June 18, 2024

Anti-Woke Literature with Dr. Jamie Roberts: Lewis Carroll

1 hour 7 minutes

About Dr. Jamie Roberts: I've spent much of my adult life studying at

university and then working at universities. After starting out in

Psychology and Mathematics I moved to English literature in which I

completed my honours degree. You write a short dissertation - using

Coetzee's Disgrace, I tried to talk about the nature of male sexual

desire and critiqued liberal feminism for failing to engage with it in

any way. After a soft cancellation following my first encounter with ID

Pol - this was 2002 - I moved to Politics to complete my PhD, but only

because I found someone who was willing to supervise me, and also, I

could only write about literature in the way I wanted to in the Politics

department. lol. In my PhD I tried to develop a model to explain the

nature of good and evil. I drew on literature and philosophy (Plato,

Conrad, Tolsoy, Nietzsche - amongst others) to explore how people do bad

things for the sake of power and belonging to the group. I learned that

nothing ever really changes - the way the academics around me behaved

fitted very closely with what I read in various classic works of

literature and philosophy. The PhD experience (2005-2009) was pretty

grim. There was more miserable ID Pol and idiot Postmodernism - and more

cruel arts academics. I was so disillusioned with academia I got a job

teaching academic skills at the University of New South Wales. This was

unambitious of me, but I was able to do a lot of teaching, which I still

love, and essentially teach people to think critically and write

coherently. In 2020 I became an academic at Sydney University in the

department of Politics and International Relations. This was quite a

surprise as I had really given up on academia. At USYD I taught

International Relations / International Security and Politics and

Popular Culture, and I wrote The Way of the Intellectual Dark Web. The

Identity Politics was always bad there, but it has got worse in recent

years - so no, I don't think we are past peak woke yet. Honestly,

despite many high points with teaching, for the most part, my whole

being recoils at how intellectually corrupt university is. Working there

is very much like sticking with an abusive relationship. I'm actually

currently on personal leave because it has all become too much - the

bullying superiors, the censorious students. It's very hard to do my

job; i.e. pursue truth. I'm always balancing my commitment to truth with

my own fears about how much I will be attacked if I step out of line

(and the attacks are quite regular).Outside all this, I write novels -

nothing published yet. I also write music. And I am starting to build a

vast art environment on some land that I own - my dream has always been

to do this (The Wollemi Art Farm). My heart lies with art: literature,

music and whatever I'm doing on my land, but also with teaching. I hope

to bring people out to my land and teach them about the classics:

Shakespeare, Shelley, Carroll, Sterne, Larkin, Forster. I also run

quests on my land - like Zelda, but in real life.Oh, and I also spend a

lot of my time with my two children - I love going on adventures with

them. There's nothing better, really.

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If you would like to contact me, my website is:

https://theradicalcenterconsulting.com/ and I am on twitter

@JLeslieElliott

And if you appreciate this ongoing project and would like to support my

continued work in this area you can chip in at any of the following

(thank you very much!):

https://www.paypal.me/jleslieelliott

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/radicalcenter

https://www.patreon.com/theradicalcenter

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By Leslie Elliott Boyce

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