![[ADDRESSING THE ACADEMY]](imgs/ata.gif)
"an intellectually & politically independent rag which does not whitewash YUFA
nor the administration, nor PEN nor AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL but which is generously
contributed to
by YUFA members.
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"an intellectually & politically independent rag which does not whitewash YUFA |
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This Web-Page invites comments. It tries not only to deal with the York University strike itself, or the aftermath as it affects York standing alone, but with the York events as being the occasion for thinking about contested academia, intellectual identity, pedagogy, and cultural definition anywhere in the world where these issues are seen as being important. Because, as benjamin said. "the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule", we have to recognize the ongoing state of emergency. Please send comments and suggestions by e-mail to idavies@yorku.ca mentioning as 'subject' ADDRESSING THE ACADEMY. However, the first version of this WEB necessarily starts with the York University Strike, with suitable other quotations, which indicate that we have been here before. |
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| "Academicus Superciliosis is the most divisable and rulable creature in this country, being so intent upon crafty calculations of short-term advantages - this favour for his department, that chance of promotion - or upon rolling the log of a colleague who, next week at the next committee, has promised to roll a log for him, that he has never even tried to imagine the wood out of which all this timber rolls. He can scurry furiously and self-importantly around in his committees, like a white mouse running in a wheel, while his master is carrying him, cage and all, to be sold at the local pet-shop." E.P. Thompson, Warwick University Ltd. | "The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule...There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain." Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History." | "It was so easy to imitate these people. I learned to spit in the very first days. We used to spit in each other's faces; the only difference was that I licked my face clean afterwards and they did not. I could soon smoke a pipe like an old hand; and if I also pressed my thumb into the bowl of the pipe, a roar of appreciation went up between-decks; only it took me a very long time to understand the difference between a full pipe and an empty one." Franz Kafka: "A Report to an Academy." | "..... the accountant turns the pages of the leger to open it where a dried up goose-feather has been left as a bookmark - ‘yes, here, a mistake, a stupid mistake of four hundred and ten lire in an addition.' At the bottom of the page the total is ringed in red pen. ‘And nobody realized, only I know about it, and you're the first person I've told: keep it to yourself and don't forget! And then, even if you did go round telling people, you're only a boy and no one would ever believe you." Italo Calvino, "Numbers in the Dark." |
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