Would that I could attribute Haltom's Sixteenth Law! I believe that I learned this maxim from Erving Goffman, but it might have come from Kenneth Burke, Daniel Boorstin [The Image], or some other thinker central to my education. All I am certain about is that I learned it from another; I did not think of this myself, which certainly speaks well of this law.
Nonetheless, the gist of Haltom's 16th is as simple as Haltom.
α Most of what we perceive is largely what it appears to be. If colleagues in high dudgeon are deluded, they usually are sincerely deluded rather than feigning delusions [with a few exceptions for particularly cunning colleagues]. Who once were "rebels without a cause" decay into "reactionaries without a clue" not as a means by which to impress but in an earnest attempt to state misgivings and anxieties. [Indeed, most faculty reactionaries posture as Emile Zola but more closely resemble Emily Litella, befuddled commentator Gilda Radner played on "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s, except that sincerely deluded colleagues never wise up and say, "Never mind." They just accuse more innocents of perfidy.]
β However, if our perceptions seem to mislead us or to obscure actualities, we must admit that whatever is not as it seems is the product of calculated fakery far more often than of error. To seem the least bit believable, a performance must persuade audiences or the performance will be taken for humor or parody or folly. Missteps immediately violate the dramaturgy or imagery and demand instant remediation and emendation of messages. Thus, when being belies seeming, seeming and being must be renegotiated between a protagonist and his or her audiences. [Strains of "Send in the Clowns" swell in the background.]
γ Artless fakery exposes itself and its creator too quickly and too easily to take in an audience. The colleague who looses a screed against students' evaluations/forms takes in no one because she or he lacks the methodological chops to make his or her points stick. Peers effortlessly tlansrate the screed into "I want better evaluations than I have been getting" or "If I do not fault students or forms, I may have to fault myself." If feckless teachers mistake the complaints of self-serving, self-exculpating ostriches for sensible, valid points, they imperil students, staff, administrators, and faculty. However, sensible colleagues dismiss such periodic mewling rather quickly. Much if not most such fakery exposes itself readily.
δ While anyone can make mistakes, errors usually do not align to fake out academics. When "mistakes" all or almost all suit some image that some colleague wants to be taken for reality, almost all PhDs immediately see fakery afoot. When "mistakes" are admitted, the performer may start to repair the imagery. However, many colleagues camouflage or rationalize mistakes behind elaborate, incredible defenses. Such dramaturgy fools no one who does not want to be fooled. For example, members of the Professional Standards Committees [PSCs] 2003-2005 still do not admit that those committees erred even though any fair-minded observer must concede they screwed up multiple times. That long line of evasions does not much imperil the University of Puget Clowns, however, because most faculty know nothing about it and because to hear from those PSCs is to disbelieve the members of those PSCs. In short, the PSCs' exculpations incriminate.
ε By contrast, persistent, persuasive verisimilitude follows from cunning, comprehensive, and copious dramaturgy far more than from good-faith errors or clumsy image-making. Worse, what is enduring and ersatz imperils the University of Puget Clowns. The colleague who faked a degree or an honor may have begun with a simple fraudulent line on his or her CV. The greater the honor or the more impressive the degree, the more tangled the web of "verification" the impostor wove. Accommodating colleagues or superiors then protected the counterfeit honor or degree because the impostor was too important to be forced out or too feisty to go down alone. Academic dramaturgy, alas, is group theater. It is an important part of the "contract of depravity" about which I have repeatedly, endlessly, tediously, exhaustively blogged.
ζ Therefore, the longer that the ersatz endures, the more invested in the fraud those who have accepted it become. Perhaps more important, the longer that the ersatz endures, the more that each responsible, respectable, reliable colleague [see this blog for 4 March 2007] must at least profess to believe the imagery and dramaturgy. Quia absurdum, credo! ["Because it is bullshit, I believe it!"] Hail fellows well kept must believe others' bullshit if others are to profess to believe the bullshit of fellows [female as well as male]. Thus does our "contract of depravity" entail collusion in mendacity and a culture of concealment of which the "Confidentiality Con" was the first example this blog explored.
η Cunning, crafted fakery, it follows, defines the University of Puget Clowns all too often. Take the Wigger Patwol -- please. The Wigger Patwol, readers of this blog will recall, consists of colleagues who are so busy professing to be demanding and stringent that they leave themselves less time to teach, to do research, to publish, or to serve the community than they might have if they were not so busy faking rigor. Most members of the Wigger Patwol are risible. How do they persist without dissolving amid derision? Because "civil" colleagues provide friendly audiences until their turn to perform comes around, at which time they may anticipate credulous colleagues who will pretend to believe the bullshit of "civil" colleagues. ["The Circle Game" now wafts into hearing.] The Wigger Patwol works the way the press corps worked in the 1980 Teddy Kennedy campaign: When Kennedy's advance people had failed to scare up a welcoming crowd at an airport, print reporters exited the planes first and whooped it up in range of cameras and microphones so that broadcast reporters would have tape to air. Many of our colleagues practice civility by scrambling to applaud colleagues for their rigor and by praising Rigor Itself.
θ In sum, at the University of Puget Clowns as at so many acacdemic institutions, seeming beats being because mutual admiration societies avert their eyes from what is and focus on what should be. Idealizations and mystifications perfect the virtual community and fend off embarrassing truths.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Seventeenth Law: Propagandists project crimes they are poised to commit.
2 comments:
Isn't it rich.
Aren't they a pair?
He pines for good old White days.
Her CV is air.
My favorite self-revealing fakery comes from a colleague's syllabus: "I will not be collecting your work because you will see that writing for an audience of yourself without my intervention will improve your writing rapidly. This may surprise you but it's true." Talk about calculated, crafted rationalization. I doubt my colleague fooled students or improved their writing or thinking with his sloth. I know he did not fool the faculty who saw the syllabus.
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