Frank Kogan

well the far left -- if this means communists -- argued that university departments should be entirely shaken up and reorganised along party lines: they felt what was being protected was merely the social structures of capitalism as extended in the structures of knowledge -- they were anti-philosophy, considering it more or less the church of the bourgeoisie, as the (actual) church was more or less the church of feudalism

the point i'm making is more this: the attachment is not the pragtmatics itself, so much as a safe space in which "we" (ie those who believe they act as guarantors of open discussion) get to stay in charge of departmental pragmatics: for it to stay SAFE it has to stay sacred, hegemony not AT ALL up for negotiation, and attachments to the Sacred mean (in my judgment) intense passionate emotional and not necessarily very rational attachments --- and i think that "metaphysics" as the queen of the sciences does function as that kind of unthinking allegience, in the higher-ed community

as a triage thing, my feeling is that the reorganisation is would a GIANT FvCKLOAD of work (the debate and then the actual moving of furniture) and actually there's a ton of more urgent day-to-day firefighting to be done, and so the reorganisation always languishes; and rather than admit that it needs doing, we find ourselves acceding to a heirarchy of wisdoms which is a rationalisation

i don't think philsopsphy is higher knowledge; i think there are all manner of tactical and strategic reasons for not dissolving disciplinary structure too precipitately, but there are arguments in the other direction also