Andrew Kay, who earned a PhD in English but could not secure a job, wrote a memorable and much-discussed essay a couple of weeks ago about the disconnect between goings-on at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association and the disastrous job market for new PhDs. As if to confirm his point about the depraved and delusional condition of the English profession, four assistant professors of English wrote a piece denouncing him for his white, male privilege (I'm not kidding, read the piece), the same white male privilege that left him unemployed, while these four embarrassments have tenure-stream positions. Happily, Anastasia Berg, a young philosopher currently in a post-doc at Cambridge has written a brilliant (both in substance and style) rejoinder. An excerpt:
The authors are right that Kay’s essay is saturated, like a blood-drenched rag, with pained longing. But in asserting that what Kay is nostalgic for is the whiteness, maleness, and colonial chauvinism of Peak English, they once again draw inferences about what he does not say and ignore what he does. Kay says very clearly what he misses about his life at the university: talking to and reading poetry with an adviser he admires, doing work he cares about, and being part of a community that could provide him with the opportunity to talk about literature with those who share his love for it. This fantasy is the fantasy of those who wish to dedicate themselves to a life of the mind. It is mine.
Here, apparently, lies Kay’s real sin. It is not his unwitting bigotry. Ultimately, the scandal of his piece has little to do with his adoring descriptions of his academic adviser or his sartorial observational satire. His sin is that he fails to embrace his own sacrifice as well justified, fails to see his own loss as the "very necessary unsettling of white male dominance," fails to welcome the "cleansing flame." The problem is not what Kay says but that he dares to speak of his own predicament — that he dares to want publicly anything at all.
After all, according to the authors, Kay, despite having had to abandon his vocation, possesses a power and freedom that they can only dream of. "Our point is this: It’s not that no woman would have written an essay like Kay’s. It’s that no woman could have done so, because no woman is permitted to navigate the MLA — let alone the world — in this fashion." Kay, that is, betrays women not only by failing to portray them as sufficiently capable and accomplished but also, and without contradiction, by failing to portray the degree to which they are, compared to him, utterly powerless. What woman could go in and out of conference rooms? What woman could sidle up to a couple of octogenarians in a conference-hotel lobby?
The suggestion that Kay’s feat of navigating the MLA is somehow beyond women’s reach is not merely insulting; it is downright bizarre, especially when one considers that all four authors have obviously succeeded in navigating the academy far better than Kay ever did.
Yeah for philosophy, and yeah for Dr. Berg! I hope Dr. Berg's rejoinder is put in the tenure file of these four embarrassments to their field.
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