29 september, 2009

Hoop en leven


Bij de vorige post kreeg ik wel een akelig déjà vu-gevoel. Plus ça change.... Pakistan staat tot Cambodja  als Afghanistan tot Vietnam. Wat hoort er dan ook bij?

Welnu: dit en speciaal dit:

Like the society to which it has played the faithful servant, the university is bankrupt.  This bankruptcy is not only financial.  It is the index of a more fundamental insolvency, one both political and economic, which has been a long time in the making.  No one knows what the university is for anymore.  We feel this intuitively.  Gone is the old project of creating a cultured and educated citizenry; gone, too, the special advantage the degree-holder once held on the job market.  These are now fantasies, spectral residues that cling to the poorly maintained halls.

Incongruous architecture, the ghosts of vanished ideals, the vista of a dead future: these are the remains of the university.  Among these remains, most of us are little more than a collection of querulous habits and duties.  We go through the motions of our tests and assignments with a kind of thoughtless and immutable obedience propped up by subvocalized resentments.  Nothing is interesting, nothing can make itself felt.  The world-historical with its pageant of catastrophe is no more real than the windows in which it appears.

Verder lezen.

Na Griekenland de VS?  In de Buik van het Beest?


Als het een droom is hoef ik niet wakker te worden.

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