Yoshie Furuhashi:
> It makes sense *for the Right* to put out anti-intellectual
> propaganda, since one of the Right's objectives is to diminish public
> support of higher education (& public education in general for that
> matter), curtailing working-class students' access to it, privatizing
> it piecemeal, etc. So, when *they* yuck about "pointy-headed
> denizens of ivory towers," they are doing what's in their political
> interest.
>
> In contrast, anti-intellectualism of the Left doesn't make any
> political sense whatsoever today. Most American leftists, if asked,
> probably say that public funding of higher education is important,
> that the privatization (via higher tuitions, more reliance upon
> student debts than grants, increasing dependence upon funding from
> private sources such as corporations & foundations, etc.) of higher
> education is terrible, and so on. Then again, though, if you listen
> to them talk about evils of "jargon," "academic books," "academic
> Marxists," and so on, and so forth, you will find it hard to imagine
> that higher education is worth a penny of taxpayers' dollars. (I
> don't know if they are consistent in their personal lives & also
> encourage their kids not to waste time on "academic books.") Why pay
> for what's worthless? Doesn't make sense to me.
>
> Naturally, this type of contradiction in the muddled thinking on the
> Left is more prominent in the USA than anywhere else.
I note with feigned surprise the conflation of "academic" with "intellectual" along with the implication that "intellectual" is the same as "intelligent" or "mentally competent." Can't think until graded and stamped by bourgeois institutions, eh?
I have to say, though, they I haven't found the material in this mailing list to be particularly obscure. In any case, I had my fill of anti-intellectualism in the '60s. (We should call it "Artificial Stupidity" and have machines do it for us.) Pomospeak is fun: you get to say things like "reinscribe", "situate", and "metatheory" about the most mundane problems. It's like eating one of those weird- upscale brands of ice cream, but cheaper, and it's probably not as bad for your teeth.