There is an old joke about a man driving on a back road in a rural area who has a flat tire. When he gets out to change the tire, he discovers that he does not have a jack, but he recalls that four or five miles back he passed a gas station so he sets out to walk to it. For the first mile he is grateful that the gas station is there and he imagines asking the attendant cheerfully for the jack. After two or 3 miles, he begins to worry that the gas station attendant will make problems for him, refusing to give him the jack or demanding a large deposit. By the time he has walked 5 miles he is furious with the attendant for refusing to help him. Finally, he gets to the gas station and when the attendant comes out and asks with a big smile, “how may I help you?,” the man snarls “you can keep your damn jack!”
Three or four weeks ago I mentioned that I had a conversation with the scholar who now runs the Social Studies program at Harvard, during which I offered to teach a small advanced seminar in the progrfam on volume one of Capital. She said that everyone was away over the summer but she would try to arrange it when they all got back. For the first week, I was excited about the possibility and spent a good deal of time planning my opening lectures in my head. In the second week, I began to worry that they would be uninterested and my mood turned dark. By this past Labor Day weekend I was convinced they were going to turn down the idea and I planned various angry letters to the Harvard Crimson about the fact that even though there was, so far as I could tell, not a single course at Harvard devoted to what I believe to be the greatest work of social theory ever written, they could not arrange for me to teach such a course even though I was willing to do it for no pay at all.
Classes at Harvard start today. I do hope that if she sends me an email message saying cheerfully
that she has arranged for me to teach the course, I do not reply angrily “you can keep your damn jack.”
Groucho Marx has a good version of this joke in "Duck Soup."
ReplyDeleteHe is the president of Freedonia on his way to greet the ambassador of a country on the brink of war with Freedonia (the ambassador is played by the amazing Sig Ruman). On the way Groucho rehearses his meetings with the ambassador: "I'll put out my hand to him".... and so on all the way down to "And he'll probably refuse it".... "How dare he refuse to shake my hand!.... the wretch!" And so he arrives the the ambassador's residents, walks into the meeting room, punches the ambassador in the nose, and declares "This is war!"
Please don't punch the Harvard functionary in the nose (much less declare war).
How dare she refuse my generous offer!
ReplyDeleteWell, sorry to hear that. When I took Soc. Stud. 10 in mid-70s, Capital vol. 1 (plus some other of Marx's writings) was the heart of the course. Now they've increased the number of authors on the syllabus so they probably don't spend as much time on Marx as they once did, though I'm sure he's still on the syllabus.
ReplyDeleteAt least the Harvard functionary doesn't look like Sig Ruman (I presume!).
ReplyDeleteYour analogy is not good.
ReplyDeleteRather than dealing with the mythical independent gas station attendant who has the power of decision whether to lend you the jack or not, you are dealing with Kafka's Castle, an impersonal bureaucracy which cannot give you a straight answer if you stray out of their limited list of questions they are empowered to answer. Imagine calling the call center of your bank with a complex and novel problem.
It just might be that due to diversity requirements, they cannot accept yet another course about a white straight male, Marx, delivered by another white straight male.
In any case, when dealing with an impersonal bureaucracy, it's never personal.
Except that this was personal. Prof Wolff gave an interview for their archives or web site, as the last surviving member of the group of six faculty members who founded the Social Studies program in 1960, and asked the person interviewing him whether the program would be interested in his teaching a course on Capital. And she said she would try to arrange it after people returned and get back to him. So common courtesy at least would have required an email saying "Sorry, I tried to arrange it but couldn't."
ReplyDeleteThis is not an impersonal bureaucracy like the call center of a bank. It appears rather to be a case where someone said "I'll try to arrange it" -- i.e., not a promise that it would indeed come through -- and then, when she failed to arrange it, neglected to let him know that. I don't what the reasons were, but I doubt that the white-straight-male thing had anything to do with it.
p.s. As I mentioned, when I took the sophomore tutorial (seminar) in that program many yrs ago, Capital vol. 1 was at the center of the course, although other authors and books were of course read. It wasn't a lecture course, but a small seminar (there were several, all doing basically the same thing). So the explanation is almost certainly not that there's an animus vs. Marx in the program.
typo: s/b: don't know what the reasons were
ReplyDeleteLFC,
ReplyDeleteIn my experience with the bank Call Center, they always tell you that they "will try to arrange it" too and never do.
I loved the joke lol
ReplyDelete