Letter: How to get an academic job: devise a thesis and make it ludicrous
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.At last, someone with the courage and insight to expose the careerist contagion of academic overproduction. As Noel Malcolm outlines, the intellectual stagnation in the humanities, where overworked ideas and viewpoints are recycled in ever greater detail, signals the intrusion of the market where it does not belong. But missing from his article is identification of the underlying world view causing this fiasco and connecting it with similar habits in life outside.
We cannot "change the emphasis from quantity to quality" unless we abandon the disabling, Cartesian dualisms which rule world-wide, meshing with the common-sense trap of treating as divisible and independent reason/the senses, thinking/ doing, means/ends, part/whole, work/meaning etc. The resulting atomisation of inquiry not only prohibits the interdisciplinary and collaborative grounds of knowledge but blocks the development of an intersubjective framework for judging quality: hence the wrong-headed triumph of quantity as the measure of achievement. Though I am no fan of Wittgenstein, he had a point: "The race of philosophy is won by those who run slowest."
David Rodway
London SW1
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments