Bastards and Disasters

Not often I find myself agreeing with Camille Paglia, but with her response to this letter, I do, at least in part:

The teaching profession in the humanities has lost an entire generation of smart, imaginative young people who were driven away from graduate school because of its infestation by pointless, pretentious, Continental "theory." What a disaster for American intellectual life!

Not much will change until the oppressors (my baby boom generation of trend-chasing p.c. faculty) retire over the next 10 to 15 years. Then perhaps young people can begin to breathe free and reclaim their own originality.

It's hardly worth restating my issues with the farcical nature of most areas of academia, but it's worth clarifying that the theory is less the problem than the professional marginalists who have built their own hectoring intellectual hegemony upon railing against hegemonies. (Yes, it's an awful sentence, but trudge it through. I think it scans-- eventually.) Academia lost its sense of humour, particularly as it invested itself so heavily in the turgid promises of professionalization. It became joyless, self-justifying, and spectacularly onanistic. I am repeatedly told by more optimistic people that Things Are Changing, but I remain unconvinced. In fact, I suspect things are only going to get worse, particularly as the current power-holders realize there's dissent in the ranks. (It's the lesson of Robespierre.) But I do agree that, probably within the next 20 years, things will change and a great sigh of relief will emanate from the once-hallowed halls. How many fine minds, however, will we have lost in the meantime? That, I think, is the quiet cost, the collateral damage, of which no one speaks. Except, of course, for recalcitrant bastards like YT. Now gods stand up for....