File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 229


Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:31:12 -0800 (PST)
From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: M-TH: Re: Jumble on the English departments


On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Fergal Finnegan wrote:

> There was a telling incident when a student from the department who was 
> involved in an occupation about fees and cutbacks approached a right-on  
> cultural theorist and asked him for an extension on a term essay (hardly 
> the act of a wannabe Enrage I know but we live in an era of modest 
> aspirations) and the request was rejected out of hand. Questioning the
> canon is one thing but questioning the university is another.

Wow. What a jerk. It's sad but true that many of the theory-slingers are
utterly apolitical. I've had the same experience as an undergraduate
myself -- professors would go up to me and say, oh, I agreed with your
latest campus editorial, of course the Administration is doing evil
things, but your paper on such-and-such is unacceptable, because there's
too much Adorno etc. They just couldn't imagine that the
Adorno/Sartre/Jameson/theory in general is always an outline for
a future praxis; nor could they imagine a theory which was informed, in
however a limited way, by real-life political organizing. In fact, they
couldn't imagine much of anything at all, come to think of it. 

> The limits of radicality in academia have to acknowledged. I went to a
> lecture by Terry Eagleton the other day and whatever about Eagleton's
> lecture itself the question and answer session confirmed how
> difficult it is to escape the narcissism of intellectuals. There was 
> no end to to the pompous, self regarding speeches masquerading as
> questions. Clubby, full of references, very clever, radical and
> completely pointless. I found myself thinking of the Tupamaros
> slogan-Words divide, Actions unite- and saying to myself it might not be
> as stupid as it first sounds. 

Terry at least makes the attempt, though, to break out of the prison-house
of the academic disciplines (if you'll pardon the Foucauldian pun). Many
moons ago I heard him speak, and basically he speaks like he writes, this
very dense, syntactic style, which is fine for teaching theory
classes but just doesn't work for Getting The Point Across in a political 
setting. But hey, that's what popular orators, street theater, and radical
culture is for, anyway. 

-- Dennis



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