2 February, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Today I went with a friend to a literary seminar. We listened to two professors each give a paper. Sometimes at these events, I often wonder if the whole pursuit of academic literary study at this level is pointless. What are we really contributing to society? Nothing. People are writing dissertations on the role of postage stamps in the work of Anne Bronte or how often the color yellow appears in the poetry of Ezra Pound. Okay, these examples are absurd but not necessarily too far off the mark in some cases. We’re just speaking to other academics and students in our little bubble of minutiae and accomplishing nothing except churning out more academics who will write more crap.

During the discussion that followed the lectures, a student raised the issue of how a capitalist society creates work for the “surplus educated.” Are all of us doing PhDs in the humanities the “surplus educated”? I wonder. I know this is a horrible attitude for someone doing a PhD in English to have, but this is part of the reason I switched to doing creative writing. I’d rather attempt to create art than just dissect the art that others have created. It gives me more of a sense of purpose.

To illustrate my point, during the seminar there was a man outside who began screaming. For about ten to fifteen minutes he was yelling something over and over again. To me it sounded like he was screaming “Help!” Everyone in the seminar just ignored the sound of this man from outside, though a few of us were laughing at him. I really did wonder if he’d been stabbed or something, though I didn’t get up to look out the window. Afterwards my friend said this just underscores how detached literary studies can be from the “real world.” We’re discussing ethics in literature and we want to shut the window so we can’t hear the man outside screaming for help.

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1. Kate Says:

   February 3rd, 2008 at 6:00 am

   I could not agree more,this has always been in the back of my mind but i could’nt articulate it as well.
   It’s the reason I keep dropping out of University,even though I love studying.

   You might want to check out Robert Fisk’s articale on Academics.
   http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles495.htm

2. Gregory Says:

   February 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 am

   It wouldn’t be New York if somebody wasn’t screaming.

   it is on one level the death of kindness, It a bit like Hunts Point,

   you are discussing door and window frames (they don’t fit on purpose), delay, leverage, more delay, pay me some money,

   and the person in charge of the family units or whatever, is screaming, he just wants somebody stop hitting him with a pipe,

   It’s Italian, it’s modern theater in the work-place, a ciascuno il suo

   In a way, it is pop art, Warhol silk-screening ‘Scream’ as a mass-reproducible object

   or the Simpsons doing Andy, doing Edvard Munch.

   http://tinyurl.com/yteasp

   Why do they call operating rooms theaters, why is a battlefield a theater?

3. daniela Says:

   February 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm

   gregory - isn’t london anglophille is talking about? what an interesting juxtaposition anyway. i know that the subject of some postgrad work sometimes sound completely off the wall, and there is a lot of arrogance in the academic circles. but. i also think that every intellectual effort counts. think of school, when most people think that maths and its complications are completely useless later in life. but what people don’t consider is that maths exercises your brain, teaches you to think. when doing my reasearch i have come across of lots of apparently useless papers and thesis but then they lead me to different ways of thinking or draw my attention to things unseen that are not necessarily related to them. and i guess that given that you achieve a reasonable award, every postgrad paper reveals your capacity of analysis, research and articulation. that is why a postgrad qualification always looks good on your CV. i am not being utilitarian but i guess that academics is not the big monster some people paint. what i think is that there is lot of male-oriented ground rules in these circles but that is another story.

4. Gregory Says:

   February 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 pm

   New York is a prototypical urban universe. I’ve always viewed it as an extension of Europe.

   So if an academic tells me that a postulated proto-Celtic word for ‘wheel’ existed 6,000 years ago, I’d ask him to get back to me when he could do ‘beer’.

   Intellectuals are one of life’s little luxuries,

   If you have a stradivarius, you get two seats, we’d be so lost if it wasn’t like that.

5. Aldor Says:

   February 4th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

   … Well… There is maybe a time when you’re fed up with school and studies and you want to live in the real life…

   …but literacy is not unreal. And you can probably say that literacy is more real than these jobs where you can destroy 5 billions of euros in some days because you badly traded.

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