HIGHER EDUCATION FAILS TO RECOGNIZE ITS OWN DESPAIR: COMPLAINT.

You may recall Søren Kierkegaard writing as his “second-self” Anti-Climacus in the existential study, The Sickness unto Death. Anti-Climacus, as we understand him, characterizes the fundamental nature of despair as “unaware of being despair,” and hence, the despairing individual doesn’t recognize the gravity of his illness. While Anti-Climacus referred to the self, and the self’s relation to faith, we might broaden this example. The “self” could be the “institution,” or even more broadly, the “academy.” If the academy cannot perceive its own despair, then surely, according to Anti-Climacus, the academy is tragically, gravely unwell. And yet, it’s not a matter of the academy simply repairing itself by “penetrating to some (facile) target of assessment,” no, the academy appears to be entrenched in perpetuating its own despair. Perhaps it enjoys despair.

We like the name “Anti-Climacus.” If there were a similar, pseudonymous counterpart in higher education, it might be “Anti-Vost,” the second-self of the Provost. Let’s imagine the Anti-Vost arriving for work at Fictional U. with his satchel, which contains 1 (one) cigar-pinching device. The Anti-Vost removes his cigar-pinching device from his satchel. “Heh heh heh,” he says. The Provost’s office is across the hallway. The Provost stands at his adjustable desk, he sits at his desk, he stands at his adjustable desk. He tosses a furtive glance across the hallway, into the office of the Anti-Vost, even though he can’t make eye contact with the fellow who’s been engaged to supervise the faculty. But the Anti-Vost has decided that he can’t supervise the faculty. Nobody can. Why should he attempt the impossible? He crosses his ankles atop his desk. “I shall hire an Associate Dean of the Supervision,” he concludes. “That is the path forward.” He wonders whether he should wear a pince nez, or were he regal, a prince nez. In the end, he pinches a cigar with his pinching device. The day’s work is done. 

Detail from the manuscript of The Sickness unto Death

We turn to our panel of experts, The Machine, Sausages, and Fluffy, which is advising this blog during Complaint Week 2019:
         “Doves,” says Fluffy.

         “You must therefore be content to slubber the gloss…,” says Sausages.

         “Everybody is overreaching and underprepared,” writes The Machine. “How many professionals are actually professional?”

Thank you, gentlemen. We concur. (About what, we have no idea, but we concur.) Incidentally, I just read a job posting from a private North Carolina university, who are hiring an Executive Director of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism. Let me get this straight. A corporate university is hiring a corporate executive to oversee the study of corporate behavior at a center sponsored by a large corporation.

         “Well, I’ll be a fleabag at a butt-sniffing contest.”

         “Roight.”

         Meanwhile, there is urgency in opportunity gap. There is urgency in campus malaise. There is urgency in poor graduation rates. There is urgency in equity gap. There is urgency in plummeting enrollment. There is urgency in student debt. There is urgency in student homelessness. We could say urgency or we could say despair. The Anti-Vost walks past Anti-Climacus in the rain-dark evening, the latter clad in rain-soaked rags begging for nickels and dimes. Complaint!

blood and gutstein complaint week 2019: no solutions—just gripes

monday: democrats

tuesday: education

wednesday: poetry

thursday: beer

friday: sports

VULPINE FACES.

You haven’t seen vulpine faces for months, yet you worry. You could try a diversion such as activities but what have activities ever gotten you? Besides, there could be vulpine faces at activities. Certainly vulpine faces have attended activities before—and prospered at them. Perhaps you could self-modify, via ritual purification. You could ask exploratory questions like, What do vulpine faces want, within the social contract? Perhaps they don’t want to startle, perhaps they seek to raise their kind in solitude. Vulpine faces might be up the hill, in hiding. They may not know the conflict has ended. They may be reduced to wearing dollar loincloths and bargain cheese cloths. On occasion, a goat goes missing. The villagers, of course, suspect vulpine faces for the goat abduction but what can they prove? It’s one thing to confront vulpine faces whereas it’s another thing altogether for the villagers to live out their years in the traditional ways: their herbs, their raincoats, their dialects, their tire gauges. Hopefully, vulpine faces will walk down the hill in their dingy diapers, hands raised, and surrender. There isn’t an unlimited supply of goats, after all. This is just an example, of course, and the villagers, in the example, haven’t seen vulpine faces “in aeons.” Coincidentally, the Handbook of Vulpine Faces hasn’t been checked out of the library since the oil crisis of the 1970s. Vulpine faces are major countenance types. What if they did appear? They might make bestial demands for cultural dumplings or Verizon service packages. They might invoke Kierkegaard. If vulpine faces did invoke Kierkegaard, would this invocation apply to themselves or to you? It almost certainly would apply to you, pilgrim, as how could vulpine faces express their own despair—unless it was a ruse? You haven’t seen vulpine faces for months so how would you tell them apart from corvine faces, or ursine faces, or tigrine faces? Maybe you’d expect a nightclub singer kind of look with a dress like solar panels. Maybe you’d expect a captain of industry look with political cravats. Maybe you’d expect an urban hipster look with severe onion funk. It’ll get so long between sightings of vulpine faces that future generations will have to be shown caricature artist sketches. Vulpine faces might get confused with curiosity, crackpot, messiah, management, and oblong faces. At least the public funding has been extended—for decades—for the Vulpine Faces Hotline, although anonymous tips must be recorded, in good faith, for a single outsourced employee who, in all probability, will never respond.


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