lee,
 
institutionally the humanities college of the modern univ is
the lineal descendant of the established church,
performing, mutatis mutandis,
its identical ortho-doxicological function, ...right-think/pc,
articulating and enforcing the hegemonic ideology,
therefore, while its low crit research can often be very helpful;
its doctrine, or high crit, is, perforce, always tendentious.
...always truckling to the-power.
 
the authentic (known by the price he pays)
poet/seer is, oth,
in the service of the platonic triad, troot/bewty/luv;
and when he contradicts the-power (tiresias v creon, etc),
the wisdom of the chorus far excells the priest-caste.
...ep's vision is likely opaque to a degree,
but he is far less wrong
than the apologists for boojwa lib imperialism
(the real trahison du clercs),
caste of guilt-experts who pronounce upon him.
 
anyway lee, wunnerful portrait of our accredited
intelligentsia,
...in the best tradition ... pope's hervey, eh?
...well-bred spaniels...nso on.
 
here's to you.
bob
 
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Everett Lee Lady <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, December 12, 1999 4:51 PM
Subject: Re: Getting things dead wrong
 
 
>>in your previous email you mentioned that someone said: "The fact that
>>Confucianism is worthless is proved by the way the Chinese have
>>treated women.".  But I could not find the shit in all the posts I
>>received. This is not a personal attack, it is even worse than that.
>
>Professor Morse has already clarified this.  I was paraphrasing part of
>one of his messages, perhaps not completely fairly.  He said that
>Confucianism has little value and went on to add something like,
>"Look at how the situation of women in Korea improved after they
>[gave up Confucianism and] adopted Christianity."
>
>           >SNIP<
>
>>Finally, I think we are still far away from making final call as which
>>social system is the best or which economical model is the best.
>>Whatever we are doing today will become history, definitely. So,
>>in principle, it is nonsense in logic to use the current economical
>>models or academic theories to disapprove Pound's (or any such) idea.
>>The failure of the WTO meeting in Seattle is probably such a lession.
>>
>>I like your posts very much, especially, those toward "academic" :-).
>>I was in the universities for about 20 years. I quitted it only
>>recently.
>
>I want to comment on this a little more, since I do think it has some
>relevance to understanding Pound, and in particular I think is has some
>bearing on the question of why so many academics who have made a
>profession out of studying Pound dislike him (i.e. the man, not his
>poetry) so intensely.
>
>When speaking about academics, I often tend, as many of us do, to
>overgeneralize and overstate my case.  Partly, as I've mentioned, this is
>a reflection of my disgust with the academic side of myself and the way
>in which, in my opinion, I've wasted most of my life and talent by being
>an academic.
>
>I want to acknowledge, though, that there are academics who produce works
>of value, and there are in particular some academics who are my own
>heros.  Some that come to mind are Harold Bloom, George Lakoff, a
>linguistic whose work (METAPHORS WE LIVE BY, co-authored with Mark
>Johnson, and WOMEN, FIRE, AND DANGEROUS OBJECTS) also has major relevance
>to philosophy and cognitive psychology, Hugh Kenner, and A.S. Byatt.
>My bedroom, in fact, usually contains several stacks of books by
>academics which I think it very important to read.
>
>Many of us remember that the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon
>once said, "90% of science fiction is crap.  But then 90% of anything is
>crap."  In the case of academic work, I think that that estimate is much
>too low.  Maybe as much as 98% of academic work is crap.  But this is
>because the very structure of the academic world and graduate programs
>is set up to enable mediocre academics to succeed.
>
>The nature of the academic world today, at least in the United States
>(and I think in much of the rest of the world) demands that every major
>department in a major university must have a graduate program and
>must graduate doctoral students.  The result is that whereas fifty
>years ago, to be an academic was a calling that demanded a dedication
>that included virtually a vow of poverty, in today's world it has
>become merely a career choice.  There are simply not that many students
>around who have a true dedication to scholarly study and the ability to
>excell in it.  So graduate programs, especially in second-rate and
>third-rate universities such as the University of Hawaii, have been
>designed to give mediocre students a reasonable chance of success.
>
>Furthermore, once one becomes part of the academic world, publication is
>absolutely vital to one's survival.  But there are simply not that many
>scholarly articles and books that the world has a need of.  So we wind up
>with an enormous proliferation of journals full of articles whose sole
>purpose is to add to the publication lists of their authors.
>
>But on the other hand, the structure of the academic world at its best
>also gives imaginative and insightful academics the opportunity to
>follow their own path.
>
>The fact is that the whole nature of the academic world has changed since
>Pound's time.  I was reading a very interesting book by Russell Jacobi a
>few years ago called THE LAST INTELLECTUALS which makes this point very
>well.  There is simply no place anymore for the sort of intellectual that
>Pound was.  The academic world is the only refuge left.
>
>But intellectuals like Pound, and most of the other persons who made
>major contributions to the intellectual history of the first half of this
>century, would not be very welcome in today's academic world.  They would
>be accused of poor scholarship and not playing the game.
>
>Academics today devote their lives to studying these people, but they
>don't want to foster any more of them.
>
>I should to acknowledge that most of the faculty I have met here at the
>University of Hawaii have not fit my own stereotyped paradigm of
>academics.  (Or perhaps what's actually true is that when I meet one
>who does fit that paradigm, I usually quickly manage to avoid him/her,
>so I'm not all that aware of them).
>
>The reasons for my own deep antipathy to what I think of as typical
>academics go deeper, I believe, than the mere culture of the academic
>world and have to do with core attitudes toward life.  And this is where
>I think we find relevance to the question of Pound, and what so many
>academics dislike about him (as a person) so intensely.
>
>Let me requote a part of your message.
>
>>Finally, I think we are still far away from making final call as which
>>social system is the best or which economical model is the best.
>>Whatever we are doing today will become history, definitely. So,
>>in principle, it is nonsense in logic to use the current economical
>>models or academic theories to disapprove Pound's (or any such) idea.
>
>One of the things that annoys me about so many academics.....  No, let me
>re-state this, I'm being too wishy-washy.  One of the things I despise
>about many academics is their *smugness* about their values and attitudes
>towards the world.  And the most annoying thing is that they deserve no
>credit at all for these values, for these values simply represent a
>conformity to the attitudes of the educational system in which these
>academics have been brought up.  Maybe they are fine attitudes, and to a
>large extent I share most of them myself, but I see no cause for
>self-congratulation in simply having been willing to accept what one has
>been taught (or indoctrinated in) at face value.
>
>Most academics today have been taught to color inside the lines.  The
>referee system for journals is set up to guarantee that those who color
>outside the lines will have little chance for success.  The attitude is
>very different from that of the magazines where Pound published his
>critical pieces, where the success of the magazine depended on having an
>editor with extremely good judgement whose decisions were made
>subjectively and were final.
>
>Some of the best academics overcome their indoctrination and the nature
>of the system and eventually reach the point where they can dare to
>stop playing it safe and take risks and produce work that will have
>lasting value.
>
>Most of the rest merely add to their publication lists.
>
>And, while praising Pound's books and articles for their amazing insight,
>they despise the man for his attitudes.
>
>How could he have so stupid enough as to have thought well of Fascism and
>Mussolini?  Why wasn't he intelligent enough to see that Mussolini was
>the devil incarnate, as we have all been taught in school, and that
>Fascism was purely evil with no redeeming features?  After all, we fought
>a war against Fascism and we won.  Certainly this is proof enough.  How
>could Pound not have known this.
>
>And being anti-semitic!  Didn't he learn anything at all in school?
>Didn't he learn that prejudice is wrong that that good people are never
>prejudiced?  How could he not have known that saying bad things about
>Jews leads to the gas ovens?
>
>Pound was in fact incredibly foolish about a number of things, in the
>way that only an extremely intelligent person is capable of being
>foolish.  He was wrong, wrong, wrong from the start about a lot of things.
>
>Today's academics would never allow themselves to be wrong about anything
>major in this way.
>
>Nobody will ever remember them.