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  Art for art’s sake was born to be the weakling, the easy target, the punching bag. Imagine the effrontery of the thing! If a painting, a piece of music, a poem exists for its own sake, we are dangerously near the point where any dirty sock with a hole in it can stand up and claim a vote in the household. No throwing the sock out without guilt. No throwing the sock out without a little murder. Art for arts sake is so intolerable, so against common sense, that we immediately feel it is a provocation. Who is behind this nonsense? And our first thought is: must be the artist. Now, it isn’t true that we hate all artists. We love the celebrity ones, the Hemingway or Picasso bio-pic on HBO, which – a plus! – comes with ample script opportunities for female nudity. Click-bait, hein? But the average artist wears no HBO-able glitter, but swans his or her poor ego around, a poser, and we are secretly sure a, that this creature will fail, and b., that the best part will be watching their come-

  I am a big fan of certain reactionary writers. Of pedophiles, racists, misogynists and a buncha sorry ass mandarins. At the same time, I am aware that criticism of these people for being pedophile, racist, misogynist and otherwise showing a sorry ass vibe is true, and that those who consider such criticism part of “cancel culture” have a very odd view of reading and what it entails. Where does that view come from? The cancel culture debate is so flatheaded and without fizz that it is stale pop all the way down. The interesting thing about it is that it connects to the current crisis in academia. Namely, in the humanities and social sciences.   The Cold War policymakers in the West and East saw big advantages in funding academia. The massive expansion of higher education has had enormous social effects, one of which is, in my opinon, understudied – I’d call this the scene of reading.   Read the autobiographies of the poobahs of the 19 th century – and in particular, women –