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@fit magna caedes, Thanks for your post. Upon rereading mine, found it sounded a bit sanctimonious and a little more paggro than I'd've liked. Neither was intentional. So, bear with me, I'm gonna try to respond a little out of sequence to some of the things you bring up.
While I think we're veering a little into thoughts about academia (I know I was), and some of the problems inherent in how we receive texts and knowledge (I think I can safely say that your posts have touched on this), they seem pertinent and relevant to the topic. They're to do with what and how we read (at least it's so for me). Hopefully this thread isn't to be limited to a simple list of book titles and others won't mind too much. Mods & other members are welcome to tell me otherwise.
Lucky us/cheers to us, then. Granted, I've a bit of an axe to grind with academia, but it is, to my mind, a largely unrewarding, exploitative, insanely cloistered, sheltered and hermetic field. Enough ink's spilled elsewhere regarding this, so enough said.
Interesting point, and maybe one that I've failed to appropriately take into account on my previous post. To put it somewhat self-flatteringly, I think I'm willing to extend a little more generosity towards the putative reader and assume s/he is discerning and smart enough to both digest whatever point the (primary or secondary) text is making and disagree with it if need be. So yes, there is an unequal distribution of power in the relationship between a student and teacher, but I'm not sure it inexorably leads to the student adopting the teacher's view. At least not permanently? (See, for example, the number of people that were initially associated with the psychoanalytic movement and later broke away from Freud.)
Going back to your previous post, it occurs to me that I am far less familiar with Harvey's older texts (his career going back 'round fifty years by now), and it may well be the case that he's taken to explicitly acknowledging his subjectivity relatively recently. This wasn't as wide a practice in the 1960s as it is nowadays.
With regards to the use others make of Marx/Harvey's arguments: I think a good number of my academe cohort frankly knew they were at best making a selective reading of them that best suited whatever agenda they needed to espouse to complete whatever monograph they happened to be working on at the time. To be honest I was pretty guilty of this myself (not really with Marx or Harvey, but certainly with, say, Gayatri Spivak), and it was one of many reasons I didn't stay in that field. One may properly understand a text and yet misuse it pretty cynically. Note: not defending this practice.
Certainly appears so.
Originally posted by fit magna caedes
Lucky you. I've moved on from this area myself [...] Just another deluded amateur.
But the moment of education is by its nature one of reduced agency - as knowledge is power, descending into an area one has no knowledge in will leave one open to influences that one does not even recognise as influences. The good conscience of the teacher does not help much here [...] This can be seen in the students of any teacher, however good - it's no coincidence that most of Heidegger's pupils were in some way Heideggerians, and not Wittgensteinians, or the like. [...] [I]n a situation where one is reading a difficult book like Capital for the first time, especially if it is not the beginning of an ongoing study but just an attempt to grasp the book and move on, all this is amplified. In any moment of doubt, it becomes easier and easier to agree with your guide...
Not saying this always happen, but I've seen it happen many times to postgraduates rushing through things so as to possess an "understanding" of them, and younger students who take a course that sets up their prejudices about an author for life. Have seen it in particular with Harvey [...] Or perhaps I'm wrong... haven written that, I'm already doubtful. It may be that I'm simply judging Harvey unfairly, based on the improper use others have put him to.
With regards to the use others make of Marx/Harvey's arguments: I think a good number of my academe cohort frankly knew they were at best making a selective reading of them that best suited whatever agenda they needed to espouse to complete whatever monograph they happened to be working on at the time. To be honest I was pretty guilty of this myself (not really with Marx or Harvey, but certainly with, say, Gayatri Spivak), and it was one of many reasons I didn't stay in that field. One may properly understand a text and yet misuse it pretty cynically. Note: not defending this practice.
If people who were deluded in some aspects of their subject were prevented from teaching, we'd have no teachers.
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