Excuses for her include language like this
"misogyny" "practices of queer intimacy" "neo-liberalism"
Feminists who rush to her defense are not hypocritical, we hear, because ... "neo-liberalism" They were never on board with "me too" anyway.
We shouldn't look at the abuse of power in this particular case, but only about "structural problems" in graduate education. Nice try.
Supposedly she is an academic super-star. It is funny I've never heard of her before now. Maybe that is an indication of how far out of it I am. I haven't seen her cited in my field ever. I've heard of all the people defending her... it's very curious.
All those victim-blaming arguments that are supposed to be so bad are trotted out in defense of a supposed feminist and Lesbian. But is she really either of those things?
And certainly, let's smear the alleged victim. He only sued because he didn't get a job.
6 comments:
The superstar part I don't understand, either. Mildly interesting work if you are into her kind of thing, but I don't see how serious people consider profound. But is a darling in a certain small circle and I think they really inflate how important they are. It really makes me wonder. And if she is brilliant then I am Einstein.
She's unstable. I think her career was a fluke, she was rattling around on one-year jobs, had one at UCB, someone they were going to hire fell through, the search committee wasn't very good and didn't have alternatives, it was late spring, they put her in the line to conserve it and not to have to search again right then. I was there and remember it.
A friend said she was soon running "seduce and destroy" missions on students. This was in the late 80s. Abusive people often make themselves look frail, and turn on the charm to get friends. That they are so enthralled with her, though, and so willing to excuse and justify her behavior, makes the signatories of the letter all look very bad to me, as people and also as intellectuals.
I admire the work of Judith Butler's partner Wendy Brown. I am guessing they must both have been complicit with and even enabling of Ronell's behavior at Berkeley and perhaps beyond. This is sickening.
Here is a good critique of the defense (deconstruction of Lisa Duggan's piece).
https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/kburd-caliban-responds/
And here is a very interesting commentary I am just starting to read, by a former student of AR, on "the predatory university."
https://punctumbooks.com/blog/what-the-ronell-reitman-case-tells-us-about-the-predatory-university/
She is not a theory superstar. She is a minor Derridean who fell into the right crowd for her career. I've read that she turned NYU's German department into a place to read French theory in English. Most of what I've seen by her is anecdotes about knowing Derrida and de Man. And she seduced Derrrida's son when he was 16 and she was 29!
That last link you post is "interesting" in that it blames the "university" and its "structural problems" for something that happened in utter contradiction to what the university is. The problem is not non-academic administrators, but an academic who does things the old way: personal power and fiefdom.
I agree but they say university created star system and job market traps students with these so called stars
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