*Las cabezas bien pensantes is the title of a story by Elena Garro in the collection Andamos huyendo Lola.
I spend a lot of time explaining to undergraduates who are the first in their family to attend college how things work and what the possibilities are. The candor of their questions is refreshing and makes me realize how difficult it always was, both in graduate school and then in Reeducation, to have an honest conversation with the cabeza bien pensante, the person in charge whose “head thinks well.”
Why was there so much mistrust, and so much second guessing, in these venues? In graduate school, the default assumption was that we would not finish our degrees. It was unwise to ask any question or make any remark which might possibly cause the professor in question to imagine, even vaguely, that one ever dreamed of slowing down. This made many conversations which would have been useful and indeed, speeded us on our way, impossible.
In Reeducation, the default assumption was that we were very seriously disturbed. It became necessary to know the favorite disorders of the Reeducator so that one could remember to assure him that one was not hearing voices, not counting obsessively, not suddenly driving all the way to Atlantic City to gamble – and thus avoid being treated for something one was not actually engaged in. As with graduate school, this took time away from the conversations in which we might have discussed real matters, as opposed to figments of somebody’s imagination. Why is it that certain authorities so insist on making these gross assumptions? How did they grow so narrow?
I think they think they are teaching us rules and pathways we need to know. I think those who do that in this way, often know these rules and pathways less well than do those they believe they should teach. I think their actual, if unconscious goal is to limit thought. But is it not desirable to know the methodology of one’s field and profession, and to be able to question these? Are these not the twin preconditions of research?
*Las cabezas bien pensantes is the title of a story by Elena Garro in the collection Andamos huyendo Lola.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
My own conclusion is that it is in the nature of political institutions — including academia — to limit thought. It’s not that a group of people get together and share their similar inhibitions, it’s just that power is by its nature exclusionary. Fear builds as people worry that they may in some sense — psychologically, economically and so on — be displaced by the encroaching newcomers. The shutters of the mind then come down, but perhaps without the people concerned even realising it.
This also happens on the left (to the degree, I suppose, that the ideologies of the left are institutionalised. I must say that I have experienced this on the part of the left to a very negative and great degree.
Which left?
Yes, political institutions (and academia and Reeducation are both, and this is an important point) want to limit thought and also the power of encroaching newcomers (and graduate students and Reeducands are primarily this, another important point). I am still too innocent, me, and keep thinking
the goals are knowledge and freedom. !
What left? The superficial left. For example there is a certain amount of leftwing consciousness in Australia that is tied to a need to be seen and felt as morally justified, at least in its own eyes. So, you know I came from a pariah country and was responsible for all the racism in the world, and nobody could talk to me in an open and reasonable fashion. Yet the moral left has very appropriate and clean attitudes towards the Aboriginals of Australia, and knows that the evils of the past have been all put behind by the new glowing purity of cleanly brushed and sparkling souls. It is only the immigrant newcomers, like myself, that threaten to contaminate everything.
I took a course when I was in grad school (outside of my department, obviously) on “Ethnicity and Methodology in the Social Sciences” taught by a mentor of mine in Black Studies. It asked just this type of question and examined the entrenchment of ideology at length, ultimately giving birth to my dissertation topic. An invaluable consideration, really.
Greetings, by the way. I’ve pretty much incubated into my new life. I’m past the toddler stage now, I think, and starting to peek out the windows to see what I can see. It feels good.
Ah, the superficial left – the question being whether it is left at all, or just soft right.
CS, good! 🙂 I’ll be in touch. And would love to hear more about that dissertation.
It was called “On Rationalizing Racism: Institutionalized Oppression in Sociological Writings on African-American/European-American Relations.” ;^)