The Shadow has lifted, I can see it and reject its precepts, but I am still fragile, and I may be so for some time – paradoxically moreso than when I was living under the Shadow. In the Shadow time, I wrapped large portions of myself away, to escape its ravages. Now I am almost all here. I was sowed and cultivated during my first blog year, but now I am to be planted. I am a detail from the Casa de la Muerte, but I might grow corn.
When I started this weblog, I said it would “keep our eyes on what is essential, and throw out the trash.” I wanted to discover ways of countenancing the academic life I lead, often antithetical to enlightenment, breath, or knowledge. When I say I choose the life of the mind, I do not mean to discount the heart, or the corporeal or spiritual bodies. I mean, I choose the life of the mind over the simulacrum thereof which often reigns in universities.
I have had some readers assume that because I am a professor, I must value academic knowledge over all other forms of knowledge, and over everything else in life. This is not true. I am merely interested in it. If I valued academic knowledge over everything else in life, I would probably be more successful, and more contented. I think that some of those who do so, or who appear to do so, have made that decision consciously, so as to swallow pain and survive. Others who claim directly to value scholarship über alles, do not value it at all. They value authority. This is why I am always initially suspicious of people who say they “love” teaching.
The other evening a friend and I came more clearly to a conclusion we had reached before: we had worked in two types of institutions. Some were focused on production. Others claimed to be focused on production, but were actually interested in vanity. These two classes of institution are completely different because their goals are so different. The platitudes according to which “all institutions have problems” and “you can do good work anywhere nowadays” are false. For us, at least, the two worlds are very different. They might as well correspond to two different careers.
We liked working at the universities focused on production because that is all we are interested in. We disliked working at those interested in vanity for three reasons. One: vanity is dull. Two: vanity must be dressed with the simulacrum of production. This leads to the creation of a schizoid atmosphere. Three: these institutions are yet more hierarchical and authoritarian than the others.
I would have called the institutions focused on production “professional” because there was a great deal of competence in them, they did not involve themselves in one’s personal life, and they demanded production only – not emotional fealty.
Amy, however, points out that:
There’s something really insidious about “professionalization”–professionals not only get paid for what they do, they so often have to believe in it also, and that belief ends up making them defend the system and the status quo. (Virginia Woolf brilliantly points out the dangers of this for women in Three Guineas.)
This explains much of my own malaise, centered on the expectation to support institutions, cover incompetence, and move ahead through “career strategies,” as opposed to something real. When “professionalization” replaces competence, and fealty replaces integrity, there is a serious problem.
It is interesting that the more elite institutions are those focused on production. Paradoxically, they allow one to take a more working class, or craftsmanlike attitude to one’s projects. I railed at Simon for his get-it-done attitude, which seems to me to be a luxury of those who do not have circumstances conspiring against them. I, too, believe in getting-it-done. I envy Simon his innocence and simplicity, and the circunstancias tan gratas he appears to have.
All of this has to do with class and money, and also race and gender privilege. Because of their class backgrounds my students do not yet have Simon’s confidence. I did – before bewilderment by atmospheres in which vanity supplants production.
In any case, and in honor of my anniversary, I reaffirm that I will no longer be confused by the university of vanity. In my house we will have only the university of production.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Hey, thanks for quoting me! Have you read Woolf? I think your difficulty is EXACTLY what she was writing about.
I have so little real education, that I have a hard time knowing if what I understand is what you are saying, because you see, you don’t speak like anyone other than one who *is* her profession.
But if I understand you correctly, I thank you and Amy too. I just want to hear more.
Amy – I have never read 3 Guineas but now I will. It’s a Woolf quotation week – I hereby copy this one, related to another topic, from the Paper Chaser:
“Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”
–A Room of One’s Own. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Pony – I’m glad to hear you say that – that I seem to *be* my profession! I feel alienated from it and am trying to claim it back because it is what I’ve got. I have had severe trouble trying to navigate the fake parts of it.
“…because it is what I’ve got.”
yes. there it is. you don’t need woolf although I guess it’s nice to be reaffirmed.
It often seems that when professionals organize into groups the most important function becomes defending the boundaries of the group from interlopers rather than the value of what the members of the group profess, in other words, as you put it profecero, vanity over production.
Yes, indeed, Three Guineas is essential reading. I’m cycling through another period of feeling ready to quit academia, although I am ill-suited for most anything else, because both the reality of vanity and the corporate version of the rhetoric of productivity (not the truly professional variety) have ground my spirit down.