Don’t Worry, It’s Educational

I thought about watching A Doll’s House. Mostly what I thought was that I didn’t want to watch it. I did try to download it as a torrent but the file only made it to 0.3% (turns out it’s not such a common text). What did finish downloading was loudQUIETloud, a documentary about the Pixies. I watched that instead (don’t worry, as an emancipated spectator I’m allowed). Happily, the Pixies have a song about university; it’s from their 1991 album Trompe le Monde (which I think is Portuguese or something) and is called “U-Mass.” If you don’t know it, here are the lyrics:

In the sleepy west of the woody east
is a valley full, full o' pioneers
we're not just kids, to say the least
we got ideas, to us that's dear
like capitalist, like communist
like lots of things you've heard about
and redneckers they get us pissed
and stupid stuff, it makes us shout
oh dance with me, oh don't be shy
oh kiss me cunt, oh kiss me cock
oh kiss the world, oh kiss the sky
oh kiss my ass, oh let it rock
of the April birds and the May-bee
oh baby
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
University
of Massachusetts, please
and here's the last five
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational
it's educational.

Which brings me to my final point: I don’t understand this colloquium thing. Did we move on from the “big” (how big? BIG) questions that we were supposed to ask earlier? Did we get those covered and sorted and answered? Are we on to bigger questions? Are we supposed to be serious now or not serious? Are we writing responses or questions or blog posts? Are we voting about which responses/questions/blog posts we like best and breaking into groups to talk about them? Are we having class in Salter or outside again? Did we figure out if we’re elitist or common? Do we need common texts? Do we want not to be elitist but still want to get paid a lot to do whatever it is that we do? Do we love the questions enough? Are we poorly treated or just jealous of The Sciences? Should we get guns and move to the mountains or learn to row (“row” as in paddle backwards, not fight)? Do we like theory or not? For last month’s response I watched the film twice and did all the readings carefully. I know we’re supposed to pretend that we spew out brilliance (or mediocrity) with little effort, but I spent a lot of time on my response. I rewrote it several times and tried really hard. I read everyone else’s responses too and am sure other people also put a lot of work in. But we didn’t talk about any of them, really. Do we get graded on this thing? Can we fail it (i.e. for not being emancipated enough or for not increasing the font-size of our questions enough or for being too (non)serious)? Are we supposed to just bask in the comfort that we’re now, finally, engaged with the conditions of our existence? Whereas all along we’ve just been….

I’ve come to suspect that the colloquium is an experiment conducted by the department and that the students are the test-subjects—the rats, if you will.

Pre-Experiment conditioning: tell the rats nothing about the colloquium; tell them to sign up for it only in one semester but neglect to mention that they will be taking it not only all this year but also all next year.

First Colloquium: get the rats comfortable within their environment.

Second Colloquium: see how the rats respond to a common enemy; establish common enemy by ranting at them and expressing general “disappointment”; what is their collective affective response?

Third Colloquium: establish a MacIntyresque conflict by pitting YesTheory rats against NoTheory rats (by the way, I think this is fantastic—I love the conflict idea. Let’s get shirts made: if you’re on the YesTheory team you get a shirt with YT on it; if you’re on the NoTheory team you get a shirt with NT on it; if you’re more like, “I dunno, Maybe…,” you get a shirt with MT on it. The hallway-fights will be epic.

YT: “You and your texts are just discursive constructs blinded by the forces of your unrelfexive ideologies.”

NT: “You’ve just lost your essence.”

MT, sobbing in the corner: “I feel so hollow….”

I especially like that MacIntyre thinks we can macroscope these internal conflicts into institutional ones. Let’s pick someone relatively obscure and all write about herm (that’s my word for him/her—it’s better than him/her; you can use it too). People could talk about The Edmonton School and its focus on whateveritiswechoose. We could attack other universities in the country for not being as awesome as we are—for asking questions that are much too small. The conflict would rage and there would be no settling down. It would be blood and by the gallons; the old days; the bad old days; the all-or-nothing days.

I digress.)

Fourth Colloquium: Not sure. I think we’ll probably extend the couple minutes of quiet contemplation into three hours, with a break in the middle; how do the rats respond to prolonged periods of silence?

Post-ironic, I'm not sure if I'm being serious or not.

Dude1: "Aw, here comes that cannon-ball guy: he's cool."

Dude2: "Are you bein' sarcastic, dude?"

Dude1: "I don't even know anymore."

But don’t worry, it’s educational.