The Stench of Decay in the English Dept...

An Open Letter to Rick, Jeremy, Virginia and the rest of the whole sick crew in the English Department

by Gordon Campbell

Somehow, somewhere in the English staff we must have a friend, a sympathiser, a cohort, a Daniel Ellsberg. Surely by now one of you must be getting a bit burned up at the way the Charisma Kid's been acting. We'd welcome even a Martha Mitchell (phone 70319 anytime) so this article is just for you fellow traveller, we need friends, we need leaks, we need documentary proof of what is going on over there. Cause from here it seems that you're shitting on us. Now, is that fair? It wasn't us who put you out in the prefabs.

Last week there was a meeting. Originally the Department's idea. They wanted to explain their position, correct misrepresentations, etc. So for example we expected from McKenzie those "other reasons" he had promised for keeping the language. Instead we got the same old bluffs and evasions, the same defense at all costs of their position. We got no discussion, no explanation. We had shown that there are at least two valid conceptions of the English major. The interest of those involved in organising the meeting lay in seeing how far the Department would go in trying to meet both alternatives. Instead it just paranoically dug in to defend its own position.

This Department is a demanding little bitch. It will allow no fucking round with English unless you do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants. After you've been a good undergraduate and proven your intentions are honourable, the union is consummated with a degree. A graduate is born. But as Peter Winter said, by that time you'll be impotent as regards any creative thought. So you'll become a working lecturer, fit only for castrating other minds.

At the risk of boring you I'll repeat the two positions. The Department sees the degree as a specialist one, something like music or science. it aims at giving a deep, broad knowledge of English literature by means of a structure and content tailored to meet the standards required by the academic community for entrance into that group. Such a degree certifies that one has "encountered" (their word) and conquered all the major peaks of English writing. According to them the degree is chiefly aimed for the exceptional student, the potential academic. It is not primarily aimed to reach the majority of students.

This is in line with the place free speech holds in other areas of our society. Western radicals have come to realise that those treasured Western freedoms — free speech, free assembly, a right to privacy and the process of law — don't mean shit to most of the public and even less to governments or departments like this one. Because our Western sense of freedom has always had more to do with an urge to individualism as expressed through business than with the fulfillment of human potential. We are embedded in a silent majority that has willingly ceded a monopoly on politics to the government; the people may vote, or not vote, but political action, or assembly is wrong, antisocial. Good citizens mind their own business, it is held a virtue to [unclear: et] the government take care of things which ordinary citizens cannot hope to understand.

This distrust and fear of "unofficial" political action, political speech and political men is the constituency which authorises (by weight of its [unclear: iilence]) official acts of aggression and repression. In this climate it is not suprising that Western radicals are perhaps the first revolutionaries to [unclear: hate] their own country and to cut themselves off from its traditions. The death wish that permeates much radical rhetoric comes from the recognition that provocation and suicidal action may be the only alternative to simply fading away.

Opposition to McKenzie first formed in reaction against his monopolisation of power. But despite plenty of provocation from the Department the student group has tried to keep up as a dialogue. For example, it has never rejected the "specialist" degree. It has merely maintained that this should be secondary to a degree that makes the potential of most of the student body its prime concern. Therefore it worked out a set of constructive, workable suggestions that make for a more flexible, creative degree while still leaving room for the Department's commitment

These ideas are: (1) to replace the current 56 credit major with a 36 credit one; (2) failing that, provide a two tier degree, a general 36 credit major alongside the specialist one; (3) to place the language requirement (currently compulsory) on the same optional footing as say, history or philosophy, as a valuable but not indispensable addition.

Note that while our degree leaves room (as options) for their degree, their policy complete!' denies the chance for ours. The student suggestions simply involve the reduction to the level of options of all that the Department feels as compulsory. That is what the meeting should have been about, whether more is lost than is gained by making these things more free. And Dr MacKay for one did not seem to realise that the Department does not only have to explain why the language requirement is valuable; that was never the issue, but why it is indispensable. No staff member who has spoken on these matters seems to realise that there is a difference. Lets look then at these issues and try and figure out the gains and losses.

The main areas of conflict are (a) what best constitutes "fidelity to English literature"; (b) whether the language requirement is merely a valuable option or an indispensable necessity.

The Department and its apologists defend the rigidity and massive credit load of their degree by claiming that they must be true to the canon of English literature. How could we, the argument goes, call ourselves true English graduates if we had not "encountered" Pope or Milton or Spenser or whoever else is currently regarded as necessary. So the course must be all-inclusive and rigidly stratified else those young whippersnappers will avoid paying homage to all the current deities. Get the picture? The canon is Holy Writ, the academics merely officating priests in the ritual of subservience to art. What worries me is whether the students are communicants or the victims.

Of course this argument of "fidelity" begs the whole question. To what are we being faithful? And how? What goes into that canon is, or should be, very open to question. Has Milton ever regained the eminence he held before T.S. Eliot's essays? Some people also feel postwar writing should hold a place in there. Why are they being treated so faithlessly? Is an English graduate worthy of the name if he has not "encountered" Mailer, Kesey etc? This year the Department itself dropped medieval drama from compulsory to being optional. The point is that fidelity to art is often just as much a matter of personal taste, convenience, or avail-ability of resources as it is a "duty". So how can the Department justify the stresses it makes compulsory? After all, most students would probably agree on the importance of Milton, Pope and some of the others. They're probably just as important as Ken Kesey.

But the Department is bluffing when it invokes "due respect for English literature" to explain why say, the Augustan course should be compulsory. Why not the Victorians? Why not Chaucer? Why not the twentieth century? Why any of them? Note again the point is not whether they're important, but whether the arbitary decision can be made that one is indispensable while another is not.

The point becomes even more pressing when we come to how the art can best be taught. Several speakers at the meeting argued that 'covering' the whole field is not necessarily the best way of teaching. Intensive analysis of selected areas can be just as rewarding as a nominal coverage of the whole field. These people have been through the courses, "encountered" everyone, got good marks even, but still they claimed to know next to nothing about English. So they endorsed the student request for an optional major; what is lost by not getting a nodding acquaintance with everybody is compensated by understanding deeply what you do study. Again the Department could, and should recognise the validity of both approaches. After all you do not end your education in English when the degree is completed, and an optional major would provide a stronger foundation from which to explore any important figures who had been missed.

What is so weird about the Department refusing to give recognition to a 36 credit major is that it is damning its own teaching. It is saying in effect that after passing 36 credits, six courses of its teaching you are still not fit to be called an English graduate. Aw c'mon guys, you're not that bad. You just have an inflated opinion about the importance of what you're doing.

I don't really think there's much point in going over the language requirement. Dr Jamie-son did try to say that English was a study of words, and therefore language was indispensable, but its hard to feel he was serious. Is English really just a study of grammar and syntax, the derivation and use of words? Nah. Its what words mean, too, which is why philosophy, sociology and history are equally important. But the dynamics of this argument were truly enlightening in showing how the Department thinks. After Dr Jamieson had put forward this "English is more words" argument, I criticised him for leaving out the all important matter of meaning. Two minutes later McKenzie sarcastically conceded that English was about 'words — and meanings of words', as if this had been self evident. He didn't seem to realise that this concession made hash of Dr Jamieson's argument, That's why its so hard to avoid 'misrepresenting' Professor McKenzie. Words mean for him what he wants them to mean, his arguments self-destruct after five minutes and are not to be referred to again in polite company. Its the kind of situational logic Lewis Carroll knew all about. Of course, we have repeatedly invited him to state in Salient just what he does mean, but like Richard Nixon and his tapes, McKenzie prefers to keep his reasons to himself.

So, in sum, the Department can't justify doing what it does through a "duty" to English literature. That doesn't hold up. It doesn't justify compulsion in any area. But the meeting also included several defenses of compulsion by attacking freedom in choosing courses.

The best way to attack freedom is to portray it as license. This wasn't done dishonestly, both Jamieson and Bollinger seem really worried that students want to define their degree purely in terms of their own selfish interests.

Jamieson said he saw the conflict between staff and students as reflecting different attitudes towards education. If I understand him right, the student position was to him, purely self oriented. Primacy was given to the feelings, sensations, experiences inside your own head. The staff position however saw education as the promotion of a relationship between the individual and the world outside his head. This is neat, hut unfortunately a mis-representation. By encouraging greater freedom in constructing their degree the students are seeking self gratification, but not just that. They are trying to create a mutually beneficial relationship between themselves and the world they are experiencing. They can only do this by participating as equals in what they are learning. On the other hand the Department is imposing a body of knowledge upon the student from outside, it is making learning a one way process, a matter of ingestion, not education. If the Department cannot see that it is the one imposing a selfish perspective on the world then it is truly blind.

Why does the thought of free choice by students frighten the Department? Why does it conjure up for Jamieson and Bollinger the picture of students reading comic books in class? Why does McKenzie feel we would avoid Milton if he gave us half the chance? I think it derives from a different attitude to social control.

Its a familiar theme in some social thinking to see social control as a good thing, a stabilising, ordering set of rules that stop potential psychopaths like you and me from going utterly screaming mad, tearing off our clothes, fucking our mothers and generally giving vent to all those dark neurotic impulses and fixations we have buried deep down inside.

The other view is that man is limited, constrained defined by social rules, and that he can only approach his true potential by transcending the limitations placed on him by external situations. Instead of going berserk this view holds that he becomes almost divine. Evil lies in social conditions, not in the nature of man.

Our argument about free choice with the English staff reflects these different attitudes. The Department fears the worst, if students are given more freedom. The students feel they need this freedom if any good is to emerge from their education at all.

For example, one of the arguments against freedom advanced at the meeting was that at 1 7 a student didn't know what to choose and therefore had to be told by the Department. The existence of zombies like this, of course, is an indictment of our high school system. But is that any reason to perpetuate the dependent relationship at the university level?

Even granting this situation, the student would not be 1 7 forever; as he proceeds as an undergraduate he will come to know what he wants and needs to read and could surely come to choose accordingly. But under the present regime, he is not allowed any choice before stage III and then only nominal ones.

Similarly, several people claimed that they had learned much of value from being forced to do courses they would not have otherwise chosen. Good point. I think to some extent it also bears witness to the human capacity to rationalise, to find reason for any experience. But even if this does happen, is an occasional discovery through compulsion reason enough to surrender the principle of free choice altogether?

I could go on and on. But as John says, there would be little point. What the next course of action is, I don't know. we have asked, rationally and patiently for little more than what is taken for granted in many high schools today. After rational discussion the next stage is often disruption. That's not very pleasant for anyone. But it seems increasingly obvious that around this place the only alternative to stirring shit is eating it. And our whole argument with them is on this little matter of nutrition.