>That's the language of political activism. In the activist's world,
>nothing is worth a damn unless it can change the world in the direction
>the activist wants it changed, and anything is justified if it can make
>such a change. Certainly very different from the academic world, but I,
>for one, am grateful that both worlds, as well as the artist's world, exist.
me too. certainly scholarship can become insular and incestuous. but the ideal behind it is to be admired. the reason why we publish and make our findings known to others is to expose our findings to criticism. the idea here is that knowledge is a collective endeavor. I've participated in really marvelous exchanges and seen scholars learn from the criticisms of others. I've seen it happen on this list. Ken MacKendrick and I and others used to fight like cats and dogs over Habermas, Zizek, etc. But Ken's and others' criticisms pushed me to explore other ideas and I'm pretty sure Ken would say the same about his work: we're all better for having made our ideas public, held them up to criticism.
we need art. we need to hunt in the morning and argue philosophy at dusk. maybe i'm just spoiled, but i've been fortunate enough to spend my life around people who ache to be able to have the luxury of debating philosophy -- thinking abstractly. these are not people with college educations. they're truck drivers. welders. retired military. social workers. gas station clerks. waitresses. strippers. former welfare moms turned social studies teachers. they yearn for the opportunity to stretch their minds, to have a say, to, as one woman told me, listen to others and to be heard by others--to be recognized. I'm paraphrasing her now (too lazy to look up exact quote) but I remember thinking when I transcribed the interview that her words reminded me of Hegel.
i have a friend who joined an e-mail list i was running. he listened to us rag on about Fight Club. It was all new to him -- this analysis of film stuff. He would just go and watch a film, take it in and not think much more of it. But, reading us, he learned of entire worlds within a film that he never knew existed and, thus, learned a whole new way of seeing a film --a world where there are members of a craft and artists who live in traditions and, however imprefectly, seek to enact those traditions and carry them on. What they do in these films means something to them and they are speaking within a craft and artistic tradition.
The world was on fire for him. He must have watched Fight Club a dozen times, fascinated by the many stories within the story that he'd never seen before. oh, the joy!
Not that Brian is like this, but I remember when I taught in central Florida. I was teaching a research methods course and we were learning some of the basic philosophical principles. To get them to understand epistemology and ontology, I made use of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, my experience working with sexually active teens, and some ideas explored by Marilyn Frye in an article called "Lesbean Sex." What is sex and how do we know we've had sex. (Clinton and some young women don't think they've had sex if there's no penetration. We titter at Clinton for saying that but accept it coming from the mouth of a 14 yo girl. When sex researchers ask people how many times a week they have sex, what kinds of assumptions are they making about what constitutes the act of sex and what are the assumptions made by respondents? Do het men think they had sex if they don't have an orgasm? Het women? Does a het man think he's had sex if his partner has an orgasm but he doesn't?
The students tittered a lot but after awhile they got into the discussion. We had a rip roaring good time for about 1/2 an hour 'til one of them realized they'd been having a really good time talking about philosophy! He asked me something like, "Why do we have to think about these things. I just want to get on with my life. Get a degree. Get a job. Go to work. Come home and build a deck for my trailer."
*sigh*
Kelley
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling