Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 20:46:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Alexander Glage <glage-AT-yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Bashing academia Yeah, I've got to agree with Matthew. Richard's remarks seemed a little too resentful, and certainly uncalled-for. They seemed to serve no purpose but to make students feel bad about themselves (hardly a joyful task). Still, on almost every list I've participated in, I've seen this view of academic life expressed at least once--that is, that the university is for the most part an oppressive institution, little more than a means for individuals to become indoctrinated or otherwise to have their spirits crushed, etc. I don't see my own experience at all reflected in this view. I would guess that many on this list would also have a hard time seeing themselves or their peers as mere "nutcases" and "frowning thinkers" (and indeed, the use of the "nutcase" as the figure of the student must raise some Foucauldian eyebrows...). At the very least, I think it would not be implausible to say that, had it not been for the university, many of us would never have had the joy of stumbling upon Deleuze, or upon philosophy more generally... Still, to be fair, I think we all can understand where Richard is coming from: there is always a danger in committing one's life to scholarship, to spending so much time reading and writing, to existing in one's thoughts. The temptation to withdraw from the world, to absorb oneself in those "silent regions of thought which has come to itself and communes only with itself" (Hegel), is one toward which we must always remain somewhat ambivalent, even suspicious. Of course, these are lessons that must be learned again and again, *through* philosophy as well as literature, through dialogue and memory, through life. George Eliot said it as well as anyone: "It is an uneasy lot at the best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small, hungry, shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted....Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual, and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control." (*Middlemarch*) I confess I like Eliot's warning much better than Richard's. Alexander Glage _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free -AT-yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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