Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 13:25:11 -0800 (PST)
From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: M-TH: Re: Jumble on English Depts.


On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Carrol Cox wrote:

> Almost all of these things have been done, in conservative dress. Toni
> Morrison is probably taught in every English Dept. in the land.
> Comparative Literature has always been a freaky thing: dominated by *real*
> conservatives. Forty years ago a grad school friend of mine left Columbia
> an comp. lit. to come to Michigan in English Lit. because the head of the
> Comp lit dept at Columbia said that only those with an independent income
> should enter comp. lit. 

I'm talking Comp Lit in 1998, not 1958. Sure, the field was hellaciously
conservative back then; so was most of the university system. But there
are some interesting and progressive things happening in culture theory
nowadays, the seeds of further rebellions down the road.

> The use of high-text or low-text marxism in classes is *not* radical, even
> when taught by real marxists.
 
Oh yes it is. Today's students are proletarianized, the grad employees and
teachers are proletarianized, and even the professors and administrators
are feeling the lash of the market. The Pentium-equipped office is part of
the new global assembly line. Of course, by Marxism I mean Theodor Adorno,
Fredric Jameson, J.P. Sartre, that sort of thing.

-- Dennis



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