[lbo-talk] Noam on intellectuals

[bitch at pulpculture.org]

At 09:34 PM 2/12/2007, Tim Francis-Wright wrote:
>Jerry Monaco wrote:
> > As far as professors are concerned.  I am not interested so much in
> > analyzing professors in general, but rather the institutions that we
> > belong to and what they bring us to do.  Duncan Kennedy wrote a
> > wonderful pamphlet, slightly influenced by Gramsci and existentialism
> > called "Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic
> > Against the System".  Now he is a star legal "professor" and all but
> > he does not refrain from what you might call "professor bashing" in
> > this book.  Only the main point is to analyze law schools and how they
> > fit into our legal institutions and to society at large.  A similar
> > "polemic against the system" could be written about all of our
> > educational institutions and about the scholarly journals of all type
> > that are part and parcel of "higher learning."  I don't see how such
> > polemics and analyses are anything but pro-educational even though
> > they might be "anti-intelligentsia", to some extent.
> >
>
>Well, one of the main goals of critical legal studies is to examine the
>underpinnings of what stands for law, and hence to examine what is right
>and wrong about legal education.  So the professor-bashing in Kennedy's
>work is more a bashing of the system in which the professor works, I
>think.
>
>I temped for a couple of weeks for a tax law professor who was in the
>same suite of offices as Duncan Kennedy, around 1990.  Before my stint
>was up, he gave me a copy of that excellent pamphlet.  Anyway, one
>version of the work in question is here: http://snipurl.com/1a0k3
>
>And his website does indeed have a host of essays on issues that Jerry
>brings
>up (www.duncankennedy.net).
>
>--tim francis-wright

Plus! Janet Halley thinks he is an exemplar of queer theory -- though he's 
a straight, white guy. To get it, you'd have to read her work on the topic, 
but it's most excellent. When I learned of him, I read the material he had 
at his site: excellent stuff. And I really loved the paper he wrote, upon 
which Halley bases her argument that he's emblematic of queer theory. Slay me.