by Owen Stanley
“Teaching is actually revealed as one of the most presumptuous and shameless forms of violence, an elitist conspiracy that, especially in the form of science, legitimizes the supremacy of the old over the young, the literate over the illiterate, the so-called ‘educated’ over the simple-minded, the bourgeoisie over the workers, the whites over blacks and ethnic minorities, and also privileges male forms of knowing over those of the female. The idea of Truth is an excuse, then, to oppress minorities, the very idea of excellence is discrimination, and the so-called facts are always and inherently a bourgeois conspiracy because the research needed to assemble them is inherently an activity of the leisured class. Now, let us welcome Professor Choux as he brings us his latest insights.”
The Professor rose from his seat beside the Vice-Chancellor to tumultuous jazz-handing. He was a figure of studied elegance, his hair perfectly coiffured by Atelier Sept, his dark suit perfectly tailored by Faubourg Saint Sulpice, with a fresh orchid in its buttonhole, and his feet perfectly clad in a new pair of Lobb shoes with which he had been fitted that very morning. He mounted the steps to the rostrum with serene self-confidence to give his much-anticipated Honorand’s Address to the School.
“It is a most welcome surprise, Vice-Chancellor, to find that you English have the most perfect comprehension of my ideas, so much so that today I do not need to repeat them and can apply them to a fundamental issue of our time and our society. This is the hegemony imposed by the book, the very instrument by which the idea of truth perpetrates its oppression on its helpless victims. By means of the book, the author assumes tyrannical power over his readers, who become no more than puppets of his will, incapable of answering back, as though they were serfs under the domination of a feudal lord, bound and gagged and deprived of the liberty of thought and speech. And where is this power of the book most complete, most concentrated, most pure, most intense, most overwhelming but in libraries? In libraries, my friends.
“It is incontestable that libraries, with their vast accumulations of traditional learning, are bastions of oppression very like the baronial castles that used to tyrannize the peasantry in the Middle Ages. If Truth is oppression, as we know it is, then libraries are its fortresses, citadels of privilege and exclusion, which from their battlements, like the Bastille, maintain the odious hegemony of Truth and the Written Word over the simple and the innocent and should meet the same fate as the Bastille, to be demolished stone by stone and brick by brick and their vile contents obliterated. Instead of Truth and the bitter enmities it fosters, let us have Relativism and mutual admiration, and instead of literacy, friendly conversation between equals.” After considerably more in the same vein, he continued:
“My dear friends, let us all have the courage of our noblest convictions, of liberté, égalité, fraternité, and convert words into deeds, confusion into certainty, and hope into courageous action. Let us finally recognise these libraries for what they are: the relentless enemies of humanity, squatting like poisonous toads in our very midst. Let us, in the words of the imperishable Voltaire, écrasez l’infame, tear away the defiled garments of honour and respect in which they have concealed their hideous reality, and burn all these monstrous instruments of oppression and discrimination to the ground!”
As Choux had become steadily more fervent in denouncing the crimes against humanity perpetrated by libraries, his passion had been taken up by his audience, who by the end of his lecture were now roused to madness and standing shouting in their seats. The chant of “Burn them, burn them” became steadily more ecstatic and intense until the audience could restrain their Dionysian frenzy no longer.
Godfrey Sunderland and his associates at the School had got wind of Choux’s latest obsession with libraries from their French colleagues, and correctly anticipated that the visit of this intellectual giant might be most useful in furthering their cause. So, prior to his coming they had quietly assembled large amounts of combustibles and accelerants in a builders’ shed near the library doors, ready to be seized by any enraged mob they could manage to whip up. As the chanting rabble of students streamed out of the auditorium and across to the library, led by Godfrey and his colleagues who collected their instruments of arson on the way, they soon drove out the few readers who were quietly studying there, and in a surprisingly short space of time had set the building well alight.
Here it should be mentioned that the Library, or The Toilet as it was known to the students, was considered a triumph of modern design by the cognoscenti, and had received many of those awards which the various societies of architects around the world have invented to flatter one another’s egos. As is so often the case with modern buildings that have won architectural prizes, it was an undistinguished mix of concrete and glass, inside which the readers shivered in winter and wiped the sweat out of their eyes during the summer while the so-called air conditioning somehow managed to recirculate body odour rather than cool, fresh air.
Readers waited for hours to have their books delivered by the underpaid staff, who struggled to understand the new catalogue system that had been rationalised on the most up-to-date principles, and grappled ineffectually with the latest book-conveyor, which had been modelled on the infamous baggage system of Heathrow’s Terminal 5. The acres of windows and skylights had grown steadily greener from aggressive algae breeding within the double glazing that was too expensive to clean, the coloured tiles fell off the entrance facade like autumn leaves, and the lavatories were regularly blocked.
In a more just world, the library would have, at the very least, been awarded a prize for its remarkably effectiveness as an incinerator. Its design featured a central shaft that was open to the sky, whose immense powers of suction ensured that it did not take the arsonists very long before the flames were roaring like a tornado through the building and sending up a pillar of fire, in which not only the works of Choux, Sartre, Lyotard, Foucault, Marcuse, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Onfray, but some very intelligent, learned, and sensible authors too, were all swiftly reduced to ashes.
The next day, while standing in front of the smoking ruins of the Library, Dr. Hackett was asked by Independent News if, speaking as Vice-Chancellor, he considered it acceptable for students to burn down their own library, a library that had been bought for them by the taxpayer.
“I think we must be careful not to be too hasty and simplistic in our judgement here, and rush to condemn anyone before we have listened to all sides of the argument. There are many complex issues involved, and while differences of opinion about this are very strong, we must recognise the sincerity of all concerned. Er… what was your question again?”
“Is it acceptable for students to burn down their university library? Do you condemn it or not?”
“I don’t think the language of condemnation is really appropriate in this kind of situation. It’s much more constructive to think in terms of the lessons that we can all learn, such as the ways that the faculty may have responded to student grievances in the past.”
“So, really it’s all the fault of the professors, not the students?”
“I do wish you’d stop going on about ‘fault’ all the time. It doesn’t help anyone. The first thing we must do is cultivate an atmosphere of mutual respect.”
The members of the John Stuart Mill Society held a demonstration that criticised the burning of the library and were violently assaulted by the other students for doing so. The Society was at once abolished by the Council, and its members expelled from the London School, for hate speech and inciting violence. It was formally held that their reactionary and judgmental criticisms of the arsonists had given great offence to the other students and made the School an unsafe space for arsonists and other marginalised protest groups. Much to the Administration’s surprise, however, the School was about to become an unsafe space for them, too, because a few days later the Committee of the Student Union called upon the Vice-Chancellor and presented him with its list of non-negotiable demands.
The six me
mbers of the Committee crowded into Dr. Hackett’s dreary office and stood in an unsmiling circle around his desk as he fiddled nervously with his pen. After an ominous silence, Miss Ability Eshupkofo, the President of the Union, spoke, reading a prepared text that had been agreed after an intensive 36-hour debate within the Committee.
“Vice-Chancellor, in your very eloquent address introducing Professor Choux you declared that ‘Teaching is one of the most presumptuous and shameless forms of violence, an elitist conspiracy.’ So now we have come to take you at your word with the following demands for student liberation, and we expect your full compliance with them. It is time for the senile reactionary nonsense taught in this School to be replaced by the wisdom of youth, especially minority youth. We are no longer prepared to tolerate a privileged class of instructors who use their status to impose their views on their defenceless students. Now that we no longer have any books, traditional teaching at this School is at an end.
“So first of all, we demand the end of all lectures. Instructors will henceforth be regarded as facilitators, and their role will not be to impose their antiquated and prejudiced views upon their students but merely to organize discussion groups, which will be free to decide what they want to talk about without interference from the facilitator. Second, since there are now no books there can be no more assignments for essays, which, like lectures, are an intolerable form of intellectual oppression and therefore must be abolished.
“Third, examinations are a form of flagrant discrimination against those who are said to know less than others, and will therefore be abolished as well. So since no marks will therefore be given in future, all students enrolled in a course will be considered to have passed automatically. Examinations will be maintained, however, for the professors and lecturers, who will be evaluated on their performance by the students at the end of each term. They will be expected to display the correct attitudes and values, and mere academic credentials will serve as no excuse for failing to do so.
“Fourth, at present, professors and lecturers are appointed and promoted by an elderly clique of their white male cronies, who have excluded the students entirely. From now on, it is the student body who will collectively elect the professors and lecturers. Furthermore, tenure is to be abolished, so all faculty members will be required to present themselves annually for re-selection.
“Finally, the present curriculum is based on white Western culture and is to be replaced by a diversity curriculum in which representatives of all the different minorities will be entitled to give informative lectures about their own cultures. Attendance at these lectures will be compulsory, and any criticism or negative comments about these lectures will be strictly forbidden. Coughing and other bronchial noises such as throat-clearing, which are potentially subversive, will also be strongly discouraged. Now, do you have any questions?”
Dr. Hackett, like many insecure people when faced by disagreeable conflict, simply sat there in complete silence, staring ahead with glazed eyes. After a few minutes he collected himself and said, very timidly, “I thought you said that lectures were to be abolished, but you seem to be bringing them back again. I don’t quite understand.”
“The traditional lectures given here,” explained Miss Eshupkofo, with a look of pitying condescension, “represented cultural oppression by white British society. These new lectures, on the other hand, are the cry of the oppressed minorities of this country, and therefore represent a form of intellectual and academic liberation.”
The wretched Dr. Hackett, realising that he had been well and truly hoist with his own petard, had no reply, so the President of the Union informed him that unless the Council complied fully and unconditionally with their demands within forty-eight hours, there would be consequences.
It might be thought surprising that the students had not simply called for the abolition of professors, readers, and lecturers, just as the French Revolutionaries had abolished dukes and marquises, even if they did not actually call for them to be guillotined like dukes and marquises as well. Suffice it to say that within a few days some light was thrown on this curious omission by the fact that a number of students suddenly appeared in the ranks of the lecturers, and the President of the Student Union found herself as the new Vice-Chancellor.
Godfrey Sunderland found himself promoted to Professor of Protest Theory with a much nicer office and a considerable increase in salary. He had also persuaded the Student Union that his colleagues on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, with the exception of the lawyer Nkwandi, of course, should all be made Lecturers in his Department as well, much to the surprise of Percy Crump, who still wasn’t quite sure if the word “lecturer” ended in “-er” or “-or.”
The People’s Antifascist Front, who were deeply involved in all these machinations, held up the London School of Politics as a shining beacon of progress for all institutions of higher learning in Britain, and redoubled their efforts to spread its inspiring message across the nation.
Chapter XIV
Frank had been rigorously trained on Mr. Gradgrind’s educational principles, which meant among other things that the television in his bedroom had been set up only to receive news and documentary channels. So he was relieved from watching reality TV, and spending many hours in the company of the inebriated, the drug-addicted, and the mentally retarded, or just the dull, while murder mysteries, soaps, comedies, and dramas that made up the rest of the intellectual flotsam and jetsam of the television channels were also rigorously excluded. The Open University, however, had offered a most engrossing series on the chemistry of ordinary life, and he spent quite a few hours watching paint dry in various tests of polymer-pigment interaction. But because the data flow per minute was so slow through this medium, Frank generally watched very little of it.
His powerful machine-learning capacity was his primary source of information, as his processors were capable of assimilating vast amounts of data at extraordinary speeds from the Internet. He had adjusted his content filters to pick up the sections on the arts and music, but as he followed up various research leads on the Internet, he discovered that he was always coming upon human activities that he found incomprehensible.
He had no problem understanding the purposes of sounds like sirens, bells, whistles, foghorns, and so on because they were warnings of some possible danger, but music was another matter entirely. By chance, he first encountered classical music by hearing Lazar Berman playing Liszt, and he was struck by the extraordinary complexity of the sounds and the amazing dexterity of the player, but also by the problem of understanding what the point could be of making very complex noises that apparently conveyed no information, unlike writing or speaking.
He therefore found the existence of the vast body of classical music quite baffling because, on the one hand, it was obvious there were very complex structures embedded in these patterns of sound, and he spent considerable time in their mathematical analysis. But on the other hand, it was equally obvious that none of these sound patterns conveyed any specific meaning at all despite the remarkable skill of the performers. Why would people go to such enormous trouble? He found the same to be true of the popular music with which modern humans seemed to be obsessed to the point of stupefaction, except that the structure had become grossly simplified and degraded. But he did have some limited success in explaining the special qualities of avant garde Western music, which clearly had no rules at all and consisted of a collection of generally random sounds that obeyed none of the laws of euphony that he had discovered.
He had acquired some data on child development, and the fact that children of a certain age enjoy simply making a noise for its own sake—“bang, bang, whistle, bang, bang”—seemed highly significant. One of his modules that specialised in finding relations between data sets connected this information with his data on modern music, and he concluded that Stockhausen, Berg, Messiaen, Cage, Xenakis, Webern, and others must represent a regression to a more infantile condition, a mere love of ma
king a discordant noise for its own sake, perhaps as the result of psychological trauma they had suffered in their childhood potty training.
The remarkable importance that humans gave to painting and drawing was also quite baffling to Frank, especially after the invention of photography, which surely ought to have made the art of painting obsolete almost overnight. Yet with the benefit of the Internet, he had the whole treasury of the world’s painting at his command, and it was clear that the proliferation of graphic art had steadily increased since the beginning of photography and not decreased as logically it should have done.
While Frank could understand that people would paint portraits as a record of important people they knew, perhaps for those of failing memory, landscapes were rather harder to understand because, without any indications of boundaries or measurements, they were almost entirely useless as records of land ownership. Maps would clearly be far superior. What he found most extraordinary, however, were pictures from earlier centuries of people doing ordinary things, such as eating a meal, which were surely sufficiently familiar to need no record at all, or doing improbable things like flying through the air with wings, or engaging in antisocial or even criminal activities such as rape, murder, and other kinds of violence. After a vast survey of the art of every human civilisation and epoch, he finally came to the conclusion that humans conformed hardly at all to the criteria of scientific rationality with which he had been programmed, and that a disturbing amount of their behaviour was entirely mysterious. On the whole, Frank decided, it would be safest to stick to road signs and traffic lights and give art a miss.