A Rigour Runs Through It

      RK emailed me this article from today's NY Times by Stanley Fish that I think should be read and reread by all of my colleagues in the academy. The article is effectively Fish's parting shot at the academy before he retires (although I expect he'll still write odd articles and perhaps a book or two once absent from the campus environment), and he seems to be joining distinguished company in railing against the polemical tendencies of the academy. I had thought of writing a response to Fish's article-- in part a justification of my own ways of thinking, in part a jeremiad against what I deem the silly and often staggeringly-blinkered pretensions of the current hegemony of ideology scouts-- but I think I'll just leave most of this be, and continue to be and to do what I do best, other than that, well, that thing that is absolutely none of your business. We lead best by example, which, in my case, is to demonstrate constantly my own commitment to my discipline and to my field of study; we lead best by demonstrating that the sincerity of our interest and our interrogation is its own reward, and that such sincerity breeds individuality of thought and with it fidelity of character and prudence in judgment. This can be put much more plainly: love what you do and let other people know it. The best teachers and the best thinkers don't worry about any answers except their own, and they worry less about their own answers than the processes of thought which go into the exploration and consideration. This is where, I think, the academy has gone fundamentally wrong. It speaks in platitudes rather than processes; it provides templates for thought rather than encouraging intellectual individuation; it niggles on questions of relativity that make the interrogative activity little more than an anticipation of a pending contradiction or qualification. I think my fundamental problem with the academy as it exists now-- once I get past any pet snobberies to which any of us are inclined at any given time-- is a fundamental insincerity of purpose. If I elaborate on this, I know I'll end up in a full-scale rant that will go on for several screens, so I'll leave that there. My central point, though, is this: the academy needs to remember that its primary concerns are with the development of knowledge (not just the mere dissemination of it) and the development of sincere and independent thinkers (for we need them for knowledge to develop at all in the future). These concerns, as I see it, are best addressed by demonstrating one's own commitment to both of these things, and to demonstrate (note the activity of that word, please) one's own capacity to develop knowledge and to nurture intellectual rigour.

      This can be all be rephrased in another way, in a manner more decidely populistic: the academy talks the talk more than it walks the walk. The best teachers are those that love what they do and what to share not just what they know, but what they do; they want to involve their students in their own discussions, and to involve themselves in the thoughts of their students. The best thing the academy can do-- must do-- is to remind everyone inside and out of it that is an institution commited to the act, the process, of study, that all of us are still students. This is necessary carnivalistic fact of which the academy must constantly remind itself. Sadly, however, the academy of late has taken to the reassertion of hierarchies bound to disconnect. Many act like generals, refusing to engage in the muddy details of elementary intellectual struggle. Most, however, act like indifferent proselytizers, instructing from the mount while dealing with their own questions as matters of aloof course. We don't need fact-dispensers or political ideologues or cultural poseurs in the academy, all of whom tend to work from scripts riddled with talking points and extradisciplinary agendae. No, we need people who care about what they study and what they do enough to encourage those that follow them to the same concerns and processes of pursuit. Or, back to that populistic tone again: the academy needs to do more than give fish away, or even teach its students how to fish; it needs to demonstrate why fishing is necessary and why it matters beyond whatever one hauls away at the end of the day.

      And, yes, now that I've written this, I'm sure all mysocial-scientific colleagues would accuse me of mystifying all this with obscurantist humanisms and naïve idealistic pap. Well, fine, whatever. Strange, though-- as deluded as Don Quixote may often be, he's capable of something his compatriots, Sancho excepted, are not: insight.