Qualifying for the Composition Olympics
McLuhan’s discussion of amateurism versus professionalism connects to a lot of stuff I’ve been thinking about academia lately. He writes that, “Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti-environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society” (93). It seems, then, that to be a professional in something by definition means to cut yourself off from other areas of thought, practice, and of, well, life. To become professional is to surround yourself in the total environment of one very specialized area and to disconnect from other environments. This is where all those myths of the professor up in the ivory tower, the crazy scientist locked away in the lab, and the reclusive writer hanging out in the cabin come from.
But are they really myths? I feel more and more like how successful you are in graduate school depends on the degree to which you immerse yourself in the discipline. What bothers me even more is that how smart you appear often depends on how well you know one specific thing that no one else knows anything about. Being well-rounded even in the discipline seems discouraged (though, of course, not directly—nothing in academia can ever be direct), let alone being well-rounded in general. McLuhan’s characterization of the professional as someone who “tends to classify and to specialize” sounds like what I’ve observed so far in my experiences with the academy.
What’s troubling is McLuhan’s warning about the results of this tendency: “The professional tends to…accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly and unaware. The ‘expert’ is the man who stays put” (93). By specializing, and thus immersing ourselves entirely in the environment of our discipline, we accept the groundrules of our environment and “stay put” by shutting ourselves out to other environments that might question our comfortable own. Would our discipline be better served if we made more of an effort to get out of this small, protected environment and opened ourselves to other environments? In other words, should we strive for amateurism, not professionalism?
Comments
The Expert Attitude (I should write that book)
I actually thought of his comments on being an expert as way more attitudinal. Sure, you have to do a lot of stuff to become an expert, but I saw his explanation as way more about focusing on something in a way that is addictive. By addictive, I mean just reacting naturally in a way that isn't discouraged or looking to take a break but always coming back to do more, to investigate further, to be ever consumed by your area of expertise.
I miss the part of myself that used to do that (this is the part where I humanize the above comment). I remember a very brief period of time when I first started school- I would come home, do all the homework, and work ahead until I had to go to sleep. That got killed when my mom eventually said, "You know, you don't have to work so hard on that- you can take a break every once in a while." It wasn't her fault- it's good not to work yourself to death- but when you discover breaking you fall in love with it pretty much above and beyond the infatuation you ever had for any sort of work.
In that way, I think being an expert in the McLuhan sense is about being totally consumed by something, or just interested to the point that you don't stop to worry about whether you've spent enough time on it. That's genuine interest, and I think that it's exactly the sort of thing that we should be looking for when we check out what we want to study forever.
But, yes, it leads to nearsightedness (or what McLuhan calls "accept[ing] critically the groundrules"). Both literal and figurative.
Web 2.0, amateurs' paradise
I watched an interview with Andrew Keen, who has written the book _The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture_. I know, I got a big laugh over the title too. His argument was that anonymous political blogs were driving public opinion, and that since the Internet allowed anyone to publish anything, that civilization is in decline. We should just stick to "objective" mainstream media journalists for our information. The web is just like a communist society where you get all your art and entertainment for free. OMGWTFBBQ!!!!1 (heh.) Talk about a guy threatened by new media! I was appalled by the elitist, snobbish attitude on display. I was afraid someone would mistake him for an academic! He's a professional by McLuhan's definition, that's for sure.
Here's the wacky thing - the guy has a blog, produces a podcast - and he founded the now-defunct audiocafe.com. Oh, sweet, sweet irony.
i'm reminded of mary daly,
i'm reminded of mary daly, who eventually got /out/ of the profession--the academy--and also of virgina woolf, who, in three guineas, continues to ask whether or not we /want/ to join the profession, should that ever become possible for women. in daly's case, she refused to conform to the ground rules, but as far as i can tell her work remains mostly unread when compared with those feminist scholars who hung in there. in woolf's case, she proposed a new model of education where the militaristic qualities embraced by most education systems and professions were rejected.
i think we're looking at the groundrules, wanting to break them, but for those of us who do not create the ground rules and still struggle to understand the ground rules--it's an impossibility. escaping the ideological framework that informs our academic lifestyle...