Feb 9, 2021 11:18 PM
How should we relate to the work of “cancelled” artists?
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/202...ed-artists
EXCERPTS: In recent years, especially in the wake of the MeToo movement, many art lovers have asked themselves what their response to dishonoured artists should be. Some have decided to “cancel” the offending artists – to boycott their work as a punishment for their wrongdoing. In fact, some media companies have literally cancelled their contracts with artists following allegations of misconduct – perhaps to protect their own products from being cancelled.
But these responses are not responses to the artworks themselves. They are motivated by external reasons pertaining to the artist’s standing and to financial issues. [...] external reasons govern the art lover’s response to the tainted artist, and these can be contrasted with what might be called “reasons of art” – reasons that grow out of our transactions with the artwork itself, reasons internal to the experience of the work.
[...] Consider the novel. Novels do not only portray human affairs. Often, they endorse or condemn various ways of being in the world. The novels of the French author Gabriel Matzneff portray paedophilia. But recent revelations about his life indicate irrefutably that his books are also endorsing paedophilia, unlike Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which only portrays it.
The difference between Nabokov and Matzneff suggests that, when an artist is proven guilty of some wrongdoing, that guilt can be considered in relation to the artist’s works that invite us to endorse the wrongdoing in question. That is, the morally conscientious art lover may justifiably refuse an author’s summons to endorse evil, although, I stress, only in the artist’s works that propose such a contract.
I think this approach makes sense. WB Yeats was a proponent of eugenics. But why should that interfere with our appreciation of his poem “The Fiddler of Dooney”? There are no racial politics there. After all, we continue to use some of the statistical techniques of Karl Pearson, despite his commitment to eugenics, because they benefit us. Likewise, despite Yeats’s failings regarding race, we can benefit from his creations that don’t require us to endorse immoral sentiments. The celebration of joy in “The Fiddler of Dooney” is not compromised by Yeats’s dubious biological convictions... (MORE - details)
Emily Herring: Why I am Leaving Academia a year after receiving Ph.D.
https://wellreadherring.blogspot.com/202...demia.html
EXCERPTS: . . . Today, almost a year after I officially became Dr. Herring, I resigned from my postdoc at Ghent University. There are several reasons that motivated this decision but the main one is that I no longer enjoy the work enough to justify how demanding it is.
[...] As I neared the end of my PhD, I worried about my future. It is hard to explain to those who are not in academia just how bad things are for those who are starting out. Say the words “job market” within earshot of a junior researcher and watch fatalistic dread cloud their face. I was relatively lucky because I secured a research job straight out of my PhD. But despite being somewhat cushy, my position was still fixed-term. To hope to one day obtain an elusive permanent contract, I had to accept that my current job would most likely be the first in a series of short-term contracts in various distant locations. To succeed in academia, I would have to make a number of sacrifices. The simple truth is that I am no longer willing to make these sacrifices.
A great deal of enthusiasm is needed to survive early career academia with its endless applications, rejections and precarity. Sadly, this enthusiasm is too often exploited. For instance, academics are not paid to publish their research in journals. To guarantee the quality of the research being published in these journals, they review the findings of other researchers, also for free. But journal publishers tend to charge thousands in yearly subscription fees to university libraries. Increasingly, higher education staff suffer casualisation and unreasonable workloads, and the pandemic (or rather, the ways in which governments and university high-ups are dealing with the pandemic) is making things worse.
I do not mean to discourage anyone who is currently working in academia or who might be considering it as a profession. The enthusiasm and persistence of researchers is admirable and important. Their work should be celebrated and their enthusiasm should be nourished rather than exploited. I am proud of my friends who have managed to make things work despite all these obstacles.
For my part, I have come to terms with the fact that academia is not for me... (MORE - details)
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/202...ed-artists
EXCERPTS: In recent years, especially in the wake of the MeToo movement, many art lovers have asked themselves what their response to dishonoured artists should be. Some have decided to “cancel” the offending artists – to boycott their work as a punishment for their wrongdoing. In fact, some media companies have literally cancelled their contracts with artists following allegations of misconduct – perhaps to protect their own products from being cancelled.
But these responses are not responses to the artworks themselves. They are motivated by external reasons pertaining to the artist’s standing and to financial issues. [...] external reasons govern the art lover’s response to the tainted artist, and these can be contrasted with what might be called “reasons of art” – reasons that grow out of our transactions with the artwork itself, reasons internal to the experience of the work.
[...] Consider the novel. Novels do not only portray human affairs. Often, they endorse or condemn various ways of being in the world. The novels of the French author Gabriel Matzneff portray paedophilia. But recent revelations about his life indicate irrefutably that his books are also endorsing paedophilia, unlike Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which only portrays it.
The difference between Nabokov and Matzneff suggests that, when an artist is proven guilty of some wrongdoing, that guilt can be considered in relation to the artist’s works that invite us to endorse the wrongdoing in question. That is, the morally conscientious art lover may justifiably refuse an author’s summons to endorse evil, although, I stress, only in the artist’s works that propose such a contract.
I think this approach makes sense. WB Yeats was a proponent of eugenics. But why should that interfere with our appreciation of his poem “The Fiddler of Dooney”? There are no racial politics there. After all, we continue to use some of the statistical techniques of Karl Pearson, despite his commitment to eugenics, because they benefit us. Likewise, despite Yeats’s failings regarding race, we can benefit from his creations that don’t require us to endorse immoral sentiments. The celebration of joy in “The Fiddler of Dooney” is not compromised by Yeats’s dubious biological convictions... (MORE - details)
Emily Herring: Why I am Leaving Academia a year after receiving Ph.D.
https://wellreadherring.blogspot.com/202...demia.html
EXCERPTS: . . . Today, almost a year after I officially became Dr. Herring, I resigned from my postdoc at Ghent University. There are several reasons that motivated this decision but the main one is that I no longer enjoy the work enough to justify how demanding it is.
[...] As I neared the end of my PhD, I worried about my future. It is hard to explain to those who are not in academia just how bad things are for those who are starting out. Say the words “job market” within earshot of a junior researcher and watch fatalistic dread cloud their face. I was relatively lucky because I secured a research job straight out of my PhD. But despite being somewhat cushy, my position was still fixed-term. To hope to one day obtain an elusive permanent contract, I had to accept that my current job would most likely be the first in a series of short-term contracts in various distant locations. To succeed in academia, I would have to make a number of sacrifices. The simple truth is that I am no longer willing to make these sacrifices.
A great deal of enthusiasm is needed to survive early career academia with its endless applications, rejections and precarity. Sadly, this enthusiasm is too often exploited. For instance, academics are not paid to publish their research in journals. To guarantee the quality of the research being published in these journals, they review the findings of other researchers, also for free. But journal publishers tend to charge thousands in yearly subscription fees to university libraries. Increasingly, higher education staff suffer casualisation and unreasonable workloads, and the pandemic (or rather, the ways in which governments and university high-ups are dealing with the pandemic) is making things worse.
I do not mean to discourage anyone who is currently working in academia or who might be considering it as a profession. The enthusiasm and persistence of researchers is admirable and important. Their work should be celebrated and their enthusiasm should be nourished rather than exploited. I am proud of my friends who have managed to make things work despite all these obstacles.
For my part, I have come to terms with the fact that academia is not for me... (MORE - details)