Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
Dennis Robert Redmond wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Christian Gregory wrote:
>
> > your two years on the market don't really count. This fall, you will
> > probably have a dozen interviews.
>
> I sure will -- but they won't be with literature departments. I don't want
> to claim any special privileges for my sojourn in academic purgatory, the
> part-time folks have endured far worse than this for decades, and the
> recession is going to make things even worse, but I do want to insist on
> distinguishing the academic lecturer from the the carnivorous realities of
> the theory-market. It's not just the non-interviews; I've buzzed, emailed,
> written, etc. tons and tons of profs, from Big Names to Small Names, and
> the only academics to ever respond have been Doug Kellner, who teaches
> history/critical theory down at UCLA, Peter Hohendahl here at Cornell, Bob
> Hullot-Kentor and a couple film studies profs, all very cool,
> extraordinarily gifted folks, doing invaluable work, but all atypical
> dissidents at odds with academe in their own right. My experience with the
> academic presses has been similar: you get the most godawful Cold War
> orthodoxy, hiding behind a thin veneer of rentier urbanity. Maybe I'll see
> something in the future to qualify this judgement, but these are the
> *only* responses I've ever received from *any* of the official
> institutions of the theory-market, to date. As some old dead German
> refugee put it, the ruling ideas of the epoch are those of the ruling
> class.
>
> > My point is simply this: the justification of urbane cosmopolitanist
> > rhetoric as a sign of one's sensitivity to the world's complexity doesn't
> > wash.
>
> It depends on whether the rhetoric actually delivers that complexity,
> which Jameson's thought never fails to do. To quote The Who, "The simple
> things you see/ are all complicated". We *need* theory, and theory thrives
> on complexity, the ability to think globally and resist globally, which
> requires global mediations. The dialectic between simplicity and
> complexity needs to be respected and carried out; clinging to either pole
> ends up in falsehood. DJ Freddy J brings the complexity, Boris "the K"
> Kagarlitsky brings the simplicity, but the two are fighting the same
> fight.
>
> OK. Enough ranting, I've gone over my rant-quota for the week, so I'll be,
> um, West Coast mellow for awhile.
>
> -- Dennis