I could feel ridiculous about certain things, like taking a dance class or voice lessons. It is feeling of how this would look to others. In a way it's rather dumb to even think this way. So in a way the fear of the ridiculous is simply a way of not trying out new things.
Yet the fear of being ridiculous could also save you from things that are in fact ridiculous. Someone comparing me in print to Jesus or Socrates would be risible, I would think. I would think of that person not as a friend or supporter, but as a cruelly misguided frenemy who wants to expose me to endless shame.
Same too for those who make the defense that queer people are supposed to be weird, so cut Ronnel some slack. If you really listen to that argument, then it would make such people virtually unhirable.
8 comments:
Someone pointed out that that article also has the rhetorical structure of the classic defense of rapists -- victim led them on. Patriarchy dressed in other clothes is still patriarchy.
So many of these responses blame the victim, or act as though a prominent, smart person should be given a pass.
Here is the mother of all articles. You will drop your jaw. Even I who have known about some of this for years am trembling.
https://www.salon.com/2018/09/08/a-witch-hunt-or-a-quest-for-justice-an-insiders-perspective-on-disgraced-academic-avital-ronell/
Wow. This put it into perspective.
She was hired at Berkeley in 1984 if memory serves, and went to NYU 10+ years later. It was in 1990 (I was absent from Berkeley in 1985 and 1986, writing dissertation, came back to file in 1986 and 1987, then left again) I heard from someone who had finished in 1988 about her "seduce and destroy missions" (other person's words). Her accomplice was someone who went to Barnard and stayed. Derrida's son and the Paris apartment were involved. Then at NYU, this.
Which has me thinking: UCB faculty must have known, and been glad to get her out of their hair. They are noticeably silent (Butler didn't arrive until after Ronell left, so far as I can tell, or didn't coincide with her for long). Freakin' enablers, all of them, traitors, misusers of state funds, what else bad can I say?
... and I have a question on this ! ! !
Does this professor, who went to a couple of deans but did not do more against Ronell, qualify as an "enabler"? He talks like a hapless victim and I do not think it impossible he could be, at least in certain kinds of places, but on the other hand he was very senior and should have been able to do something to save self and department ... or no?
Is he an "enabler"?
There are plenty of enablers here. He is probably one too. We only hear his self-serving account of it all. But, of course, he was also a victim in this, and a fool for hiring Ronell in the first place.
Yes - all of the above
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