As the economy progressively worsened during the first decade of the 21st century, the despair got retooled as “hope” during the wave of “Obamamania” that many people, almost despite themselves, got wrapped up in. I found myself partaking in many conversations with other underpaid/overworked/disenfranchised culture workers about the possibilities of a new FDR-style WPA from 2006 to 2012. More politicians, and political commentators, were beginning to use the rhetoric during this time, and it was certainly part of the original Occupy Wall Street vision. Certainly my community college students were very interested in the WPA. Talking about it seemed a way beyond the troubling paradox of trying to convince students that their B.A. or A.A. will actually better their employment chances when one’s Ph.D. has been having increasingly diminished returns. Indeed, I was eventually downsized due to state budget cuts almost simultaneously with the end of the Occupy Movement. After 2012, the hope of anything remotely resembling a WPA seems further away than ever; a delusion. Meanwhile, beneath this somewhat utopic hope, what Scott Timberg calls “Creative Destruction” was occurring faster—not just in academia, but in music, and publishing as well…
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 16:54:12 +0000
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