From Posthegemony:
In an era when capitalism is assumed to be not only efficient but also a source of freedom, the careerist seems like the agent of an easy-going tolerance and pluralism. Unlike the ideologue, whose great sin is to think too much and want too much from politics, the careerist is a genial caretaker of himself. He prefers the marketplace to the corridors of state power. He is realistic and pragmatic, not utopian or fanatic. That careerism may be as lethal as idealism, that ambition is an adjunct of barbarism, that some of the worst crimes are the result of ordinary vices rather than extraordinary ideas: these are the implications of Eichmann in Jerusalem that neo-cons and neoliberals alike find too troubling to acknowledge.
–Corey Robin, “Dragon-Slayers,” London Review of Books (4 January 2007): 20.
Assignment: relate this to the question of “professionalization” for academics.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Well here’s the thing. I will probably never get a scholarship or grant from the University because I am not bland enough. Those who do succeed within the system in Western Australia are almost all indubitably bland. So, this is a problem, certainly.
Careerists in public service, like the ones messing up Iraq currently, are the ones who cause the most damage. They don’t really care what happens to people. Not as long as they are O.K.
Yes, blandness really helps and I am also incapable of it. If you are not bland you have to be doubly good – it is in that way sort of like being Black, or female, or something.
What one of my professors said: “Each faculty member is allowed one eccentricity, and by being a woman you have already used yours up. You must therefore be utterly conventional in all outward ways. Your compensation for this must therefore be undertaken in some way that the University does not see – some secret hobby.”
When she said this, we graduate students thought oh dear, Professor, where is your space of liberty? But she was sort of right. Or perhaps, exactly right.
Yet it is still possible to *survive* as a non-bland person, and I prefer that to becoming bland (as if I could, of course).
Well I am “surviving” on government welfare and part time work from Japan. I am probably the only highly intelligent person that has been filtered out of the system through being too good.
Hattie – so true about Iraq!
Scratchy – there are more people with this situation.
Perhaps not in your area but it is a known phenomenon.
Oh good. I think perhaps not in my area though. I do take courage from Marechera who had an extreme version of this particular predicament — as seen in The Black Insider and Mindblast.
Anyway, I don’t totally resent my predicament. The Nietzschean saying that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger is true in my case.
For instance, when I first came to Australia, I was mademoiselle arch-conservative. Not that I knew it. I had all the markers of being extremely conservative, though — sexually repressed to some large degree, mentally and emotionally an adherent of rule following behaviour, afraid to draw attention to myself, and so on. I had also developed a kind of desperate professionalism to weigh me down, psychologically, even further. Without the freedom to have adventures in the African wild, I was wallowing in a deep state of unhappiness, and destined only to experience more of it.
But, you know, the people of this culture have never relented in savagely attacking me until very recently. I had a weak mind (as per above) when all of this started, and now, 20 years or so later, the opposite is the case.
And this — and the opportunity to develop my intellect — is not a bad thing.
It’s funny, but in the big bad art world, it seems that people who agitate for diversity and make that a part of their work tend to go as far as they can be promoted…as a kind of fad, if you will. If you are very loud nearly all the time, you have a career. If you are very cunning and have the right sort of connections, you also have a career. There is no in-between.
If you ARE in-between, then you are not polarizing enough. You cannot be easily pigeonholed. You are dynamite to the careerists, because you could well tank THEIR careers if you are not as advertised. Bad, bad stuff. Really.
Scratchy – having a strong mind is the key, as you have been demonstrating!
Liprap – yes. I wonder about this. One of the things I wonder is whether it is permitted to be outrageous if the outrageousness is within paradigms.
At one place I worked there was this outrageous woman but she was always outrageous in a recognizable way – embracing feminine norms in a way that looked transgressive but wasn’t really because it did not transgress the norms themselves. She did various wild things and one might have expected her behavior to be considered unacceptable, but things turned out fine because people recognized its tropes, understood it. So people might disapprove, but they still ‘grocked’ her, and many others were merely entertained.
Does this make any sense?
2nd last paragraph = pomo strategy. Nice work if you brain is already structured that way!
Pomo strategy – exactly. And thin, like much postmodernism. Faux revolution…
..and elitist, too. You have have pretty much landed with you bum in the butter to be able to afford that strategy.
“She did various wild things and one might have expected her behavior to be considered unacceptable, but things turned out fine because people recognized its tropes, understood it.”
Accepted rebellion is kind of like the reverse form of pornography – people know it when they see it. And it has also become more acceptable to rebel for recognizable reasons and some unrecognizable ones, if only because it is now acceptable to acknowledge the rebellious within ourselves. It has been co-opted for profit, for career, for individuality – but for many, many people now, those three reasons right there are the ONLY reasons.
Elitist, yes, and it is only token rebellion. A fashion accessory … ? …
Here is my motto: don’t rebel; take charge.
That is an *excellent* motto and I was thinking of it at lunch, even before I had read your comment. Great timing.
P.S. That is yet *another* thing, or the *main* thing I could not stand about Reeducation. It was against taking charge, or being in charge of one’s life.
Here is my motto: don’t rebel; take charge.
My stance is “Don’t drive! Use gears!”
I’ve also been known to say, “Don’t fight. Walk!”
Those are good, too! 🙂
hahaha! It has been hot as hell (it was yesterday) in Perth. Today is cooler, thank the deity.
Will it get hotter as we move toward December?
unendurably.
I have just had an Epiphany. Namely: the attitude one despises in students, “I want a degree and passing grades but I do not want to learn, I only want to Get Points,” is one and the same as the overly ‘professionalized’, overly ‘trained’ professorial attitude I deplore: “I do not want to teach responsibly, I only want high evaluations. I do not want to advance knowledge, I only want to be well cited.” Interest in surface signs only, and of course profit.
By that measurement I’m underprofessionalised to a fault or three. Actually I have goals beyond advancing knowledge. I want to change society so that we do not only have some knowledge stored away in books, for those with the fortitude to look into them. I want a basic change in attitude away from bourgeois mind-body dualism, so that knowledge permeates the soul. I won’t stop at anything less — although I may transfer myself to such a place where I think that this outcome is already more likely.
Those are the truly ideal goals.