LA SILLA ESTA CALIENTE

No recuerdo muy bien ahora. Quizás lo leí en algún escrito de Tomás Eloy Martínez o Chomsky. El asunto es que el juicio se quedó en mi memoria: ¿Es el intelectual contemporáneo un intelectual de "silla caliente" (pues no se para de su silla, piensa y "ejerce" desde ella)?

La academia, con todas sus seducciones y promesas de estímulo, se queda a veces en el limbo de sermonear al coro. Muchos journals académicos son letra muerta, escritos para lectores "selectos." Hoy, más que nunca, me seduce la idea de aterrizar las ideas, buscar extenderlas y aplicarlas en la esfera mundana. Ese es (debería ser) el reto del mundo académico de hoy.

Otro ángulo del tema es ver la academia considerarse panóptico crítico de la sociedad, cómo si desde ella pudiesen hacerce todo tipo de juicios (a veces erróneos e inútiles) evadiendo la función como agente de cambio. Entiendo que sea esa precisamente una de las funciones: ser un laboratorio intelectual, un observatorio social. Aún así, para algunos siempre será más cómodo quedarse en el plano teórico y evitar el riesgo de error que se corre en los procesos de aplicación. Para otros es tentador seguir alimentando la noción de omnipotencia que produce el constante rol de observador.

En el proceso de la evolución humana, esta arrogancia intelectual es un obstáculo aún más grande que la ignorancia misma. Repito: es absurdo creer que se sabe porque se sabe de algo, cuando en realidad lo que se devela al aprender es la naturaleza infinita del saber. "Sólo sé que nada sé," dijo por ahí uno de mis personajes favoritos en la historia.

Algunos escogen la academia por las razones acertadas. Soy una fiel "creyente" y admiradora del espacio académico. Aún así, no me enceguezco ante sus fallas ni ante los crímenes de omisión que suceden en ella. Para la muestra, un botón:

Excerpt from Barbara Epstein's essay:

"Postmodernism asserts that there is no such thing as truth, and it does sometimes seem that participation in postmodernist discussion requires shutting down the part of one's mind that asks whether a view accords with reality, whether it makes sense or not. An acquaintance of mine, who teaches in a major East Coast university, described the doctoral defense of a candidate who had written a dissertation on the treatment of race in the law. The student criticized existing law for failing to take race (or gender, or sexual orientation) into account, for treating blacks and whites, women and men, homosexuals and heterosexuals, as equal before the law. He cited as an example the following: several black teenagers had seen a film in which a black man was beaten by a group of racist whites. They were standing on the sidewalk together discussing their anger at racism, and at whites, when one of them pointed out a white teenage boy walking down the other side of the street. Several of them ran across the street and beat the white boy, who sustained permanent brain damage. This was designated a hate crime by the court. The student objected to this designation: in treating black violence toward a white as the equivalent of white violence toward a black, he argued, it disregarded racism. The faculty at the exam, other than my acquaintance, applauded this view. My acquaintance asked the student, and the other faculty, what legal system they could imagine that would distinguish between people on the basis of race (or gender, or sexual orientation) and yet remain fair. The student and the other faculty at first seemed taken aback by the question. But after a minute one of the faculty members said, "No, that's the wrong question. It's not our job to make proposals; we're critical theorists. Our job is to criticize prevailing assumptions." The student and the other faculty seemed relieved, and the exam proceeded as if the question had been answered. My acquaintance was appalled. She considered asking whether the others present believed in apartheid. She considered refusing to concur in a passing grade. But she realized that the student would be the main victim of her protest, which really should be directed toward the other faculty. The student was given high marks for the exam; my acquaintance did not object."