Re: AUT: Re: Academia....

["Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Sean-
No disrespect, but I think you take good points and overstate them, making
your analysis pretty inadqeuate. I think I agree that the function of the
university as a site internal to capitalist society is a reactionary one,
maintaining and advancing social relations of capitalism. No one in the
discussion on this or on students has really made a strong argument for the
reactionary nature of the university, myself included, but I do think this
is right.

Still though, to say that universities and colleges produce wholly or solely
reactionary results seems silly to me. Like any other place in capital, the
university is a site of antagonistic struggle, and its behaviors are a
result of the outcome of struggles. The reason I say this is that your take
sounds very close to advocating abandoning the university as a site of
struggle. The point that "hey there's a world beyond the campus" is one that
many students regularly forget (at least I did) but struggles on and in
sites of higher education (by students, teachers, and various staff) are a
part of the antagonism which characterizes every moment of capitalist
society. To make the 'real world/campus world' dichotomy sounds very close
to a host of historical examples of people saying where the struggle is (the
factory) and where it's not (the bedroom, the kitchen, the segregated buses,
etc).
Plus, it simply is the case that SOME folks employed in the academy DO read
and propagate ultra-left ideas, including some folks who are on this list.

all the best,
Nate





>From: asc <satellitecrash@xxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: AUT: Re: Academia....
>Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 21:08:14 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Hi autopsy,
>just want to get my two cents in on the academia
>debate that seems to have morphed into something else
>(like everything thread on the list), but anyway i'm
>surprised no one has advocated the position that EVERY
>academic department is wholly reactionary... it took
>me quite sometime to figure this out, but i think that
>was because i'd been trapped on university campuses
>for four years! there's a whole world out there with
>real social issues, people dying, emperors starting
>wars, etc, etc... the university is just like a little
>gated community on mountaintop insulated from all the
>stuff outside of where the class struggles, ecological
>devastation, fight for control of resources,
>extermination of native populations etc., etc. is
>taking place... every once in awhile (or all the time
>with the really 'radical' profs) some of these issues
>are paraded out in front of the student body/given the
>spotlight, and it's really unclear what else can be
>done further than discussing the issues and writing
>eloquently penned critiques of the unjust
>situations...
>
>i'm not saying i'm not ever going to go to a
>university again, i'm just saying take the education
>with a grain a salt, i mean i basically view
>university as the training ground for the ruling class
>and their sycophants; there's a reason why even the
>most radical academics aren't reading and teaching
>things like the texts on a lot of the far left
>websites that are plugged on this list all the time...
>it's because their radicalism is limited by an
>incomplete critique of both society and it's
>institutions, reactionary elements that have been
>grandfathered into control of their discipline, and
>their own inability to reach outside the ivory tower
>to engage in the real movements of the day that will
>destroy the present state of things.
>love and rage,
>-Sean
>
>
>=====
>
>
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