Dear Christopher and all,

I'd like to thank Christopher for his very honest and lucid description of our Academic field and sub-culture. I am now taking option number 2 with Robert Fludd, so if anyone in this list knows anything about Fludd please feel free to point me in the right directions.

Why do people become academics and what are the "allowed" types of Academics is a vast topic which can not really be answered. Other then loving to read and being able to write academics don't have much else in common. I've met warm, passionate academics with hearts of gold and I met boring and stuffy academics with shriveled turnip-like hearts. I've met people who only got the position because nobody else wanted it and people who made a position to suit their interests. Since Academics write a lot I'd like to suggest it's like asking how does one write. And the answer is that there are as many options as there are writers. Some people can type in glass cages in a busy street and some can only write on the finest sheets of white paper in special India ink on an Irish cliff by the sea (Mornings only). And, just like writers, if you have to be one you'll be one in the end. 

I think this list helps those of us who don't like the types that burst out laughing when a non-academic comes along and starts talking about UFOs and how Crowley was ages ahead of his time. This could very well be the difference between someone who is "Occultist" and someone who is not. Having real interest in the people around you. In the academic sense this is wasting your time when you could be writing or teaching or sleeping or eating. Some tosser comes along with a blue-print for a time machine and we listen for as long as it takes. Not just because we're polite but because, deep down, we always hope to find something remarkable out there. And I think this is why people sign on and read this list. We hope to encounter remarkable people and ideas and I'm happy to say that some of us are lucky enough to exprience that.    

So, how is this list academic? It bridges the gap between Academics and non-Academics who are interested, and it helps a particular kind of academic (Or person really) to find other people to talk with. With all the ups and down these things bring.

Cheers from Tel Aviv,

Hagay Hacohen

BIU - STS

   
--- On Sat, 6/14/08, Christopher I. Lehrich <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Christopher I. Lehrich <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] discussion of magic: what is academic?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Saturday, June 14, 2008, 8:06 AM

Dear All,

In all the flurry of noise and difficulty of the last week or so, I 
noted something I thought worth de-lurking to remark upon. It appeared 
most clearly in an important exchange between Grant and Josephine.

Grant Potts wrote:
> Most of us do not consider something academic or not based on the 
> "subject matter."  What we are interested in is in discourse
about 
> this subject motivated by critical analysis and evidence based 
> argumentation.
That's rather idealistic, Grant. Surely it's pretty obvious, on the 
whole, that mainstream academia is uncomfortable with esotericism, 
magic, occultism, etc.? The objection there isn't really about approach, 
but subject matter. In the _abstract_, I agree with you --- the 
difference between an academic approach to a novel and a novelist's 
approach or a lay reader's approach is purely, well, approach. But
let's 
not oversimplify.

Josephine wrote:
>> The brief of this discussion group is 'academic study by students,

>> teachers and practitioners'. Practitioners who come from a non 
>> academic setting will not approach the subject matter in an academic 
>> way. That does not invalidate their voice: it just means that, 
>> through participating and observing, communication mathods can and 
>> will be developed. And if people choose not to do that, then it is 
>> their loss. 
And Grant responded:
> Again, this is not to invalidate non-academic voices, but to suggest 
> that it is inappropriate for this forum.  A practitioner should 
> understand this, as clouding an academic discussion list with 
> non-academic discussions is kind of like playing your favorite polka 
> on a tuba while people are trying to conduct a solemn ritual 
> initiation.   This is not to suggest that polkas or tubas are 
> reprehensible means of expression, but that they are inappropriate for 
> that setting.
To my mind, the crucial point getting missed --- because it's implicit 
in what Grant says and not seen, I think, in what Josephine says --- is 
that academic discourse is basically created by and primarily for 
academics. If one does not wish to participate in that mode of 
discourse, one has no business participating in it. It's not a question 
of developing "communication methods," nor of validating or
invalidating 
voices. Consider the remark that "practitioners who come from a 
non-academic setting will not approach the subject matter in an academic 
way." If true, there shouldn't be any practitioners here. But as a 
matter of fact, I think it's absolutely untrue.

The interesting question, actually, is why this is debatable at all....

Josephine again:
>> The outbursts and declarations of creed etc have taught me more of 
>> how to approach certain material as a writer than any stuffy 
>> theoretical approach would have.
Note the implicit correlation of "academic" with "stuffy
theoretical" 
approach. Why? Is this true of all academics? And are all stuffy 
theorists academics? And if you make this connection, why would you want 
to participate in a list that identifies itself as "academic"?

Josephine:
>> And then comes the question: who gets to decide what is academic or 
>> not? most magic
Grant replies:
> Academics.
Correct. So I know what's coming, from various parties --- "why should

you get to control the discourse, you're disenfranchising, 
disempowering, silencing, etc." Am I? Only if you _want your discourse 
counted as academic_. Why on earth would you want this? Do you want a 
job that has adequate perks, low pay, 8-odd years of expensive training, 
no guarantee of employment (especially in this field), and a tendency to 
attract sneers from all manner of people who will you think you
"stuffy" 
or elitist or whatever? Why would you want that? If you do want it, you 
know why, presumably, and you will work to walk the walk and talk the 
talk to be accepted by other academics as one of them. If that were the 
case --- if you were walking the walk and talking the talk --- we 
wouldn't be having this discussion. On the other hand, if you don't
want 
to be accepted as an academic, why is it disempowering for an academic 
to say you aren't one? Is it disempowering for you to say that I am not 
a Wiccan, given that I have no interest in anyone considering me so? And 
why shouldn't the academic trade have its own venues for specialist 
discourse, like other trades do? (Of course, we do --- they're called 
journals --- and it is a fair question what relation there ought to be 
between online off-the-cuff discourse and scholarly journal discourse.)

Josephine hits the nail on the head here:
>> If people can address discussion regarding their area of expertise 
>> without being defensive, then we have an arena where by learning can 
>> occur.
Sure, I agree. But who ever said that "an arena where learning can 
occur" is always academic, or vice versa? If you want learning, and 
freedom, and openness, and tolerance, and all that, the academy is no 
place for you. It doesn't work like that, I'm sorry to say. Not at all.

Never really has, and never will. The good thing, of course, is that the 
academy does on the whole hold these things to be ideals worth striving 
for, which isn't true in most of the world. But don't think for a
minute 
that that's how it really works.

So, moving on from commentary. My question for serious consideration --- 
probably not for a thread here, but for musing over (maybe someone will 
one day produce a good article about this!) --- is as follows.

Given that there are very, very few professional academics who would 
affiliate themselves with terms like esotericism, magic, occultism, 
etc., at least as a primary association; and

given that very few of the regular participants and readers of this list 
fall into this category (except by the common but by no means universal 
extension to relatively junior graduate students of "academic" as an 
identifying mark); and

given that, the academic job market being what it is today, in this area 
especially, almost nobody who manages to acquire a PhD primarily in the 
field is going to get a job in it, making that extension to grad 
students much more problematic than in the past; and

given that, on the whole, most of the discourse on this list is musing 
consideration, with some occasional preliminary searches for references; 
THEN

What exactly do we mean when we think of this list as "academic" at
all? 
Not that it isn't, necessarily, and not that it shouldn't be, but I
find 
it a peculiar term to cling to in the abstract.

Grant's quite right: "academic" is what academics say it is. But
suppose 
we confine "academic" as a term of professional identification to
people 
with tenure-track (or equivalent) jobs in the field, how many people 
could and would be remotely interested in trying to determine what is 
and isn't "academic" discourse on magic? Would I even have to
take off 
my socks? Consider people like, say, Tanya Luhrmann. She wouldn't be 
interested in such determinations, because she doesn't want to have 
anything to do with this field. Who does, really? The list is very, very 
short.

Consider seriously the fact that in the United States, if you want a PhD 
with your first reader/dissertation supervisor somebody who is in a 
strong sense overtly identified with this field, you have four choices 
that I know of:

1) Do Jewish Kabbalah, hard-core, and don't waver; or
2) Do early modern history of science, and work on alchemy, and don't 
wander; or
3) Do the classical world, and be a classicist's classicist; or
4) Study with me at BU, if you can convince my department that you are 
overwhelmingly better than just about anybody else applying to work on 
ANY aspect of religious or theological studies broadly construed.

Honestly. I'm not tooting my horn: that's the facts. And we took 
precisely 0 of the several candidates who applied this year to work on 
such things.

And when you add to all this that I don't know of any hard-nosed 
Kabbalah scholars who want to have anything to do with things like 
Crowley or the OTO, and that every one of my many friends who does early 
modern history of science bursts out laughing about things like Wicca 
and the Golden Dawn --- I can't speak to the classicists, but I doubt 
they're really that much different --- what is this "academic"
discourse 
we keep talking about? Where is it?

All of which is to say that I think there is a lot of circularity and 
confusion going on in these periodic debates, and I think some 
soul-searching is in order.

I honestly wonder: since as far as I can tell "academic" here has
very 
little to do with its technical meaning in mainstream academia, what 
precisely is it intended to mean here, and who determines it? 
Joesphine's question is dead right: if Grant is right that the 
determinants are academics, who? and if there aren't any, or they (we) 
don't want to determine discourses this way for all kinds of ethical and 
other reasons, what does decide "academic"? It _can't_ be 
subject-matter, because otherwise "academic study of magic" is a 
misnomer, or else a class-term for something almost nobody who reads 
this list does.

So the question isn't really _what_ "academic" means, I suppose,
but 
rather _why we are using the term_ at all.

Yours,
Chris Lehrich

-- 
Christopher I. Lehrich
Assistant Professor of Religion
Director of Graduate Studies, Division of Religious and Theological Studies
Boston University