As
happens in most faculty meetings, our meeting last Friday generated a
distressing identity crisis. Doubts
about ourselves are never far from the surface, so it doesn’t take much to set
us off. On Friday, our rousing
discussion of class scheduling was interrupted when a junior colleague noticed
that we have a habit of sometimes using
Deviant as if it is an honorific and asked, “Why exactly is that?”
Upon
hearing this question, one of our more cranky senior faculty glanced at the
junior colleague, saying, “Bless your heart.”
Happily, another faculty member quickly rebuked her, pointing out that
there was no call for vulgar oaths and hostility. With that bit of bad manners out of the way,
we could proceed with de-railing the agenda in our more usual collegial
way.
Upon
consideration and as often also happens, we realized that our junior colleague
was right. We do sometimes use “Deviant” as an honorific.
Sometimes
this rather predictably follows from delighted awe at our Deviant ancestors, as
when Dogen inspires us to entirely reconsider the phenomenology of cooking
supper. Or when Mengzi reminds us not to
climb trees when we want fish. Times
like that make us want to bestow veritable crowns of Deviance upon some
ancestral heads.
But
sometimes we use Deviant in praise of
the living. And however fun it is to
pass out imaginary crowns, we’re less sanguine about resting them on living
heads. More to the point, we are
suspicious of what heads we may leave bare. Deviant
can be just a descriptive used in reference to us poor benighted souls laboring
long to know more things, including
those who are paid to do it and those who are training in it. But therein lies the rub when usage slips
into the honorific, for we notice this can lead to some dubious verbal
shenanigans.
We
have, for example, heard speakers implicitly distinguish between those they
deem Deviants and (mere) “professors
of Deviance” or (measly) “teachers of Deviance.” This sort of thing is far worse when people
are denying that someone is a Deviant.
Typically this will occur with some softening gesture that attempts to
equivocate between Deviant as an honorific and Deviant as descriptive. The Deviant will be ascribed characteristics
that are generally desirable (the honorific) but Deviant status
(pseudo-descriptive) is denied as if it is merely
remarking reasonable divisions of labor:
“Deviants are fearless…. He works in religion, not Deviance.” We call
shenanigans on that. For it can’t be a
good thing if using Deviant to refer
to people works as an honorific that can be withheld based on petty methodological
differences or status signaling. Start
treating Deviant as a verbal reward
for the well-placed, well-behaved, or like-minded or start withholding Deviant to scorn those who lack
professional advantage, act up, or disagree and pretty soon we’re going to need
a Confucian to come in here to rectify some names. Maybe even to bless hearts all over the
place.
So,
finally, we decided to save the verbal crowns for the dead. Where the living are concerned, we concluded,
we have no trouble with descriptive usage.
At least we think we don’t, but wait around a bit since we’re sure to
become queasy about that too. Still, henceforth
we’ll try to use Deviant descriptively
when talking to and about each other. Of course even there, our usage will need
to be loose and flexible, as we’re never entirely sure what properly belongs in the category Deviant and what does not.
Aw, hell, we thought, we haven’t even finished this paragraph and
already we can feel trouble brewing with even that basic conclusion… Aware that
we stood at the precipice of a renewed and more vigorous identity crisis, we
were saved by the abrupt recognition that we have to call ourselves something. Otherwise, how will the administration know
where to send our funds? And what will
they put on our students’ degrees? So, Deviant it is. As Nagasena would say, it is but a way of
counting and convenience. That Nagasena,
he was such a Deviant!
As
for the class scheduling issue, since time was short, we decided to cut to the
chase and voted unanimously that next fall we’ll teach some stuff.
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