Refer to previous entry where I spoke on my 3 projects.

Indexing Project – done.

Fridge Project – Done

Think-tank Book Project – No where near done. Foreword and Acknowledgements written.

All this means I am incommunicado. I will be taking myself off-line until I finish this Think-tank Book project. I don’t want anyone bothering me. I will not brook disturbances when I have a deadline.

Up and Down
The yoyo swings
Shimmering like a divine faceted pearl
Dancing its lonesome founded way at night
As its puppet mistress hums a sweet tune
In a worthy tone vibrantly merry
Enticing travellers to her Siren’s den.

Round and Round
The yoyo spins
Pirouetting like an ecstatic moth
Painted complete with perfumed pheromones
As its puppet mistress snares a suitor
By enveloping to reel him in slow
With a true kiss in a subzero shawl.

Today, I’ve negotiated three projects and it will put a little bit of money in my hand. A very little bit. But money is money and needs must, n’est-ce pas?

The first is a ghostwriting-cum-editing project for a local think tank. That should keep me occupied for two months. The second is a small project to ghostwrite a brochure for a refrigerator company from China setting up base locally. Their English is appalling and so I have to cough it up. 20 cents (local currency) a word, they told me. I have accepted and I meet the representative on the coming Tuesday evening to iron out details. The final one is the indexing of the encyclopaedia I helped ghostwrite last year, and that means I go back in the ‘can’.

‘In the can’  is a phrase mangaka/ghostwriters use when they lock themselves in and do nothing but write and draw until their deadline. The idea is that they are locked in a small confined space (like a tin can) doing nothing but work until the deadline lapses. Not the most wonderful thing (and not when it is that time of the month when I would be offended by even a single misplaced raisin on a muffin), but with copious amounts of tea and good Baroque music, it is tolerable.

Meanwhile, I heard from my dentist that he has set up his own practice. It is just as well. I had the distinct impression that he was “bullied” in his old practice where he was a very junior partner, and such a nice obliging fellow too. He even does my mother’s dentures. I am very happy for him and will have to make an appointment with him soon for some scaling and whatnot. My teeth are helplessly yellow from a surfeit of tea drinking. My mother jokes that tea to me is like opium – I need it to function. She thinks I drink too prodigious an amount – English breakfast in the morning, pu erh in the afternoon, Earl Grey in the evening and pu erh at night.  Rather tea than other substances, no?

Last week, Rejection 1 from C_____ Uni came in, informing me that my academic credentials were lacking.

Well, Rejection 2 came in today from a D_____ Uni . Apparently, my “prior academic record in prerequisite coursework” demonstrated that I was “not competitive in my major field within the discipline”.

That blasted course and those days at Snowy Uni return to haunt and bite me in the arse…. Two down, six more to go.

Fingers and toes crossed.

I have been sick lately. While it does wonders for my figure (and I regained the much admired waist measurement I had when I was 16), it has done nothing for my health. In between, I had been engaged to finish a ghostwriting project for a encyclopaedia on local Southeast Asian personalities, and have had two book editing projects. Not the most pleasurable things to do but needs must, n’est-ce pas?

Last month, on the orders of a client I went to Malaysia and Thailand for a research trip and took mother with me because the home front has gotten ghastly. This has only cemented the urgency with which I need to get out of this gilded cage (much like the starling The Sentimental Journey) and when I do get out, I’m taking mother with me. Needless to say, all the paperwork has been dispatched and I now await someone or anywhere who would be prepared to overlook less-than-perfect academic grades, the previous issuance of a quietus est and my status as a pariah in the bottom rung of the ivory tower. Fingers, toes and all other appendages crossed.

I will write more when I have rested. My tummy is distended with air and I believe this is the effects of pre-menstrual discomfort.

Lately, I’ve been watching a shilling that has slipped through my fingers. It stopped falling yesterday; and it caught the light beautifully. It showed me something I had long suspected. However, it hasn’t stopped spinning. Most interesting… Disappointment is a worse feeling than pure anger or sadness. Yet, such is life.

One of my ghostwriting clients – an academician – has refused to pay me after I completed his project. Apparently, he did not want the stigma of his precious baby being associated with a fallen academic like myself or as he called me “a failed PhD student”. He also told me that it was rubbish to believe in the “fru-fru” ideals of honour, justice, nobility &ca in political philosophy because my single-minded pursuit of them has not landed me anywhere or garnered me any kind of success in life. Well, compared to many of my contemporaries, I am nothing, or so he would have me believe. I feel my inadequacies most keenly, believe me – I shall be 28 in July, my health remains indifferent and I am no where near getting back in any school save for that one single offer without funding.

What is so wrong about knowing what I want and going towards it? It is not as if I do not try. I apply for jobs in the editorial sector and whatnot but no one seems to have the common courtesy to send me a rejection letter. I apply to graduate schools, but then again – all I have to compete with the American kids fresh out of the American honours programme with their 4.0 GPAs is a long publication list, a long research list, and so-so grades that are nowhere near a 4.0GPA (I average A-/B+, what a certain school called “mediocre and below average abilities). Yet, despite this world of “no” that I have encountered since deciding at age 18 to enter academia, I persist in this path.

 

Given my experiences then, I am beginning to think that monotheism is a political teaching, a teaching for the city. I don’t just say this because I believe in ‘God’ with a capital ‘G’. I am a worshipper of Athena, and I write dodgy poetry – yes, I am a paradox, but love me or leave me – that’s the way I am. By monotheism, I mean a belief in something higher (not necessary a god) that governs our behaviour, our beliefs, the way we behave, the way we think and so on.

 

First and foremost, let me begin by saying that my views on monotheism are rooted in Plato, Aristotle, Farabi, Maimonindes, Strauss, the King James Bible and many others. There is no one distinct text. I simply read and draw my own conclusions. You may say it is vain of me or heretical of me (as the father of a particularly scummy ex-beau once called me because I am not a Catholic) but I think this notion of a higher being may be culled from various texts. Because I cull my understanding from various texts, it must be said now that I also read both the Eastern (Confucius, Mencius, Han Fei Tzu &ca) and Western writers together. They tend to complement and illuminate each other. I find that so doing allows the reader to better pick up the various texts’ metaphysics. I mean there is much to be learnt by so-called “nonsensical” sayings (as an ex-student told me was BS) of – It is sometimes better to be like the supple reed that bends with the wind than a dry twig. Of course I had students who also insulted my character and indicated their displeasure with fingers that would rightly be in the repertoire of the French archers at the Battle of Agincourt who scoffed at my belief that sometimes it is best to leave things to Nature when I quote Lao Tzu’s “By doing nothing, everything is done”.

 

Let’s face it, d’accord? Sometimes, the so-called “outdated” teachings (I do not think they are outdated, but many people whom I have talked to have called them so) of Taoism Confucianism, and even Hinduism are better suited to teaching one how to live with all the parts of the soul in balance than even dear Aristotle. Why? Because in understanding how to live with our tripartite souls in balance, we can go back to Aristotle and understand him better. I have had people tell me in conferences when I was a Masters student that I had no business studying my beloved men in togas or men in tights with well-turned calves, that I was Asian and should therefore restrict myself to Asian studies. Putain de merde! Both men in togas and men in hanfu (as Chinese robes are called) can coexist together. Isn’t the academia supposed to encourage learning and seeing how everything can be used to better ourselves before we seek to try to get others to better themselves?

 

I mean, metaphysics is metaphysics whether Asian or Aristotelian or Platonic – metaphysics is basically is the same. Why do I say this? Because a good grasp of one systematic or a-systematic approach to metaphysics aids in understanding others. A basic grounding in metaphysics allows us to understand the various notions of what a god could be or is. It would help if you like the metaphysical poets.

 

Now, when I say metaphysics is basically the same whether Eastern or Western, I mean both kinds of philosophical thought discovers the same things and are about the same kinds of things. Let me illustrate – Plato discovered a wonderful city; a beautiful place where truth, honour, nobility and all the good and just traits are able to exist. Strauss, for various reasons, calls what Plato discovered Jerusalem. But Plato himself did not call it that. Now, how could it? It would be years and years and years before Christianity came into being. Yet, Strauss calls this wonderful city Jerusalem. In other words, Strauss saw Jerusalem as the problem of the “ideas” itself and the problem of the ideas is intimately tied to politics and the way men approach problems politically. Human beings tend to create abstractions which they believe to be universal, including the belief in a single god. They do so, because they believe that they know what something is. For example, many human beings believe they know the answer to the question, what is god?

This question, the quid sit deus question that ends the City and Man (delightful book, I recommend it), cannot be answered without knowing the answer to the question – what is man? The problem of the ideas is what is called by the theological-political problem and it is the problem of this wonderful city Plato saw and created that Strauss calls Jerusalem. There is philosophy and there is the theological-political problem. Together, they seem to form a whole, when in reality philosophy is the whole and the theological-political problem is how men deal with philosophy. Philosophy is the true universality, the indeterminate general, of which the ideas are particulars or determinations that believe themselves to be the true universal.

BUT philosophy does not exist from apart from a particular man, Socrates. As such, the only coincidence of the most general with the particular is the philosopher. However, when men attribute generality to other things besides what is truly indeterminate and believe them to be universal, these ideas, including the idea of a one god, are usually socially determined, by law, for example. The entire method of philosophy, if we can call it that, the dialectical process, is an effort to show that these ideas are not real, why they are not real, and what their proper relation to philosophy truly is.

One might say that god cannot be an idea. God is the highest relative term for that which brings all things to be, for the ground of all that can be manifested. That indeterminate has no admixture of any non-being. As such, god cannot be an idea, if the idea can be contradicted. Once we begin to discuss god in terms of laws, moralities, ethics, and so on, we create a god that is an idea, or, to put in more distinguished terms, an idol. Obviously, the interesting thing we get when we answer the question what is man? In the same way we do question what is god? We question, guess what? You get idealized men, or, what we like to call the Greek gods. The divine and the human are equated with very pure idealisations. Yet, these idealisations turn out to be mere poetry, supported by myths, political prejudices, religious needs, &ca. They are not real.

The philosophical critique begins with these ideas and sees that they are not universal and how they are not universal. For example, if we speak of the human soul, there is the particular individual, her bodily shape and what she is. Then there is the indeterminate soul that makes all souls what they are, assuming that such a soul actually exists. Buddhists, for example, deny that there is any soul at all, for example, dismissing the notion of soul to be merely the illusory idea that is created by us and maintained by social orders, usually for the sake of various kinds of political control and order, even justice. To the Buddhist there is only one thing that is real, so to speak, this vast void that is a non-contradictory whole that transcends everything.

As such, we come to the problematic crux of the whole and, as I frequently say, it is ineffable. I can’t talk about it without limiting the unlimited and thus everything I say is completely misleading, even if systematically. The whole must be a well ordered whole that somehow also has to be indeterminate at the same time. When men create cosmological models, they believe that they somehow reflect the reality of all things. It is like holding a globe in your hands and believing that you it is the really the earth. It is only a model, an idea, a picture, an image. As you know, monotheistic systems within the three great monotheistic religions have models for god, man, soul, and finally cosmos. They attempt to create a seamless whole that is in effect only a model, a poetic model which is apart from them. They believe in them, because it is in the nature of most men to do so and they want to believe them so much that they are willing to fight for them. They can see the model before them and it is real because they made it.

However, if there is a whole and there is a true cosmos, no one can stand outside of it or, for that matter, within it. Moreover, we must be a part of it in some way. As the whole is a single non-contradictory, non-numerical ineffable infinite, the very determinations that we make of necessity cannot be the whole. There is no ratio of reason to the whole that we can use. Similarly, because god is an indefinite being, writ large, god cannot have any contradictions or any verbal determinations. All of a sudden, we are have all these modalities of what is non-contradictory and universal, the most general, which themselves cannot be identified with any particular and cannot be anything than apart from all things, which, of course, is crazy. That would mean that no man really can understand the whole of things. Yet, the whole permeates us and everything in the universal as well in some way. It begins by being one, a non-contradictory unity as well as a single determining one at the same time. While that indeterminate is like a vast formless ocean (a conventional appellation for it), at the same time, because it is all possibilities, it provides for itself own self-knowing. Of necessity, it must. That self-knowing has something to do with the way man is and his intellect is. That man can know himself means that he can know the whole of things. One might even assert in a very odd way that the whole knows itself through the philosopher, the one particular that is a generality at the same time.

The difficulty with that is there are no many of these philosophers around. Now, when the philosopher says “I” it is not the same “I” that you and I say. Yet, the I you and I say seems to settle in us. We have an idea of what we are. It seems so definite, so real, and so obvious. Yet, when we examine that I we find that it is very much a social construction. We look around and ask why that I is a social construction. But suddenly we are not allowed to ask that question. Like the taboo on incest, there is a taboo on knowing ourselves for what we are. We can’t know what we are because there is this one god, a grand technician directing everything, a perfect technocrat personally and consciously attending to every little facet of the world. Moreover, this god cares about every little thing, especially the “I” that is the “I” that I say when I say “I”. He cares so much that he gives a reliable and infallible manual on living, whether one calls it the Bible or the Quran or he provides a saviour. We know that this guidebook is right, because it provides us a model for everything. I am suddenly stuck to being this particular I, this particular individual, while what is real and lasting is a completely generality that is not a particular in any way. That I have an idea of myself means, of course, that I am an ignorant fool.

Socrates begins with the assertion that he knows nothing, that is what is real and in effect he says that he has no idea of himself. He is one with what is. Not me, I am only a heretic and a charlatan. But Socrates (oh la la) is all eros. The Christian on the other hand sees love installed in the force that moves the sun and the stars as in the last line of the Dante’s Comedy. Socrates begins with the “what is” question – What is this thing you call justice? What is the city? And all that, and suddenly we discover that there is a model of everything, a regime and it has a grand technocrat giving it guidance or a bunch of gods doing the same. This city is Jerusalem. However, very odd, the city really is not a true whole. It is a model, an image, something that is not and other than what is. It is a model that men have created to live by. While we may not know the whole of things, we certainly can know the model that we have created. And because it is a defective whole, a whole that is a fake, like a globe for the planet earth, we can begin to approach wholes that are not models. We have put work through Jerusalem and to Athens, which, of course, is only a silly _ for philosophy or the philosopher’s city. It is as deceptive a term as Jerusalem, and we can put it behind us in the same way that we can put away Jerusalem. Yet, as we do, all those strange ideas we had about ourselves, all those strange images, start to disappear and become something other than those ideas.

The relationship between the city and man suddenly changes. Socrates thus becomes a fully realized human being who is both in the city and out. He lives both in the illusion of the singular life and with one foot in the grave. He knows everything, but is not omniscient, and so on. Yet, he can’t do it without the city, Jerusalem, which always has to be there putting taboos in the way of knowing himself and knowing what the gods and god is.

The most radical approach to this problem is that of the Tibetan Buddhist for whom there is only a non-contradictory reality that is formless and is a non-numerical infinite. Any differentiation however it is made, especially in reasonable speech, is illusory. If that is the case, my detractors are already enlightened. You are the Buddha. There is no difference between you and me and the Buddha. You are the indeterminate void. You are the whole. It is an illusion that you are not enlightened (maybe you ought to recollect it?). So am I enlightened as there is no difference between you and me and the Buddha? Did I say I? What am I then if I am the whole of things? What am I if I am already enlightened? What am I? Am I foolish to stay the course and hope that I will one day be a full-fledged academic? According to my very persist troll, I am.

Bah, then again, I could be just rubbishing.

 

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

It seems ages since I was here last and for good reason; I was attempting to sort out the festering mess that is my life. Not one of the most wonderful things to do, I can assure you. Something occurred today whilst I was cleaning a client’s flat (specifically the bathroom). How it manages to grow algae and a fungus-like blob in the corner is beyond me, but I scrubbed it away. My client asked me what a copy of Plato’s Symposium and Xenophon’s Symposium doing on her coffee table next to my sling bag. I told her that the books were mine and I was reading earlier to keep myself amused while waiting for the clothes to be washed in her washing machine. She made an improper and highly illustrative gesture with a hand to demonstrate what she thought of my choice of literature and accused me of being pretentious by reading those books. I answered with a smile, “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.” 

She shrugged, made another illustrative gesture and proceeded to inspect her bathroom that I had just cleaned. When I told what had happened to me to Captain Obvious (who taught me everything I know in comparative politics and who phoned me today on some Burma related issue), he only snorted and lectured me on why my grad school reapplication attempts are doomed to failure. He then went on to say I quote, “You’re one of the nicest and smartest people I know, but you’re just weird. I think you are purposefully weird because you think it is cool. It will never help you in grad school. No one will want you, not when you fucked up at Snowy Uni.”  

Odd thing is – I don’t think I’m odd. I just think it is me. I like what I like and I do not see why I should hide the fact that I like what I like. I then asked him, “What about your oddities?’ He informs me, “I can be weird because I am better respected.”  

I am what I am – I do not seek to endear myself to others. With me, there is no two ways about it; you either think I’m amiable or you think I’m detestable. I like myself just the way I am – petite, eccentric, blind sans glasses and addicted to caffeinated teas with a dash of lemon (and no milk). Besides, I have always observed that we are all odd in our way, even those (nay, especially those) who follow a group or the prevailing fashion.

Well, there is a reason why I have been going on about all this. The basis lies in that which I answered my client whose flat I cleaned today. I told her “Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer.” It was an oversight on my part that I answered her in Latin. At times when I am very cross, I swear in French and make snide remarks under my breath in Latin. It is a very bad habit and not very ladylike but it is one of my oddities that makes me what I am. 

Anyhow – the concept of “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas” or “Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer” is a very Straussian concept. It is, n’est ce pas? Captain Obvious brought up the painful business of Snowy Uni and Herr Dr General who did not like what I wrote about Strauss’s Natural Right because I based my writing on the “Amicus Plato, sed magics amica veritas”. This in return resulted in the horrid grade in Herr Dr General’s course, which resulted in me being forced to withdraw from the programme. What is so bad about loving truth more? I do not deny that it is the curse of the political philosopher – this search for knowledge and the ultimate truth of what our existence on this earth means. It’s always the same cycle. Captain Obvious would say that my experiences are what they are because I refuse to compromise. But don’t you see, compromise very quickly becomes sacrifice because we do not get something of equal value in return. Sounds like chess doesn’t it – with gambits and what not… And that is the way life is, which is what I think was intimated in my cursory reading of Lord’s The Modern Prince and Mansfield’s Taming the Prince. I haven’t read them in detail yet as I am occupied with much ghostwriting and whatnot for clients, but I have roughly skimmed through them.

You know, Strauss’s Natural Right and History has traditionally been a favourite with me (next to What is Political Philosophy and Other Essays). And I believe it will tie in with Lord’s The Modern Prince and Mansfield’s Taming the Prince. Why? What I see as Strauss’s and his students’ contribution in the area of politics is not narrowly speaking his conservatism or his intellectual approach to conservative questions but rather the return of common sense and of a classical understanding of politics as was understood in the 19th century (oh, I love the fashions of 1880-1882 and 1897-1902) where the emphasis was on political history and not so much on models and mathematics. And given my general ineptitude with mathematics, this discussion today seems apt.  Now, Natural Right and History was very much a shot across the bow of the social science community and they never forgave Strauss for that. Why? Because in Natural Right and History, he showed, as evinced by his (in)famous Epilogue, how un-political modern political science is and how ultimately irrelevant it is for those who are truly serious about politics. Of course, the whole recovery of classical political thought that Strauss apparently started (along with Vogelin, Arendt, &ca) did provide the impetus of students of philosophy to once again take not only ancient political thought seriously again (and escaping the crude generalisations so popular in the modern age) but to force a critical re-examination of not only the very concept of natural right (or natural law or natural justice) but also the idea of the good man, prudence, and the serious man (spoudios). In fact the philosophic revaluation of prudence was an open attack at positivistic science and was seen to be understood as so, even from the early lectures of Heidegger in 1919 (I think). The whole Hurselian and Heideggerian project to get to the pre-scientific science of the whole can be understood as a project to return to phronesis, but via a modern route.

I mention the recovery of prudence as a key tie in to the rediscovery of statesmanship because the two are very much tied together. And here I think Strauss has opened many a door for others to make their own paths from his little hints and subtle suggestions. Of course, I am not too blind to see that the problem of the statesman (the person, not the Platonic text) is central to Strauss’s political thought and especially to the original contribution of his political thought.

Modern political thought tends to oscillate between extremes of hyper-legalism (the replacement of the rule of men by the rule of law or laws, the most thoroughgoing version of which is Kojeve’s Phenomenology, where we have law beyond politics altogether in the end state) and “decision-ism” (as posited by Schmitt). Liberalism seeks to hold the middle ground between these extremes (a strong executive within a constitutional democracy, ideally with true separation of powers – versions of which are sketched in Mansfield’s Taming the Prince). All very well and good, but liberalism is threatened by its tendency of forgetfulness of the underlying problems and its underestimate of the extent to which effective constitutional government, viz., liberalism’s own “middle ground”, so to speak, depends on something that the classics understood as character.  Strauss’s emphasis on the statesman is not so much a rejection of modern political thought as a necessary enrichment of it by classical reflections on the character of the ruler or executive. He discovered or recognised a theoretical dependency or need in liberalism for something was essentially pre-modern. What did he discover? He recognised a need that was perhaps taken for granted by thinkers such as Montesquieu and even the American Founding Fathers (in my limited reading of the Federalist Papers), given their bred-in-the bone classicism, even at the moment of breaking with certain decisive elements of the tradition.Whatever the importance of Strauss’s theoretical accomplishment in these regards, I don’t think he had the taste or sensibility to be a very good judge of actual statesmen. In fact, the same could be said about a lot of us political philosophers/political theorists (or in my case – a fallen political philosopher). We can criticise; we can analyse, but we cannot for the life of us be a good statesman. I mean, from the little I know of Strauss’s view of Churchill, I have the impression that he is clearly someone who never sat around a cabinet table, even as an adviser, never really breathed the world of actual “politics” (the act of politics – the actual doing of politics). Although he taught that political philosophy was political, Strauss himself was not a “political” man and to be honest, I think neither are the bulk of political philosophers/political theorists (however much Herr Dr General likes to paint himself as a “political” man). In thought, Strauss transcended his own limitations; but unlike Tocqueville, Locke, Lord Acton, Constant, Mill, and dear Machiavelli, he never got his hands dirty in real political life. But of course, he never became stupidly or cravenly political, either, like Schmitt or Heidegger. Then again, I am biased against Heidegger for his treatment of Arendt. 

Thing with Strauss, is that unlike his friend Kojeve, Strauss was not even an eminence grise. I do not believe he once ever gave a piece of advice to a government – at least in all I have read including his correspondence. The great (pre-20th century) political thinkers, ancient and modern, had direct daily or at least frequent contact with people directly or indirectly exercising political power. So perhaps this is a sign that political philosophers should not meddle with the affairs of the world, and just concentrate on the politics of academia. Oh yes, I wrote on this for a paper at Snowy Uni and the prof there didn’t like it. So it meant a bad grade and “away with thee, Lady Strange”. How Bloody ironic.

Why do people seem to shy away from the topic of academic freedom? My experiences in the Politics department in particular unis (yes – plural) reveal that academic freedom is practically non existent (on a certain island that may one day will completely submerged in the sea) or extremely curtailed (on the continent somewhere in the vicinity of the Atlantic Ocean). I have watched my mentor and academicians whom I greatly respect suffer under the administration of the respective unis’ departments. I have seen my mentor demoted because he stood up for what he believed in. Time and time again, I noticed in the unis I have been in that good teachers well-skilled in political philosophy get pushed over in favour of a postmodernist theorist who is so illiberal in his thoughts that if he says something is wrong, then it must be so.

 

Indeed, academic freedom has very seldom been mentioned in the local context (and even in the Western context since it is often taken for granted that it already exists there) and everyone assumes that because academicians in the ivory tower, we have no commonsense, no real talents and no practical purpose as we do nothing but talk and write and read. It is believed that we have the freedom to do what we choose.

 

Nein! The truth is quite the opposite. On a certain island, the things that are to be done and said by academicians has to be ‘viable in the new economy’. For instance, there is no Classics department in any of the 4 ‘sanctioned’ universities on this island because it is ‘NOT viable in the new economy’. There is no medieval literature course (there was an old prof in the lit department that specialised in medieval lit but was let go due to ‘cutbacks’) because it is ‘NOT viable in the new economy’. My courses in community colleges on feminist theory and political philosophy have been closed down for the same reason. In fact, if one believes the words published on the ground – a person is not deemed successful until he is a high paying civil servant turned entrepreneur, turned technopreneur or whatever-preneur.

 

Rubbish, I say. Division of labour makes academia viable. Division of labour makes ambitions like mine to join the ranks in the ivory tower viable. But what do I know? I am just an Asian woman, horrid in written Mandarin, a committed feminist, a female left on the shelf (and hence a loser dog) and a half-crazed political philosopher. Triply damned as an old beau once told me – damned because I am a woman, damned because I’m not a typical Asian, damned because my area of specialisation is dying. But I am not the subject here, so let us move on.

Academic freedom as a public issue has never been so prominently highlighted on this particularhed isle until the University of Warwick and other foreign unis decided to withdraw their plans to establish their foreign campus in Singapore. Among the complex arrays of reasons for the Universities’ termination of their plan is the concern that the city-state lacks an environment that protects intellectual and academic freedom. Academic freedom, strangely enough, is seldom discussed or debated among the academic community on this island, except by some foreign academics who have made their brief stints in Singapore universities and lived to talk about it. (Read John Clammer, “The dilemmas of the oversocialized intellectual: the universities and the political and institutional dynamics of knowledge in postcolonial Singapore,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, August 2001 – you’ll learn much more about it) This island has never expressed regret that it has not produced a single figure in literature, the arts, philosophy, history, religion, or, for that matter, political science who commands national respect. Many would-be authors and poets have had their work rejected even though they are well-written and thematically moving to be relevant in any social context. Why? Because their works are considered “un-Singaporean”. Indeed, only leaders of the ruling party have been allowed a leading voice in the running of people’s lives in Singapore. Only a flawed intellect could tolerate such a glaring gap in the history of a nation and people.

 

Furthermore, the Singapore social science academic community is too loose to be labelled a community. They are fragmented by their cultural background, professional interests, allegiance and loyalty. 62% of teaching staff at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the island’s premier Uni are foreigners. The premier uni is also obsessed with ranking. It wants its staff (in the economically viable fields) to be good researchers rather than good teachers. Thus, this same institution pushes its academics with its unnatural over-concern with international ranking. As an upshot, lecturers are too engrossed with getting their work published in international academic journals, making them totally oblivious to practical contemporary politics and policies. The lack of response and debate of Singapore academics on this issue of academic freedom perhaps has tragically confirmed this observation. I wonder whether the same thing holds true in other countries?

Singaporean lawyer Thio Li-Ann’s words in Warwick, which have been quoted rather extensively in the foreign and local press, have unfortunately found a resonance with a number of friends and foes of Singapore. She said: “Speech [in Singapore] is permissible so long as it does not threaten real political change or to alter the status quo.” In reality, I doubt intellectuals enjoy the kind of freedom that we are said to enjoy. Indeed, whether our conversations are unconstrained by any fear of political repression, or our publications being free of taboos should be a matter of self-reflection for the intellectual community. I mean, nowadays, I can’t say “Let me introduce my close friend, Dr Regina Ho” without people sniggering and telling me that I have committed a faux pas by being un-PC – nevermind that Ho is indeed the surname of my friend and that I am not insinuating anything about her.

                                               

In any event, it is only too obvious to me that the academics in the arts and political science especially by and large have not created any marketplace that would include much needed explicit debate about controversial issues or policies. Their courage of “speaking truth to power” does not surface too often, and when it does, they oftentimes risk being countered by the know-all bureaucrats and politicians who adamantly believe in the “right of reply”. Local academics are timid about soiling their hands when they leave purely academic questions and enter into discussions on political questions. If there have been heated intellectual debates and deep ambivalence about political authority, it is well hidden within the community. As a long time observer of the local academic community, I can say that I have never observed the community having any such debates. These sort of debates only occur at the level of friends in harsh whispers at tea establishments or coffee bars. Any attempt to introduce these matters in the classroom and we get into trouble – oh, trust me, we do get into trouble even if a joke is made at the expense of the ‘kingmaker’.

All this describes my experiences at both unis I have been in. Dr Repellently Gorgeous and Herr Dr General are such characters inhibiting academic freedom. Why do I say this? When I was a humble student reading my MA, Dr Repellently Gorgeous once made a remark in class – he said that there was a trade-off between being a good teacher and a good researcher. A good researcher gets acknowledged and stands a chance at becoming a somebody in the academic circuit. A good teacher only endears himself to his students. Ten years down the road, the good researcher will still be with the university, be offered tenure and likely become a Dean or Don. Ten years down the road, the good teacher because he doesn’t publish as much as the ‘good’ researcher will be deemed to be useless and sacked. And, Dr Repellently Gorgeous continues, you will find this unfortunate good teacher pumping gas at a petrol station such as Texco (sic) and BP. If that is a remark as to his own ambitions, I am not surprised. He is a good academic (his publication list spans four pages, font size 12, times new roman, single spacing even though he graduated with his DPhil in 2001). However, he is a bad teacher. Herr Dr General is the same. In fact Herr Dr General is already a somebody in the academic circuit and is on the look out to be someone bigger. If such a remark (that good teachers end up as petrol pump attendants and good academicians end up as Deans and Dons) is indeed true, then I fear for the academic profession. What about other academics out there who value their students and actually bother to teach them and inculcate in them the right values, thereby demonstrating the abilities of an excellent teacher? I think academicians like Dr Repellently Gorgeous and Herr Dr General are disagreeable sorts without honour or justice in their soul. I have known good teachers who teach well, take an interest in their students’ progress and who would do anything to defend their students. I have known one who had in the past when he was still in the department, put his career on the line for two protégés – one of whom was myself.

Makes you wonder does it not – whether politics in the ivory tower is as dirty as politics in the outside world of governance. All I can do is to hope that there is enough of good teachers’ teachings in me to remain true to the pursuit of knowledge and this labour of love. Perhaps an old friend (an academician who though adept at playing politics, plays only when necessary) once told my mentor and me, “You two are brilliant theorists and good people. You two are uniquely talented in many areas, but playing politics is not one of them.” Has academic freedom and what makes a academician been reduced to whether one successfully becomes somebody in the academic circuit and somebody who is constantly browbeats anyone be it colleague or student who dares think differently? Given my experience so far, I think academicia is being corrupted by ambition and no longer the bastion of intellectual learning it has once been.