luke

failed philologist

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash Well, I guess I just think that's bad and those strict norms should change. I do think it is possible to learn meaningfully outside the seminar room, and depending on course goals, it is possible to teach something important to undergrads in English about, say, Rousseau.

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga Obviously, the contemporary denial by Israel of legitimate Palestinian interests is what I am talking about.
Earlier Zionists said "we have interests; they have interests; we win"
Modern Zionists say "the only legitimate interest is the Israeli one, Palestine is per se invalid"

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash Interesting. I guess I take that to be too rigid. Under this conception, it would be impossible for graduate syllabi to change over time, since one would need to have been already taught by a Great Master in order to alter readings lists. All the worse for the minor authors/texts

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga Most liberals today look back at forced population transfers and think of them negatively. If that doesn't describe you, fair enough, you are welcome to weigh the merits of coercive expulsion against those of justice/dignity/etc This is what I take to be the honest Zionist stance

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga Who is being naive? I take the Dayan quote above to be quite prescient: "Of course Palestinians are gonna be mad about Israel, we showed up with guns and took their house! I just like Israel more than I care about that."

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash i took you to be making the more expansive claim that in order to teach Homer, you have to not only read Homer and thought seriously about it as a text, but also have "Department of Classics" printed on your degree

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash Fair enough, glad to know you've reviewed his syllabi.
I think the primary confusion here though is what you mean by 'expertise'. If all it takes to teach something is having read it before, then I don't really understand what your intervention is—no one would dispute that.

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash You might be surprised! As I hope you know, there is a wide world of literature beyond even grad school syllabi. As you grow as a scholar and your interests change over time, I hope you recognize that it is actually possible to acquire expertise outside the classroom

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash Then I fail to see why only classicists should teach Plato/Aristotle. Again, setting aside the banally true claim that people who teach things should have seriously read them first, why would this exclude a political theorist from teaching the ur-texts of the discipline?

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash its one thing to claim that someone should have legitimate subject-matter expertise (obviously). its another to adhere to rigid and arbitrarily drawn departmental boundaries

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@theo_nash welp, sorry then but thats nonsense. i dont understand how anyone could teach a liberal, historically-oriented, or survey course without straying from a pidgeonhole.
My classics prof published mainly on Tacitus, was it malpractice for him to teach Horace?

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga Serbs were aware that their goal of an ethnostate would fuck over minorities, they were just ok with that tradeoff as did like (some) early Zionists. Establishing Israel can only mean fucking over Palestinians the question is how you weigh that con against the pros Zionism offers

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga I do not understand what you take to be your intervention here. It sounds like you agree with my initial tweet then? Maybe we disagree at the level of normatively evaluating Zionism and its consequences, but that is what I was trying to say.

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@post_kantbian @tipy1802 lol Mill was the academic standard until like 8 years ago. Is it better to read the original German? Obviously. Is Inwood better than Miller? Yes. Is someone who reads Miller going to utterly fail to comprehend the PhG? No.

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga Is the idea that Jews moved to Palestine with no serious "push" factors? My understanding is that Europe was practicing, uh, a LOT of anti-Semitism at this time. Surely some Zionists did not like this and therefore wanted their own state? I dont understand the counterfactual

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga idk, i guess i dont see why zionism has to be monocausal. though, i dont really see how yishuv could disprove the idea of a relationship between nationalism and zionism? if thats true, and Theodor Herzl didnt really think about nationalism, why did it happen in 19thC, not 17th?

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga Obviously Zionism and Jewish settlement in Palestine are heterogeneous and vary over time and space. I stand by the post-mortem characterization, moreso as time goes on. Some Jews were not pleased with the development of say German nationalism as early as the Wars of Liberation.

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@karnoa @nikicaga What's bizarre? The idea that European nationalism in the 19th-20thC involved chauvinism and had some bad consequences, or the idea that early Zionist intellectuals considered themselves in continuity with traditions of European nationalism?

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@nikicaga Isaiah Berlin, speaking to Alexandre Kojeve:

[luke @Luke_Ruiter]

@nikicaga early zionism was a bunch of people looking at the ruin wrought by nationalism and ethnostate ideology in the 19th-20thC and going "ok, i get that was all bad but just one more ride."
Not a defense by any means, but some were honest about their chauvinism and its costs