Author: Ophelia Benson

Here, on the other hand, is a comment on the MLA and hipness [in the comments on the post] that is quite another matter – and says (from inside the academy as opposed to outside it) what I’ve been thinking for a couple of days, as well as for many years:

At the moment (ask me again on Dec. 30 how I feel), the bottom line seems to me that many serious scholars of literature and culture, who would very much like to engage in a serious, generous, forthright way with the world-at-large, often find themselves prevented from doing so by both the internal demands of the scholarly universe (publishing in the “right places” demanding certain kinds of technical language and attention to trends) and by the jeers of that world-at-large (the technical language and trendiness taken as evidence of our irrelevance).

There. This is what I’m saying. Academics of all stripes, and especially, for heaven’s sake, literary academics, serious scholars of literature and culture, ought to want to engage with the world at large. Not necessarily every single one of them, I don’t mean that; some people would rather just concentrate on research, and are better at it; but some of them. It ought to be within the possible realm of thought for the discipline. That’s why I take exception to that ‘We’re professionals and this is our turf and it’s nothing to do with you so shut up and go away’ line. The quotation above is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping to see.

It’s common knowledge that engagement with the world at large, that popularization and public education are not the way to get ahead in universities. To put it mildly – they are in fact a ticket to oblivion. I’ve heard this from many relatives, friends and acquaintances. It’s only established stars who can afford to popularize or engage with the world at large. Carl Sagan was kept out of the National Academy of Sciences because he was a popularizer – because he did such a damn good job of turning people on to science. Well, brilliant – that’s a good way to run things. Wouldn’t it be nice if that system could begin to change. (People have been saying that for as long as I can remember, which is awhile. But one might as well go on saying it.)

Chapter 3. (And I still had some items I wanted to examine from the fuss over ‘Hear the Silence’ – some of the odd assumptions behind the rhetoric – but that’s such a long time ago now. I’m just not speedy enough, clearly.) Because there is still a little more. And it really is quite interesting, how very defensive and righteously indignant the defenders of the ‘professional discourse of the humanities’ get. As if people who tease them were committing lèse-majesté, invading the Temple, polluting the inner sanctum. Why? Why do they take themselves so very seriously? Why is a joke (and a damn funny one at that) seen as an outrage? Why are professional discoursers so deaf to humour on this subject? Is that an occupational hazard? If so, it would be an interesting research topic to discover why. Something for a social psychologist, perhaps, or a sociologist of work.

Along with the humour-deficit there is an odd sort of professional gigantism – an unwarranted assumption (as I mentioned yesterday) that all intellectuals are academics, that only academics are intellectuals, and that to tease ‘the professional discourse of the humanities’ is to attack intellectuals. There is something very sinister and unpleasant in these two ideas: one, that academics have a monopoly on intellectualism, and two, that non-academics are forbidden to criticise ‘the professional discourse of the humanities.’ So they have a double monopoly, and the rest of us are doubly excluded. We’re not intellectuals ourselves, and we’re not allowed to tease the people who are. It really does sound very like the medieval priesthood, that used Latin as a fence to keep the people out.

Now, of course, the people who complained that the Chronicle article was a jihad against intellectuals may well not have meant such an implication – but in that case, their clumsiness with language doesn’t give us non-intellectuals out here in the cold much confidence in their highly-trained ability to be aware of their own discourse, does it.

One more thing. Among the several excellent things McLemee said was this –

by all means say hello at MLA. Just do me a favor. If I ask you what papers you have heard that are interesting, please don’t translate my question. What happens every year is that people respond by saying: “Hmmm, what’s ‘hot’ this year?” And then they proceed to tell me what is “hot.” They dilate upon what is “trendy.” I do not care at all what is hot and trendy, and would never use such terms in my writing without displaying conspicious levels of sarcasm. Talk about what you found interesting, important, an addition to the conversation. I’m as concerned with the actually developing substance of scholarship as any of you are. After all, I spend at least as much time as you do reading it. But if you do insist on talking about what’s hip, hot, and happening, I will regard you as part of the nominating committee for next year’s Provokies.

Regular readers may remember that I’ve talked about that very maneuver of translating, many times. I’m interested to see that I’m not the only one who’s noticed. No indeed, interesting is not the same thing as hot or hip. I wonder if there’s some connection between excessive defensiveness and pomposity and humour-deficit, and ambitions to be hip and hot and happening and edgy. That would be ‘ironic,’ wouldn’t it?

I have some more comments I want to make and others I want to quote. Comment boards on blogs are not always the best place to do research on attitudes, naturally, because the people commenting can be anybody and everybody – people who’ve misplaced their meds, people who haven’t been prescribed any meds yet, people who are just that little bit too interested in aluminum foil. So keep that in mind. But the comments at Invisible Adjunct do seem to represent some real attitudes in that sector of the academy that’s under discussion. So let’s dissect one or two of them on that assumption – the attitudes are worth a look even if these particular exponents of them are bogus.

For instance this from comment 25:

I repeat: the MLA is a professional convention. Its audience is _not_ the general public. We don’t ask particle physicists to defend big words and opaque paper titles. Why literary and language scholars? Because while we recognize the expertise inherent in a field like particle physics we _all_ feel we have some intuitive claim on language and literature? Because language and literature are about our opinions and emotions? Not. Get thee to Literary Research Methods 101.

Particle physicists – there it is. I love it when literary theorists compare themselves to physicists, particle or otherwise. It’s so funny, for one thing, and such a giveaway, for another. One feels an overwhelming urge to start exclaiming like a Valley girl, ‘You wish! In your dreams; as if; yeah, right; etc.’ Apparently the assumption is that if a discipline is to be found at universities, it therefore follows that they are all of exactly comparable difficulty and rigor. But it doesn’t follow, does it. No.

And then – and here we move from funny and pathetic to rather disgusting – there is the business about ‘professional’ and the repudiation of the general public, and then the brisk removal of literature from the public domain. And yet literary theory on the whole considers itself a left-wing, liberatory, progressive enterprise – doesn’t it? Am I wrong about that? I don’t think so. But one of the first defensive moves in the face of criticism is to proclaim how professional and expert the whole subject is, and none of the public’s damn business. But that’s nonsense. Certainly there is much to learn about theory and criticism, but that does not alter the fact that literature in fact is a public subject in a way that physics (obviously) is not. People don’t generally do amateur physics for fun and pleasure, but people do read novels and poetry and essays and plays for those reasons. All the time! This is a common practice! Why, non-experts are even permitted to read Shakespeare and Wordsworth if they feel like it – and they get a lot out of it, too, without ever asking permission of literary theorists. That’s simply a fact. So, yes, that is one reason the MLA gets more attention than other conventions do – and a good thing too. Universities aren’t some sort of sacred mystery, after all. Academics are not medieval priests, their subject matter is not the Ark of the Covenant. So this indignant relish for the professionalization of the academic study of literature is deeply repellent.

Well, this is a rich resource at Invisible Adjunct. Sort of a treasure-chest of lame alibis, bogus analogies, whining, flag-self-wrapping-in, efforts to seem important via association, verbiage, accusation, attempted guilt-mongering, accidental self-revelations, messenger-blaming, conceit, and much much more. It’s funny but it’s also rather depressing. However, it’s not exactly a news flash that people in the literary theory game have gone a little odd lately, is it.

The fuss is about a hilarious brief piece Scott McLemee wrote for the CHE about ‘The Chronicle’s First Annual Awards for Self-Consciously Provocative MLA Paper Titles (also known as the Provokies).’ There’s an Award for Transgressive Punctuation, the Andrew Ross Award for Dangerous Hipness (if you’ve read Strange Weather you know how funny that is), the Award for Best Slavoj Zizek Knockoff, and more.

Criteria for the Andrew Ross Award for Dangerous Hipness incited heated debate among the judges. Some held that the award should go to a title reflecting scholarship that keeps up with recent cable-television listings. They nominated the paper “Taking Away the Threat: Cribs and The Osbournes as Narratives of Domestication,” by David S. Escoffery and Michelle Sullivan, of Southwest Missouri State University and the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus, respectively. Others contended that the winner should be “très 1990s,” just like Mr. Ross’s own bad self. They argued strenuously for “Judith Butler Got Me Tenure (but I Owe My Job to k.d. lang): High Theory, Pop Culture, and Some Thoughts About the Role of Literature in Contemporary Queer Studies,” by Kim L. Emery of the University of Florida.

Don’t you just want to stampede off to the bookstore or library and snap those titles up so you can start not reading them? I know I do. But alas, some people were not amused. (Others decidedly were, which is a relief. I mean, if you’re going to be all playful and ironic and dangerously hip for the MLA but then go rigid and purple with deadly-earnest rage when other people are playful and ironic – why, people might start to think you’re not really all that playful and amusing after all, mightn’t they.) Comment 15, for example:

The point, as far as I’m concerned, is that these articles are nothing more than a recycled, sneering, hipster version of the same old intellectual-bashing exercises that mainstream US culture is perennially embarked upon. Is it too much to ask that the freaking Chronicle — our own paper-of-record, one would have thought — resist getting in on the action? Yes, ridiculous, yes, sexless, yes, dorky. But who isn’t?

Well, frankly, lots of people are not as ridiculous as the titles of those articles are. Let’s see – historians, sociologists, astronomers, mathematicians, biologists – I can think of lots and lots of disciplines that don’t attract the kind of derision the MLA does (remember the article last year? ‘Theorists make the snappiest dressers?’). So teasing the MLA is not equivalent to teasing (or bashing) all intellectuals. It’s just teasing the people at the MLA. Do they take themselves to coincide exactly with the set ‘intellectuals’? Do they think there are no intellectuals outside the MLA? Do they think literary theorists exhaust the definition of ‘intellectual’?

And then there’s an old acquaintance of ours, talking with his usual politeness and depth of learning to the author of the article:

The fact that these few paper titles out of hundreds offend your parochial sense of what literature professors should do is not particularly surprising; but the Chronicle hasn’t gone broke by perpetuating ignorant stereotypes…I guess they don’t give you the Microsoft-style brainteasers at the Chronicle job interview. But do you know what I bet is a de facto prereq? Unsuccessful attempt at being an academic. You see you’d be delivering papers at the MLA if it weren’t for all the “queer theorists” and “blaxploiticians,” right? It’d make me bitter too.

Amazing, isn’t it? He thinks delivering papers at the MLA is a desirable fate. He thinks people want to be like him! That may be the funniest thing on the whole page.

Catherine Bennett has a very funny piece in the Guardian today mocking the Big Read by suggesting further installments of the idea. Favorite religion, animals’ favorites (why did no one ask them, anyway?), best operation, greatest tits, Cherie Blair’s best PR move – and my favorite favorite, ‘She’s just an actor, OK?’

Stevenson is a fine actress, but who, until now, would have thought she could be convincing enough to be taken by Channel 5’s current affairs team for the real thing? She was not, after all, regarded as a spokesperson for grief-stricken young widows or expert on ghosts following a brilliant performance in Truly, Madly, Deeply. This is not the first such confusion. Around the time of The Deal, the actors Michael Sheen (Blair) and David Morrissey (Brown), both so much more handsome and amenable than their originals, were treated, rather wistfully, as if they might be able to offer genuine political insights. On Saturday’s Big Read, an actress who played Miss Bingley in 1995 appeared as an expert witness for Pride and Prejudice.

No, this is certainly not the first such confusion. Look at all the deeply convincing, sincere-looking, craggy, strong-jawed actors who have played US presidents. Martin Sheen, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Harrison Ford, Henry Fonda – how much more reliable, sensible, confidence-inspiring they seem than the shifty-eyed, lip-biting, stammering, forgetful, whining, paranoid crew who fill the office in real life. Oh if only the real ones could be more like the pretend ones – or in fact if only the pretend ones could just replace the real ones. We keep trying that, and it doesn’t seem to work out all that well, but – maybe if they had better script-writers…

After all, communication, persuasion, conviction are hugely important aspects of most jobs, aren’t they? Of course they are. Doctors perform their expertise and confidence. Scientists dress up in lab coats so that people will take them seriously. Government officials always have a lot of subordinates standing around looking subordinate when they give press conferences so that everyone will know how important they are. Right? Obviously. Display is what it’s all about. So why shouldn’t really good, convincing actors play the parts of all these experts and bossy people? Wouldn’t they do a better job of it than the shlubs with bad haircuts or squeaky voices who do it now? Naturally. And actors are just as likely to be right about anything as anyone else is, aren’t they? It’s all a crap shoot after all. Am I right? You know I am.