I too was struck by the proposal of a more antagonistic discourse within the university, which I think MacIntyre is implying will link to more possibilities for relevance outside the institution – that by excluding that which has not fit into the “agreed” status quo (219), the thinking within Universities is necessarily divorced from real significance within larger social contexts.

And I will confess that seeing the department counsel debate for an hour on whether to name graduate courses as “texts” or “literature” confirmed some of this for me: here was a space of dissonance that would likely be irrelevant, even a source for mockery, if taken into larger contexts. Some faculty argued for the aesthetics, history, and importance of the term ‘literature,’ while others suggested that the inclusivity of the term ‘text’ renders it the most descriptive of what the department actually offers – and yet the I wondered about the significance behind the debate. What’s actually at stake in the top-level naming of courses? Is there a territorial violence done in the changing of the terms? Was this a debate of MacIntyre’s “moral significance” or was it, as Readings might see it, a pragmatic shift being resisted by scholars operating in an older (possibly nostalgic?) tradition?

As debates go, this wasn’t really a very good one. Proponents of the literature side seemed to largely simply suggest that in some cases the term ‘literature’ would be more concise a term, or a more aesthetically agreeable one, without really taking up the proposing of an alternative to the proposed term “text.” On the other side (and I’m generalizing here), the proponents of the term “text” spoke of the term’s greater applicability in context of oral traditions, and non-canonical texts, and only in one instance were the political ramifications of the term shift addressed. The two sides were certainly at odds, and some voices were more antagonistic than others, but I really didn’t sense that this dissonance was a productive exploration (MacIntyre 232), nor that even given some strenuous objections that there would be any kind of opportunity for evaluation (a quiet voice next to me suggested we use “literature and texts” but no new proposal of this kind was really taken up).

Additionally, the politics of the term ‘text’ speak in some ways to Readings’ observation of a new “cultural studies” paradigm that perhaps serves a more pragmatic purpose than some existing models – the conscious move to a term that shifts away from existing, canonical hierarchies makes sense to me, but I can also see that there is inherent within this move a further codifying of the term ‘literature’ as something that fails to signify properly, in effect concretizing a connection between the term and its hierarchical deficiencies. This was of course a pragmatic decision that needed to be made, but it still struck me that if it was worth talking about for more than an hour, then the debate might have produced more than the sense of either an indulgence on the side of the movers to let the dissenters ‘have their say’ without really needing to respond to it, or the non-productive dissent being raised without proposing a new paradigm. Perhaps I’m locked into a consensus building model, but I certainly didn’t see any kind of real space for dissent here – the decision made beforehand, and the dissent being voiced mostly in a resigned, sometimes nostalgic way.

My response to this debate echoes Angela's in that perhaps a productive (generous?) reading of MacIntyre’s model is a life-long engagement with difficult conflict -- but one invested with a commitment to respect. Lindsay’s connection between A Doll’s House and the Readings and MacIntyre readings about a call for change is something I see as well, all though I will confess in a slightly more defeated manner (today). I have always felt suspicious of the championing of Nora’s exit from the Helmer house: not because I think she should stay, but because it seems to me from her complete lack of knowledge about the world outside of her domestic sphere, of the extreme potentiality of consequences for her actions, that Nora is screwed. She doesn’t have Kristina’s office experience, or any other resources (unless she will have some support from Dr Rank). Perhaps what makes this play so disturbing to me is the sense that really, Nora was out of luck either way. Perhaps what I’m feeling today is that while it may be important to challenge our notions of the university's social engagement and to embrace a more dissonance-phillic approach to lectures and the collation and circulation of knowledges, this is a) not likely to become a productive space – perhaps through the lack of respect mentioned in other posts, b) not likely to result in the reversal of a corporate university model and student-consumerism that devalues much of what we do, and c) not going to change the fact that we, like Nora, are likely SOL anyway.

PS sorry andy for being so serious! I really am more fun than this. sometimes.