Life is Revolution continued...about Angela Davis

U of F Interview Pt 4

JPJ Jr: Of course, I'm always open to speaking about Angela, but we have to be a little more specific. And the reason for that is that Angela is such a polarizing figure...she's a receptacle for misunderstanding. Also, and she and I have talked about this, she's a receptacle for a degree of blind faith. So I always want to be very specific when I'm talking about Angela, because for some people in their stages of development, Angela's voice is really, really important. She's done some really substantial work, but it has to be understood not as an end game but as a stage of development...because Angela came from a very bourgeois background. Angela worked within the confines of the institution for the better part of, somebody else could probably tell me better, 45, 40 years, something like that. And Angela retains her emeritus gold card. Okay, that's not talking shit. That's just the reality.

So I would take it one step further than your formulation of liberal professors and say that radical professorship is nowhere, man. There's functionally no difference between them. I would leave out maybe one or two from there, Robin DG Kelly being one. But there is functionally no difference between radical professorship and liberal professorship. They can come at me all they want. I'll sit up there like the Chomsky/Foucault debate if they want to. But I would say that from my position and, getting into a little bit of my biography, being banished from the academy after having completed my doctoral work but essentially living as an outsider working person, hustling to get by, etc. but having gotten the training that was necessary to do what it is that they do, I could tell you, and I went to the academy at the highest level possible. I have three master's degrees and a PhD from Berkeley, Cornell, and a Columbia satellite in Europe. So there's no part of the institution that I didn't see. And I can tell you with full conviction, radical professorship actually doesn't even exist.

See, when you work in service of an institution, that institution coerces you in ways that you're not even aware of.