A Sincere Disquisition upon the Present Condition of Academia
To have embarked upon my Doctoral studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, within its esteemed Centre for Regional Development and Planning (Cedeplar), has proven a source of considerable solace. Not that I have been entirely spared the vexatious task of circumnavigating those well-springs of anxiety which, in recent decades, have become so lamentably endemic to Brazilian academic life; I speak of such trials as the nebulous and protracted delays in the remittance of bursaries, and the utter desuetude of any concrete expectation concerning their eventual receipt. Truth be told, the preoccupations of the young Brazilian scholar are of a nature far more comical, nay, caricaturish, than those profounder anguishes born of fierce competition which I did observe and hear recounted during my sojourn in foreign lands; at least, such is the perception of a ‘Latin-American boy’ like myself, nurtured within the bosom of a somewhat halt and enfeebled elite, itself possessing no discernible passion for true excellence.
There is but scant pressure exerted upon the pupils by their preceptors. Conversely, a considerable pressure is brought to bear by the students upon their masters, urging them to demand even less. I had, since my undergraduate days, grown accustomed to observing this daily importuning of the teaching staff by the student body. It is but natural that an environment wherein relationships are thus established should prove little conducive to intellectual productivity, and that the inducements towards a certain ‘alienation’ upon the campus should be formidable. Yet, what a boon that it should be so! I do not contend that it were well for such a state to persist in perpetuity, but rather, that for the present hour, it is a welcome circumstance. In traversing the university gates, life itself appears to adopt a different cadence. To be sure, Brazilian higher education lacks that liberal component (the sole component that can be, though is not invariably, liberating) which, not so very long ago, did yield so many Brazilian professors who were more than mere researchers; they were, in truth, absolute masters of elegant Portuguese, of theoretical complexity, and of Education with a capital ‘E’.
Yet, in such a world as ours, I can conceive of no cultural revolt of greater import than that of voluntary alienation, of severing oneself from its manifold impositions, of drawing breath in peace. It is, at its core, a negation, a dialectical product, if one inclines towards the Hegelian parlance. The current state of Academia in Brazil is not, as so many adherents of our new-fangled, populist Right (who, more than political figures, are nowadays veritable purveyors of fleeting public spectacles) are wont to describe it: a positive and terrifying affront to all that is most sacred – as, for instance, the divine commandment laid upon Adam and Eve at their exile, and imposed upon us by congenital heredity, that we should attire ourselves in sombre black suits beneath a scorching sun; that we should offer up our matutinal prayers in unison upon the omnibus amidst the traffic’s snarl, emitting a blessed yawn for each commercial logo glimpsed through the windows (oh, glorified be ye, Logos, who from the very beginning did plan with Supreme Wisdom our urban iconography!); that we should ascend the staircases of our places of employment upon bended knee; and, at length, seat ourselves upon our allotted seat of daily Mercy, whence we might gloriously tap upon the keys of a computing machine within a labyrinthine office constructed of flimsy Drywall partitions – opus Dei.
The University, let the truth be acknowledged, has become a sanctuary for those who can no longer endure the pretence of fitting into this world. To recognise this and other distortions, which today coexist in flagrant yet silent contradiction to the very purpose of university life, is not to incite that it be regarded with culpability. We are all perfectly cognisant, and there is no cause to feign ignorance, that an undergraduate education, in these times, has far less to do with an opportunity to receive a Higher Education than with the procurement of an internship and a diploma, so as thereafter to enter into some manner of employment which, though as undignified as any other, at least remunerates with a wage somewhat less unjust than the majority. We are likewise aware that postgraduate study, nowadays, bears less resemblance to an academic way of life than it does to a profound dread, a radical rejection of the indignity inherent in the current labour market; and many of those who make of it a retreat, do so to mend some portion of the soul that fell sick upon their graduation.
That university students should refuse to be governed by the same purportedly ineluctable laws of progress that hold sway beyond its walls can only signify that at least some veritable remnant of a true University has been safeguarded; and in this instance, it appears to me to be its founding principle: the Charter, the Constitution that guaranteed unto the medieval academic guilds their autonomy as a corpus dedicated to scholarly pursuits. Even in its most disheartening states – and none shall gainsay that Academia, across the globe, subsists upon draughts of Xanax and Rivotril – at least the University is not, so far, a corpse whose body still feigns life, performing its most mechanical functions, whilst its soul, having departed, has taken with it any prospect of avoiding a final surrender into the embrace of Mistress Death. Adorno, in his Minima Moralia, captured with precision the notion that one cannot even dream of absolutely new conditions, let alone construct them, without first rejecting, opposing, and turning one’s back upon that which is absolutely wrong. Hope remains, nestled at the very bottom of Pandora’s Box, even when all ails have escaped it: “Beauty and consolation are now to be found only in the gaze that perceives horror, that confronts it, and, in the unmitigated consciousness of negativity, affirms the possibility of something better,” he typed (Adorno, 2001, p. 14). In this negative dialectic, whether conscious or not, the raison d’être of the University still finds shelter: it is still “the gift of an interval.” The activity of the university was never intended to serve purposes extrinsic to itself. It is entirely constructed around the acceptance of a certain kind of prodigal leisure that, in the present age, finds no place in the world:
“The enjoyment of [the university] ... does not depend on any definable pre-existing privilege or upon the absence of the necessity of earning one's living in the end - it is itself the privilege of being a ‘student’, the enjoyment of schole - leisure. ... We who belonged to no "leisured class" had been freed for a moment from the curse of Adam, the burdensome distinction between work and play. ... The distracting urgency of an immediate destination was absent ... But somehow or other the idea of a university in recent years has got mixed up with notions such as ‘higher education’, ‘advanced training’ ... these ideas belong to a world of power and utility, of exploitation, of social and individual egoism, and of activity whose meaning lies outside itself in some trivial result or achievement - and this is not the world to which a university belongs; it is not the world to which education in the true sense belongs. It is a very powerful world, it is wealthy, interfering and well-meaning. But it is not remarkably self-critical; it is apt to mistake itself for the whole world, and with amiable carelessness it assumes that whatever does not contribute to its own purposes is somehow errant” (Michael Oakeshott, 1989).
Naught could afford me greater pleasure, in an epoch distinguished by facile, lip-service complaints, than to behold a campus capable of suspending itself in time, that it might draw inspiration therefrom with tranquillity. Of course, all calm has its appointed duration; Aeolus, at times, unleashes his gales when we least desire to venture forth, and we pray only for serenity – for who has never wished a journey might endure longer? It is no arduous matter to founder, and the campus is not so elevated above the sea’s level as to lack its treacherous sandbanks at the foot of time-worn rocks.
But if a short while ago master’s degrees took four years, and doctorates commonly six; if research was a lengthy undertaking, debates a routine occurrence, and the disputationes attracted animated audiences to the spectacle of a pupil defending their point and sustaining it at the very edge of the cognisable, who brandished with eloquence their verbal sabres, striving to the utmost to focus upon the hope of an intellectual autonomy acknowledged by their peers, whilst beads of perspiration already escaped their countenance, carrying with them a portion of their vital warmth as they plunged into the abyss of mediocrity, trusting that their own descent would swiftly follow; in fine, if academic life cannot avoid being an Act within the Play, a definite part of a whole rendered complete by diverse modalities of life-speech that come to define Human existence – it can only be a matter for admiration to observe that the mean attitude of Brazilian academia, on the part of new entrants and established members alike, has remained unaltered: a gracious indifference to its problems, to the diminution of the value and quantity of bursaries, to the truncation of undergraduate and postgraduate timelines, to the curtailment of project funding, to the utter disinterest in and complete ignorance of its work, as revealed in the abundant and vague complaints, worthy of pity, emanating from a morally bankrupt surrounding, drowned in the lactic acid of exhausted muscles that mechanically execute their final convulsions against the utilitarian compulsions that have come do dominate us.
Even whilst constrained to find employment beyond the confines of my programme’s classrooms in order to sustain myself, I could not but join in laughter when one of my professors enquired of me, with a theatrical gaze, “But are you not yet in receipt of your stipends?!” as if there were any cause for astonishment in the matter! We are all aware that it is impossible to produce a doctoral thesis of profound relevance in a mere three years; we all know that no good research can be undertaken without academic voyages; we all understand that the fewer resources available to university education, the less useful will be its outcomes – and thus does reactionary rhetoric succeed in fulfilling its own prophecies!
But what a blessing, what a blessing, that at least one place has not yielded! That there yet remains a sphere where abnegation may prove successful, even if one must, from time to time, indulge in a nervous laugh to relieve the pressure. Like the Monasteries, which arose, not coincidentally, amidst widespread hostilities and pitiless contests for power, the Universities are today the place wherein we, academics, may smile with gratitude that we are still able to read, to write, and, above all, to converse one with another, praying in our deeds, thoughts, and words, that the radical uselessness of academia may once more inspire a new vitality.
It is in stagnant waters, not in the turbulent currents of rivers, that we may perceive our own reflections. As academics by vocation – and thus, I do not here refer to those sheltered souls who perceive in academia the prospect of doing nothing forever – we are summoned to a life that proceeds at a different rhythm. Our hope is that, just as we value the indefatigable enterprises of the myriad creators, inventors, curators, and artists beyond the campus, so too, one day, will our choice of life once more be regarded with, at the very least, apathy, instead of that morbid and corruptible disdain with which the supposed “privileges” of university life are currently decried.
May the collective unconscious one day again give rise to dreams such as those which so afflicted the ill-natured carpenter in one of Zhuangzi’s Confucian tales! Vexed with his apprentice, who stood admiring an ancient tree, a species typical of China, he complained:
“Stop! Say no more! This is worthless lumber! As a ship it would soon sink, as a coffin it would soon rot, as a tool it would soon break, as a door it would leak sap, as a pillar it would bring infestation. This is a talentless, worthless tree. It is precisely because it is so useless that it has lived so long!” (Zhuangzi, 2020).
Just as the carpenter’s truculent and sullen voice had wearied his apprentice’s ears, so did the voice of the tree come to torment him in the night, as he sought repose from his profoundly useful toil:
“What do you want to compare me to, one of those cultivated trees? ... Their large branches are bent, their small branches are pruned. Thus do their abilities embitter their lives. That is why they die young, failing to fully live out their Heaven-given lifespans. They batter themselves with the vulgar conventions of the world, as do all the other things of the world. As for me, I've been working on being useless for a long time. It almost killed me, but I've finally managed it - and it is of great use to me! If I were useful, do you think I could have grown to be so great?” (Zhuangzi, 2020).
Whilst from every quarter it is proclaimed that the world’s second oldest institution is useless; whilst it is sabotaged from within and from without; whilst the demand for its continuance yields to the discordant chorus of parrots preaching obscene disdain for those who venture within its precincts; whilst even within its walls some resolve that it is best it cease to be what it is, preserving merely its name and escutcheon, like those historic edifices in the Centre of Rio de Janeiro whose façades remain beauteous, though through their windows one perceives that what lay behind has long since succumbed – there shall I be, silently, gratefully, amiably, living the felicities that academia, as a way of life, affords me, without need to preach, without need to be conspicuous, proving unto myself by deeds, and not by omissions, the dignity of my decisions. I trust I do not here betray mere superciliousness simply because I hum to myself ancient hymns whose Truth is timeless…
Look upon all the gold in the world’s mart,
On all the tears the world hath shed in vain;
Shall they not satisfy thy craving heart?
I have enough of loss, enough of gain;
I have my Love, what more can I obtain.
- Divan of Hafiz
My greatest lament, nonetheless, is that, more than ever, the consciousness of our transgressions is alien to us; clouds obscure our judgement concerning our great many sins! If to Karl Marx it appeared so manifest that Capitalism would inevitably succumb, yielding to a ‘proletarian democracy’, it was because its ideational movements would disseminate materially to the lower classes. Class consciousness does not arise without books and pamphlets, after all. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution signified, for a time, that for the first instance in history, a multitude of ‘ordinary’ folk – what a presumptuous adjective! – altered their dietary habits and began to devour the papers issuing forth from Gutenberg’s movable press, for they perceived in them a chance to compete intellectually with their employers and governors.
Feuilletons circulated, bearing the finest offerings of their vernacular and their culture. Ideas clashed in the public arena, extending political and moral concerns into the very bosom of residences and manufactories. For the first time, to educate oneself became a great popular value, a moral duty accessible to all. The liberty to be critical, to not require four tankards of ale to commence stammering forth the discomforts stored within one’s breast concerning the inhumanity of our servile obligations to meaningless toil, was a revolution – the “Enlightenment in the second degree,” as some term it.
Nevertheless, the “right to work” has transformed into a compulsory military enlistment - “isn’t that good old slavery in disguise?” asked me the 93 years old grandfather of my friend the other day once he learned I was pursuing a PhD. We have contrived to gainsay all prognostications and become a Society of Distraction! Had Marx but known how potent would be the cultural alienation wrought by the maniacal productivism that was to take form in the succeeding century, perhaps he would have dealt more gently with his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, who penned a celebrated essay entitled “The Right to be Lazy” in 1883, wherein he declared:
“Capitalist morality, a pitiful parody of Christian morality, anathematizes the flesh of the worker. Its dream is to reduce the producer to the smallest number of needs, suppress his pleasures and passions, and sentence him to playing the role of a machine, turning out work without respite or thanks … A strange madness has taken hold of the working class in nations where capitalist civilization reigns. This madness drags in its wake the individual and social sufferings that, for two centuries now, have tormented poor humanity. This madness is the love of work, the moribund passion for work, pushed to the point where the vital forces of the individual and his progeny are exhausted. Instead of taking action against this mental aberration, priests, economists, and moralists have declared work sacrosanct. … Work ought to be prohibited, not imposed. The Rothschilds and the Says, too, will be eligible to give proof that they have, their whole lives long, been perfect good-for-nothings … Like Christ, the doleful personification of ancient slavery, the men, women, and children of the proletariat have been hauling themselves up the hard Calvary of sorrow for a century; for a century, forced labor has broken their bones, bruised their flesh, and pinched their nerves; for a century, hunger has twisted their entrails and warped their brains! Oh, Laziness, take pity on our long destitution! Oh, Laziness, mother of the arts and noble virtues, be thou the balm to heal human sufferings!” (Paul Lafargue, 2023).
The University is the Temple of Modernity. It is high time we returned to treating it as a sacrosanct space, admiring it from afar, atop the hill, for the cross it bears. It is high time we turned ourselves back towards it, and walked in its direction.
Bibliography
Theodor Adorno (2001), Minima Moralia, Edições 70, Lisboa.
Divan of Hafiz (1928), Poems from Divan of Hafiz, William Heineman, London.
Michael Oakeshott (1989), ‘The Idea of a University’ In Timothy Fuller (org.), The Voice of Liberal Learning, pp. 105-117.
Paul Lafargue (2022), ‘The Right to be Lazy’ In The Right to be Lazy and Other Writings, New York Review Books, Nova Iorque.
Theodor Adorno (2001), Minima Moralia, Edições 70.
Zhuangzi (2020), ‘In the Human World’, In The Complete Writings, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, pp. 34-44.