thanks for not being a zombie

I'm confused. What does the "it" in "it is a shamefully shallow argument" refer to?

"It"? What "it"?

What? Are you saying you can't read my mind when I write an unintentionally oblique blog entry?

Update to appear shortly...

Gillespie did attend the panels he described in his later articles. (I know because I was at two of the ones he discusses.) His account of the "Political Literacy" panel was on the mark. A couple of former New Leftists talked about students being "conservative" because they didn't have sit-ins or engage in "movement politics," which is to say they have a model of political engagement which amounts to little more than nostalgia. Bauerlein, Roberts-Miller and Ken Warren, on the other hand, presented solid proposals about the necessity of teaching students "critical thinking" skills outside binary platform politics and the "political Calvinism" such "thinking" entails:

"You are saved, good sir, or damned; and if you disagree with me, you must be damned, therefore I need not listen to a word you say."

"Political Calvinism" was Roberts-Miller's coinage, but Warren's lecture about the necessity of academics to improve the quality of their students by supporting people who improve the quality of their future students (serving on the local PTA, school board, &c.) seemed to me an eminently pragmatic argument . . . and as something far more substantial than the complaints the New Left speakers propounded. Anyhow, I'm just saying that Gillespie's article is by far the best of a truly terrible lot.

Mainly, I notice how quiet my blogroll gets around now. Sigh.

PS: Are you blocking comments from folks with bl*gsp*t URLs?

Sorry about that, Bane. I've fixed the blacklist. And yes, the blogroll does get quiet between Christmas and New Year's.

Scott, I agree that Gillespie's four-part series is an interesting departure from the usual crap we get this time of year from the mainstream press, but it's still not exactly what the MLA convention deserves in terms of depth of coverage.

Mostly I'm just tired of arguing with people who don't know much about the current state of the study of language and literature but who want to spout off and tell the rest of us what we're doing wrong. (See, e.g., my blog entries here, here, and here.) I'm tired of people who think the annual meeting of the MLA is the only time that "English teachers" (sic) get together from around the country, and that its purpose is to form mission statements that we all must follow in our teaching and research. I'm tired of people who think that because they keep up with the book review section of the New York Times, they're qualified to opine about what should be taught in higher education. I'm tired of people who think that the Romantic-era model of artists and art (fn. 1) is the only model that has ever existed--and the only one that should--and that any discussions of, say, Renaissance drama or Medieval poetry should take place under the rubric of that model. I'm tired of people who argue that we're all anti-intellectual when what they really mean is that we should use the classroom to argue in favor of such topics as the "war on terror." I'm tired of the comments sections of the big blogs and of Inside Higher Ed.

I used to believe that if we were just diligent enough in our good faith attempts to engage with these people, they would eventually come around or at least take part in what would be rewarding conversations. I now believe that many people just like to maintain a perpetual state of indignation, facts be damned.

And though this may sound tangential to the above, I'm disappointed that The Valve, which was launched with great fanfare about challenging the print-based paradigm of modern literary scholarship, seems for the most part to be replicating the insular nature of that paradigm. The feeling I get when reading the Valve is that there are insiders and outsiders in Valveworld, and that there's a very narrow (though unacknowledged) range of topics to be addressed there. (Discussions of the work of philosopher Slavoj Zizek, for example, show up with a regularity that is disproportionate to his importance in the study of language and literature.) It's too bad, really. Perhaps KF's ElectraPress will offer a more promising model of what electronic publishing could be.

1. Roughly, that artists work in isolation, unaffected by contemporary politics or the material demands of life, unswayed by the expectations of readers, unsullied by the commercial world of publishing, immune to any psychological particularities related to the details of their life.

We're going to have an event on Moretti's Graphs, Maps, and Trees very soon. I'm not sure how that fits into your conception of what's important, but please feel free to contribute something if it is.

Also, you're throwing in the towel there based on an unusually blinkered account of the Valve's content.

I'll check out Moretti's book, Jonathan. Thanks for the tip. My account of the Valve's content may be blinkered, but it is not (based on my conversations with other lit studies bloggers) unusual.

Of course. The lit studies bloggers that I've talked to, however, all agree that your entire century is suspicious.

They're right.

I for one find The Valve kind of clubby and intimidating, even though I sometimes comment on the individual blogs of its contributors.

Hmmm...that's not good. Hopefully with these upcoming book events and the influx of new contributors, it will seem a little less clubby. We don't want clubby, I don't think. As for the unusual amount of Zizek, well, I blame John. (It's not as if I post about Zizek...ever.)

Your list of annoyances, however, squares with mine. The comments at IHE are, nevermind; the less said about them the better.