Clarissa's Blog

Some very kind person helped me access Terry Eagleton’s article title “The Slow Death of the University.” Thank you, kind person!

As you must have gleaned from the title, the subject Eagleton is addressing in the piece is the tragic transformation of the function that universities have had since the very dawn of their existence (thank God for blogging where I can indulge my occasional urge to use cliches):

From Cape Town to Reykjavik, Sydney to São Paulo, an event as momentous in its own way as the Cuban revolution or the invasion of Iraq is steadily under way: the slow death of the university as a center of humane critique.

I really believe that this process is a lot more momentous than the pointless and idiotic Cuban Revolution, but it’s great that Eagleton is choosing to discuss the issue.

Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the accusation. Yet the distance they established between themselves and society at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to reflect on the values, goals, and interests of a social order too frenetically bound up in its own short-term practical pursuits to be capable of much self-criticism.

This is precisely what I have always valued so much about the work I do. For a few hours every week, my students and I get to remove ourselves from the cycle of selling, buying, and discarding as we gather to talk about literature. There are two pursuits that radically distance human beings from other species: the capacity to create art and the capacity to create knowledge. In my classroom, we engage in creating knowledge about art, which is the most exalted activity of the human mind that I can imagine.

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People keep saying they don’t understand why Rolling Stone didn’t fire  the journalist who wrote the frat house gang rape story.

It’s like they live on a different planet.

This journalist is the best thing that ever happened to the magazine. People world over now know that it exists and is in the business of publishing gang rape porn. The magazine is experiencing its stellar moment. I’m reading articles about this article in several different languages published in several different countries.

And so what if the journalist in question is an unprofessional, stupid fool? Isn’t that the modern definition of a journalist?

Turned on the news and saw the video of Walter Scott being murdered.

The fuck.

Can anybody send me Eagleton’s article in the Chronicle? I don’t mean the link but the actual article.

I promise a post on the article in return.

In case you have never had two-inch hail hammer on your head as you are running through ankle – deep puddles feeling your carefully done hair and tasteful makeup disintegrating, let me tell you: it’s not a whole lot of fun.

P.S. The title is a pun of my own making.

My friend from Ukraine, let’s call her Basia, is similar to me in many ways. We are both passionate pro-Ukranian agitators, we’ve had a very similar life trajectory, and both made the decision to emigrate at the age of 14. And now we are teaching at the same university and soon, hopefully, the same course. Basia says that one of her grandfathers survived the Holocaust and the other one survived Holodomor.

There is one thing, though, that sets us apart. Basia is as kind as I’m not. So when we got an email from a Russian guy we’ve never met asking us to come to his elderly mother’s birthday to give her the joy of speaking Russian on that single festive occasion, I came to work and announced to Basia, “Did you see the email from that Russian weirdo? The guy’s just the limit! Trying to offload his old mama on total strangers!”

“Don’t tell me you are not going!” Basia exclaimed. “I already agreed thinking that it would be a great thing to spend some time with you.”

So now I’m going to the Birthday of an old lady from Russia.

Basia and I worry that the family might turn out to be Putinoid. I’m thinking of wearing my Ukrainian patriotic scarf to make it clear what’s appropriate in my company. The only problem is that it’s a heavy knit scarf and I might look like an idiot wearing it in hot Illinois April weather.

I also need to bring a gift. Any ideas?

“She achieved great success in life,” a student writes about a character I’d call anything but successful, “because she moved a lot and lived in several different countries.”

While we fret about the erosion of the nation-state by the flows of the increasingly liquid world, the young people are embracing the new reality. We, the members of the older generations, see the nomadic lifestyles which require one to be endlessly on the move, chasing temporary employment as torture but the young shrug off our concerns and discard the concept of a career altogether. Success is uncoupled from professional fulfillment and the satisfaction of building a career is substituted with a search for new experiences. Precariousness of employment becomes an advantage.

And I just erased the conclusion to this post because I don’t want to be an ancient spoil sport.

Sometimes students just slaughter. A student handed in an essay on the nature of an exile’s experience that is so true, so profound, and speaks so deeply to who I am as a human being that I’m almost in tears.

He’s doing this in a foreign language, mind you.