Monday, January 22, 2007
Irony in the marketplace of ideas
I've been reading Kate Hayles' My Mother Was a Computer. Now before I make my point, know that I like Hayles' work and her contributions to thought about electronic literarture and especially her ongoing support of the Electronic Literature Organization. That and the fact that she's just a nice person.
That said, I'm a bit troubled by her shots at capitalism. The book is very lightly seasoned with biased references to market economics: "the nefarious corporate practices of Microsoft, the capitalistic greed that underlies its ruthless business practices," "the machinations of evil corporations," "resistant practices [read: 'reactionary'] and hegemonic reinscriptions associated with them [capitalism's politics and economics]."
Hayles is not alone. Over on the other side of the campus, in the humanities, there exists a political litmus test: Be an anti-capitalist or else. Now some readers (sounds like I have a lot of readers, but I actually only have about three) will note that my adjunct appointment at an elite business school no doubt distorts my views. Maybe so. But I've personally experienced the venom of my friends "over there." Not only is it clearly impossible that I know anything about literature, poetry and poetics in particular, because of my Wharton affiliation, I'm no doubt a rapacious robber baron directly responsible for the starvation of children just by virtue of my job. Oh well...
But it seems to me that the anti-capitalism so evident in the academy smacks of McCarthyism. Just a whispered allegation like "You know, that guy supports pro-business legislation" or even better "is a conservative" consigns "that guy" to a blacklisted status.
Which seems to me profoundly hypocritical. Every tenured faculty member (and even adjuncts like me) receive some portion of his/her salary from income from the institution's endowment: A high percentage in the elite university, a lower one in the not-so-elite. And nearly every penney of that income is realized from investment in capitalistic enterprises.
BTW: Those lower tier institutions depend on parental contributions, which very often are the result of careful financial planning and investment in equities, and on government programs supported by tax revenues generated by our capitalistic, market economy.
Oddly the academy's political practices as manifest in faculty hiring practices are resoundingly capitalistic. With a limited number of seats at the table, if a young PhD has any chance of getting one of them, he/she better produce and offer for sale just what the market wants: The academic party line. Otherwise, just as in business where organizations that make money survive and those that don't don't, that aspiring academic with nothing the academy wants to buy will be out in the cold, begging for a handout at the adjunct entrance.
# posted by Jim @ 11:00 AM 
