> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 09:55:49 -0500
> Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I stressed imminent potential rather than claiming some sort of
> totalizing,
> > cookshop vision. I am, at the moment, in the middle of defending
> salaries,
> > benefits, and the scope of membership in a faculty union while
> > simultaneously defending what was once a semi-functioning process of
> shared
> > governance while trying to undermine the radical misallocation of state
> and
> > tuition dollars to a fiscally irresponsible, completely unnecessary and
> > local-elite-enriching Medical School.
>
> You speak of 'imminent potential', whatever that phrase means, and yet what
> you actually list as political activities amounts to defending the
> status quo.
>
1. You're too well educated not to know what imminent potential is AND you're too good at reading not to know that the whole discussion of public space pertained to it, but you can play dumb if you like. 2. Just so we're clear, your argument is this: because universities don't do what you want them to do there is no reason to defend any aspect of them much less support the people working in them against neoliberal attacks on their wages, benefits, working conditions or livelihoods... and you don't want me to take this personally? You are quite the piece of work.
>
> If anybody were putting anything really radical on the agenda -- like an
> end to grading, or admissions by lot rather than 'merit' -- then I would
> prick up my ears. But I rather suspect that very few toilers in the
> credentialling vineyard would actually sign off on these ideas; the psychic
> and institutional investment in the gatekeeper role runs very deep, as far
> as I can tell.
>
Yes, we know, unless the sure-to-produce-Utopia revolution's immediately pending it's all crap and there's no utility or potential in impure institutions. You set yourself up for the mother-in-law argument by taking such monolithic and totalizing positions? The form of your arguments invites the form of the responses.
>
> > I have no Master Plan, jackass
>
> Tsk. Save that epithet for the Democrats among us (and we have a few).
>
Hilarious. (Datum: Donkeys are generally defined by being domesticated Asses.)
>
> Michael J. Smith
>
Alan