how are arts and humanities at sc?

Tom_Holsinger_1
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:13:33 +0000

Deconstructionism is not trendy politically correct nonsense. It’s an analytical tool.

The problem with deconstructionism is that it has significant weaknesses, especially when used outside its normal English Lit role, and has been carried to ludicrous extremes both in English Lit. and other fields which make it quite open to ridicule - see http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern above.

Those who misuse deconstructionism have almost always been trendy politically correct types. THAT was my point.

And, as my drama instructor friend (writer John Barnes) explains, trends are always coming and going. There is now a distinct trend in academia away from deconstructionism, just as there was a trend towards it earlier. Regretably, he says the trend away from deconstructionism is due mostly to it being “passe” aka “yesterday’s news”. I’d rather the trend away from deconstructionsm was due to it being flaming nonsense outside the fairly narrow uses it was originally developed for.

As for UCSC’s Lit. faculty being lefty, most academics are lefty. What counts is whether that affects their ability to teach undergraduates and, more importantly, how well they can teach undergraduates period. With a few exceptions, UCSC’s Lit. faculty are allegedly poor to mediocre in teaching undergraduates, and that seems to been the case for some time. There are other UCSC departments like that.

What is more the problem with the Lit. faculty is a lack of professionalism in keeping their personal political and social views out of the classroom. The good ones do. Too many of the rest allegedly don’t, to a degree exceptional even by UCSC standards.