Puh-thetic

“It is easy for academics to talk about their leftist commitments; it is harder for them to act upon them in public, in the world.” In other words, academics who don’t “act on” their commitments are just a bunch of fakers. Their lifestyles are radically at odds with the political commitments (or “principles,” “ideals,” or whatever) they claim to uphold. If they invite each other to their dinner parties, talk “uncritically” about art, eat and drink well, engage in personal hobbies in their “free time,” have families, talk about their work in difficult, non-ordinary language (i.e. that foresakes, reflects upon, or works to undo language as “communication”) – many more complaints can be added to this list – they can’t possibly be the radicals they purport to be. Their habits of living distance them too much from “the people.” Unless they somehow intervene in a material practice of renegade politics, their commitments are vain, pretentious, useless – a form of careerist posturing that does little other than secure their institutional location and professional status as “dissident intellectuals.” They can then use their political commitments as a form of cultural capital to belittle, intimidate, and shame students and colleagues who don’t measure up to their standard of ideological correctness. What sad creatures they are. End of story.