What is is about the Freyre apologists?
1. Arrogance: they think they are an enlightened elite and everyone else is unsubtle. 2. Argument by authority: they are exceptionalists, and because of their identity they have special knowledge nobody else can have. 3. Apologetics: they have excuses for everything. 4. Projection, projective identification, or something like these: “You are an X, therefore you must think Y, and I know this to be true.” 5. Gaslighting or something like this: they refuse rational conversation and instead attempt to manipulate their interlocutors.
These are all hallmarks of authoritarian behavior. Notice the invasiveness, the streaks of verbal abuse, and the focus on maintaining discursive power and diminishing the interlocutor. A large part of the reason I wanted to leave academia and refused to write for years was that I wanted to get away from people like this and I have only cited one example (and not linked to their site).
I argued bitterly with Feminéma last year, taking the position that I was tired of saying academia was destructive because it did me no good to think about it. I have been being told I was powerless for as long as I remember and it is more useful to me to remember that I do have some autonomy and some room to move.
But when I look at what the above mentioned individual has on his vita, and think of how destructive some people really have been to me and to many others–and realize that it in the case of some it was with energy they stole from us that they wrote their books–I have to concede that Feminéma may be right.
That, finally, is probably the fundamental reason I dislike academic advice. You can be perfect, and you can do everything perfectly, you can be a brilliant strategist, but you cannot always win against oppression.
And a good professor assumes the students will be able to do what they do, but a bad one is concerned to demonstrate that only they can. That is one thread in this post. The other is that authoritarianism is a necessary element in exceptionalism.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 