Intellectuals and the Flag

[alpheios21]

I am in a writing mood tonight. Or, at the very least, I am feeling a need to be productive tonight. I haven’t written for personal reasons in a while now (since late-February or early-March, I believe, when I was in the throes of thesis and graduation panic), but it feels like a decent time to resurrect this old LiveJournal, though. At the very

Comments

[nashiitashii]

Cultural studies, from what I've seen of them, fit in quite well with anthropology because they're trying to derive meaning from the culture of different groups in slightly different ways; while anthropology prefers to deal with the people (we're talking about cultural anthro here), whereas cultural studies incorporates the expressions of that culture through media as their study focus. Makes sense to me

[nashiitashii]

Oh, also: Wikipedia says that the "ivory tower" is a biblical reference. I'll have to do some research on this, as I have an Oxford annotated copy around here somewhere.

Action, Reaction, Words

[anonymous]

I approach any critique of political work in academia in a very simple, even old-fashioned way. Academic cultures emphasize the value of words; this means that politics is defined by how you use words rather than by what you do. Among other things, this also means that academia has long been trapped in an argument about the politics of discourse.

It's a trap because discourse only has so much power; beyond that limit you have to act. In particular, you have to attend meetings, organize, form unions, negotiate contracts, etc. This "discourse politics" creates an endless circle of action and reaction but not much change at all. It does create certain kinds of change, of course.

The so-called literary cannon has been utterly transformed. Again, it has limits. It has not had any impact on the ongoing destruction of tenure, or on the increased use of adjuncts, or on more general funding issues.

Ray Watkins
http://writinginthewild.com/