>For Carl Remick, here's a key to understanding the political economy of the
>fetishization of poststructuralism: "Academics gutted by government
>cost-cutting and corporate narrowness now have a renewed faith in abstract
>ideas" (Peter Ellingsen, "Jacques Be Nimble"). "'Their faces had the same
>kind of almost ecstasy that people have with the Pope or Dalai Lama," says
>Monash English professor and tour organiser Kevin Hart. 'They were queued
>up. One common thread was how they felt revitalized by hearing him. So
>many told me they were re-dedicating themselves to their work.'"
>Postmodernism, at one extreme, may inspire a perverse ethic of "self-help
>through helplessness."
This is way too neat.
>From the middle of the gutted academics concerned I'd have to say that the
'renewed faith in abstract ideas' is quite different from what you are
suggesting.
I didn't go to hear Derrida, though some postgrads here did, but what is longed for in that kind of journey at present (and in Australia it is a long and expensive trip in a way that people in the US are unlikely to appreciate), is clearly some kind of validation that 'we' (as academic workers) are something other than functionaries in a system for churning out graduates.
These new faithful are looking for a definition of their work as intellectual endeavour instead of institutional tools rather than they are surrendering to enjoyment of the futility of 'post-structuralism' or 'postmodernism' (which are, for god's sake, not the same thing).
My problem with this is that it is so damned romantic -- not that I'm immune, not that I never desire that kind of idea of meaningfulness in what I do, but... we are owned by the system that contains us, and that system doesn't much care what we write/think about within certain boundaries. Having said that I also sympathise, and while I don't think the definition they desire is really tenable, there may be a way of maintaining a productive possibility along those lines.
Catherine