in my experience of it, has not at all been about me
following anyone's orders.  In fact, what grad school has been about
for me seemed equally divided into three parts: (1) exchanging ideas
with students/teachers; (2) performing work for others (i.e.,
professors) so that I could be given advice, praise, criticism etc.
(and I certainly agree with you that grades are pretty pointless--they
are a fairly recent invention after all); and (3) my own private
research/work.  I've always been deeply absorbed in my own independent
work, and there has been nothing to stop me from using the resources
made available to me by the university to do whatever I wanted.  Like
I said, the key is to do both.

If *all* I wanted was to do independent work, though, then why would I
bother going to a university?  Do you think that there are no smart
people outside the university?  That there's no one doing interesting
things beyond its "ivory towers"?  If this list is any indication,
there are *plenty* of people, organizations, discussion groups, and
arenas for intellectual fulfillment, a lot of which seem to be really
fascinating, and none of which abide by any of the "regulated"
standards of enforced academic traditions.  You can still write,
publish, attend conferences, and thus change or contribute to the way
people understand things.  I personally know 4 people who left
academia, but still participate very actively with the "intellectual
scene," as it were.  I tell you this: If ever I felt that the
university couldn't provide me with what I wanted (and it's quite
possible), or otherwise discouraged me from pursuing what I was
passionate about, I'd be outta there in a flash...

Alexander
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