A Malevolent Hysteria
In the video below, Janice Fiamengo reports on recent events at the University of Chicago, where Rachel Fulton Brown, a professor of Medieval history, dared to suggest, briefly, that, as a notional group, white men aren’t entirely awful, and that Western civilisation isn’t wholly without merit. The professor has consequently been denounced by her peers as a “fascist white supremacist” and a “violent” menace to the wellbeing of anyone whose skin is heroically brown. And do note the number – 1,300, cited towards the end of the video – the significance of which will, I think, become apparent.
Professor Fulton Brown’s supposedly scandalous and fascistic blog posts can be found here, here, and here.
I mean, the similarity of those comments is frightening.
Booche’s beer brainwashing ?
But… which?
He is a lawyer.
Heh.
I agree a good bit of it is deemphasis or even outright rejection of the “dead white males”, and especially Teh Narrative, but even DWM are a bit of a problem. As much as I admire, let’s say Twain’s writing and philosophy, he spent much of his time observing and writing things down. It is the nature of most writers to do significantly more writing than doing. This, I believe, warps their perceptions and thus their ability to communicate reality. And the Yank in me can’t help saying that goes double for Dickens. Understandably so yet these were two of the best. Or take a Hemingway for example. Much of his writing and much of his influence on later writers was based on seeking out adventures mostly for the purpose of writing about them. And the honest Yank in me would call him a poor man’s Kipling, at best. I’m not a student of RK per se but I did get the impression his adventures came first and writing was a leisurely afterthought. But I digress… The writer cannot honestly abstract himself from his writing. But a biographer OTOH, I’m tempted to say even a dishonest one, will not have himself as wrapped up in the story as a novelist or such.
I think perhaps the argument hinges on the definition of “literature”. As it was presented in my school days, I am including such things that might straddle the line of literature and history/philosophy/whatever like Cicero’s Orations, Caesar’s Commentaries, all the various Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies, Pypes’ Diaries, and moving on, even the muckrakers, along with the traditional basic load of English, French, Russian, ‘Murkan, and so on, writers.
It is the nature of most writers to do significantly more writing than doing. This, I believe, warps their perceptions and thus their ability to communicate reality.
I suppose, the act of observation/existence of an observer changes in some respect the phenomenon being observed. But long term observation yields data from which conclusions about the nature of reality, or, in the case of literature, insights about the Human condition may be inferred. Those conclusions or insights may not be one hundred percent accurate in all cases, but they may be sufficient to be of general applicability.
I think perhaps the argument hinges on the definition of “literature”.
Ultimately, it is always about the story. Can you tell a good yarn? The deeper “meaning” comes later when the rest of us schmohs start poking around between the lines. That is, I’m not sure Shakespeare was interested in turning out classic drama as much as he was in filling the seats at the Globe. What makes Shakespeare enduring is the story and the characters. They are things most of us can relate to and that’s what makes them “classic.”
Rember Frank warned us in the mid 60s.
Put Muldoon’s, Sherman’s and WTP’s on my card please. And I’ll have a double of whatever it is they are quaffing.
And I’ll have a double of whatever it is they are quaffing.
Crushed ice and Night Nurse coming up.
It’s not “literature” which is necessarily the problem, but rather the pernicious idea that literature can only be relevant if it conforms to the tenets of modern, intersectional identity politics.
Forget the Hungarians, the Japanese Model is the way to go. No public funding for the humanities or social sciences, period. Private colleges that want to teach those subjects for cash, fine. No publicly-secured loans for that tuition.
Farnsworth, you went to better schools than I did. Aside from Shakespeare and possibly Nathaniel Hawthorne, my literature exposer as far as reading assignments went was as if literature started after the Civil War and didn’t really get going until the Lost Generation post WWI. Any exposure to the true classics I got on my own after graduating college and having much free time after (and even at) work. Also to be clear, I do find Kipling to be the kind of legit writer to which you and Sherman refer.
I have a theory (yes, another one) that this writer-first, doer-second stuff mostly ended with the rapid increase in literacy along with communication and trade starting in the early 19th century or so. Western adventurers like Buffalo Bill Cody/John Burke, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, etc. were doers who wrote later in life (or in Burkes case, contemporaneously about the doer) about their adventures thus creating the market that later such writers-first writers went on to exploit. That’s an American focused/biased theory, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it applies more braodly to British and Spanish writers, I just lack the background on many of those (outside of Kipling, of course) to really say.
And for the record, I prefer Night Train over Night Nurse, but we were out of NT AND the MD 20/20 …*casts evil eye toward hench lesbians slacking off at the end of the bar*…and Davis assured me t h aaa t Niiight Nuuuurrrsssssszzzzz…
Daniel Ream,
I think this is the best retort to that photo.
Umm…
I’ve learned a new and useful phrase today.
Safety Asians
Band name.
Farnsworth, you went to better schools than I did.
In retrospect it was pretty good, but at the time it seemed cruel and unusual punishment for my not taken public schools seriously. Alas, I fear it has gone downhill since it went co-ed and the classical model curriculum watered down. O tempora, o mores.
I think a lot of today’s problems would go away if the SJWs and anti-SJWs would just mind their own business.
I began thinking along these lines while reading Will Wheaton’s blog. The guy is very, very girly. I bet there are geisha who aren’t as feminine as Will Wheaton is. However—if he’s happy, his wife’s happy, the dog’s happy, who cares? Guys who are offended by girly men can just ignore him. Likewise, he could just ignore those tedious types who try to out-macho each other and insult each other by hirling Greek letters. (“You’re a beta!” “Yeah? Well, YOU are so, so gamma!”)
Archdruid Report-er John M. Greer has suggested the U.S. change its national anthem to Hank Williams’s “Mind Your Own Business.” I’m with him.
I think a lot of today’s problems would go away if the SJWs and anti-SJWs would just mind their own business.
They aren’t going to do that, so that’s a non-starter. What will work, and what is doable, is if people just stop paying any attention to them. Hobby Lobby. Chick-Fil-A. Whataburger. In-n-Out. UChicago. If you just ignore the online outrage fetishists, nothing bad happens. They have no power other than shrieking.
They aren’t going to do that, so that’s a non-starter. What will work, and what is doable, is if people just stop paying any attention to them.
Unfortunately, your first sentence–with which I agree completely–prevents the course of action advised in the second.
Imagine being an assistant professor in a tenure track position in say the Classics Department. You want to immerse yourself in your work, but your colleagues decide to demand that everyone sign a stupid letter denouncing Rachel Fulton Brown. Now what?
Or, you’re a semi-conservative engineer at Google, Inc. and your boss is shilling for the latest progressive California Proposition?
Or, you’re a pizza restaurant which has never catered nor will ever cater any weddings under any set of facts, but you get call from a local news reporter about whether you’d bake pie for a gay wedding reception.
It’s becoming ever more difficult, if not impossible, to ignore because outrage is now a competitive spectator sport. As they say, “You will be made to care.”
It’s becoming ever more difficult, if not impossible, to ignore because outrage is now a competitive spectator sport. As they say, “You will be made to care.”
Yep, even down to overpriced sneakers.
Our education system would do us and its students much justice if just one semester of English literature would be devote to biographies of people who build things.
This is because school admins & boards homogenize k-12 via textbooks. It is the rare
historysocial studies teacher who assigns readings from anything BUT the textbook. Primary sources? Biographies? Heavens to Betsy, we can’t have some fool kid go off and find out for himself now! That might mean thinking and coming to a conclusion that differs from the approved textbook!That might mean thinking and coming to a conclusion that differs from the approved textbook!
It’s likely a sign of some sort of malfunction on my part, but whenever this sort of subject comes up I think back on those days in high school AP history where they insisted that we must not attribute the cause of the US Civil War to slavery. It was all about states’ rights. You must respond with that answer on the big test or your two years of study on this subject will be for naught.
Imagine being an assistant professor in a tenure track position in say the Classics Department. You want to immerse yourself in your work, but your colleagues decide to demand that everyone sign a stupid letter denouncing Rachel Fulton Brown. Now what?
Or, you’re a semi-conservative engineer at Google, Inc. and your boss is shilling for the latest progressive California Proposition?
Or, you’re a pizza restaurant which has never catered nor will ever cater any weddings under any set of facts, but you get call from a local news reporter about whether you’d bake pie for a gay wedding reception.
I don’t mean to split hairs, but those are different cases from “online Twitter mob targets random person/business”.
In the first and second case, that’s inside baseball. That’s not a bunch of Internet randos with no power shrieking at your boss, that’s your actual boss. That’s an awkward situation, but it’s not any different from the usual run-of-the-mill toxic academic/office politics that’s always gone on. I don’t have all that much sympathy for Lindsey Shepherd and James Damore; they knew they were walking into a vipers’ nest the day they signed their employment contracts. I’ve worked at companies where my own boss was actively trying to trump up reasons to fire me for no better reason than I wouldn’t give him free wifi. Stupid and malicious supervisors is an evergreen problem.
The third case is a non-issue; Memories Pizzeria got $846,000 from a fundraiser[1] and received record lineups after their story went viral. The threats and direct harassment are a problem, but those are also criminal matters that were addressed at the time.
I can’t find the list of 1300 professors (all the fellow travelers who archived the letter won’t include the signatures “for their safety”, which seems to me to defeat the purpose), but none of the news reports indicate any of the signatories were from the UChicago Classics Department or even UChicago generally. If UChicago just continues to ignore the whole thing, nothing will or can happen.
[1] I could only dream of owning a business that grosses $84,600 a day.
@Daniel Ream
I see the distinction. Still, I think those examples evince a larger trend of which the Twitter mobs are just one. It is a multi-front battle in my view. The progressive Left desires to silence and/or destroy dissenters by any means necessary, and one can insulate oneself from their attacks for only so long.
As for UChicago, kudos to it, of course, for its restraint, but it’s not gone on the offensive against the mob in defense of its professor. It’s not provided an example for other institutions to follow. Reading its statement in reaction to the controversy, I’m struck by its (the statement’s) wish-washy-ness. To me, it smacks more of fear than courage.
YMMV
I don’t have all that much sympathy for Lindsey Shepherd and James Damore; they knew they were walking into a vipers’ nest the day they signed their employment contracts.
Did they? Or were they young enough when they were hired they actually believed their employers’ PR & recruitment schtick about looking for the best and brightest to feel free to run with their ambitions and expression?
I bet neither the university or Google had anywhere in their HR packet something along the lines of “Non-liberals should shut the fuck up and be invisible or you WILL be fired”.
Did they? Or were they young enough when they were hired
Adults in their twenties. Grad students, both. No sympathy, these were not 17 year old freshman.
Also, I’m intimately familiar with the region containing WLU and the super-secret Google office in Waterloo. Both institutions have well-known reputations. Arguing that they didn’t know what they were getting into is disingenuous at best.
From Wikipedia: “Shepherd completed her undergraduate degree in communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, before joining the MA program in Cultural Analysis & Social Theory at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU)”
Cultural Analysis and Social Theory. Go on, tell me she was a wide-eyed naif.
As for Sheperd, I’m sure she thought she could slip that clip in and get away with it, maybe a little push back but nothing too serious. She was on the ‘right’ side after all, wasn’t she? I’m sure (checks over both shoulders) she was completely surprised by the resulting Spanish Inquisition.
Damore seems like just enough of a high functioning tech geek, I work with and around them, to honestly believe the truth would set them free, or something.
Damore seems like just enough of a high functioning tech geek, I work with and around them, to honestly believe the truth would set them free, or something.
I’d be more inclined to believe that like a lot of senior engineers in tech companies, he saw the non-tech employees as both politically and intellectually inferior within the organization. Given he’s described himself as a high-functioning autistic, I’m guessing he simply didn’t grasp that they actually held the balance of power.