Comments on: Hunger Artists (TIAA-Cref Edition) https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2011/09/01/hunger-artists-tiaa-cref-edition/ Culture, Politics, Academia and Other Shiny Objects Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:42:47 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.15 By: Historicist https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2011/09/01/hunger-artists-tiaa-cref-edition/comment-page-1/#comment-8032 Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:42:47 +0000 https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=1753#comment-8032 ve read your blog sporadically for years—always impressed and sometimes a bit intimidated. You consistently manage to discuss complex questions while simultaneously maintaining the good citizenship of the administrator and the outsider sensibility of an anarcho-utopian generalist. It is a balance I’ve never been able to manage. Your critique of the contradictory logics of disciplinary defensiveness is great. But I am unclear why it is coupled to a critique of non-instrumentalism. As I understand the post, the main argument is that we have made compromises for the sake of our perks. We should accept this fact and figure out how to make the best of it. It seems to me that the non-instrumentalist position could conceivably be fine with this. Life on earth always entails compromises. We just have to deal with them and make as much space as possible for what really matters. Following the star of James Scott should lead us into much greater hand-wringing about our compromises and failure to seek emancipation. Scott encourages an activist hostility to manageability, excessive legibility, mechanistic interventionism and all those things that the university has produced so effectively. Can we honestly follow that star when our boat remains on dry land, tethered to disciplinary agendas, standardized classrooms, mandatory assessment, predictable curriculum, etc.? It’s hard to tell where that star can lead, since even James Scott himself doesn’t seem to be interested in untethering his boat. And, out of curiosity: What do you think a plausible justification of the non-instrumentalist attitude might look like? Thanks.]]> First, let me say that I’ve read your blog sporadically for years—always impressed and sometimes a bit intimidated. You consistently manage to discuss complex questions while simultaneously maintaining the good citizenship of the administrator and the outsider sensibility of an anarcho-utopian generalist. It is a balance I’ve never been able to manage.

Your critique of the contradictory logics of disciplinary defensiveness is great. But I am unclear why it is coupled to a critique of non-instrumentalism. As I understand the post, the main argument is that we have made compromises for the sake of our perks. We should accept this fact and figure out how to make the best of it. It seems to me that the non-instrumentalist position could conceivably be fine with this. Life on earth always entails compromises. We just have to deal with them and make as much space as possible for what really matters.

Following the star of James Scott should lead us into much greater hand-wringing about our compromises and failure to seek emancipation. Scott encourages an activist hostility to manageability, excessive legibility, mechanistic interventionism and all those things that the university has produced so effectively. Can we honestly follow that star when our boat remains on dry land, tethered to disciplinary agendas, standardized classrooms, mandatory assessment, predictable curriculum, etc.? It’s hard to tell where that star can lead, since even James Scott himself doesn’t seem to be interested in untethering his boat.

And, out of curiosity: What do you think a plausible justification of the non-instrumentalist attitude might look like?
Thanks.

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