Unceasing consumption induces indigestion, and so, I feel compelled to return to this blog and reverse the flow of information, however insignificantly, in utter disdain of the endlessly proliferating obstacles to such frivolity. Has it been a while? It could have been worse ("Behold, I come quickly ...").
And if the process of writing another post, although effectively contributing nothing to my short list of accomplished things, brings relief, it should not, I hope, be read in light of what I just wrote about the sickness that comes with the consumption of texts which I have neither the time nor the energy to absorb.
It would be entirely unoriginal to characterize the world's scholars as a herd of ruminants, busily reconstructing their fodder into the only production of which they are capable. I can only hope to be so prolific. As far as the usefulness of all this creation, perhaps it is no better than the metaphor toward which I have been tending with a feeling of delicate revulsion. Or maybe it is even worse, for nothing sprouts from it - except more bovines, perhaps.
But if academics don't do anything useful with those brains of theirs (and for all the noble defenses of the humanities I could mount, there is a difference between preserving the "treasures" of "civilization" and endless self-extirpation in the interest of projects which only pretend to have contact with political reality), then this is at least in part because academia is, whether accidentally or intentionally, a repository - an institution, no less! - for those dangerous and altogether undesirable elements of society which might, if deprived of the opportunity for unceasing busy-work, busy themselves with certain, more concrete, forms of criticism.
[Please note, this is conspiracy theory No. 2 regarding the purpose of academia: there are those who are merely processed by the system, i.e. die Studenten, and those who are contained by it and do the system's processing, i.e. die Professoren. See also conspiracy theory No. 1]
And as far as the first category - the blessed students for whose ostensible sake this whole structure exists - the perpetual complaints and polemics regarding the always-already irrelevant humanities and the constant demands for practical skills - the expansion of the university to accommodate those who were always destined for the meat-packing plant in one form or another brought with it, quite naturally, a new set of requiremetns. The humanities never mattered to the people who did; it is simply that the universities did not have to produce high-level cashiers and managers of cashiers, and the rich people who rebelled by becoming professors could continue to dispense healthy portions of the refrigerated high culture which those who would assert their superiority to the mob which they exploited needed to pass the time (and show that they needed something with which to pass the time).
[One is reminded of the contemporary notion of exercise. Those who do not need to work need to demonstrate that they have enough idle time to pretend to look like they have to work - but no one would ever confuse those who work and those who work out! The latter is a demonstration of one's superiority to compulsion].
To put the matter briefly, if reading Marx in an academic environment makes me sick at the thought of the utter pointlessness of the excercise of reading Marx in an academic environment, anemically discussing texts which were, at least once upon a time, intended to provoke action, then perhaps there is still some hope for me as a human being. On the other hand, it would be much easier just to give in and feel the comforting waves of contented cretinism wash over me as I settle into even the minimally tolerant lifestyle of a "contingent" academic. But if not cretinism, then what? What is to be done? Write stupid books, starve, wait for the inevitable (the unpredictable).
