Comments on: The world, Set on Fire, by Reading http://bigother.com/2009/11/01/the-world-set-on-fire-by-reading/ Tue, 29 May 2012 23:21:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Jacob S. Knabb http://bigother.com/2009/11/01/the-world-set-on-fire-by-reading/#comment-370 Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:40:37 +0000 http://bigother.com/?p=791#comment-370 I think the answer is rather complex. Speaking for myself, I don’t have a very cush job. I’m an adjunct. This does afford me tons of free time, which is certainly cush. Yet my salary places me well inside the parameters of the lower class. I am functionally impoverished: I can do what I like in my sort-of bohemian way, but I could never do things like buying a car, taking an extended trip, or, god-forbid, taking on a mortgage. In Adorno’s construction, many of my co-workers might be ‘bourgeois.’ They are rewarded for living and breathing work. They don’t seem to have pleasure pursuits in line with their work. In your words, they don’t understand reading for pleasure. But these are mostly the folks who are my superiors – chairs, co-chairs, etc – or careerists. These are people who will do anything to get ahead and really aren’t true academicians: they aren’t really interested in knowledge and have no innate curiosity. They happen to be working in academia, but may as well be selling insurance.

But most of my contemporaries – predominantly Adjuncts like myself – definitely commingle work and pleasure and are teaching their passions and working on their own pursuits and pleasures. And given the state of things at present there are a hell of a lot of adjuncts. And looking at trends, there are likely to be a lot more. Perhaps my notions are colored by teaching in Chicago, where jobs are finite and mostly everyone is overqualified.

Also, Adorno hated jazz. He’s kind of a stick-in-the-mud. ;-)

]]>