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 _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free -AT-yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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