[PEN-L:6810] Re: Old "foggies"/"fogeys"

[knowware@xxxxxxxx (Tom Walker)]

Michael Perelman wrote:

>>In my department, the
>>average tenure must be about 20 years.  We have no young people and we old
>>foggies hang on.

Michael Keaney wrote:

>One possible advantage accruing from present circumstances - more an
>unintended side effect - is that the so-called old fogeys preserve what
>remains of heterodox teaching and research.

On the other hand:

"As with other marginal groups, a certain handful of [heterodox old fogeys]
are accorded higher status that they may perform a species of cultural
policing over the rest. . . Such exceptions are generally obliged to make
ritual, and often comic, statements of deference to justify their elevation."

I've paraphrased from Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1969), substituting
"heterodox old fogeys" for "women". By definition, a "heterodoxy" offers a
critique of the arbitrary selection and privileging of some discourses
(orthodoxy) over others. But no critical discourse has the right to exempt
itself from its own critique. So we may suppose that certain heterodox
positions are "more orthodox" -- that is to say, more _deferential_ to the
orthodoxy -- than others. And, we might suppose that it is those "less
hetero" heterodoxies that are allowed by the orthodox to represent
heterodoxy. Thus the "advantage" of preserving an old fogey heterodoxy must
not be assumed to accrue to heteroxy per se. Quite the contrary.

But I'm sure my incessant carping on this theme is boring to those who would
distinguish between "the informed critique" and my inchoate rage at the deep
structures of oppression. Long live econometrics! Long live NAIRU! Long live
tenure for a handful of well-behaved radicals!

regards,

Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm