Scholarly
There is a difference, says Sabato, between being eclectic or scattered, and being interested in a field as a whole, or in the interrelations of its parts. I would add that there is a difference between this – to which Sabato has referred as “integralismo” – and the thinness of being a so-called generalist.
Practical
I do not get enough finished. This is due in part to the breadth of my interests, although this breadth, I submit, is integralista and has, therefore, a corresponding depth. It is due more to the fact that I always seem to get job assignments which require me to add new subfields rather than develop the many I already work in. But it is mostly due to my having for some time avoided my primary field of expertise like the plague.
Reeducated
That is because in Reeducation, since I did not resist any suggestions or diagnoses which seemed reasonable to me, a diagnosis which I would resist was sought, on the theory that what you deny is what is most true. It was decided on the basis of thin evidence, the academic portion of which was that because of what my research field was – subjectivity, identity, modernist writing – and because one of the writers I regularly teach in a course on my primary research region was a victim of sexual abuse – that I must be one, too.
I did not and do not think so, and I was quite concerned that the proposed treatment – hypnosis, the “recovery” (or perhaps, the implantation) of memories – would be more destructive than I could withstand. I decided instead to remove the incriminating evidence by giving up my primary research field. This was of course a disastrous thing to have to do, but I could really see no alternative at that point. The Reeducators had me worried enough that I needed to show myself that their theories were not true. Since the use of logic was not allowed, and since by definition my instincts and hunches were wrong – since, in sum, nothing I knew or felt was true – I had to prove myself through action. I had to get rid of the symptom so as not to have to undergo treatment for the putative problem. So I put my primary research field on the shelf for later – much later.
Impractical
The immediate problem there was that I still had to produce, and I had no time to retrain. I had to do something fairly closely related to what I had been, and I got involved in all too many interesting side projects. These then became whole side fields I cannot always tend well and do not really need. That, in turn, is because while I may have renounced my main research interests and driven them underground for a long time, they did not actually change. The result is that I am trying to hit a spectrum too broad for one person. This is why no single project moves ahead quickly enough.
Savage
Now, though, having returned to my primitive savagery, I no longer have to care what some crazy M.S.W., Ph.D., M.D., or amateur imagines my research interests to mean about me. Now I may do as I please. I want to finish a number of disparate projects and then make a serious, streamlining decision about the major project upon which I will focus next. All of this is going to take some serious thought, and some work.
Intellectual
My Reeducator, of course, also believed that work meant overachieving, which was a bad thing. I gave that serious thought at the time, but I reject it. I may not be Leonardo, but may I not still explore my curiosities? Should Gandhi have given up his hunger strikes and high aims for the sake of demonstrating “balance?” Must enthusiasm and fervor be suspect?
Integral
As my more assiduous readers will have realized, the recovery of integrity is and has been my purpose in my writings here. That is yet another reason why I like Sabato’s related term “integralismo.” I am no longer Reeducated. I can work as much as I want, on whatever I want. I have stopped letting Reeducation siphon off my brain cells, and time presses on me. I am interested only in writing (with breaks, of course). But I am free at last to do so. This amazes me.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Hey there Prof Zero.
I have a confession to make here. Not a comment yet about your thought provoking piece.
I can’t really tell you why I assumed a gender for you. I had this picture in my mind and just went with it … recklessly.
OK, I have read some more of the back-story now but only after I left you a note on my blog.
It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman. But I have learned a valuable lesson today … no more gender assumptions.
Having said that though, you did intend to keep your posts as gender-free as possible. I think you have achieved that aim for the most part.
My assumption implicated my male prejudices.
I need to spend a lot of time thinking through my assumption … and what it means.
In fact, even as I could not just find a post where you tell, I was relieved to read somewhat of a telling somewhere.
Relieved because I was about to drive myself crazy.
I am like that 😉
Of course now I am gonna say to myself … ‘you should of known.’
The ‘should of known’ part is that making such assumptions is dangerous. Even disrespectful to you.
But I hope my recklessness has only caused you to laugh hey. That would make me happy.
OK, so if you ever visit PDX again, please let me know.
Be well my friend.
Peace,
Ridwan
Yes – I did try to design the blog as race and gender neutral, and everyone has always said I write like a man. I’ve even fed pieces of my writing into a computer program that discerns the gender of the writer, and it said I was a man! So I’m used to it, and don’t correct people.
Blog readers, though, thought I was a Latino male. I came out first as a woman and at that point they decided I was Black. I came out as white and at that point they decided I was a traitor.
Yes, I’ll look you up when I get back to PDX!
This is so dreadful, and then so hopeful.
Graz, Tom! There were a lot of plot twists in the intervening time. Yes, it was pretty dreadful, as I can see as I write it all out. I suspect I survived because I was not nearly as messed up as they claimed. Or maybe even not as messed up as average, except for this stuff, because of which I could never afford to dabble in any other messes.
Do you find that people who are narrower academically tend to be deeper? I hear it, it sounds reasonable, but I’ve worked with a lot of people and I haven’t really found it that helpful.
I think that is only true of people who would not be able to be both deep and broad. Small brain = good in one narrow area, or superficial in several. Larger brain = can do more. The advantages of the second option is that subfields can cross-fertilize each other. Expertise leaps up geometrically, if not exponentially.
Of course, I am prejudiced. All my degrees are cross-disciplinary, and I have always been cross-appointed between departments. I also tend to favor the breadth of an intellectual or artist over the depth of a mere scholar. And it must be said, one cannot do or know everything. I set this as a goal when I was two or three years old, and while it is amusing as a pursuit, it slows down production.
Since I have been dabbling into the arena of the pedagogue I must admit I love the way you set up you your entries . . . and your Reeducation touches on a whole set of assumptions, formulas and modes that our knowledge complexes feed upon in making both an academic assessment and mere mental diagonsis of a person. I realize that I am now training to be the magic mirror.
I admire your back stepping in the snow and recounting of the beans. It is like you are trying to find your way back, and I keep wondering where this primal paradise lies for you intellectually.
Do tell me when you get there. Though it seems to be a darker forest than I thought.
Graz, Unbeached! Entry setup: believe it or not, it comes from having read a lot of poems. I do class handouts, and talk handouts, the same way.
It does appear that Reeducation was an induction into – what – the crass psychology of the great, unwashed, which is to say, Da Whiteman.
Actually, that is interesting. I have been aware for some time that it was antifeminist but it was perhaps not just about oppression of women but about induction into the whole Whiteman universe.
Primal paradise, good phrase. It lies anywhere. It can be right now. I am there part of every day, at least now, but I need to spend much more time there and I need a faster mode of transportation. I am closer than it seems from these posts because they are sort of retrospective. I used to live in this paradise full time.
In this paradise “we say things, draw with colored pencils, and meditate on the Great Question, which is whether thought precedes language, or language, thought.” I came up with this at a very young age, and I am standing by it! Reeducation, of course, did not believe it could be real, but I am sure it is.
I’d love to hear more about the methods, assumptions, and knowledge complexes … I think I missed them earlier on and this is why I did not understand Reeducation, or recognize it for what it was. It seems I never received the full-on bad news, and I was passed a lot of enlightening ideas as a child. Reeducation could not understand these and had a lot invested in convincing me of the horror of my earlier life. In doing that, it not only Gothicized it – which was bad enough – it stole and sullied the inspiration, too, which was even worse, and I only just realized that! 🙂
P.S. Unbeached – here’s my insight, based on some comments from Jennifer Cascadia and then yours – and also from Tom, in some threads on his blog.
1. Reeducation was destructive because it defined intellectual activity itself as pathological. I was therefore terminally screwed, no matter what I might do.
2. Reeducation’s main, abusive weapon was to say, if one disagreed (as in, disagreeing that intellectual activity was necessary pathological), “you think you are better than other people, eh?” This was a distraction technique. It was also based in a whole worldview in which difference had to mean inferiority or superiority.
3. I am *in fact* alternative, and I always have been. I never thought I was not just one more person, nor have I ever tried to claim that, nor do I think that makes me superior to anyone else. But I am not mainstream and this is a fact. Not being mainstream for me is not a question of style. I do not recycle everything, or have dreds or tattoos. I look perfectly mainstream and I am a pillar of society. But I am not mainstream and this means that certain models for living and thinking, no matter how many people they fit, do not fit me.
4. A huge error in the therapy industry, I think, is the idea that you must have deified your parents and what you have to do is come out of denial and admit how truly bad it really was. I am not saying that is not true or not valid. I am saying it can be really disabling if it means all you get to do now is look at the dark. Just as useful, and perhaps more helpful is the question, what in your background / your past, do you *like* and *find strengthening*?
5. In my case the answer to that last question included intellectual life, amazing revelations, laughter and zen-style meditation. Reeducation had no idea about the value of any of these things, it seemed, and more importantly, did not seem to believe I could have them. In essence, it took them away, held them hostage.
The sentence “you are an intellectual snob” was Reeducation’s greatest weapon in its assertion of itself over me, and I have a post coming right up on that. These comments here are closely related to it.
Hi
Very interesting information! Thanks!
Bye
N.B. The URL on this is Google-Russia. Because the comment is vague in the was spam comments are, I thought it was one, but it seems not, so I am posting it and saying Hi to you, Huitopor! –Z