Comments on: Aca­d­emic ma­te­rial http://blog.voyou.org/2009/02/04/academic-material/ Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:03:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: duncan http://blog.voyou.org/2009/02/04/academic-material/comment-page-1/#comment-32458 duncan Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:52:08 +0000 http://blog.voyou.org/?p=558#comment-32458 Yeah, that article's really obnoxious. Obviously academia is shitty - but the article seems to be written from a space that both fantasises what non-academic work involves (attributing to academia specifically stuff that's pretty much a feature of capitalism) and yet also fails to hit on problems that really are specific to academic employment. Both these things, as you say, discourage any attempt at change or contestation. There's a profoundly unpleasant displacemenet of affect, too: justified rage at the exploitations associated with his own industry is rerouted into contempt for the people being exploited; the problem isn't the system, it's the naivete of those within it - all those ditzy would-be grad students who haven't faced up to the school of hard knocks. Of course that naivete is in large part fantasised too. "With the prospect of an unappealing, entry-level job on the horizon, life in college becomes increasingly idealized." The fact that plenty of people work in unappealing jobs to pay <em>for</em> life in college is outside the scope of Benton's polemic - which is directed against the stupidity of the students whose enrollment pays his salary. Not to say that lots of the stuff in his article isn't right, obviously. Just: ugh. (Sorry to come out of nowhere with a (probably confused) rant. Done now.) Yeah, that article’s really obnoxious. Obviously academia is shitty – but the article seems to be written from a space that both fantasises what non-academic work involves (attributing to academia specifically stuff that’s pretty much a feature of capitalism) and yet also fails to hit on problems that really are specific to academic employment. Both these things, as you say, discourage any attempt at change or contestation. There’s a profoundly unpleasant displacemenet of affect, too: justified rage at the exploitations associated with his own industry is rerouted into contempt for the people being exploited; the problem isn’t the system, it’s the naivete of those within it – all those ditzy would-be grad students who haven’t faced up to the school of hard knocks. Of course that naivete is in large part fantasised too. “With the prospect of an unappealing, entry-level job on the horizon, life in college becomes increasingly idealized.” The fact that plenty of people work in unappealing jobs to pay for life in college is outside the scope of Benton’s polemic – which is directed against the stupidity of the students whose enrollment pays his salary. Not to say that lots of the stuff in his article isn’t right, obviously. Just: ugh.

(Sorry to come out of nowhere with a (probably confused) rant. Done now.)

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