Clarissa's Blog

Barquinero’s novel also has a political component that Calder’s book lacks. The Smartest Girl I Know is a novel about academia, and the writer shows how identifying as a leftist is so normalized in the academic world that it’s at the same level as identifying as human. It’s not simply the norm. It’s the only possibility that exists.

The novel also explains the reason why. The life of the mind is about trying to generate new ideas and figuring new ways of looking at things. It’s by definition anti-establishment.

But this is great news!l. All we need now is for academics to notice that the establishment has been boringly, predictably, and oppressively left-wing for half a century. What’s cool and counter-cultural is to be conservative. You can get tons of publications out of it because you will have something truly new and original to say about whatever it is that you are studying.

I’ve noticed this at conferences. Twenty speakers, one after another, talk about how “the patriarchy oppresses women”, and the audience is asleep. And then I get up and say my thing, and people immediately wake up and get really into what I’m saying. Because they haven’t heard it before. It’s interesting, it’s new, it’s fresh. And the “oppressiveness of patriarchy” is stale.