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Academia and the Luster of Capital

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Sande Cohen has always been an eloquent spokesperson for the "narcisistic" mode of scholarship, which he defines as a method of self-referentially and self-destructively performing the role of "Intellectual." In this dated-but-fiesty text, Dr. Cohen continues his argument over the course of several dense chapters, centered on the cry that academia must kill itself to save itself. Few of his fans (me included!) will fail to join him in his nostalgic cry for death, or at the very least dismemberment of the entire academic system.

As usual, Dr. Cohen uses the most fashonable theorists of the 70's and 80's to justify an implosive mode of Postmodern scholarship by which he hopes this suicide will come to pass. This slavery to fashon is no crime; in the 90's, plenty of other instructors at design colleges fell into the same bog of French theory that Dr. Cohen has, and he can at least take credit for jumping in the pond when it's popularity was on the rise. The real tragedy is that however elloquent he is when praising the wholesale destruction of contemporary academic systems, Dr. Cohen tends to meander sadly when confronted with the challenge of constructing anything in the aftermath. His own role in the pogrom he calls for is also a problem -- does he imagine he'll be keeping his own academic job in the aftermath of his proposed French (Theory) Revolution? Surely his role model could not be an Academic Terror with him sitting in judgement, but we are left to wonder....

Fortunately Dr. Cohen's blizzard of rhetoric tips us off that he's not serious at all, and this has always been his true genius. But unfortunately he also seemed to be trying to climb the academic rungs in this early work, and the need to "pay the bills" overshadowed his inner poet.

Perhaps in those days Dr. Cohen feared a loss of the legitimacy he had so ernestly striven for in his weighty ouvre; when reading "The Luster of Capital," the reader can't help but wish he had stuck to what seems dearest to his heart -- namely blood. If only he had followed his heart as much in this early book as he has in later works, we could have gotten that much farther along in his epic poem of destruction. But letting fall his pretentions of seriousness has also spared his readers the fog of his rambling ennui.

In his later work, Dr. Cohen has acknowledged to himself and his readers that his true strength is as a poet, not as a theoretician. He is at his best when singing the glories of continually staged conflicts and random beaurocratic violence. In this work, we see him struggling, conflicted with himself, trying to find his voice as a Nietzichian nay-sayer, a Baudrillardian bard. To give away the ending of his career, he eventually succeds and his more overtly poetic works are recommended. But for the die-hard fan of Dr. Cohen, this segment from arc of his early emotional development lays a solid foundation.