“the forces of native stupidity reinforced by that blind hostility to criticism, reform, new ideas and superior ability which is human as well as academic nature”

Q. D. Leavis wrote:

The answer does seem to be that the academic world, like other worlds, is run by the politicians, and sensitively scrupulous people tend to leave politics to other people, while people with genuine work to do certainly have no time as well as no taste for committee-rigging and the associated techniques. And then of course there are the forces of native stupidity reinforced by that blind hostility to criticism, reform, new ideas and superior ability which is human as well as academic nature.

Not that I’ve ever read anything by Mrs. Leavis (or, as the Brits used to write, Mrs Leavis). The above quote is one of the epigraphs to a book by Richard Kostelanetz. Whom I’ve never heard of, except in a footnote in John Rodden’s classic Orwell study, The Politics of Literary Reputation.

I’ll have more to say about Orwell in another post, but for now let me return to the above Leavis quote, to which I have three reactions:

1. On a personal level, I’m on Leavis’s side. I’d much rather work (or blog, which I feel is related to my work and is also a public service) than spend time on academic politics: forming coalitions, doing the pre-meeting meetings, trading favors, kissing up and kicking down, and all the rest.

To put it another way, I don’t like political games because (a) I’m not good at manipulation and deception, and (b) Much of politics is zero-sum, and I prefer to collaborate in positive-sum activities such as writing Stan.

2. But on a more practical level, somebody needs to do the dirty work. Every once in awhile. I’ve encountered some administrators who are good at “committee-rigging,” etc., and others who show less political ability. I’ve seem people use political processes in a pointless destructive way—power for the sake of power—but others can use their political skills to foster smooth cooperation.

To put it another way, I require the political efforts of others to create the safe space I need to do my work. And it’s a special bonus when these political efforts are not “reinforced by that blind hostility to criticism, reform, new ideas and superior ability.”

3. As a political scientist, I recognize that politics is necessary. There’s no such thing as a non-political process. Politics is how we fight against entropy. Whatever non-politicized zones we have in life are often the result of continued political effort. As the saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Ultimately I’ll have to go with #3.

12 thoughts on ““the forces of native stupidity reinforced by that blind hostility to criticism, reform, new ideas and superior ability which is human as well as academic nature”

  1. There is a convention that concerns me of presuming that the work of politics is synonymous with criminality. Collective action is not a zero sum game, quite the contrary.

    I guess it’s not surprising the people are quick to be dismissive of activities that they don’t engage in. And there are lot of activities to be dismissive of: jogging, blogging, plumbing, negotiating, shopping, etc. etc. And dismissive easily becomes fearful when then activity is both mysterious and might have power over us. At that point it’s not hard to get a polarization dynamic spun up.

    Polarization tends falls too rapidly into tit-for-tat. Those that do the work to enable collective action are grateful with people who don’t occasionally say thank you.

    What most concerns me is that if you presume that the people who labor to achieve collective ends are criminals then you attract, tolerate, even demand criminals.

  2. I am British, but I wouldn’t write “Mrs Leavis” as she’s not defined by whose wife she was. She was Q.D. Leavis.

    But the tag “sensitively scrupulous” sums up very well what both Q.D. and F.R. Leavis tried to do. It’s fair to say that people who disagreed with much they wrote, and tried to counteract their influences, and who presumably are the subject of the dig here, tended to use other adjectives.

  3. No contradiction.

    Many people have written that way in the past; that is certainly true. But that was in a time (say 1920s … 1950s particularly in this case) when first names were much more rarely used in literature or journalism, and “Leavis” by default meant F.R. and the “Mrs” was regarded as the way to flag that she was meant.

    But you said as “the Brits would write”: absolutely not in my case and I think not widely now, for reasons alluded to or self-evident.

      • Andrew: There was a married couple in Canada that both were senior civil servants and the wife thought to be much more capable and so many would refer to him as Mrs First Name (his name), Last Name (same name).
        (It was not nice, but probably what you are pointing at here.)

  4. The line “Politics is how we fight against entropy” is brilliant and widely applicable. The only thing that struck me about it is that the opposite is true for libertarians. They fight for entropy!

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