Aristotle roolz

[lobelia321]

There is a debate going on about academics within fandom so I just thought I'd advertise my credentials and tell you that I've been reading Aristotle's Rhetoric.

Which, by the way, is fab. It is surprisingly engaging and totally topical! E.g. Aristotle advises orators to use simple maxims because most of their listeners will be stupid and will like to hear things that they generally hold to be true. There are whole pages that could be glued onto any analysis of youtubed Obama/McCain debates!

ETA: I'm not reading him in Greek, though. Alas, I'm not that academic, after all.

Comments

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Pssst, the entry you link is friendslocked.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Pooh. Well, that's that then, I guess.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I was coming to say friendslocked: the two posts which started it are both linked on metafandom, and I have a response in my LJ which you are free to link to if you want though I am not as thoughtful as the flocked post!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Aha, metafandom has a hand in it. I didn't find the nonflocked response in your LJ.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, and my response was metafandomed (I posted a flocked thinking about stuff post, so you maybe saw that and didn't go further back).

As one friend pointed out to me, it's interesting that a professional writer and a journalist are using all their rhetorical powers which are considerable to attack academics or aca fen or whatever (not quite clear) for their......influence and rhetorical power?

Here's my post: http://ithiliana.livejournal.com/957693.html

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am puzzled by this notion of 'influence and rhetorical power'. One part of me nods and thinks, of course, because I have a Ph.D. and teach students in a university and occasionally give research papers, I am so much more articulate than the common rabble out there in my local supermarket. Another part of me wonders where the reality of all this comes from. Teaching students means I constantly have to school my words and simplify them so that they can understand so I don't seem to be wielding much rhetorical power -- although I do like to think I am moulding young minds, hah, but I'm not sure that's what the ranters have in mind. I teach at a crap university. I get paid less than the local area manager of McDonald's (where's the influence?). My department was closed down so I get to talk to fellow-academics in my discipline maybe once a year, if lucky, and the other academics in my institution talk about anything but high-falutin' stuff: it's all about marksheets and retention figures and recruitment drives and re-sit statistics.

I do like to talk clever but is that because I'm academic or is that because I'm me, and because I'm me and I love words, I chose this profession to begin with? (Only to wake up disillusioned 15 years later...) And I can talk mighty clever with people who are not academics at all, and a lot of those are on my Friends list, and they are very rhetorically persuasive and witty.

Also, I love novels and fiction (duh, why else be in slash?) And most novelists are not academics (although some are, and why not?) But all novelists, be they academic or not, are persuasive and rhetorically sophisticated.

As to influence? *sighs* That seems to be another kettle of fish, not to do with academe at all, but with the whole BNF thing. Which requires blood, sweat and tears, obsession so that you put in the time, and a network as wide as the world. People cleave to BNFs, it seems to me, because they love them. It's not some evil mysterious 'influence'; it's fans actively choosing to follow that person around because they're getting loads out of her. And once they stop getting loads out of her, they either become her friend and stick around, or they flit off to other pastures. And what's wrong with that?

Hm, it occurs I am preaching to the converted here. I am having an academic identity crisis!! I've been having it for years! Will it ever stop???

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

*totally nods enthusiastically in agreement choir-like*

As somebody who is lucky enough to be a tenured professor in my field and getting to teach and write what I love, including vampire novel, but at a poor regional university in a rural area of Texas, I know just what you're talking about. And I am quite prepared to understand that people looking at academia from the outside see only the big glossy places (where in many cases their faculty look totally down on US!).

And I totally reject the argument that academics are the ONLY sub-set of fans who are rhetorically POWERFUL: as a friend pointed out, the two posts that started this latest round were written by, one, a professional writers (quite a few of those in fandom), and two, a journalist with academic training in (if I'm remembering right--I don't want to go look because I'm in a fairly good mood now and if I'm wrong I apologize) economics. LOTS of people have LOTS of training in rhetoric/writing and are NOT professional academics.

I suspect that some of the BNFs are aca-fen, but not all, and to conflate all BNF with academics, and then argue that academics are colonizing (for heaven's sake) fandom--it's just.....frustrating to read.

So generally I think internet fandom (where we mostly communicate by DUH writing) by and larger is probably more literate than any random group of people at a supermarket, is not interested in exploring its own privilege (i.e. globally speaking, I suspect a large part of academic privilege in the society at large is in part due to white privilege, class privilege, etc., privileges not always extended to the white women, queers, faculty of color, let alone to all the people working at universities who are in staff positions. A large part of fandom is also white.) So this whole construction of academics (who are in no way a majority of fans) as somehow having institutional privilege IN fandom (as opposed to outside fandom, or as part of cultural movement representing fandom to the rest of society) just does not make sense--and still, nobody can point me to any concrete examples (that's my academic elitisim operating, you know, I want evidence, not emotional or vague claims). Posting quotes from anti-academic essays and George Orwell does not constitute proof of academic malign activity WITHIN fandom (that was the last reponse I got--and I deleted the comment and banned the commenter since s/he proved to be unable to understand a simple question).

So, erm, yeah! *lalalalala* *warms up for choir practice*

I'd love to talk more about this academic identity crisis if you like! I remember you talking about it before....

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

nobody can point me to any concrete examples (that's my academic elitisim operating, you know, I want evidence,
Absolutely!! If there's one valuable thing about university training (you may get this training elsewhere, too, but university's give it to you for sure) is that you need evidence. Names and dates, t'h always says (he's a historian), names and dates.

And if this is about feeling talked down to by somebody and identifying your own shitty feelings as resulting from academic arrogance -- well, I've gone away from the online world, feeling shitty and feeling talked down at, and I am an academic. (Heh, that's why I only hear of these debates at second hand these days because I've built protective anti-shitty walls around my virtual existence. One learns...)

And of course we fans are by definition already privileged. We just have to live with that. We have internet access, most of us have broadband, many of us have enough spare money lying around to purchase paid accounts and extra pictures (totally trivial add-ons!), we are literate, and most fans are at least high-school educated (if not all -- I am hazarding this as a guess; maybe most are even college/university-educated to some level -- simply because of the high literacy level around here. Which is what drew me into fandom to begin with, after being bored stiff by non-spelling, non-punctuating random chatroom visitors. I remember when txt-slash was the rage for a while (among UK fans) and how carefully we all spelled and punctuated and avoided any tinge of the 'how r u' txting syndrome. It was like a marker of distinction: yes, I txt, but look: I use an apostrophe! (Some phones don't even have those so that teaches us that we're a minority, I guess...)

I do get very tired of people who pretend they're not privileged. I think it's better to be thankful for it, and grateful to all those generations before us who enabled us to live what is really a phenomenally fantastic lifestyle, compared to most people alive now or ever.

Um, where was I? Oh yes.

or as part of cultural movement representing fandom to the rest of society)
Now that's an interesting one. Because this is the one thing that academic fans do (some of them! goodness, not me): they write and talk about fandom in academic venues, and with footnotes. I view this from the outside, with benign but distanced interest. When I first joined fandom, I read some of those people (there weren't so many of them then) but then I realised I found it much more interesting to debate these issues with online Freinds who had fascinating things to say, and I come here to hide from academe. So I (personally) cringe from mixing up my two identities, my two NAMES. But I see that some others do it. So be it. If this upsets some fans, I can see why it could but on the other hand, the average readership for an academic article is, apparently, 1.5 (*sobs*) so academics can hardly be said to represent fandom to "society". Everyone knows that academics mainly talk to each other, *gg*.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

At least you are reading Aristotle! I probably should. And I will also kiss you. :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Aristotle is great!! He is so 'now'.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm reading Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds by Jocelin of Brakelond, but not in Latin.

Anyone else reading something not in the original language?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Not in Latin? Surely not! (Er, I don't even know who Jocelin of Brakelond is but latinum ergo slashum. Hoc est!)

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Local monk. I haven't got very far - got distracted - but I am promised descriptions of the monks' 'particular friendships' with one another.