Peter Gratton’s letter to a a student, and Graham Harman’s response to it, reminded me of an observation I’ve wanted to share about academic discourse in general.
There’s a fictional character from The Simpsons known as Comic Book Guy. Offering sarcastic quips about his “favorite” comics and television shows (often including The Simpsons itself), he epitomizes the nerd-pedant who nitpicks every last detail out of his pop cultural fare.
Besides serving as a send-up of the quintessential comic book/D&D geek, Comic Book Guy also lampoons the nitpickery of the Internet, where everyone’s a critic of every detail of everything all the time. To wit,
If my knowledge of sci-fi movies is correct, which it is, the black car is an advanced probe for the mothership. Now, if you’re through, I’m going to spend my last hours on Earth complaining about movies on the internet.
But beyond those obvious references, I think Comic Book Guy also serves as a critique-by-proxy of most academics. We tend to be horrific pedants who seem to listen or read first to find fault and only later to seek insight. If ever, really.
I have no particular evidence for this next claim, but it’s possible that philosophers are especially guilty of becoming comic book guys in their professional dealings. We might dub this personage “Philosophy Book Guy.”
Perhaps it happens so often because philosophy is so abstract, so rooted in careful reading and critique, that it’s easy to let the details of those investigations become the chainsaws that devour the forest tree by tree.
Just look at him up there. Can’t you imagine meeting him at a conference? The only difference is that he’d probably wear pants.
Comments
Jeff Medcalf
Ironically, I think you’ve overthought this: it’s actually much simpler. When a person becomes deeply enmeshed in any area requiring detailed study, they strongly tend to be driven to finding criticism of others’ work, and often their own. Seeking perfection inherently requires identifying and eliminating imperfection. But it’s very like science and medicine in that you can get so far down into the reductionism that you forget there is something holistic that is far more important. (We see much the same thing with political debates, and not just on the internet, among policy wonks.)
I don’t think there’s a cure, though awareness does help. But there is a mitigation, and that is for generalists to pay attention to the specialists, and ask honest questions. A good example of this in political policy terms was Bill Whittle’s comment on health care: take a boat to midway between Florida and Cuba, and tell me which way the boats are going.
Paul Ennis
Does Philosophy Book Guy have to be carrying a copy of Sein und Zeit. If my friends see that picture it’ll haunt me forever!
Ian Bogost
@Jeff
Worst. Comment. Ever. 😉
@Paul
I know, I know. I resisted, I really did. It just fit the book cover so well. Can you think of a more identifiable, yet short, philosophy title?
michael~
Great observations Ian.
As someone who left academia after grad school to pursue ‘applied’ work, I often find it difficult to get a fair hearing from PhD’s without first identifying the institution you are attached to or dropping the requisite names. (especially since my native discipline is not philosophy proper)
That’s what i appreciate most about your work, it bridges gaps: pop culture, technology and philosophy – you are operating in spaces between discourses, often bumping right into the practical.
m-
andrew uroskie
just off the cuff between classes, I’d venture this has a lot to do with the postwar humanities’ dubious efforts to reclassify themselves under the banner of “les sciences humaines” with all the perverse efforts at systematization and theoretical correctness that came with it. Like the moment in 70s film theory when the critique of the apparatus got so insular it was hard to remember they were even talking about films anymore, it was all about tropological dimension of desire, or whether the ‘objet a’ necessarily implied a rim-like structure, etc.
there’s also different departmental cultures. in an east coast school that shall remain nameless, we always used to joke about how the grad classes were like miniature battle royales – where to dare open one’s mouth you risked being humiliated by both teacher and fellow students alike. I also remember that the culture at a certain west coast school that strived to do the opposite, and despite all the fears that these students would turn out ‘soft’ and never survive in the cut-throat world of academia, they actually ended up doing much better on average, and almost certainly because of that critical disposition, rather than despite it.