La Cosa Nostra: Universities and Humanities
- La Cosa Nostra: Universities and Humanities
T.H. Adamowski
Professor of English, University of Toronto
Footnotes
1. In his distinction between ‘false’ and ‘true’ intellectuals, Sartre adumbrates the inherently adversarial mission of the latter: ‘He will thus reject “reformist” propositions, and in doing so will tend to become more and more radical. In actual fact radicalism and intellectual commitment are one and the same; it is the “moderate” arguments of reformists which logically radicalize the intellectual, by showing him that he must either reject the basic principles of the ruling class or serve it by merely appearing to reject them’ (Sartre, 252).
2. Consider, for example, the fad generated by Derrida for commentary on, and allusion to, Freud's trivial essay on ‘the mystic writing pad.’
3. Perhaps I am too sanguine. Readings's commitment to teaching as ‘justice’ arises from his critique of ‘subjective autonomy,’ an illusion that has led ‘North Americans ... to want to forget their obligations to the acts of genocide on which their society is founded’ (186). One might as easily argue that ‘subjective autonomy’leads them to debate such issues. The point is, however, that for Readings ‘justice’ includes a fundamental challenge to the individualistic thrust of the Enlightenment. Were his conception of justice-driven teaching to win the day in future universities, it would be interesting to see if those who are sceptical of Readings's anti-individualistic politics were provided with the same pedagogical ‘autonomy’ that the university in ruins provided for him.
4. We should not forget, however, that la cosa nostra is older than most of the nation-states in existence today. It was there when they were born, and if Readings is to be believed, it is the place which now issues their obituary notices.
5. Large numbers of the junior literary faculty are busy analysing the cultural significance of Elvis, Madonna, and other of their favourite pop icons. For an account of a common American culture, see Lind.
6. Think of all the students and professors who, lacking the rich literary culture of Roland Barthes, reduce the complex representations of human beings, in, say, Dickens or Balzac, to the ‘cultural code’ of S/Z.
7. Readings's reliance on this old metaphor conditions his account of teaching: ‘In order to open the question of pedagogy we do not need, therefore, to recenter teaching but to decenter it. By the decentering of the pedagogic situation I mean to insist that teaching is not best understood from the point of view of a sovereign subject that takes itself to be the sole guarantor of the meaning of that process, whether that subject is the student, the teacher, or the administrator’ (153) He confuses Enlightenment ideals with those of Fascism, or perhaps merely of monarchism.
8. As I remember the film, Tina Turner did need another hero, played by Mel Gibson.
9. Speaking of clichés and weary tropes, some day soon we are bound to come on an article called ‘Reading(s) the University.’
10. In an anticlimactic version of Sartre's distinction (note 1) between ‘false’ and ‘true’ intellectuals, the professor who becomes an administrator must now mediate conflicts or find moderate solutions. Necessarily, then, such a professor becomes ‘false,’ the ‘servant’ of the ‘ruling class,’ and a scandal to those colleagues who think of themselves as living in truth, even if they have never run one ‘Sarrrean’ risk and, in Sartrean terms, are, therefore, no less false.
11. It has not even been followed by the demise of the Grand Totalizer. Not about to risk having Sartre win later, ‘onappeal,’ Foucault, Bourdieu, Derrida, and Deleuze made grand totalizations of their own. Given the humanities audience to which such intellectuals have always appealed, soul-stirring ‘totalizations’ could scarcely have been avoided.
Works Cited
Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Google Scholar
