SEP-A-12
SHOT
DOWN IN MEETING WITH MY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE, WHO DISMISS MY THESIS PROPOSAL,
AND RECOMMEND DROPPING OUT OF THE DEGREE,
IF
NO LIBRARY-BASED BIBLIOGRAPHIC SEARCH IS TO BE DONE AS THE CENTERPIECE OF A
POST MODERN THESIS WORK
Sep
5, 2002
Well, it seems to be over, as thoroughly as predicted. The thesis proposal was not scholarly enough, since it was not bristling with footnotes of the kinds of post-modern writers in vogue, and I should consult the scholarship of my Human Sciences colleagues to find out more successful scholarly outlines. I have. I am a professional judge of scholarship. That is why I want nothing to do with the endless repetition of the same au courant authors and a dissection of some human impasse which they come to the astoundingly repetitive conclusion: “This is problematic.” What I am supposed to be doing for a living is SOLVING some of those problems, not pointed out that they cannot even be defined in the absence of the right thing to do.
The proposal is too biographical and reads too much like a travelog. But I did not go to these populations as a tabula rassa; I went as a student of the Human Sciences and if they had any confidence in their degree program, it would seem that I am able to make a few judgments of my own, and not sit in the library where I have done considerable time already and find someone else who has said what I want to say so as to freight the proposal with as many footnotes as words! We do not want more than one single example, and from this one—hypothyroidism, for example—you should use the field of disability studies and study Michel Foucault to speak to the issue of Subjectivity.
I wrote almost all of my Comprehensive Exams on Foucault, since almost all he stands for I disagree with, and above all his position that there is no right or wrong, but it is all a matter of the hegemony of a political power structure---but he is to be my hero, and thesis focus, since this is what Human Sciences are all about.
“This will not fly. Dean Moses of the CGSAS will not change the September 30 deadline for an accepted thesis proposal, which for our purposes is September 26, so perhaps you should consider whether to just drop it. We might even be able to petition for an “M Phil” degree for you. But give serious thought to whether you have a commitment to do what it is that we are telling you, again, to do.”
I
do not need yet another Master’s Degree.
For that matter, I do not need this PhD, and personally think the terms
under which it is being extorted are contrived. And, there is almost no way I
can meet a new deadline, with the same result in any event. So much for multidisciplinary!