Tuesday, January 02, 2007
It's probably just me...
...but there are posts all over the place about the recent MLA Convention in Philadelphia, including by some who lay claim to innovation and resistance to norms. There's been a lot of this going on recently. Slought (one of my favorite places on earth) recently hosted a talk by Barrett Watten in which he claimed to still be a resistor even though he's a tenured English professor (because there are degrees of resistance) and its Rogue Thought Award presentation (sponsored by the MLA) with a public conversation that included Gregg Lambert and James English. To his credit, Lambert noted that though MLA members pride themselves on their radicalness, the MLA is about as conservative as you can get.
So riddle me this: Once you are tenured (ordained?) into the academy and you make decisions on who else gets tenure and who the next generation of faculty will be, haven't you by definition not only allowed yourself to be appropriated but are one of the appropriators yourself? And how is it that "radical" writers don't boycott the convention?
# posted by Jim @ 2:28 PM 
