Discussion Groups / English Usage / March 2010

Well, colour me mocratized!

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions and comments. I followed up on
a few of them and it seems that deprofessionalizing is a notion
dreamed up by Ivan Illich, an anarchist social theorist. It is to the
professions what deschooling is to schools. As far as I can tell, the
overall aim is ... Dunno. Like a lot this stuff, it seems to be more
about playing with words and dropping names than proposing a coherent
course of action. For some people, deschooling is child-centred
learning, for others it's home-schooling, and for at least one
deschooling expert (a contradiction in terms, that much is clear) it's
throwing away your fridge magnets, starting dream-diaries and taking
your children window-shopping. At root, both deschooling and
deprofessionalizing are probably about doing your own thing and not
being a tool of The Man.

Unsurprisingly, Illich is popular with the crustier, mutt-on-a-length-
of-baling-twine, anti-GM, anti-nuke, anti-roads, anti-airports, anti-
meat, anti-globalisation, anti-America, anti-Israel, anti-banker end
of the carbonista movement. They like his 'Ban The Man'
antiestablishmentarianism (and probably his incoherence) and are
especially impressed that he was one of the first to call for the
creation of a low-energy society. But because they rely on Holy
Peereviewedscience to justify their antics, they are less keen on
quoting Illich's thoughts on scientists. He saw them as an overmighty
secular priesthood, a view that's shared by many denialists of the gun-
toting, it's-all-a-hoax, anti-abortion, anti-Obama, anti-healthcare,
anti-banker (nobody likes bankers) variety. That lot is also anti-
intellectual, so they haven't discovered Illich yet. If they ever do,
with any luck we'll get both sets of maniacs using the same Illich
quote to justify opposing propositions. As it is, at the moment
there's only the mildly amusing spectacle of wild-eyed weirdy-beardies
brandishing Illich while banging on about the unimpeachable authority
of climate experts.

--
VB
'If combustion continues to increase at present rates we will consume
the oxygen of the atmosphere faster than it can be replaced. We can
then calculate the day when we will wither like mice locked into a jar
with a burning candle.' - Ivan Illich, 1970

On 27 Mar 2010, R H Draney wrote

...which undoubtedly was in academia.  I'd guess it's someone who's also been
thrown out of whatever professional institute he used to belong to.

Or a really smart person who sold out, like a PhD in art history who
sells computers.

Plausible.

"Professionalized" to me would carry the implication of a *regulated*
or official profession, such as law, medicine, or civil engineering.

-GAWollman

[...]

I assume he refers to a straitjacket.

Almost certainly a transposition.  That's why I went looking for
"deprofesionalizar".

I agree, although I approached it from another angle.  I see nothing
in the article (thanks)about breaches with academic or professional
societies, and a great deal about being a man of the common people.
"Deprofessionalised" in the sense that all professions are
conspiracies against the laity.

"Sellout"?  Those were the days.

I think this says that he "is an independent writer and activist. He
forms part of the unskilled segment of the intellectual community" which
is not exactly what it would mean in English.

Basically it is saying that he does not have a job that requires either
a license or a professional association to do. He is not a teacher, a
pharmacist, a doctor, &c. He is also not a journalist in the sense of
having Press credentials, but he maybe a journalist as an freelancer
(independent writer could mean freelancer).

hmm. I don't think it's derogatory. I could find out though, if people
really care.