are much appreciated. Jay's reminiscences of his own grad student experiences
were surprisingly refreshing: so this is, like, a phase I'm going through...?
ha ha - seriously, thank you Jay for the perspective. I'm not so stuck in
my temporality that I can't see the writing on the walls: your depiction of
idealism
rings quite close to home.
Jay writes:
>I think, personally, that it is rather romantic and unrealistic to imagine
>academic cultural capital placed at the disposal of the most oppressed
>segments of modern society. Where these people have been placed, there is
>not much of any way that they could use nearly anything we could reasonably
>offer through our actual expertise. If we want to help them, we need to do
>so not as researchers, but in other human ways
Yer right, I don't suppose the "most" oppressed have any need for academic
cultural capital,
what with pressing concerns like food and shelter being more imminent:
but then who's to say a single mother on welfare, fighting some addiction
or / and some abusive partner wouldn't enjoy an opportunity to study, say,
a course on the working-poor, feminism, a material-marxist analysis of
the relations betwen the State and the welfare class...
I mean: *if* these were available options, who's to say who would
or
wouldn't benefit? if writing practices were less institutionalized, who's to
say what kinds of contributions might come in? who's to say that, given the
option,
she wouldn't produce a provocative video-narrative?
these are feasible options, to me, options which I do hope become more
plausible to the state, the universities, and so on...
On the ideals of knowledge-for-knowledges'-sake, I guess, for me, ever since I
grasped the relations between knowledge/power, I suppose it has been harder
and harder
for me to defend this ideal: if the hallowed halls were more open, less musty,
less "hallowed", ...
and this may come, one day, of course, decentralization of
institutions, dissemination of knowledge, rather than stockpiling in the
academic journals and that shelf we've all visited in the library at one time
or another, where theses & dissertations get stacked like paid bills in the
Out-box;
but of course it is also only BECAUSE of my experiences thus far with academia
that I can even go so far as to articulate my quandaries.
don't think i don't know that. :-)
Phillip, *thanks* for your note of encouragement, and thank you for sharing
the issue with yr teachers : I hope you win yr point of practice: it is, I
think,
a *major* issue for students of the Legacy... Another small change which
could go a long way in changing the quality of output/capital that the
universities produce.
I reckon I'd hope that the practices of the Legacy don't completely change
or go away,
so much as occupy less of an absolute position: for example,
I reckon a third option for research is likely to come along, so that
those who want to, can work in areas of "altruism" and still be recognized
as making
"legitimate" contributions to the fields. Just as writing practices need to
change, as Phillip's note demonstrates, so too can research practices
change, or
mutate, perhaps, into some third type/genre of academic activity.
Mike,
> Our practices are so seldom adequate to our theories that
>when they are, we need to be deeply suspicious that we are
>being taken in by our theoretical blinders or that we have
>simply not waited long enough to find out how we were wrong.
this is a good example of the 'burden' of 'responsibility', altho geez it's
kinda masochistic ain't it. No wonder it's so hard to stay sane in the academy.
("Ah-HAH! I've GOT IT!" / "Ah-HAH! I'm CORRUPTED!!") ha ha-
and of course, I recognize as an initiate, I've missed the stray threads of
the historical angsts
of change, - you've all given me much to think about; and
at the risk of coming across like some sort of puling ingratiate,
thanks for the supportive remarks. clearly my position in left field leaves
me much to think about while waiting for the odd pop fly. :-)
but wow. what a view!
cheers,
diane
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca