A funny thing happened to me at a bar. I was in the men's bathroom taking a piss when two girls stumbled through the door. The first fell flat on her face on the bathroom floor, and the second fell directly on top of the first. The bouncers were already right there, because both were incoherently drunk, and as one bouncer helped one of the girls up I finished up at the urinal and helped the other one up. I thought it was funny and walked out of the bathroom smiling and a little startled.
As soon as I emerged from the bathroom and the two drunk girls were taken away, another girl got in my face and said 'It's your fault.' I gave her a puzzled look, and she said 'no, I'm just joking.' I smiled and kept walking. When I was past her she continued, '...because you opened the door!'
The fact of the matter is that the girls didn't fall because I opened the door. I was still holding my Charles Dickens at the urinal when these two drunk girls fell into the *men's* bathroom because they couldn't figure out which was the women's bathroom and they were too drunk to properly walk and open doors. But this other one who was apparently 'just joking' about it all being my fault was truly under the false impression that I caused that scene. As I walked away with polite smiles I admit that this meaningless misconception of hers still irked me a little.
I'm certainly of the 'don't sweat the small stuff' mentality--on the record--but sometimes the small stuff seems pretty well connected to the big stuff. After I left this bar and was waiting for the train, another group of drunk people stumbled by me, complaining belligerently about the crowd in the subway station. They must have been partly after my heart, as I regularly complain about large groups of phone-ogling, slow-moving, inconsiderate people. But then this super-ironic, super-unattractive hipster among hipsters started a full-on rant. It began with how all the people on the platform should just jump in front of the next train and kill themselves, and ended with 'this is why they bombed Boston.'
She was truly a horrible person, and it took so much resolve to refrain from laying into her. She was the perfect prototype of all the 'little things' that are wrong with the world: a gross overbalance of entitlement above empathy, an insipid excuse for ironic comportment, a thorough inability to understand the force and merits of true irony or satire. These days (I must be getting old) this kind of intellectually broke and witless 'irony' prevails, in which you simply hold up obvious extremes ('innocent stranger, kill yourself!'; 'minor inconvenience = major tragedy') and think this is either funny or biting. It is neither. It is stupid and overdone and reflective of the laziness, vacuousness, and unearned arrogance of the average fuckface whose meager efforts afford her an ironic night out in the city...with trains!
The disdain this behavior generates in me makes me wonder sometimes whether I (you) should just become powerful, as opposed to doing things with my time that I believe in, and that I think make this world better than worse. Then I (you) could better stand up to this tyranny of bad irony, like so many powerful people do.
This is certainly how dictators begin to justify their actions. Fortunately, dictatorship is not an ambition of mine. Had I embraced the 'small stuff matters' mentality, I would (should) have told her off then an there, and this post tonight would never have happened.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Reclaiming 'Intellectual'
For centuries people have been interested in defining and measuring intelligence. The two go hand-in-hand, really, because to measure something requires one to decide what is to be measured. We have a sense of raw, computational intelligence akin to what one might employ in an IQ test. We have theories of multiple intelligences, which include things like emotional intelligence along with verbal and mathematical reasoning. We have memory tests. And, at least in the US, we have the idea of common sense or practical aptitude as a kind of intelligence (think 'how many professors does it take to screw in a lightbulb,' or the TV-show savant who can piece together seemingly unsolvable crimes by means of masterful information processing, but is always pushing with futility on a door you're supposed to pull).
We have plenty of (smart?) people working on how to define and measure these kinds of intelligence, and to quantify and describe intelligence in general; but we're never satisfied with the results. I think this is largely because intelligence is by definition greater than innate ability. Intelligence is inextricably linked with our values. If we lived in a world where everything practical were taken for granted as god-given, it may be painting or poetry that reflects the highest intelligence. If we lived in world where all the matter around us were constantly shifting its properties, it may be the engineer or the physicist who embodies the most formidable genius.
The best definition of intelligence I've come across is from an Oxford 'Short Introduction' to Intelligence that I read some years ago. The author described intelligence as a kind of flashlight. Different flashlights have differing degrees of candle power, such that some have the power to shine light further or brighter than others; but, crucially, it's also important where we point our flashlights. A flashlight with the most brilliant power, pointed continually at the same blank wall (or reality TV show, or futures market) will not achieve the knowledge, enrichment, or results of a dimmer flashlight pointed toward all that is dark, unknown, or underexplored. In other words, computational brain power is a part of intelligence, but so is that inclination or ability to train our brains on things that are diverse and complex and mysterious enough that we can learn and develop and flourish beyond our present selves.
I like this definition not only because it's plausible and accurately descriptive of what I and others empirically observe in our interactions with the world, but also because it allows for the possibility that the intelligence of every person is at least in some part amenable to the will: if we choose, we can all work on pointing our flashlights toward the dark corners in our lives, rather than dwelling complacently in the light of the known world. This is so satisfyingly democratic, despite that, surely, and for whichever reasons, some are more naturally inclined than others to point their flashlights in the right places, and some have the candle power to see so brilliantly anywhere they point.
I bring up intelligence because this, I think, is the crutch upon which modern-day castigation of the intellectual rests. So many--and, it must be said, especially those on the political right--are proudly anti-intellectual. They disdain the idea that someone highly educated or in an elite job in opinion journalism or a senior position at an art gallery, a museum, an opera house, or a scientific research institute might be considered smarter than the average person. The idea that knowing more about something is a form of elitism stems from this understanding of intelligence as fundamentally undemocratic. Rather than seeing people in these elevated 'knowledge' positions as hard workers who pointed their flashlights in uncommon directions, the anti-intellectual sees them as snobs who want to impose a foreign set of 'smart people' values on the commoner. At the same time as the anti-intellectual sees himself as a commoner, however, he also sees himself as intellectually superior, not faffing around with uncommon or unpopular knowledge, but enterprising in the realm of practical knowledge.
This paradoxical mentality of the anti-intellectual forces him into the No True Scotsman fallacy of denying the intelligence that he recognizes as intelligence, and simply renaming it snobbery.
As a consequence of this thinking, 'intellectual' has become a dirty word, signifying not the public good of pointing our flashlights in uncommon and underexplored directions, questioning popular attitudes and ideas, and standing up for knowledge for its own sake, but instead a kind of elitism or frivolity.
I, really, am proud to call myself an intellectual, or to strive to be one, without irony, and without disdain. For me this means leading what is trivially referred to as 'a life of the mind' not in some mythical 'Ivory Tower,' but every day. This means pointing our flashlights toward the darkness and being comfortable with the idea that we might not like what we find, but we'll deal with it as we go along. This means celebrating the freedom of public discourse, delighting in rhetoric, argument, disagreement, skepticism, and uncertainty. This means standing up to the scoffing, checkered-shirted, dark-rimmed tyranny of ironic detachment, and the insouciant consumerism that circumscribes it. This means not being afraid to be wrong or to be mocked for aspiring to something better than what we have.
The intellectual is a modern Don Quixote, a figure who was read as a madman and a buffoon before anyone thought him a visionary.
We have plenty of (smart?) people working on how to define and measure these kinds of intelligence, and to quantify and describe intelligence in general; but we're never satisfied with the results. I think this is largely because intelligence is by definition greater than innate ability. Intelligence is inextricably linked with our values. If we lived in a world where everything practical were taken for granted as god-given, it may be painting or poetry that reflects the highest intelligence. If we lived in world where all the matter around us were constantly shifting its properties, it may be the engineer or the physicist who embodies the most formidable genius.
The best definition of intelligence I've come across is from an Oxford 'Short Introduction' to Intelligence that I read some years ago. The author described intelligence as a kind of flashlight. Different flashlights have differing degrees of candle power, such that some have the power to shine light further or brighter than others; but, crucially, it's also important where we point our flashlights. A flashlight with the most brilliant power, pointed continually at the same blank wall (or reality TV show, or futures market) will not achieve the knowledge, enrichment, or results of a dimmer flashlight pointed toward all that is dark, unknown, or underexplored. In other words, computational brain power is a part of intelligence, but so is that inclination or ability to train our brains on things that are diverse and complex and mysterious enough that we can learn and develop and flourish beyond our present selves.
I like this definition not only because it's plausible and accurately descriptive of what I and others empirically observe in our interactions with the world, but also because it allows for the possibility that the intelligence of every person is at least in some part amenable to the will: if we choose, we can all work on pointing our flashlights toward the dark corners in our lives, rather than dwelling complacently in the light of the known world. This is so satisfyingly democratic, despite that, surely, and for whichever reasons, some are more naturally inclined than others to point their flashlights in the right places, and some have the candle power to see so brilliantly anywhere they point.
I bring up intelligence because this, I think, is the crutch upon which modern-day castigation of the intellectual rests. So many--and, it must be said, especially those on the political right--are proudly anti-intellectual. They disdain the idea that someone highly educated or in an elite job in opinion journalism or a senior position at an art gallery, a museum, an opera house, or a scientific research institute might be considered smarter than the average person. The idea that knowing more about something is a form of elitism stems from this understanding of intelligence as fundamentally undemocratic. Rather than seeing people in these elevated 'knowledge' positions as hard workers who pointed their flashlights in uncommon directions, the anti-intellectual sees them as snobs who want to impose a foreign set of 'smart people' values on the commoner. At the same time as the anti-intellectual sees himself as a commoner, however, he also sees himself as intellectually superior, not faffing around with uncommon or unpopular knowledge, but enterprising in the realm of practical knowledge.
This paradoxical mentality of the anti-intellectual forces him into the No True Scotsman fallacy of denying the intelligence that he recognizes as intelligence, and simply renaming it snobbery.
As a consequence of this thinking, 'intellectual' has become a dirty word, signifying not the public good of pointing our flashlights in uncommon and underexplored directions, questioning popular attitudes and ideas, and standing up for knowledge for its own sake, but instead a kind of elitism or frivolity.
I, really, am proud to call myself an intellectual, or to strive to be one, without irony, and without disdain. For me this means leading what is trivially referred to as 'a life of the mind' not in some mythical 'Ivory Tower,' but every day. This means pointing our flashlights toward the darkness and being comfortable with the idea that we might not like what we find, but we'll deal with it as we go along. This means celebrating the freedom of public discourse, delighting in rhetoric, argument, disagreement, skepticism, and uncertainty. This means standing up to the scoffing, checkered-shirted, dark-rimmed tyranny of ironic detachment, and the insouciant consumerism that circumscribes it. This means not being afraid to be wrong or to be mocked for aspiring to something better than what we have.
The intellectual is a modern Don Quixote, a figure who was read as a madman and a buffoon before anyone thought him a visionary.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
A Trainwreck is a Trainwreck: Some Other Facts about Literature and the Job Market
Rebecca Schuman's 'Thesis Hatement' article is clever and funny, but so, so wrong. There are things to be said about Schuman's own circumstances that make her advice based on personal experience less reliable, like the fact that she's in German literature and not English, which makes her prospects significantly worse than those for English literature academics; or the fact that she's already done well by herself to get a coveted ACLS New Faculty Fellowship, and still has a great chance of getting a tenure-track job; or that, as others have noted, being an emotional trainwreck over one's career isn't exactly exclusive to academic careers in literature, and is probably more reflective of an individual's approach to her career than the 'forces' of the career itself. But I don't want to get bogged down in the personal stuff here, because there is a much better argument to be made about why these 'just don't go' to graduate school in literature or humanities articles are wrongheaded and misleading.
For starters, Schuman's opening fable about Kafka's mouse is apt, though her reading of this fable is self-serving and misguided. As the fable goes,
My point here is that Schuman ignores a fundamental reality about working life in her attempt to paint academic careers in literature as especially awful: almost all employment is contingent, competitive, and often disheartening. We choose how to navigate this situation by degrees, and by figuring out for ourselves, when we make career choices, which tradeoffs we're most happy with, which things we must have and which we can let go of, which of our own tolerances and desires we should feed, and which we should ignore or suppress. That's reality.
In other words, if our career choice is always a false choice, there being no perfect or ideal career--to be trapped or to be eaten--then this doesn't underscore Schuman's point that academic literature careers are especially awful; it supports the very reason many people choose to pursue difficult or competitive careers despite how difficult and competitive they are: because it's still better and more rewarding than the alternatives.
So before we can even talk about the value of an academic career, we have to line up all career choices on the same starting line. This means not comparing an academic career with an unknown, unspecified, and idealized nonacademic career. It's trap or cat, not trap or luxury spa.
That being said, we also need to understand an important reality about academic jobs in English literature, the kinds of jobs that the vast majority of people reading and considering graduate school and a career in literature are considering. Articles in the 'just don't go' genre, like Schuman's, always foreground this alleged 'oversupply' in job candidates with PhDs in literature. We're told, therefore, that the job prospects are poor because there are 'too many' qualified PhD holders vying for too few jobs.
Half of this equation is correct: there are too few jobs. But literature scholars and the public at large really need to get this fact through our thick skulls: the apparent 'oversupply' of PhDs IS NOT A SUPPLY-SIDE PROBLEM. Let me explain this in terms of who needs teaching:
Many are quick to point out that English majors are on the decline, while business majors are on the rise. This is true, relative to the increasing population of enrolled college students. Putting aside the fact that when there's a glut of business majors in the future, people will respond by majoring in things other than business; and putting aside that English majors are among the most versatile and employable of all; when we talk about DEMAND for PhDs in English, we're talking about the raw numbers of students who need teaching in English classes.
In raw numbers, English departments remain (as they have for decades) the largest and most populous departments in virtually any university. Excluding the fact that basic literature and writing classes are always part of the distributive requirements for non-majors in English, the numbers of actual English majors have been relatively steady over the years. Among all bachelor's degrees conferred by field of study (nces.ed.gov), 63,914 English literature degrees were conferred in the 'heyday' of literature education in 1970-71, 50,000 in 1999-00, and steadily between 52-55,000 for every other year between 2000 and 2010. These numbers for English are far greater than for computer and information sciences, engineering technologies, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and consumer sciences, to name a few.
What this means, in short, is that the demand for teaching in English literature remains among the highest of all subjects. The reason the jobs are scarce for literature academics is not because there are too many PhDs, nor because advanced teaching in literature isn't very much in demand, but because universities have been steadily shaving tenure-track jobs in all disciplines in order to cut costs and make more money for nonessential spending. Classrooms of 50 or 100 students 'studying' literature are non-starters for learning the subject properly, but with larger classes, universities can pay for fewer faculty.
This is the problem that Schuman and others acknowledge; but the cause--demand-side manipulation of the market by university administrations, not suppply-side 'oversupply'--is crucial. It's crucial because telling the best people not to actively participate in and pursue the academic teaching and learning of literature means telling them effectively to assent to the total destruction not only of literature departments, but of the university itself.
This brings me to my final point. In the rapidly deteriorating university, tenure-track lines are indeed deteriorating as well. But, back to the cat and trap analogy, this doesn't make an academic career in literature worse than any other kind of career; it only brings it to a comparable level where job security is concerned. Don't get me wrong: I think tenure is essential and ought to be preserved and also expanded, frankly; but that's not going to happen if literature scholars just quit before we start. And while we're digging in and waiting for that tenure-track position someday, its' not as if the great abundance of full-time lectureships, postdoctoral fellowships, Visiting Assistant Professorships, etc. are doing worse by us than the average office job. Rather than comparing these to being a tenure-track faculty member in the 1970s, we should be comparing them to the alternatives. In what other job does one have such freedom from managers, such day-to-day control over one's schedule, such time and freedom to pursue the research that one (apparently) loves or finds important? And what makes anyone think that working for an accounting firm or a non-profit is any less precarious in terms of job security than working as a professor on a one- or two- or three-year contract?
My final point, then, is that when we compare contingent academic labor to what is effectively contingent labor in every other sector, we're making a more realistic comparison on which to base our career choices. Every industry needs to be self-serving, to promote its ideals as well as its goals, and to recruit the best possible people into its ranks. If the university can be saved, it will be saved not by medical research administrators pulling money hand over fist, or MBA schools, or university presidents and provosts; it will be saved by faculty in literature, math, history, chemistry, etc., who are savvy enough to make the case. 'Just don't go' is typical literature-academic self-defeatism. It smacks of the wrong kind of idealism--the insular idealism of snobbery and false comparisons--and says to the world 'we give up, because we're too good to get our hands dirty.'
For starters, Schuman's opening fable about Kafka's mouse is apt, though her reading of this fable is self-serving and misguided. As the fable goes,
'Alas, said the mouse, 'the world gets smaller every day. At first it was so wide that I ran along and was happy to see the walls appearing to my right and left, but these high walls converged so quickly that I'm already in the last room, and there in the corner is the trap into which I must run.'As Schuman relates the fable to her decision to pursue graduate school in literature and an academic career, the mouse (the naive graduate student) was cat food the entire time without knowing it. At this point Shuman drops the fable as a metaphor for career choice, only to pick it up again at the end, when she warns, 'you've only got to run the other way.' We get the impression that graduate school and an attempted career in academia is a mouse trap; but then, doesn't running the other way mean getting eaten in the end anyway?
'But you've only got to run the other way,' said the cat, and ate it.
My point here is that Schuman ignores a fundamental reality about working life in her attempt to paint academic careers in literature as especially awful: almost all employment is contingent, competitive, and often disheartening. We choose how to navigate this situation by degrees, and by figuring out for ourselves, when we make career choices, which tradeoffs we're most happy with, which things we must have and which we can let go of, which of our own tolerances and desires we should feed, and which we should ignore or suppress. That's reality.
In other words, if our career choice is always a false choice, there being no perfect or ideal career--to be trapped or to be eaten--then this doesn't underscore Schuman's point that academic literature careers are especially awful; it supports the very reason many people choose to pursue difficult or competitive careers despite how difficult and competitive they are: because it's still better and more rewarding than the alternatives.
So before we can even talk about the value of an academic career, we have to line up all career choices on the same starting line. This means not comparing an academic career with an unknown, unspecified, and idealized nonacademic career. It's trap or cat, not trap or luxury spa.
That being said, we also need to understand an important reality about academic jobs in English literature, the kinds of jobs that the vast majority of people reading and considering graduate school and a career in literature are considering. Articles in the 'just don't go' genre, like Schuman's, always foreground this alleged 'oversupply' in job candidates with PhDs in literature. We're told, therefore, that the job prospects are poor because there are 'too many' qualified PhD holders vying for too few jobs.
Half of this equation is correct: there are too few jobs. But literature scholars and the public at large really need to get this fact through our thick skulls: the apparent 'oversupply' of PhDs IS NOT A SUPPLY-SIDE PROBLEM. Let me explain this in terms of who needs teaching:
Many are quick to point out that English majors are on the decline, while business majors are on the rise. This is true, relative to the increasing population of enrolled college students. Putting aside the fact that when there's a glut of business majors in the future, people will respond by majoring in things other than business; and putting aside that English majors are among the most versatile and employable of all; when we talk about DEMAND for PhDs in English, we're talking about the raw numbers of students who need teaching in English classes.
In raw numbers, English departments remain (as they have for decades) the largest and most populous departments in virtually any university. Excluding the fact that basic literature and writing classes are always part of the distributive requirements for non-majors in English, the numbers of actual English majors have been relatively steady over the years. Among all bachelor's degrees conferred by field of study (nces.ed.gov), 63,914 English literature degrees were conferred in the 'heyday' of literature education in 1970-71, 50,000 in 1999-00, and steadily between 52-55,000 for every other year between 2000 and 2010. These numbers for English are far greater than for computer and information sciences, engineering technologies, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and consumer sciences, to name a few.
What this means, in short, is that the demand for teaching in English literature remains among the highest of all subjects. The reason the jobs are scarce for literature academics is not because there are too many PhDs, nor because advanced teaching in literature isn't very much in demand, but because universities have been steadily shaving tenure-track jobs in all disciplines in order to cut costs and make more money for nonessential spending. Classrooms of 50 or 100 students 'studying' literature are non-starters for learning the subject properly, but with larger classes, universities can pay for fewer faculty.
This is the problem that Schuman and others acknowledge; but the cause--demand-side manipulation of the market by university administrations, not suppply-side 'oversupply'--is crucial. It's crucial because telling the best people not to actively participate in and pursue the academic teaching and learning of literature means telling them effectively to assent to the total destruction not only of literature departments, but of the university itself.
This brings me to my final point. In the rapidly deteriorating university, tenure-track lines are indeed deteriorating as well. But, back to the cat and trap analogy, this doesn't make an academic career in literature worse than any other kind of career; it only brings it to a comparable level where job security is concerned. Don't get me wrong: I think tenure is essential and ought to be preserved and also expanded, frankly; but that's not going to happen if literature scholars just quit before we start. And while we're digging in and waiting for that tenure-track position someday, its' not as if the great abundance of full-time lectureships, postdoctoral fellowships, Visiting Assistant Professorships, etc. are doing worse by us than the average office job. Rather than comparing these to being a tenure-track faculty member in the 1970s, we should be comparing them to the alternatives. In what other job does one have such freedom from managers, such day-to-day control over one's schedule, such time and freedom to pursue the research that one (apparently) loves or finds important? And what makes anyone think that working for an accounting firm or a non-profit is any less precarious in terms of job security than working as a professor on a one- or two- or three-year contract?
My final point, then, is that when we compare contingent academic labor to what is effectively contingent labor in every other sector, we're making a more realistic comparison on which to base our career choices. Every industry needs to be self-serving, to promote its ideals as well as its goals, and to recruit the best possible people into its ranks. If the university can be saved, it will be saved not by medical research administrators pulling money hand over fist, or MBA schools, or university presidents and provosts; it will be saved by faculty in literature, math, history, chemistry, etc., who are savvy enough to make the case. 'Just don't go' is typical literature-academic self-defeatism. It smacks of the wrong kind of idealism--the insular idealism of snobbery and false comparisons--and says to the world 'we give up, because we're too good to get our hands dirty.'
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