...My Work

I am not sure if academic work is becoming increasingly irrelevant (that is to say, was there ever a time when it was relevant?) or if I am becoming increasingly aware of the irrelevance of most academic work. This is not a quality issue. I do not mean to suggest (as others have) that standards have fallen or that theory has ruined everything, etc. I mean to ask what is the point of academic writing in the first place?

"How is it that you live, and what is it you do?" (Wordsworth)

Recently, I had to put together part one of my tenure review file: the research part. This folder is sent to several referees around the country. These referees in turn decide whether or not my work constitutes a contribution to my field of study. This is a sickeningly worrisome process to me, raising as it does - as it is supposed to do? - my own insecurities about work, intellect, writing. But my worries are hardly an interesting topic to write about. The process has raised another concern as well, though, and this concern is something that has been nagging me for several years now (from the dissertation prospectus phase, in fact): if I am fortunate my work will pass as a viable contribution to my field. But to what does my field contribute?

I like my job and I like having a job. I like teaching; I like my students and my colleagues. I do not like where I live but that's acdemia, isn't it? I can and do see the relevance of teaching. I sometimes ask why I should teach Wordsworth or Conrad or Woolf - why I should teach literary works, that is. The answer I give myself changes a lot. One of the better recent answers I've seen from others comes from Mark Danner. In a speech he delivered to the 2005 graduating English class at UC Berkeley (entitled "Humanism and Terror (What are you going to do with that?): see http://www.markdanner.com/articles/show/humanism_and_terror_what_are_you_going_to_do_with_that), Danner (who has written on the Abu Ghraib photographs for the NYRB) highlights the fact that the current administration not only condones torture, it openly condones it: it does not conceal the fact, that is, that it is for torture. Still, despite the fact that documents and evidence regarding the atrocities of the government are easily accessible, few people look. Few people, perhaps, care. In this context, deciding to study literature, says Danner, is deciding to be someone who questions, who looks, who reads.

"We are divided [...] between those of us willing to listen, and believe, and those of us determined to read, and think, and find out. And you, English majors of the Class of 2005, you have taken the fateful first step in numbering yourselves, perhaps irredeemably, in the second category. You have taken a step along the road to being Empiricists of the Word. "

This sounds good to me. And the fact that Conrad or Woolf or Dostoevsky can give us a better sense of the complicated motivations behind violence, war, and treachery does not preclude the sheer pleasure of reading their books. Political and moral questioning can coexist with pleasure. It can be a pleasure (the pleasure of hating is my theme). But this is a digression. How and why does a scholarly book on Conrad or Woolf or Dostoevsky matter? Such books might make us better teachers, better readers, better thinkers or questioners. But do we really need another reading of "Resolution and Independence"? Not to sound too stuffy here, but what is the function of criticism at the present time? To not be read by more that seven people? OK. Are there other kinds of writing - more general, less scholarly - that perform the function outlined by Arnold: to create the ideas and materials out of which culture and cultural products can be formed? I don't think academic writing is doing this. But then maybe it has a different function (to qualify someone for Tenure, to establish competence in a given area of instruction?).

Another digression: In todays NYTimes there is a review of the new Zachary Leader bio of Kingsley Amis. The review is written by the Times film critic, A.O. Scott. The Times drives me crazy and I take great pleasure in hating it - almost as much pleasure as I take in reading it. The paper's wishy-washy political stances, the fact that it (along with most others) completely dropped the ball on the Iraq war, and the assumption in its culture pages that everybody struggles with their co-op board and that everybody is perhaps tired of the menu at Babbo: all of this makes me pull my hair out. Of course, there is good stuff, too. For example, in his wonderfully written review of the Amis bio, Scott references the following: in his own “Memoirs” Amis, "an ardent connoisseur of feminine beauty," called Margaret Thatcher “one of the best-looking women I have ever met.” “This quality is so extreme,” he continued, that “it can trap me for a second into thinking I am looking at a science-fiction illustration of some time ago showing the beautiful girl who has become President of the Solar Federation in the year 2220.”

I think there might be a good conference-paper topic here.