The state, civil society, and academic tenure

I am about to break up a very busy schedule, in which I work daily with the most talented and most generous-spirited people I have ever met in the world's attested crucible of symbolic creativity in order to attend Paul Cahill's Supreme court case, at my own expense. One of the reasons for this is that Paul is a truly great human being ; he has taken on forces beyond the ken of 99.9% of humanity and won. Not just the congeries of globalized corporatism and catholic nationalism which defines DCU, the Irish Times and its acolytes at DCU; what is at stake is a totalizing view of the state and society, which must be resisted. Another reason is, of course, the sheer consequentiality of this issue. Let us explore these in turn.

Civil society is a paradoxical concept. It refers to a rule-based set of functions which (as yet) do not have the legislative imprimatur of state. Due to its colonial heritage, Ireland is full of benign civil society structures; the Irish music session; the GAA; traditional Irish music, until IMRO privatized it in the 1998 deal; the intensity of the democratic process which, unlike that in the USA, survived electronic “voting”. Italy is full of benign such, as well as malignant such like the Mafia and Camorra (see the movie and read the book “Gomorrah”; this is what FF would have become, had they not been domesticated; the 1990's saw them revitalize this antinomial dream). The work we Irish people, and our allies from other countries (many of whom were married to Irish people, surely the ultimate vote of confidence in a country) did in setting up DCU, while paid by the state, was largely civil society; we went every day beyond the call of duty, which Danny O'Hare nevertheless attributed to his own Roman Catholic genius. (He never taught there)

FF's impetus has always been to bend the state toward its scams, and then extend the state so that no competition is possible. And now, of course, the Irish state under FF has bankrupted itself, and the IMF calls the shots, as already predicted on this blog:

IMF and NAMA


DCU takes lawsuits against its staff rivalling anything from the Munster circuit at its most extreme;

As frivolous and vexatious as Tom Mallon

A thought experiment; the DCU president shoves mail into your door at home, repeatedly, asking you to do something illegal. Do you agree to do it? Are you in violation of your contract if you don't? No and no, surely? More to the point, we can, I assume, take a criminal case against him and his "legal' advisers after the dust settles - which will be sooner than they think, because even the state is sick of this unsuccessful incursion into civil society.

So what will happen next? Well, IMHO the Supreme Court will throw out DCU's appeal, and comment that it should never have gotten this far. Wrt the EAT; an offer has been made to DCU to obey the law, and deal with all the issues internally. The central issue – of education, and the organic formation of young women and men – was historically made in Ireland through the hedge schools, an a fortiori civil society construct. It is my opinion that we are heading back there from this miasma of criminality, incompetence, and ripping-off taxpayers to pay for perhaps the most laughable self-elected elite since the Hapsburgs . We even have a Prussian – one not married to an Irishwoman - involved.

Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. 18u Meitheamh 2009