Oh, I should say, despite his bluster, Leiter's a very good scholar of Nietzsche and jurisprudence.

He's a prick! Perhaps this accounts for his obsession with hierarchy. How can he be a nice guy and so vindictive? Are you just saying he's well mannered and charming at cocktail parties?

Are you just saying he's well mannered and charming at cocktail parties?

Well, there's that, but he's also supposed to be extremely friendly to graduate students in person and he really supports his own graduate students (though I suppose there may be selfish reasons at work here). Also, I hear that he's quite shy in person, and loathe to start arguments.

I hear that he's quite shy in person, and loathe to start arguments

Sounds more like a punk-ass chickenshit to me.

It's possible I got testy in the last ten minutes.

Dude, you don't spend enough time around academics. That's an average day's slapfight-before-lunch.

Hmmm, now I'm in the mood for a juicy academic farce.

Actually, the psychology-philosophy split had plenty of material for academic farce. The Wikipedia version below lacks the snark of some I’ve read, but if you read between the lines you can see that it was a pretty good slapfest.

In 1892, G. Stanley Hall invited 30-some psychologists and philosophers to a meeting at Clark with the purpose of founding a new American Psychological Association (APA). The first annual meeting of the APA was held later that year, hosted by George S. Fullerton at the University of Pennsylvania. Almost immediately tension arose between the experimentally- and philosophically-inclined members of the APA. Edward Bradford Titchener and Lightner Witmer launched an attempt to either establish a separate "Section" for philosophical presentations, or to eject the philosophers altogether. After nearly a decade of debate a Western Philosophical Association was founded and held its first meeting in 1901 at the University of Nebraska. The following year (1902), an American Philosophical Association held its first meeting at Columbia University. These ultimately became the Central and Eastern Divisions of the modern American Philosophical Association.

When Jen and I were driving around SF the other day, we talked about my research into poetry in the fifties and how it was a huge cultural war between those who followed William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound and Charles Olson, and those who followed T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens.

And then we marveled at a time when poetry mattered enough to people to draw those kind of battle lines.

What does a huge cultural war look like? What's the battlefield? What are the weapons? The wounded and the casualties?

What does a huge cultural war look like?

Imagine an army line of kittens facing off against another army line of kittens - their mortal enemies. Now imagine them all puffing up their fur in hissing agitation.

What's the battlefield?

Chapbooks, broadsides, academic journals, denunciations from newspapers, lectures.

What are the weapons?

Turns of phrase, character assassination, carefully marshalled arguments, extravagent gestures, pure snark, backstabbing, weak-willed appeasement.

The wounded and the casualties?

Careers may be lost, tenure may be denied, entire departments decimated (just one in ten). Your books may be remaindered and the NY Times stops calling for your opinion.

I have seen an academic argument very nearly turn physical once. Never actually seen any punches thrown, though.

I thought you had a serious point to make, Hec.

William Carlos Williams

Which is why I dearly love The Red Wheelbarrow. It's such a perfect little piece of "fuck you, Eliot."