A difficult week to blog, with my essay "The Dialectics
of Experimentalism," accepted for publication in Perspectives of New Music but in need of editing prior, something
I've been struggling with for months. And now another deadline is approaching,
an essay I'm writing about composer/theorist Robert Morris due the beginning of
March. Those who know me well know how
much I hate deadlines. However, those same people also know I need them as
otherwise I edit and edit and edit and edit. Eventually somebody, usually one
of my editors, just has to pull the plug. I mention these two projects (I have
others as well) because I want to draw attention briefly to what I'm working on
in relation to a really bad editorial written by Nicholas Kristof this past
Sunday, "Professors We Need You," which I'll link below:
I can't spend too much time with this for a couple of
reasons: first I'm too busy, like many other serious scholars and artists, to
devote myself to the practice of being the "public intellectual"
Kristof wants more of us to be. And while in a sense this blog is meant to
address that (in fact I've always wanted to have time to be someone who could
write journalistically about various subjects that matter to me outside of my
specialized interests), I also made a decision, that I've tried to keep so far,
of not delving too deeply into current events, saving that for my occasional
rants on Facebook and even then limiting those to issues I see as not partisan:
like voter suppression; media bias--not "liberal," which it seems to
me is an intentional figment of the conservative imagination to confuse
people--but instead bias rooted in bought and paid for propaganda masquerading
as "conservative" journalism; and the issue of "gun
rights," the discussion of which I believe almost exclusively tramples
upon my rights as a citizen not
"to bear arms." I believe these issues are so basic to our lives in
this threatened democracy that it can't help but have an effect on all we do,
whether we be artists, writers, factory workers or whatever. So I share those
opinions in public media when I read about things I find especially egregious.
But still I resist it here in this blog, as I do with many of my deeply held
and carefully thought out opinions on what is going on in the world. Being an
informed citizen matters to me and I use what I learn every day. But I want
this blog, whether I write about things such as movies and concerts, or more
typically actual research projects either finished or in process, to always be
informed by careful examination, with me writing from an informed
perspective where I feel I have enough expertise to hopefully have something
interesting to say.
And this is what upset me so much about Kristof's editorial,
something that neatly fits with the "neo-liberal" nonsense going on
at most state universities even as the wealthy and privileged at our nation's
best private institutions still demand (and get) the highest quality professors
doing the most important, detailed and (dare I say) complex research activity
possible in their chosen fields. That's the world I write and work in, did so
for my entire 30-plus year career at the University of New Mexico, and now
devote myself to full-time as an Emeritus Professor. If we were to take Kristof
seriously, should all of us drop any research projects that do not directly
concern the general populace, or at least reorient our research so that it can
be understood without the usual training required in the various disciplines
concerning language typically part of those specified discourses? This seems
dangerously close to the kind of thing I'm often reading about concerning
professors who teach primarily at state universities, where the emphasis is not
so much on sharing what you know with students but instead being responsible
for making sure they learn what you are teaching and that what you teach should
be relevant to their needs as students and (worse) as "citizens."
This is truly scary stuff and I have strong opinions regarding the damage this
causes, especially when you consider the fact that talented students who cannot
afford to go to top private institutions are being cheated out of the education
they used to be able to get when they came in contact with leading scholars and
artists whose jobs were about the sharing of their expertise with students who
wanted to learn to do what their professors do. This is often an apprenticeship
atmosphere and when I've experienced it with talented students, the results
have without exception been wonderful for both professor and student alike.
It's one of the few things I miss from my university teaching days.
That said, I don't want to be seen as defending the
unintelligibility of what sometimes passes as academic prose, and in fact I've
often criticized it myself, but I think this argument is not really up-to-date
and the writing I'm in contact with lately is much better in that regard. In
fact, I'll use myself as an example, referring back to my opening paragraph, which
I included for this purpose. My essay "The Dialectics of
Experimentalism" is written in prose as clear as I was able to produce at
the time and many of my colleagues have already read it informally and offered
me excellent comments and advice. During the review process I received some
pretty strong criticism regarding the clarity of what I had written, with the
desire of both having it be more focused as well as making sure my own point of
view was stated throughout. My usual attempt at objectivity was questioned,
legitimately I think, as being suspect due to the fact that the subject I was
writing about was/is something I not only study but in which I am also a
participant. I have struggled mightily working on this and think I've finally
found a solution acceptable to both my editor and me. The result will be, I believe, a far superior
essay than had I just put it out there without going through the process of
peer review.
I think one must be very careful when reading criticism
concerning the academic necessities of "publish or perish" and the
peer review process that helps determine the quality of both the research
presented as well as the value attached to the place where it is published.
This is but one area where I take strong exception to Kristof's point of view,
a view he shares with many by the way. There are flaws in peer review and we've
all experienced them first-hand. However, some criticism of the system can also
be attributed to sour grapes by scholars who do not produce research the peer
review system deems as meritorious and worthy of publication. Of course
mistakes get made and equally there are some ruthless power brokers out there
who intentionally keep excellent research from finding its way through the peer
review process. I understand that and am sympathetic. But as someone who does
not like to write reviews for journals (as I've written about before) I
frequently review articles and books for publication purposes and rarely, if
ever, turn down a request to do so. I consider it my duty as a scholar to
assist in helping discover great new work that deserves to published, assist
authors when the work is not yet ready to be published but could be if changes
are made, and assist the profession when an essay does not deserve publication
at all. I've experienced all three of these possibilities when I review. If
this is not something meant to be read by a general audience so be it. I do not
feel, nor have I ever felt, beholden to the community at large whether that be
when I compose a piece of music or write academic prose. My obligation is to
the discipline I've chosen to study and I write for that community. It may be
the case (and in fact often is) that there is overlap where what I've written
can be of interest to others who are not part of the specialized world where I
live and work. And here's an example of that, something I heard today on Terry
Gross's "Fresh Air," which I would hope qualifies as a vehicle for
things that might be of general interest, a review of a new book about Henry
David Thoreau. You can listen to the review here:
Sounds like an interesting book and I'll probably read it.
But notice where the reviewer mentions what made the book interesting to her,
even though she remains unconvinced about Thoreau and his work overall, that
being the point where she mentions Thoreau's shift from the Romantic idea of
writing about nature in a symbolic way and instead writing about it
scientifically, or as I would put it, "experimentally." Well, this is
certainly old news to Thoreau scholars, going way back to the 1980s, and while
I don't have a problem with popularizers getting credit for something that
seems novel to reviewers on radio shows, I do want to point out that I have
spent years researching this and it represents one pole of how I approach all
of musical experimentalism, a subject that has been my specialization as
scholar and artist from the very beginning of my professional career. If you
are interested in learning more, it can be found in my book "Silencing the
Sounded Self" for which I'll put a link here:
I very often talk about finding universals through the
particulars, borrowing from William Carlos Williams who, in turn, probably
borrowed from James Joyce and, in any case, it is an idea that's been around
for a very long time. And here's a case where that is true. My particulars
concerning Thoreau, building on the research of my predecessors, finds its way
into a popular study about Thoreau being reviewed on a popular radio program.
That is, in my opinion, what should be the typical role of scholarship in the world
at large. There will be occasional exceptions where scholars more directly
engage with the world regarding current events, one obvious example would be
the great economist Paul Krugman writing for the New York Times. But look at
the vilification he receives for doing so. You would think anyone off the street
knows more than this Nobel prize winning professor who teaches at Princeton
University, one of this country's most prestigious academic institutions. At least
Kristof mentions the long history of anti-intellectualism in this country as
influencing scholars who might not want to follow Krugman's path. I know I
wouldn't.
Inserting the personal is not something I'm entirely
comfortable with but lately, and maybe this approaches something closer to what
Kristof would want scholars like myself to do more often, I'm being asked to
write in a style that includes my point of view in very direct ways. After I
finish this blog entry I'll be devoting myself, as mentioned at the beginning,
to an appreciation of Robert Morris, especially as it relates to our shared
interest in the natural world and how this finds its way into what we create.
I'm going to struggle with that too. But I certainly would rather struggle with
difficult projects like what I've described, in the hope that I might come up
with something useful, not just currently, but with any luck something that
might even last longer than the usefulness of Kristof's attempt to denigrate the important work of scholars and artists who, like me,
do not look at what we do as a product meant to reach as many people as
possible. I want instead to reach those people who are interested in what I do.
And, believe it or not, over time they usually find my work, read it, learn
from it, and (often) add their own perspective to it. This may not be good enough for Nicholas
Kristof; but it is definitely good enough for me.
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