It turns out that the maker of the cartoon is Paul Ennis’s roommate. Here’s a follow-up video:
What is it, I wonder, that generates this sort of frightening type of academic? Is it that we live in such utter poverty in grad school, facing the very real possibility of not getting a job (read Mark Fisher’s recent brilliant post on joblessness), and that we don’t get very much respect for our work outside academia (“would you like fries with that”), or, for that matter, within academia. In the absence of any stability and economic capital, it seems that we become entirely bound up with struggles for symbolic capital. This generates a frightening conceptual persona that strives to situate everyone else in a position of ignorance, stupidity, and naivete so as to affirm their own self-worth and value.
The remarks of the German in the two videos are hilarious. Why stop with reading Heidegger in the original German? Why not also add Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, cuneiform, etc., etc., etc.? The German in the videos enacts a logic of infinite debt. Had the French character been a German reader as well, we can expect that the German character would have made a case for Portuguese and Spanish as well. Had the French character read Hegel’s Science of Logic, Phenomenology and Encyclopedia in German, we can expect that the German character would argue that Hegel’s early papers are crucial to an understanding of Hegel and that none of this can be understood without reading Pseudo-Dionysius, Plotinus, and Aristotle in their original languages. It never ends and this is because the debate isn’t really about qualifications, but about upsmanship. The irony is that the German character seems to miss the French character’s point that he lacks similar qualifications with respect to activism. For the German character it is only texts that are real, only a canon that he defines. The activists are just ignorant dupes in need of being taught by the scholar.
Mel likes to poke fun at us here in the blogosphere that get in these debates. She just can’t understand these sort of “boy games”. She’s got a point. Many of these debates seem to literally be about elk locking horns in displays of masculinity, having little to do with really understanding things or thought.
Larval Subjects . 
August 9, 2010 at 3:00 pm
When I hear things like this I am always reminded of ” The Poverty of Historicism ” by K Popper which engaged this problem of treating all human progress as the inexorable march of history by calling out its pretensions, prejudices and predictions as all so much bunk.
August 9, 2010 at 4:10 pm
As an academic in the humanities I hope one would appreciate the gallows humor of these comics. It takes longer to be authorized to say something about a text (i.e. get a Phd) than it does to be authorized to practice surgery (i.e. get an MD). Not only do we have the endless bottom of authority as Levi points out, we have a ridiculous proliferation of contemporary scholarship. The result has been increasing specialization and a shrinking common ground on which to have a conversation.
August 9, 2010 at 5:11 pm
…on the other hand, here in English Lit world, language proficiency is a dying skill. UC Irvine and Davis just allowed students to demonstrate proficiency in a software code as a substitute for e.g. French or German.
There are various views on this. The two poles in the debate so far seem to be:
1) If we don’t do it then someone else will and Irvine set a precedent.
2) This makes a mockery of the idea of “language.”
Douglas Hofstadter (who obviously knows about software but also holds a comp. lit. Ph.D.) weighed in on the side of option 2).
Does anyone have a sense of how to proceed? Read any good philosophy in C recently?
August 9, 2010 at 5:12 pm
PS–this is apropos of the general discussion of stretching notions of language to breaking point.
August 9, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Re: Tim’s question
I recently learned that there was a rumor going around UCLA comp lit (where I did my PhD) that I had counted C++ as one of my languages for the degree (it’s not true — I did French, Greek, German, English), and I’ll admit that the idea that I would have done this sort of sent a chill up my spine. Then again, my German totally sucks, whereas I am quite proficient in a number of computational systems.
Despite my general agreement with the whole language-mastery minotaur thing, I think I’m with Hofstadter here. We may call programming languages “languages” but it’s mostly a shorthand, and to know one doesn’t necessarily suggest anything particular about knowledge of how a (particular) computer operates.
But then again–does knowing French or Latin suggest that one knows anything about how a body of literature or a culture operates? Only if you accept a simplistic account of a particular thesis of structuralist or cognitive linguistics.
Which just makes me think that we ought to reevaluate the whole idea of what counts as fundamental material competence in the humanities.
PS – There is fantastic literature–I’ll call it that–written in C (and in other computer languages). Behold some examples from the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC). I could say much more about this but I’ll stop here for now.
August 9, 2010 at 6:56 pm
[…] myself siding with the Minotaur… Here’s Levi on the recent video (see his post here) mocking those who would advise students to learn French and German. Now, it is a bit much to […]
August 9, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Yes Ian. I also read your comments over at Peter Gratton’s.
This particular issue concerned someone who ALREADY KNEW C but had NO foreign human language abilities.
I think your comments raise some interesting questions. I would definitely like to see a discussion around what we expect competence to be nowadays.
I would very much like, for instance, humanists to take at least ONE course in a hard science.
However, I’m not convinced such knowledge should be used to swap one or more languages, seeing as how Meillassoux is originally in French etc.
August 9, 2010 at 8:11 pm
…of course this might also give scientists the go ahead to indulge in the slippery slope pedantry that Levi is talking about: “Okay, so you understand quantum theory, but which version? Do you know enough about Fourier analysis to really know how to talk about it? etc.”
August 9, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Well, now, don’t go getting me in trouble with the wolf-pack, Levi. I think much useful and exciting work is done among these blogs, and there are women taking swings in the fray as well. Sometimes, though, I can’t help marveling at the elaborate and compulsive nature of the one-upmanship…
August 9, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Tim,
Regarding the “already knew C” thing, on the one hand it does feel like an excuse. But on the other hand, we wouldn’t make a native German speaker who wanted to study German and French choose a different language just because he or she already knew it. I suppose if the C student (lol) really wanted to study C deeply and meaningfully, then that’s the acid test.
Interestingly, in my corner of the world, we’re dealing with exactly the opposite question: how much computational expertise does a student getting a PhD in Digital Media need to have?
With respect to comp lit in particular, there was a time when that field really did mean “2+ national languages and literatures.” Then the whole philosophy/critical theory thing happened, and the linguistic turn, and Heidegger and Derrida and whatnot, and we became rather obsessed with language without a good sense of why. But for me personally, comp lit offered a place to ask questions about X and Y and Z where X and Y and Z weren’t immediately or obviously related. And in those cases, you’re more likely to be doing interesting, innovative work if you are bringing together areas that have not spent much time with one another. In which case German or Sanskrit might not be the stumbling block, but indeed, physics or gastronomy or metallurgy. It’s weak ties rather than close cousins interdisciplinarity.
Here’s a possibly relevant piece of mine from a couple years ago on the subject: http://bogo.st/9a
August 9, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I’m with Hofstadter too. I don’t think requiring reading knowledge of German and French is too minotauresque. In a lot of humanities fields, those are languages that you really need to be able to at least pick your way through unless you want to end up waiting years for translations to appear.
August 9, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Thanks Ian, I’ll take a look.
August 9, 2010 at 8:58 pm
I don’t know enough about computer languages to really weigh in on this whole thing. I think that, realistically speaking, the idea is that one’s work should dictate knowing certain skills, and this frequently means languages. PIC (the department I am) use to require three languages for the PhD. However, at some point it decided to change this to two languages and a skill (which could be another language, or symbolic logic, or sewing, or what have you). The idea is that certain dissertations require skills that are not just linguistic. For example, someone did a dissertation on the sort of interpersonal community that emerged in women’s sewing circles. For which she needed to learn to sew. (Because of an inability to really test these other skills, now it is just a two language requirement).
So, learning languages is a good thing. But they should be languages that have something to do with your immediate work, and shouldn’t be just boxes to check. I can certainly understand why you might need to know computer languages for your dissertation work, but that probably shouldn’t count for your foreign language requirement.
August 9, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Scu: “However, at some point it decided to change this to two languages and a skill.”
Hey that’s a good idea.
I’ll write to Hofstadter to see whether he would mind me airing his comments. My favorite (oops, I am already airing): “Does waving a toy plane around and making whoosing noises qualify me to fly a plane?”
August 9, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Oops: should be “whoosing.” But who knows what those noises sound like…
August 9, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Yet again: WHOOSHING
August 9, 2010 at 9:28 pm
To be clear, what I was poking fun at was the thesis that everything must be read in the original language, not the idea that we should learn other languages. I still remember Tom Sheehen rattling of etymologies every other sentence. He was a marvelous teacher but I always found this practice to be very affected. I guess what I’m poking fun at is academic display for the sake of display. Note that the german character in the cartoon is making all sorts of dickish demands that have little to do with the French character’s project. For him the ultimate goal is to be an encyclopeadic scholar.
August 9, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Tim: the skill requirement is a great idea in the abstract. The real problem revolves around how to evaluate the skill. Still, I always liked the idea itself.
August 9, 2010 at 11:10 pm
A plague on both their insufferable houses.
August 10, 2010 at 6:40 am
I may just think so because I don’t know many languages (though I do, by virtue of accidents of family heritage, know both English and modern Greek pretty well), but somehow the language requirement isn’t something I’d put in even my top-10 wish-list. Sure, translations put you at a certain disadvantage, but so do lots of knowledge blind-spots, most of which I think are more important than languages. Everything is getting so specialized that it seems like it’ll be a miracle if we can maintain any sort of breadth of background knowledge. In some ways I like the idea of a humanist checking off an “I learned C” box, much like I like the idea of a scientist checking off an “I learned the basics of [some area of philosophy]”. Both are a lot more interesting to me than some literary theorist learning French, or mathematician learning another area of math.
August 10, 2010 at 8:02 am
I’m with Skholiast here… I don’t really like *either* character in *either* of the videos, though I know we’re being expected to like the one character in both. Still, it’s a hilarious exchange both times.
August 10, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I really enjoyed the language aspect of grad school and have continued to work on language acquisition (albeit only for reading so far). I think that what makes it somewhat minotaur-like is that in many cases it’s simply a hoop to jump through — whereas if language skills are important to the field, it should be integrated into the coursework and be part of the common experience of all the grad students in the department. Not only would this make the requirement more meaningful, it would also make it more likely that you’d retain the skills.