Destruction & Revolt ...was Mo Mo Mo P Scholarship (this Dis is on Film)

[alice wellintown]

Reading _Days of Destruction Days of Revolt_ by Hedges abd Sacco,
where they claim that we have been in the brave New World and are
moving to 1984, I am struck by the passion of philanthropy, by the
biography, of those whose tales are told, and by the lives, the
couragious lives of the authors, the awsome bravery, but most by the
naive, at times, foolish assessment of the corporate state power and
how defenseless the American is, how much a slave the American, fat
and slothful, addicted to consumption, of drugs, of booze, of garbage,
of propaganda, of prison and reservation and houses built by the
government and Habitathas made him/herself; we live in a Brave New
World not 1984, though the slaves take comfort in the Big Brother
State, in the Snowden propaganda, so I have little hope for the
Americans; the world will rise as they decline as a peop[le, though
the state, the corporate state will continue to grow its power. Now,as
the economy of Europe has turned and the US is on a growth track, it
will have to be the BRICs & Others. Nothing worthwhile  will change in
the developed world.


On 7/23/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the US tenure / tenure track is down to 30%.
> Again, 70 % is adjunct to part time.
> I can't understand why graduate students would want to push this even lower
> by attacking the very jobs they hope to get.
> So there will be no tenure? Is that the idea?
> No thanks.
> We need to fight for more positions, better pay, working conditions...etc.
> And of course those who have a position are not as motivated to fight for
> those who don't, those who don't are envious and feel abused. This is
> basic. Right? We are all ragged trousered philanthropists in this
> profession. There are your egg heads and Humpty dump ties, your Franks
> giving lectures to the workers who, are paranoid, living on wish sandwiches
> (bread that would love to wrap itself around some met and cheese, but has
> only its crust to keep it from falling apart).
> We are up against so many forces, we counter forces, and we are against
> ourselves too often.
> Here, where the misery measure ( inflation [1] + unemployment [7.5] is too
> low to get people occupying streets. Our demographics are not favorable-we
> are old. And we are fat and slothful for decades now. Where there is higher
> misery, more youth, more recent success threatened, there is opportunity
> for counter force. Brazil. Maybe soon. Not here. Still, we need to change
> the narrative or we will not be "Chicago Teachers", we will be "Detroit".
>
> On Tuesday, July 23, 2013, Matthew Cissell wrote:
>
>> Oh yeah I know about WAC, having done that, and you should know it's a
>> money maker for schools bcz they gets grads to drudge through those Comp
>> courses.  (By the way let's not bring translation and L2 writing, it
>> muddies the water and obfuscates the problem - disclosure, I work in
>> ESL.)
>>
>> Al, I agree that more needs to be spent on Ed. However, that doesn't let
>> higher ed Profs off the hook. I'm sure you know where I'm coming from. If
>> you've been around as you say then you know how much grads love those
>> tenured profs. (There are web pages dedicated to kvetching about the
>> system
>> that slaves grads and then does the min. to help them.)
>>
>> Let's switch this around, change fields so to speak. Imagine I'm speaking
>> to some Wall St cat and I say that there is need for some change and
>> oversight and he says "hell no just let us have our head and well show
>> you"
>> Sounds like the same thing, leave us alone and we will take care of this.
>> The problem is, is that aint gonna work. But maybe from your POV things
>> aren't so bad.
>>
>> Yes these are interesting times, but isn't that a Chinese curse?
>>
>> vor dem Gesetz
>> mc
>>
>> ps my limited reading of papers in Nature and other journals has not
>> detected "jargon and blah,blah,blah", maybe I'm not reading the same
>> stuff
>> as you.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com <javascript:;>>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:;>>
>> Cc:
>> Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 7:51 PM
>> Subject: Re: Mo Mo Mo P Scholarship (this Dis is on Film)
>>
>> > Now how did that come about? Run across any doctors or medical papers
>> that
>> > did the same thing? your point, a fair one, is an example of part of
>> what is
>> > wrong with the Humanities industry of papers and dissertions. Do some
>> > reading of dissertations in other fields and you might come to see part
>> of
>> > the reason that Lit. departments are in trouble.
>>
>>
>>   How did it come about? There are so many contributing factors, but
>> here in the US, one that's been around for a long time but has more
>> influence now because more students go on to college and graduate
>> programs, and a greater percentage are non-native speakers of the
>> language, is that the teaching of writing is not supported in the
>> grade schools, high schools, or even in most colleges and
>> universities. Teaching writing is labor intensive, some would say
>> drudgery. In most programs this job is given to the folks at the
>> bottom of the ladder, where the first few steps are a treadmill that
>> spins people in and out of the position (adjuncts and the like). Given
>> the choice, to teach Pynchon or Shakespeare or Literature of any kind,
>> or to teach writing, basic writing, composition, most will choose the
>> former.
>>
>>   This past year I read 90 research papers in Biology and Chemistry.
>> In teaching the research and writing process, I read hundreds of peer
>> reviewed academic journals. I read these anyway because, I love
>> Physics and Environmental Science and I'm quite keen on Physics these
>> days, but what you say was not confimrmed by what I read. So many of
>> the bleeding edge papers are written by L2 or L3 scholars who are not
>> supported with translation, editing and the like. So the jargon and
>> the jumble of grammar is not a disease of the Humanties, but is spread
>> in all disiplnes.
>>
>> But this is the negative side of wha are, very interesting times in
>> the world of published papers. We have now more and better
>> translations, more and more cross-cultural and cross-linguistis
>> schoalrship than ever. It's quite an amazing exchange of ideas that is
>> taking place, and that English is the language, not the one we would
>> choose, makes this exchange quite difficult but, nonetheless,
>> miraclulous.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> > As for Cervantes and words involving techne:
>> >
>> http://www.uaemex.mx/plin/colmena/Colmena_73/Aguijon/La_palabra_maquina_Quijote.pdf
>> > Of course if you don't know Spanish it won't help much. So let me
>> > add: http://www.traduccionliteraria.org/1611/art/canivell.htm
>> >
>> > ciao
>> > mc
>> > Glad to see you're getting round to The RTP, let us know what ya think.
>> > Could the that Frank be important for the AtD Frank?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> > Cc:
>> > Sent: Monday, July 22, 2013 2:31 AM
>> > Subject: Re: Mo Mo Mo P Scholarship (this Dis is on Film)
>> >
>> > Someone in the P-Industry is keeping track, if not perusing these
>> > dissertations. I've read lotz and I think many are not worth the time
>> > it takes to figure out what the author is trying to convey. Jargon and
>> > have digested regurgitation...blah blah, but I like this one. I like
>> > it  a lot, actually.
>> >
>> >
>> > The unfortunate hyperbole in the passage quoted may be owed to
>> > inexperience, the audacity of ignorance, of youthful arrogance, or to
>> > what has become a tradition, a habit in the academy. I suspect the
>> > last. Take it out and you have a better paper. The author never
>> > defends this claim. In fact, a lot of claims are not well supported,
>> > some are better addressed by the works cited, some are simply driven
>> > into the fog of abstractions and theory. What I like is the discussion
>> > of MASH and  GR. And the stuff on Joyce. Nice!
>> >
>> > Again, I don't think the Dis argues that there is a correct approach,
>> > although it does take advantage of "mis-readings" (e.g.,
>> > Weisenburger), or "what is missed" by other approaches. This is,
>> > again, a stupid academic habit that this Dis doesn't surrender to
>>
>