The limits of genre
Posted on | December 30, 2004 |
Glen has outed himself as an aspiring academic; I will pledge that I aspire for this obit from anyone (of course if it appeared in The New York Times that would be nice too):
“Through four decades, public response to Ms. Sontag remained irreconcilably divided. She was described, variously, as explosive, anticlimactic, original, derivative, naÔve, sophisticated, approachable, aloof, condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic, sincere, posturing, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing, left-wing, profound, superficial, ardent, bloodless, dogmatic, ambivalent, lucid, inscrutable, visceral, reasoned, chilly, effusive, relevant, passÈ, ambivalent, tenacious, ecstatic, melancholic, humorous, humorless, deadpan, rhapsodic, cantankerous and clever. No one ever called her dull.”
I’m can’t quite understand the rhetorical function of this paragraph, other than a means to bolster the final sentence, but it seems like a welcome attempt to indicate that intellectuals aren’t always ideologues, and that (surprise!) thinking about big issues can be complicated and contradictory. It also makes me wonder, again, why the compulsion to label must remain the scourge of metacommentary.
Greg Seigworth’s response seems much more fitting, as usual. Here he contributes to the CULTSTUD-L thread on Sontag/Derrida/Said obits:
“I believed nearly everything that she wrote in the moment I read it (writing with passion will do that), and then sometimes found myself disagreeing with her when spinning out this or that notion of hers’ in conversation with others. Something about the intimacy of reading and writing that she understood, which made her work both hard to share or extend but easy to quote (what so often worked in her own words, occasionally didn’t when ushered from others’ mouths). So, thankfully, words and all of the movements in their vicinities live on, or live afresh, or yeah whither away, whether Derrida or Sontag. And though they’re, at most, a blip among today’s news headlines — in the NY Times or elsewhere — with tsunamis killing tens of thousands, and US-Iraqi debacles, and all else, on the horizon of cultural studies, they’re among the evidence of work still to be done, more than ever.”
Comments
3 Responses to “The limits of genre”
December 30th, 2004 @ 11:39 am
That last sentence is devastatingly true. Sontag was hugely capable of inspiring people in and outside the academy.
When you read something like In Praise of Passionate Opinionated Teaching, you think Sontag almost straight away.
Could someone post a snippet of that obit? I’m having trouble getting onto the NY times site, despite having a code.
..and Melissa, I sent you email, but my gmail cocked up as I did.. hope you got it.
December 30th, 2004 @ 8:34 pm
The luxury of having the intellectual space for creative thought is a treasure I never want to relinquish. If that means I am doomed to academia then I should be so lucky. I have worked in the jobs of the new immaterial performance-based economy from lowest ranks of the service industry to the upper levels of writer. I do not want to return to it.
It is odd to think that I am now thinking about investing to prepare myself for the future. I have long hated goody-two-shoes who always seem to do the ‘right thing’ and who embody the spirit of capitalist servitude to see they get what they are told they want. But now I see I am going to have to invest in a little bit of mental real estate. Not investments of money, but of time and effort to secure a future where I am not paid to think someone else’s thoughts for them. Fuck that.
That is the implicit warning I heard in Ien Ang’s end-of-conference comments at the CSAA. The powers that be within Aussie Cult Studs need to take the bull by the horns and ensure that a space for intellectual freedom is produced alongside the forces for the total commodification of research. Unmolested survival is far more important at the moment than revolution.
My song was a bit of a joke - hence the reference to The Joker himself, Zizek - and should not be taken too seriously. Maybe I should add a few winks or something
In fact, they should make more comedies about academics everything about academia is too serious. I have never laughed harder than in the movie Adaptation and the joke about the serial killer English professor who chops his victims into little pieces and is called “The Deconstructionist”.
Maybe a ‘black’ comedy cum sitcom based in a cultural studies department or research centre called: “French Fries and Dead White Guys”
January 3rd, 2005 @ 11:49 am
This reminds me of the thread on csaa-forum when someone suggested a new reality tv series…
‘If you liked The Apprentice. In 2005. Get ready for. THE POSTDOC!!!!’
Maybe a decent enough aim for the year would be to approach life as an attempt to create the perfect pilot episode.