Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 462.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2023-03-18 05:37:58+00:00
        From:  <jkrybicki@gmail.com>
        Subject: RE: [Humanist] 36.460: excitement everywhere all the time, but no Oscar

I'm truly excited and delighted and thrilled to see that it is not just my
cynical self foaming at the mouth when I see all those "excited to be giving a
talk at the conference..." tweets. Excited, really? Man, you're 40, you should
not be excited anymore whenever you talk at other people for 20 minutes in a
room with a screen (half of those people are tweeting about something else
anyway). I wonder if this is not just the same false excitement we see in
commercials when that laxative really does the job on the acting persons'
entrails.

I guess it makes sense in very competitive academic climes (you know where).
It's interesting how hyperbolical the traditionally unemotional Anglo-Saxons
have become. I don't see a lot of that excitement ("podniecenie" or
"ekscytacja") in my native Polish in this context; I guess it's because our
academia is so underpaid that the competitiveness evaporates before it's even
born. But that is another story.

Cynically, then,
Jan Rybicki

-----Original Message-----
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Sent: 18 March 2023 06:18
To: jkrybicki@gmail.com
Subject: [Humanist] 36.460: excitement everywhere all the time, but no Oscar


              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 460.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2023-03-18 05:14:48+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: excitement everywhere all the time, but no Oscar

Since I no longer have to mark papers, Lorna Finlayson's offering in the latest
London Review of Books, "Everyone Hates Marking", didn't at first look like it
would strike home with quite the force it once might have. But that judgment
proved premature. Note her second and third sentences:

> But the university is not the safe space for complaint that it once
> was. Negativity, even ambivalence, is frowned on. Nothing less than
> complete enthusiasm will satisfy: you must at all times be thrilled to
> announce, excited to be part of, delighted to share.

This got to me because of the many announcements I see buzzing with pretended
excitement, or alternatively so peppered with asterisks as to blank out the
communication which the author obviously intended to dress in urgency. Under
such a regime quiet statement shouts far more loudly, or rather, satisfies and
draws attention by understatement, don't you think? But yes, if you're writing a
letter of recommendation for someone applying to an institution in a country
where overstatement is the norm you do have to add loads of glitter, or the
reader will assume the worst, I'm guessing.

Back to Finlayson: why the put-on enthusiasm? Are we (as possibly we should be)
so worried that the anxiety of identity (and everything else, all the time) is
creeping in everywhere? Perhaps play-acting calm would prove therapeutic?

Yours,
WM

--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews;  Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk



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