Part ONE — § 2

Unlike such well-known public university systems as California's research universities (Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz,...), SUNY's research universities (Buffalo, Binghamton, Stony Brook, Albany) have not achieved a world-renowned level of research and pedagogy. The reasons are many and complex: including such various factors as the tax base; relations to local and state governments; underlying theories of citizenship and education, and also the role of ideas and intellectuals in the two systems. This is not the place to examine why one public education system (California) has been so effective while another (SUNY) has not been as effective. However, an examination of the history and institutional practices in the Department of English at SUNY-Albany will clarify, on the microlevel, some of these reasons. The pre-history of the English Department at SUNY-Albany — the fact that it was originally part of a Teacher's College — is as important to the specific forms of its current “crisis" as is its recent institutional history in which its current Ph.D., as I will map out shortly, is influenced by the dominant practices of its previous graduate degree, the D.A. At the center of any institutional accounting of the differences between the English Department at SUNY-Albany and the English Departments in other systems, such as the California research universities, lie the differences by which matters of research, scholarship and pedagogy are treated.

The Department of English at SUNY-Albany (more than any of the other English Departments in the “flagship” universities of the SUNY system — the research centers at Buffalo, Stony Brook and Binghamton) has had a troubled history. One main problem is that in this Department research, scholarship and rigorous pedagogy have, for the most part, been abandoned in favor of “service." The valorization of “service” has immediate material reasons: faculty who focus on “service” are often amply and immediately rewarded from high merit raises to being awarded “Excellence in Service” awards, “Collins Fellows," “Distinguished Service Professorships," and other material rewards. At SUNY-Albany it seems, it has become more important to be, in the words of the Vice-President, “important citizens of the campus” (May 7, 1996 text, 3) rather than active, publishing scholars who participate in the knowledge contestations of the time and practice rigorous pedagogy. “Rigor” and “rigorous” are, in fact, the subject of jokes and mockery among the Group and their students.

Being “important citizens of the campus” is what provides “power” for faculty and not their intellectual work, their publications and research, or their pedagogy. In fact, in one committee meeting when I argued for the intellectual rigor and excellence of the Ph.D. program, one colleague (part of the Group) told me that he was sick and tired of hearing me use these words. “Intellectual” and “rigor," in short, are taboo words: they are associated with ivory tower “idealism” and impracticality and treated as terms of derogation and sites of bad jokes. An anonymous text, “Boundaries of the Gnoses or noses, or sneezes heard recently on the third floor of the Humanities Building” (one of the anonymous texts that, from time to time, circulate in the Department to mock “intellectuals” and the philosophical and theoretical issues they raise in their texts and their classes), is exemplary of this anti-intellectualism which, when faced with sustained argument, takes refuge in nervous laughter. However, when “jokes” have failed to silence the intellectuals, other means are deployed to block, delay and finally suppress efforts for reform and change in the Department's practices and programs in support of more intellectual rigor, research and new knowledges in teaching and scholarship. These include resorting to procedural mechanisms — such as invoking “Robert's Rules of Order” to suppress debate; walking out of committees to prevent a quorum — and behind-closed-doors deals. But, the tactics deployed to defend the status quo are not limited to these. As an advocate of institutional reform and curriculum change, I myself have received (as recorded in the police files) anonymous telephone calls and graffiti attacks—on the wall outside my office — aimed at intimidating and silencing me.

The valorization of “service” — as opposed to “intellectual” and “pedagogical” work—in the Department is part of a larger national trend in the corporatization of the university. Like corporations, the university is putting more and more emphasis on the “loyalty” and “service” of its employees. The notion that scholars and pedagogues are “employees” of the university and derive their “identity” from their “loyalty” (as shown by their “service") to the institution more than from their practices as intellectuals and knowledge workers is beginning to prevail. Like corporations, the university tends more and more to reward those who do its errands and do not raise questions about the principles and consequences of its policies. The privileging of “service” over intellectual and scholarly work is part of de-forming the university from a place of “critique” to one of “bureaucracy."

It is symptomatic of the marginalization of principled intellectual work that there is no “Distinguished Research Professor” nor “Distinguished Teaching Professor” in the English Department. The work that has been represented as “scholarly” in the Department has been, for the most part, works of “editing” (of anthologies of others' work), “textual editing," “textbooks," “study aids," “bibliographies," etc. Scholarly work — the product of original basic research, intellectual discovery and sustained conceptualization that contributes in a significant way to advances in the humanities — has been marginalized in the Department. A “book," in other words, has been understood more as a physical object (anything between two covers) than an intellectual construct—a work of rigorous conceptualization and an original contribution to human knowledges as a means for praxis.

The history of this marginalization of scholarly practices and research is a long one and has lead, among other consequences, to the Department's Ph.D. being “deregistered” by the State of New York Department of Education in 1975.[1] According to Cyril Knoblauch (now Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences), writing in the ADE Bulletin, the deregistration was a “catastrophe” ("Albany Graduate English” 21). But the “deregistration” of the Ph.D. was not perceived to be catastrophic enough to transform the practices of the Department. The “self-examination” following deregistration led to a denial and a defensive withdrawal from the scene of contested knowledges. It simply enhanced the Department's dominant practices and its “pragmatic," anti-intellectual approach as the Department expanded its “doctor of arts," which according to Knoblauch, was “designed to prepare English teachers rather than research scholars and to attract writers” (21). Thus officially limited to a D.A. — a teaching degree — for many years, the Department became (again) a teacher training department.[2] As Knoblauch characterizes it, “We've been...too restricted by the nature of our degree to compete with other schools in producing literary scholars” (21). In short, for much of the last twenty years, the work in the English Department has been in relation to a non-scholarly program. This genealogy of the practices and pedagogical priority of the “pragmatic” and anti-intellectual has played a significant role in producing the conditions that underlie what the SUNY-Albany Administration calls the "crisis” in the English Department. This same “pragmatic” (anti-research and anti-scholarly) approach—supported by big business and the new corporate management styles in the university—is now sweeping the nation and working to break up humanities departments (such as English) as research units and put in their place pragmatically-oriented “programs," such as “writing studies."

In the late 1980's (at the height of the revolution that had transformed the humanities in research universities in the U.S. and Western Europe) the University at Albany was made painfully aware of the fact that its claims to being a world-class “research” university remained an empty one without strong research departments in the humanities and especially in English. The University, therefore, in 1986-87 began preparing to reinstitute the Ph.D. after an examination of the state of the discipline showed that the “viability” the D.A. degree had been “seriously affected” (Knoblauch, “Albany Graduate English” 21) by the new revolution in the humanities, the emergence of new knowledges and the reshaping of the post-national university itself. In 1987-88 the university set up a committee and in 1988-89 hired an external consultant to provide the committee with advice on how to rearticulate the graduate curriculum in English.

The place of “English” in the transnational university, however, is highly layered, complex and symptomatic of the contradictions of the university itself, at this historical moment of transition. On the surface, with the decline of the nation-state and the diminishing importance of national identities and culture in a post-national world, one would think that departments of national literatures and language, such as English, are a thing of the past. This is a perception that is further enhanced by such “internal” shifts in the politics and production of knowledges as the development of transdisciplinary work (e.g. “cultural studies"). On the other hand, “English” has become the lingua franca of transnational business and, as such, has acquired a post-national privilege and prestige in the university. Also, as I have argued in my “After Transnationalism and Localism: Toward a Red Feminism” and as some other theorists have emphasized, transnational capitalism itself still relies heavily on “local” states and local cultures and identities (strengthened by various “local” state ideological apparatuses such as national and regional literatures).

Developing the theories that he first put forth in his Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony, William I. Robinson writes in his essay, “Globalization: Nine Theses on Our Epoch," that transnationalism works not only through a “dense network of supranational institutions” but also it “requires the nation-state to perform three functions” (18-19). These are the adoption of fiscal policies favorable to transnational business; supplying the basic infrastructure necessary for global commerce, and providing social control, order and stability by ideological work such as advocating nominal “democracy” (in place of old-style military dictatorships). Robinson concludes: "we are not witnessing 'the death of the nation-state' but its transformation into a neo-liberal state” (19).

We see the contradictions between “post-nationalism” and “ultra-nationalism” on the global level in the sudden outbreak — in the midst of transnationalism — of “nationalist” movements, such as those in Eastern Europe, Ireland and other parts of the world. This contradiction also marks the institutional practices in the contemporary university and its English Departments because the work of Departments of national literatures and languages (such as English) are part of the ideological work of this stage of transition to transnationalism. Departments of English have now become, like all transitional practices, sites of numerous conflicts between residual and emerging practices.

The so-called “crisis” in the English Departments (the favorite subject of conservative weeklies and journals) in the U.S. are not simply the effects of local politics and a clash between “canon" teachers and “canon” busters, or “writing” and “literature," or “American Literature” and “British Literature," or (more recently) “political correctness” and conflicts between “literature” and “theory." The "crisis" is rooted in material shifts in capitalism itself, and English Departments are one site relaying the conflict resulting from this shift. The conflict is between, on the one hand, a “transnationalism” founded upon consumption practices — and the identities derived from them — and, on the other hand, the assertion of the class solidarity of working people (articulated, in part, in the work of resistance knowledge workers) who oppose transnationalism not in the name of some localist cultural identities (such as those expressed by the Social Movements activists and old cultural feminists) but in support of a collective internationalism based on production practices and class struggle. The defense of “transnationalism” in the university is done not only by administrators, who are embracing corporate management models, but also by various faculty groups that see the rising global capitalism as “the wave of the future” and do whatever is necessary to support it. At times this support takes the form of a defense of post-national practices and at other times a revival of intensely nationalist and localist acts.

This incoherence in the practices of the transnational university is quite evident in the practices of the Group in the Department of English at SUNY-Albany. On the one hand, the Group has attempted to marginalize “literature” (national identity) by advocating “Writing Studies” — English as a transnational communication skill that is not tied to a department of national identity. On the other hand (as an attempt to shore up local identities to carry out the ideological work of transnationalism), it not only advocates “literature” but also “national” literature and goes even further and foregrounds “regional” literature. In their report, the Consultants unwittingly hint at these contradictions. They write that the Group that has advocated establishing a “Writing Studies” department will provide “excellent training for business” (11), that is, it will supply transnational capital with communication skills. But they also point out that the Group also wants "to limit 'English Studies' to American or even U.S. studies” (14). It is this reductionism (of “writing” to a functional practice suitable for “business” and “literature” to the cultural products of a “nation") that marks post-al transnationalism itself — a sign that shows its claim for inclusion is, in actuality, merely a set of exclusions. Transnationalism becomes in practice little more than a form of neoregionalism or neonationalism. It is, as many have pointed out, the name for a new nationalism: the Americanization of the world. “American” is the nationality of the transnational. In the same manner, its advocacy of “democracy” is, in actuality, an opposition to democratic governance and a thinly concealed institutionalizing of the dictatorship of the “free market."

In short, the place of the “English Department” in the contemporary university is shaped by the contradictory ways in which the university is accommodating the “needs” of the rising transnational corporations. It is no longer deemed “realistic” for the university to be a critique-al space for questioning the practices of these corporations or a site for educating internationalist citizens committed to the idea of the “good society” of economic equality. Yet the university cannot entirely abandon the project of critique-al humanities without undermining its own legitimacy as a place of knowledge and violating its democratic principles. The university thus engages in such contradictory acts as simultaneously undermining, while nominally supporting, the faculty and practices involved in critique-al studies. Moreover, the SUNY-Albany Administration supports the Group's agenda only to the extent that this agenda is its own agenda and reflects the practical and pragmatic (anti-intellectual and contra-critique-al) interests of big business and transnational capitalism. The Administration, in short, is sustaining its own pragmatic institutional interests rather than supporting any individual persons in the Group: it will abandon and discard any and all persons the moment their practices no longer overlap with those of the Administration and its business allies. For the post-national university the idea of the “good society” based on open democratic critique is cynically displaced by the notion of a pragmatic, practical “consumer society” founded on networking and the silencing of critique.

In the complicated emergence of “new” world orders, Departments of English have thus become both "more" and “less” important in the contemporary university. As focal points of the humanities in the university they have become an integral part of the ideological work of the university in relation to transnationalism. A major research university without such a site for the ideological training of the labor force cannot claim to be a serious player in the games of transnationalism. At the same time, for a research university to neglect critique-al knowledges, particularly in the focal disciplines of the humanities, would jeopardize its intellectual credibility. A recent institutional move by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign captures some of the contradictions of the “humanities” and their relations to the post-national universities. Having achieved an international reputation in sciences and cyber-research, the University recently announced that it will put new emphasis on the “humanities." It has, therefore, established a new “Program for Research in the Humanities” whose purpose is to enhance the place of the humanities in the university and thus make its claim to being a world-class ("international") university more believable. Without a strong humanities program, the university, will be known at most as a "technological” university.