An Invitation to Ivan Illich

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In his 1982 book Gender (Pantheon), Illich attempts to show that sexism is the inevitable condition of industrial society, which deforms the ?dyssymetric complementarity? of men and women into a ?legally engineered equality? - creating a world not of men and women but of competitive economic beings. In such a world, argues Illich, the majority of women will always lose out economically. Needless to say, Gender did not endear him to feminists.

His most recent book, In the Vineyard of the Text (University of Chicago Press, 1993), holds a mirror to the past and explores Illich?s beloved 12^th century in order to contrast the way we read today with the way a dear friend of his - a monk, Hugh of St. Victor - experienced the art of reading 800 years ago. In fact, Hugh was the subject of Illich?s speech at Penn State.

Speaking to an audience consisting mostly of friends and a few academic colleagues, Illich announced the imminent end of the university as we understand it, a place of learning based upon the book. He cautioned that a certain type of reading skill was disappearing - in effect, a physical intercourse between reader, printed text, and the world beyond. Hugh delighted in the written page, savoring words from line to line like grapes picked from the monastery vineyard. (Illich informed us that page, or pagina in Latin, derives from espalier, the trellis on which grapevines are grown.) Reading for Hugh was a physical activity as well as a search for wisdom. It was a way of life.

In contrast, said Illich, reading today is veering off ?in the direction of masturbation in hyperspace.? According to Illich, when the sensual, textural, actual book-as-body goes, so goes a vital, human form of interaction. What?s wrong with a little fooling around in hyperspace? Illich didn?t say, but by the time he had finished his story about Hugh?s feast of words, hyperspace seemed like a virtual wasteland. Illich, an elegant man of 68 with a lilting accent derived from the German, French, and Italian he spoke at home as a child, left the final denunciation of Progress to the poets, ending his speech with these lines: ?The sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.? Though he hadn?t attacked technology or even higher education, a radical critique of modern techniques of living and learning hung heavily in the air.

In David Cayley?s Ivan Illich in Conversation (Anansi Press, 1992), Illich says, ?I often have the impression that the more traditionally I speak, the more radically alien I become.? This may be true. In an age that assumes the perfect word for a poem can be found by accessing WordPerfect, or that genetic engineering is part of a natural order, Illich?s insights may no longer make sense. In a society that has gotten used to standing on its head ? preferring the drum machine to the drum, for example, or the Discovery Channel to a slow walk in the woods ? it may be impossible to embrace a man who still uses his feet.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print