/lit/ - Literature

>>7021027
>The core power of SJW movements is that they allow the disenchanted, the disenfranchised, and the existentially-crises'd individual the chance to don the fletchings of Revolution without actually doing any revolting. There's substantial difference between a Black Lives Matter hashtag and honest-to-God riots in the streets of Ferguson; the people making the hashtag only care about the Situation of the working-class black insofar that it gives them power to ascend to the status of Liberal.

This is exactly right. I'm currently working towards my PhD. in lit. When I first came, I was optimistic and eager to surround myself with people who are just as passionate about language and writing as I am. Within a year, however, I was so disillusioned that I nearly quit; rather than vibrant discussion about literature, all conversations turn to the same tired mantras about social justice. Not only that, but there's an obviously mercenary bent to all of my (affluent, white) colleagues' "activism". They don't volunteer at soup kitchens or food drives, but they write eagerly about the evils of capitalism towards the poor. They claim to stand up for the rights of workers while ensconcing themselves in the cloisters of the academy, surrounded by "right thinking" people and help to support a department that exploits and marginalizes its own students, using graduates for cheap labor via undergraduate teaching. They argue that any who disagree with them - even the working class they so ardently champion - are suffering from internalized isms, adopting the attitude of the enlightened savior. And of course, every article they publish is tied to the cause du jour, all the better to build their CVs with, and always ending in an argument for why the humanities deserve more funding/respect/support than those privileged dudebros in STEM. The one professor I do respect lamented once that there are far too many Marxists who have never had a meal in the home of a working man.

The worst part is, they're all hypocrites. The chair of my department yelled at a fellow grad student for daring to request extra time for a conference paper due to her pregnancy, and the open contempt my colleagues have for undergrads, many of them from lower income families, is downright vitriolic. They've fetishized the idea of marginalization to the extent that one's position within power structures is directly related to one's moral rightness. The more repressed you are, the better a person you are seen as, and vice versa. And of course, since there's always inequalities present - and by God if there aren't they'll FIND them via the ideas of "microaggressions" or "internalized privilege" or their beloved "author function" - they always have something to bitch about in their articles and build their own career within university.

I'm glad I decided to refocus my studies on a career in teaching instead of scholarship. What a rotten fucking business.

>tfw you can't write on cue

>>5044951
>mistborn trilogy
post disregarded