(in)security
Music: ELO: Eldorado: A Symphony by the Electric Light Orchestra One of the worst feelings in the world is being asked to live up to your projections, which may or may not mirror this nebulous thing called “potential,” which, all to often, is discerned in death (or self-consciously, in dying or the falling away). I was approached some months ago to share my thoughts—to intercourse causally, I supposed—about my adventures in psychobabble vis-à-vis rhetorical criticism. This would not be a problem if I were not situated between two highly respected, well-known associate professors flown in from other parts of the country to do the same thing.
And so for days I have been reflecting on my own insecurity, on not being secure in my ability to provide something that will bridge these two “names.” And then I got to thinking: well, shit, this subject position is not uncommon. Indeed, it would seem my abject insecurity is almost overdetermined since, as any person in humanities would recognize, we live in a time without security!
For starters, post-tenure review has effectively removed tenure, pitting us hapless Lefty types against Academic Administration (the Borg, the Tower, etc.,) . . . and as we all know, we live in apocalyptic times on top of that! For over two decades we have been besieged by the neo-liberal suits pouring out of Harvard business school and flooding the federal government . . Clinton or Bush, it doesn’t manner none (invest in your human capital!). And then, we’ve been derided by snotty journalists on the pages of the New York Times, snarling that Derrida was full of nonsense on the obituary page, and accusing Butler for occultic, needlessly obfuscating prose. And then, leaders in my own field of rhetorical studies have been arguing that we need to learn to talk to money by steering research toward the real world and the scientific! I know, then, what to convey to these students of rhetorical criticism: it’s downright suicidal to pursue a degree in rhetorical studies these days because
THE HUMANITIES ARE FALLING! THE HUMANITIES ARE FALLING!
The academy is McDonaldizing and McNuggetizing everything; and if you don’t produce, produce, produce--and more importantly, produce those frankenmeats that can be noshed on by figures in the entertainment industry--then rhetorical studies will DIE!
THE HUMANITIES ARE FALLING! THE HUMANTIES ARE FALLING!
Or could it be that my own insecurities reflect a much deeper disciplinary neurosis?
Well, it has been said many times and many ways: rhetorical studies is fundamentally a neurotic discipline. With no definitive object and therefore no “method” to approach this object, the “field” is literally built on a fundamental, generative anxiety. Once we get to the point of security and coherence, we’re done for.
This logic does not bode well for my personal life, neither. What happens when I’m not functioning on heartbreak and emotional deprivation? What happens when you take my apocalypse away?