There is a damp, sameness to discussions about Difference in the academy these days. Students seem weary of it, faculty, cynical. Subject-positions that were oh-so-provisionally constructed and debated a few years ago have been carefully named and reified within our syllabi and departments. Issues of race, sexual difference, queerness, and the "chic-ness" of alterity have become specialities, "areas," territories to claim, define, dissertate-then, hopefully, teach. "Of course race matters." "Gender schmender." "Sexism is boring." Ho-hum. We know all about it, right?

Why is it that everyone seems to "know" that diversity is good for us, but few people act like they believe it? Well, of course, it is more complicated than that. Many, many people actually believe it. Some of us, who were educated in the UC system way back in the mid-80's really know it from, dare I say it, our own experience. But it seems to be the fashion right now to privately, after class, over lunch, or in our offices roll our eyes when the D-word comes up.

Now, as a teacher and an administrator, I do think I understand why that is and I've been guilty of it myself. It's because, I believe, we've all been forced to watch (but asked not to notice) as important, sociopolitical concepts and achievements like "mulitculturalism," "art," "sexuality" and "diversity" have been emptied of their power and complexity and reduced to marketing devices by our institutions. (The jingoism having to do with "new technologies" can also be added to that list.) When stuff matters to you-which I would venture to say is what sucked most of us into universities in the first place-that kind of thing is pretty hard to take. Feigning cynical distance can definetely help. But, I hate to see students adopting that glib attitude because I know they got it from us. I hate to see them giving in to the (fleeting) glamour of cynicism because, like cigarette smoking, I know that it will leave them slavish, hacking, and kind of gray-in no time at all.

Our academic culture is sodden with our own "knowing-ness" right now. We are hip-deep in received notions about received notions. That's why I think it is especially important to remind ourselves and each other that just because the discourse surrounding a subject (be it feminism, identity politics, or homosexuality) has become insipid, overdetermined, or reduced to fashion by the academy (or the marketplace), it doesn't mean that the complexity and relevancy of the subject itself has been. Remember that the limitations of academic (and commercial) discourse should not be attributed to the object of that discourse. Out Inside. can serve as such a reminder.

Art can-when it happens.