> At 08:54 PM 10/19/2010, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
> I don't doubt that, but I'm usually left confused when people talk
> about radicalism in English departments because their influence seemed to
> me to be more a conservatizing canon creating one than otherwise.
Back in the 1990s, during my past life (it feels like the late Pleistocene) as a litcritter, I noticed many English departments tended towards conservativism. It was the Comparative Literature and the less-taught languages which were full of extraordinarily creative and interesting thinkers.
Possibly there was less imperial/national policing in the latter zones, which opened up a space for dissent. I have no idea what the situation has been since 2000, though.
-- DRR