Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:37:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Juergen Hahn > Dario Fernandez-Morera: We have seen the  enemy,
 and it is...
To: [log in to unmask]


I must say that many of the Marxist critics of the old school were learned and educados en todo el sentido de la palabra.  I, as a hopelessly bourgeois, that is, middle class liberal, could converse with them.  Europe still has some of those and I respect them and converse with them.  But some of the new ones in the U.S. tend to be not only vulgar Marxists, but just plain vulgar, and very fond of a certain kind of verbal terrorism.  D
 
In a message dated 4/16/2007 4:54:36 P.M. Central Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes:

Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:20:17 -0700 (PDT)

From: Juergen Hahn <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: Re: Fwd: Dario Fernandez-Morera: We have seen the enemy, and it is  us.

To: "A. Robert Lauer" <[log in to unmask]>

Bravo, Dario, I absolutely could not have summarized

it better! It  occured to me there may be a reason why

things seem even worse now  then when your highly

perceptive book came out: Those who represented the

current back then were largely still junior professors

who still had to reckon with the resistance from older

"universalist" scholars in their career evaluations.

The latter have been disappearing into retirement,

many unfortunately in pure panic, and those erstwhile

juniors are now the undisputed senior professors in

charge. So now you have the worst effects of the

Kuhnian paradigm, and the worst of all worlds.

As for that scholar who considers the term "bourgeois

liberal crap" to be  legitimate critical terminology,

how should one respond? Perhaps with "Marxist crap"?

Or "race-baiting crap"? But I fear that would mean the

final descent into the speechless nethersphere of the

"Hollow Men" (or women).

Juergen Hahn

--- "A. Robert Lauer" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>

> >Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:53:38 -0400 (EDT)

> >From: [log in to unmask]

> >Subject: Re: We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

> >To: [log in to unmask]

> >

> >«Y entre los santos de piedra

> >y los álamos de magia

> >pasas llevando en tus ondas

> >palabras de amor, palabras».

> >

> >Que estrofa mas evocativa!  No la conocia.  Gracias

> por citarla, Emilia.

> >

> >Spanish literature is not alone in the situation

> >that many at this forum lament.  Many literature

> >departments around the country have eliminated

> >Medieval Studies or made them ancillary to other

> >studies of greater relevance....  Look at the

> >department of English at your university or

> >college and see who publishes on Chaucer; or who

> >publishes on Chaucer in order to show something

> >other than the chauvinism, patriarchalism,

> >obscurantism, and brutality of Medieval times,

> >against which some select Medieval writers

> >miraculously rebelled, as indubitably

> >demonstrated by the professor's

> >research.  Taking a class dedicated to

> >Shakespeare is no longer part of the program,

> >but something voluntary.  The same goes for

> >French.  A course on Cervantes has ceased to be

> >a requirement of the undergraduate curriculum,

> >and in some cases this requirement has been

> >eliminated with the enthusiastic acquiescence of

> >Golden Age scholars, who have been against

> >"privileging" or "hierarchizing."  The

> >humanities are studied basically in order to

> >show how chauvinistic, racist, and generally bad

> >the context in which they have appeared and

> >thrived has been; and how they have been placed

> >largely at the service of exploitation, etc.,

> >that is, the humanities are studied in order to

> >show how ideological they have actually

> >been.  Some years ago I thought the situation

> >was bad; but the situation has worsened since I

> >published my American Academia and the Survival

> >of Marxist Ideas.  So the question is, if those

> >who study the humanities do not consider them

> >worth defending, why should administrators?  If

> >we consider the sixteenth and seventeenth

> >centuries not a "Golden Age," but an age of

> >exploitation, religious obscurantism, and

> >general badness, which a few clever writers

> >secretly managed to denigrate, until we of

> >course thanks to our superior abilities have

> >managed to detect and prove their Straussian

> >deceptiveness, why should administrators be

> >concerned with subsidizing the study of this

> >historical cesspool, or students be concerned

> >with studying it at all?  At best, let us better

> >conflate it with something of greater interest,

> >such as Liberation Studies, for example.  If we

> >study Medieval and sixteenth and seventeenth

> >century writers basically to show how bad their

> >times were, how can we communicate any love of

> >the culture that, somehow, strangely, fostered

> >the existence of such great writers (notice the

> >paradox here) to our students so that they get

> >interested in studying the period

> >themselves?  Of course in many cases the concept

> >of greater or lesser writer has disappeared as

> >well, along with the concept of greater or

> >lesser, period, so there are no great writers to

> >study anymore.  Now, who would want to study

> >something under these conditions

> >consistently?  I suppose we professors would,

> >along with pathologists, but that is not enough

> >to keep a field alive indefinitely...(I am

> >tempted to create a field: The Pathology of

> >Literature; two famous French professors once

> >did publish a book on "The Parasite" once, and I

> >am sure many other professors read it).  If the

> >humanities have been basically an ideological

> >instrument of exploitation, etc. etc. should we

> >wonder that neither administrators nor students

> >put the humanities very high on their list of

> >priorities?  I just attended a lecture on Persae

> >by a famous English professor.  Her

> >prize-winning line of argument was how racist,

> >chauvinistic and eurocentric Persae and its

> >interpretations have been, at least until

> >recently, when, as she points out, satirical or

> >subversive adaptations have been made in order

> >to put Persae at the service of human

> >liberation, as understood by the English

> >professor of course.  She expressed her

> >annoyance at other interpretations by

> >characterizing them as "bourgeois liberal

> >crap."  Those where her exact words.  She kept

> >mocking the notion that Salamis and Thermopilae

> >had anything to do with Western liberty--Western

> >liberty being in any case a notion that she

> >laughs at too.  A month ago I attended another

> >lecture on Persae by yet another famous

> >professor, this time a classicist from

> >Stanford.  His line of argument was that

> >egalitarianism is highly desirable, as is the

> >redistribution of wealth.  Since he has the gift

> >of gab, as we all more or less do (after all, we

> >are professors), he did manage to make this

> >argument while talking around Persae.  So my

> >friends, we have seen the enemy of the

> >humanities, and it is not administrators or

> students: it is us.

> >

 

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