{"id":2195,"date":"2016-05-27T13:46:19","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T21:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2017-05-23T11:34:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T19:34:06","slug":"he-doesnt-hold-back-his-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2016\/05\/27\/he-doesnt-hold-back-his-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"He doesn’t hold back his criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was looking at one of my interviews with\u00a0philosophy professors and was struck by this little explanation of why\u00a0he had not picked someone as his dissertation supervisor\u00a0(directeur<\/em> in French):<\/p>\n

\n

\u2013 Normalement j\u2019aurais d\u00fb faire ma th\u00e8se avec XYZ, car c\u2019\u00e9tait lui qui m\u2019avait le plus inspir\u00e9, mais je connaissais suffisamment XYZ\u00a0pour savoir que je ne r\u00e9ussirais jamais \u00e0 faire une th\u00e8se avec XYZ.<\/p>\n

\u2013 C\u2019est-\u00e0-dire ?<\/p>\n

\u2013 C\u2019est-\u00e0-dire que c\u2019est quelqu\u2019un dont la moindre remarque m\u2019aurait bless\u00e9 au profond, et comme c\u2019est quelqu\u2019un qui ne menage pas ses critiques, je pense que, euh, j\u2019aurais pas pu, quoi. Bon, je vais pas raconter \u00e7a, parce que c\u2019est un peu intime, mais c\u2019\u00e9tait pas possible, quoi. Voil\u00e0.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In English, here’s how\u00a0that\u00a0comes out:<\/p>\n

\n

“Normally I should have done my thesis\u00a0with XYZ,\u00a0because he was the person who had inspired me the most. But I knew him well enough\u00a0to\u00a0be sure that I would never manage to do a thesis with him.”<\/p>\n

“Meaning?”<\/p>\n

“Meaning that he’s someone whose tiniest\u00a0comment\u00a0would have hurt me so deeply, and as he’s someone who doesn’t hold back his criticism, I think that, uh, I\u00a0couldn’t do it. Well, I’m not going to tell you about that, because it’s sort of\u00a0personal. But it wasn’t possible, eh?\u00a0Voil\u00e0.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The cruelty of criticism can shape an academic career, \u00a0we see.\u00a0Personal acquaintance with academics can\u00a0trigger revulsion. And\u00a0pure intellectual commonality (“inspiration”) is no guarantee\u00a0of human\u00a0solidarity.<\/p>\n

That’s what I\u00a0learn from this little moment. That, and the sheer sense of blockage that can set in when\u00a0academics\u00a0stop to retell their lives. You’re reminded of moments of impossibility, of those\u00a0structural dead ends\u00a0that are as much subjective as institutional. “It wasn’t possible, eh?” he summed up. As if that was the whole story (even though he also told me he wasn’t going to tell me the whole story).<\/p>\n

(On a\u00a0more positive note, this interview does remind me of one piece of practical advice. If you are interviewing in French, and are otherwise at a loss for words,\u00a0c’est-\u00e0-dire?<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 “meaning?” \u2014 is almost always a good\u00a0way to get people to keep\u00a0talking.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was looking at one of my interviews with\u00a0philosophy professors and was struck by this little explanation of why\u00a0he had not picked someone as his dissertation supervisor\u00a0(directeur in French): \u2013 Normalement j\u2019aurais d\u00fb faire ma th\u00e8se avec XYZ, car c\u2019\u00e9tait lui qui m\u2019avait le plus inspir\u00e9, mais je connaissais suffisamment XYZ\u00a0pour savoir que je ne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[488,753,500],"tags":[750,751,589,627],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2196,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions\/2196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}