The subject of this article, by my friend Chuck Lane, is, well, nothing if not an easy target: Yale student claims to have inseminated herself and induced abortions as part of an art project on the female body – but did she really? – Yale says no, she won’t say. That uncertainty alone is oh so postmodern.
But the project’s obtuse language (it’s on the “ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership”), its trite ideological points, its trampling of norms of morality and biology, the media furor, it all seems so … 20 years ago. Have things really gotten so curdled on college campuses? Are liberal arts faculties and their brainwashed students stuck forever in 1989?
I’d point out two things that indicate maybe Yale isn’t filled with jargon-spewing leftist automatons.
First, the undercurrent of irony. There is a kind of Warholesque opportunistic cynicism here – grabbing the spotlight and shocking people for self-advancement. Whatever her motivation, Aliza Shvarts will be known as the girl who scandalized Yale. Still sick? Yes – but it’s a capitalist sickness. Second, by most accounts, today’s college students are vastly more sensible and have better BS detectors than most of the U.S. population, so it’s doubtful much of anybody in the Yale student body bought into this.
