To answer your question "what is academic" (as it pertains to this list), I view it as how a discussion is conducted. If you divide the population of any list into those who use Critical Thinking techniques to support their position and those who don't, the CT folks will most likely have advanced degrees and/or be part of a university. There are exceptions, of course, but based on my professional work in business intelligence, CT skills are not commonly found outside of the academically-trained.
In fact, I've noticed that the converse is also true. If you belong to a practitioners list that eschews a "sterile and stuffy academic approach", then forget about using CT in your argument. Whether you're an academic or not, you'll automatically be branded one.
So on that basis, I'm happy that this list is named "The Academic Study of Magic". It tells me that CT is an expected and welcomed approach to presenting and defending your points in any discussion.
Caelum
--- On Fri, 6/13/08, 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: Friday, June 13, 2008, 10:06 PM
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
