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CALLING_COLLINI

                                                       August 4, 2010
                DUTY_IS_SERVED

Stefan Collini
"Absent minds:
intellectuals in Britain" (2006)


  "Reading extensively in the
  literature on any topic, one will,
  inevitably, encounter a degree of
  repetition and overlap, but the
  sheer predictability of so much of       Intellectuals writing about
  the writing in this case is truly        intellectuals may not be "creative"
  awful to behold."                        enough for Collini's taste, but
                                           this is not an excuse nor
  " ...  turning out a piece on the        dismissing them.  The oft heard
  theme of 'intellectuals' (especially     opinion is an opinion one needs to
  on their decline or disappearence)       engage with, not dismiss as a
  might almost seem the would-be           cliché.
  columnist's equivalent of passing
  the driving-test."                                     ARGUMENT_FROM_BOREDOM


                                   And isn't there a
                                   certain predictability
                                   in intellectuals
                                   accusing other
                                   intellectuals of
                                   predictability when          (Are they less
                                   writing about                predictable when
                                   intellectuals?               writing about
                                                                anything else?)
                                          DEATH_SCENES
 Another thing that should be
 predictable is the sort of
 routine that goes "When they do
 it it stinks, but when a superior
 fellow like myself generates it,
 it's very earthy soil."

   Quoting Stefan Collini again,
   again from the introduction to
   "Absent minds":

      "As I have already             "... the book makes no pretence
      suggested, in addressing       to being comprehensive, and I
      this topic I am hardly         shall be more than usually
      treading on virgin soil;       unmoved by readers or reviewer
      there are many signs that      who complain that this or that
      others have passed this        important figure is absent form
      way before me."                its pages."


                    I said if it first, so
                    you're not allowed to!
                    No backsies!

To my eye, Collini is coping the pose of
being a no-nonsense critic of all that
other nonsense, he's like a rapper            A Collini review of a
dismissing everyone else's "rhymes"           Christopher Hitchens
(without saying whose exactly) as a           book was titled "No
way of pumping up his own.                    bullshit, bullshit"

In intellectual combat, you don't count                 Ah, what a world.
coup by just by making an attack, you                   Irony and hypocrisy
really have to bring a scalp home.                      without end...

                                                        "London Review of Books"
                                                        January 23, 2003
                                                        [ref]


          But when he stops sneering,
          Collini gets close to the
          real point:

             "And some of this writing surely signals
             that there is a genuinely important
             subject here: it is, ultimately, nothing
             less than the question of whether
             thought, enquiry, imagination, pursued to
             the highest level, issue in any wisdom
             about how we ought to live."

   This is what this subject is really about:
   It's about the fact that our collective
   intelligence is awful, we get taken and
   taken again with maneuvers that should be
   transparent, and are transparent to a
   lot of us, but we can't get the sleepers
   to wake.

   That's it, that's the "holy grail"...

          It hardly matters if our intellectual
          elite is elite enough or intellectual
          enough, or fairly chosen, or growing,
          or shrinking, the question is are
          they doing their job, and their job       And it matters
          isn't a mystery: are they making us       still less whether
          smarter?                                  the French team
                                                    is beating the
                                                    British.

                                                    Collini's main focus is
                                                    to refute the claim that
                                                    there are no British
                                                    intellectuals.  It could
                                                    be he's taking that a bit
                                                    personally.




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