Self-Righteous Avenger:
I stand corrected, comrade. The clerks are just the pawns of the
system,it's true. Though I'm certain that an analysis of the
developement of the "theory" bookshelf in the American bookstore of the
1980's and 1990's (where theory is taken to refer to a largely French
tradition of post structuralist, post marxist, psychoanalytic, post 68
etc. writings) would have to take into account the crude and reductive
happenstance of the market in such things. As one not really on the
inside of the industry, I can only speculate on these processes.
I am, however, convinced that supposedly low level clerical staff,
administators, secretaries etc. always exercise much more influence on
institutional procedures than may be apparent. The secretary in my
dept., for example, a truly mad woman who can destroy or disfigure a career
with the simple "slip" of a key stroke, or the accidental misfiling of a form.
The general functional imperative of any institutional member - to
minimize his or her own productive labour - coupled with the market
reqirement that complexity and variety be reduced to easy groupings and
quick choices, produces the double effect of false coherence and
opposition.
I'm about 100 pages into "Archaelogy of Knowledge" (!!!) and wondering
what it would have been like if Foucault had considered not just the
knoweldge producing practices of discourse formation, but the market
effects of the knowledge industry.
I guess we had to wait for Pierre Bordieu's HOmo Academicus for that.
sam.
------------------
I stand corrected, comrade. The clerks are just the pawns of the
system,it's true. Though I'm certain that an analysis of the
developement of the "theory" bookshelf in the American bookstore of the
1980's and 1990's (where theory is taken to refer to a largely French
tradition of post structuralist, post marxist, psychoanalytic, post 68
etc. writings) would have to take into account the crude and reductive
happenstance of the market in such things. As one not really on the
inside of the industry, I can only speculate on these processes.
I am, however, convinced that supposedly low level clerical staff,
administators, secretaries etc. always exercise much more influence on
institutional procedures than may be apparent. The secretary in my
dept., for example, a truly mad woman who can destroy or disfigure a career
with the simple "slip" of a key stroke, or the accidental misfiling of a form.
The general functional imperative of any institutional member - to
minimize his or her own productive labour - coupled with the market
reqirement that complexity and variety be reduced to easy groupings and
quick choices, produces the double effect of false coherence and
opposition.
I'm about 100 pages into "Archaelogy of Knowledge" (!!!) and wondering
what it would have been like if Foucault had considered not just the
knoweldge producing practices of discourse formation, but the market
effects of the knowledge industry.
I guess we had to wait for Pierre Bordieu's HOmo Academicus for that.
sam.
------------------