← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Post-shutdown, the word on everyone’s lips is…

nihilistmints

nihilism. Everyone’s calling the Tea Party nihilistic. Do a TEA NIHILISM Google search and see.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm is thrilled. She loves the word, its soft insidious feel… The middle H adds a dying breath to its barely-there sound…

A beautiful mysterious letter-set, n-i-h-i-l-i-s-m. The movement of the mouth in saying the word maps the regress of nihilism itself —

A strong initial sound at the outset as if you’re headed somewhere: NEE…!

(Note: You can do it NIGHilism if you prefer.)

Then a catch of the breath on the H as you remember it’s pointless.

A final collapse into the enervated quietude of LISM..

*************************

Europeans (Nietzsche, Dostoevsky) long ago cornered the market on nihilism. Finally America – perennially dismissed as too youthful, optimistic, and pragmatic for nihilism – gets its chance. You go, girl.

Margaret Soltan, October 17, 2013 8:31AM
Posted in: Scathing Online Schoolmarm

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=41604

5 Responses to “Post-shutdown, the word on everyone’s lips is…”

  1. Dave Stone Says:

    Ooooh! Oooh! A chance to overintellectualize! I’m very excited. I teach nihilism in my Russian history classes by having the kids read Turgenev’s _Fathers and Sons_. My students TOTALLY get Bazarov, the nihilist character, but they can’t stand him. They immediately see parallels to coffeehouse hipster types who insist that everything is meaningless and pointless, and they will NOT accept that world view.

    So I don’t buy the Tea Partiers as nihilists. They DO fervently believe in the absolute and objective rightness of things: God, low taxes, the imminent danger of socialism. World-weary resignation and je m’en fichisme just isn’t their style.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Dave: The Turgenev sounds exactly right: Ground zero for nihilism. I myself like the much more obscure character Armand Vedel in Gide’s The Counterfeiters.

    I agree that nihilism isn’t quite right for the Tea Partiers. They are, I think, revolutionaries with nihilistic tendencies. That is, I think they are willing to go all the way to nihilistic behavior on behalf of their enthusiasms. This doesn’t make them nihilists, but it gets them, under certain circumstances, close.

  3. dmf Says:

    Freud’s death-drive(n) might be a better label/diagnosis, but really aren’t they just Protestant-social-darwinists, I don’t think that they understand themselves as gambling/monkey-wrenchers more as destined to rule on earth as in heaven…
    http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

  4. david foster Says:

    Agree with Dave S…nihilism is a much better description of the garden-variety cynical hipster than it is of the Tea Partier.

    The only way it would make sense to view the Tea Partiers as nihilists would be if one believed that meaning in life is to be found only via government, and that hence a belief in smaller / less-intrusive government makes life meaningless.

  5. MattF Says:

    The TPers suffer from the illusion that they don’t have a political philosophy, they’re just your ordinary commonsense neighbors who want to bring on the Apocalypse. As ever, what happens after the big A is unclear– but it will be terrific, you betcha.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories