Bakhtin

[Kildsig]

Well, it's probably lovely that members of academic community - so careful
not to omit their affiliations and previous encounters with some "great
dudes" - attempts to provide each other with some sort of psychological
support....

The author of the book in question is only a name for quite many people, not
a person or an individual, so that book could have been written by Emer
Carylson or an entirely anonymous author for that matter.  Besides, the
importance of anybody's work should be judged by the future, we right here
and right now aren't that omnipotent to carry such a task out, even if there
is enough impudence to try to do so. And personal evaluations of one's work
should be carried out in privicy, not public.

If the author of "First 100 ..." was so concerned with the reader not
knowing Russian, then the texts (at least the ones discussed at length in
the book) should have been translated into English, French, or German.
Reading of that book leaves one with a sombre feeling that can easily be
expressed in the way Dmitry Khanin has done. The campaign "Appreciate
Emerson! Down with Khanin and others like him!" is exactly the attitude
adopted in "First 100 ...", and it's offensive, patronising towards those
who share Khanin's sceptical opinion regardless of the words chosen for
articulating it, yet are not interesting in any politicised groupings.

Finally, what has he said that's so appaling? (Sure, some parts of his
position might be understood better if exapained more thoroughly.) That
there are no career-making enterprise on-going in the Western academies?
That there are no market mechanisms forming research? Are we already at the
stage when we attempt to prove that water is dry?

Sincerely,
N. R. Kildsig