Outdated? Literature Class.

I go to class. I am a student. In our rather small seminar room, the lecturer arrives right on time, and makes some sort of commotion, gawking at the PC on his work station, and tries to get some attention. The man is beyond middle age, tall, but slightly bent, with intentionally big motions of arms and legs.

His face gives immediate associations to a kind of fish, like a flounder or another bottom fish. His eyes are sunken, and framed by thinly bushy eyebrows, like sets of feelers in disarray. He lets his eyes dart around, still gawking at the modern contraption of a PC. In his packet he has a CD. “They have removed the computer!” he says, rather loudly. “Where have they taken it?” Indeed, he is making quite a scene, because, as he explains, he had planned to use the material on the CD, a 20 minute segment he someone helped him copy from a VHS, as a basis for discussion.

A young, sweet and helpful student offers her assistance, but her laptop did not have a compatible HDMI connection to the system, which she smoothly reveals, is a new one with no CD drive. His technology is outdated.

The professor takes his position up front and starts his lecture, still using large movements and eyes darting about the room, as if he is looking for inspiration from a hidden muse. He is a literature professor. He dabbles in philosophy, seeking to paint the background for how to approach the essence of “Englishness” without any such essence. He suggests a post-structuralist approach of derridaian persuasion to seek out the lack of any definable core in the very concept he wishes to describe. Indeed, a rather complicated task it is, for should we follow the lead of the post-structuralists of derridaian persuasions, we have only waves in an ocean to illustrate what water is.

All in all, I see the lure of lack. What is not seems the more positive than anything we may try to define as such. Anything that is can always be denied, and since it is deniable, there is a chance that it is not. And since the option of it not being there, is, it is not (there). Right. An argument shoots itself in the leg. So, the concept of “Englishness”, is it real or is it simply defined by what it is not? Does it have a core which creates the very idea of ‘Englishness”, or does it not have any such core, but is layer upon layer of roles, expectations, conventions, etc., like the layers of an onion?

So the older man rambles, aiming to stare meaningfully out a window, but the small room has only small windows, and they flutter with the wind and are mostly covered by blinds. So he stares meaninglessly on the wall, perhaps feeling a bit constrained.

He was hoping we were dying for breaks – he needed it. It was not his age as such that made him ask for breaks. It was his longing to hang on to the content in the old VHS, the 20minute segment. I find my own aging, but maturing mind muse over this, - for I remember the entry of VHS technology – and thinking that the segment would by necessity be outdated. I had no regrets missing it.

The three hour long session ended with the professor sitting like a schoolboy, novel in hand, reading out loud a text by E. M. Forster, and commenting on select words. Here he was at ease; here he was at home. This was the field of human experience, of thought and reflection where he could contribute. Was it real? Could we find reasons to indicate that the professor’s love and zeal for literature and its potential interpretation was more easily defined by what it was not? Perhaps is there no such thing as love for literature. Perhaps he had no contribution. And yet, in his peculiar way, with odd mannerisms, being older and seeking to be relevant, he was blissfully outdated. The post-structuralists, the post-modernists at it, are the ones who have lost their relevance in all their zeal for relative newness.  When the professor was one with his role, he was real.