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49. Report on Professor Shamus’s Course (1994)1
“First Class, September 19, 1994
“A small but crowded classroom. Professor Shamus comes in and sits down. He is
casually dressed but with a rather imposing look. He starts to explain why the
primary text, Merleau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, isn’t available in the
bookstore. I have difficulty following his explanation. He then tells us that, given
the heavy workload, he would prefer to have only those students willing to roll up
their sleeves. Anyone who is not prepared to do so should think about clearing out.
“He gives us a couple of handouts. One of them is an unidentified excerpt from a
philosophy text. The other is an untitled poem beginning with the line, “Think
flesh.” He gives us ten minutes to read and think about these texts.
“A discussion follows after the ten-minute break. He focuses in on one student who
is obviously trying hard to understand the unidentified Merleau-Ponty text.
Professor Shamus seems particularly concerned with the student’s choice of words.
They seem inept to him and he badgers her about this. The student doggedly goes
from one explanation to another. An amazing amount of time is taken up by this.
“Despite the difficulty of the Merleau-Ponty text, Professor Shamus at no time
makes any attempt to identify it. He seems to think that we should be able to grasp
it without any preliminaries.
“Then he gives us a reading assignment for the next class. It’s an excerpt from the
fourth chapter of Merleau-Ponty’s posthumous work, The Visible and the Invisible.
This text is even more difficult than the first. After class I go to Professor Shamus’s
office. I tell him that I am perplexed by the way he’s proceeding. Instead of
showing any surprise or concern, he tells me: ‘Give it time. There’s no closure.’
“Second Class, September 26, 1994
“Professor Shamus asks us if we have any questions about The Visible and the
Invisible text. No one is able to do more than raise a few feeble questions. Showing
impatience, he then asks, ‘How can we