Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1929–2022)

A thorough and detailed examination of how diversity work is done in an academic institution. Moreover, it focuses on how diversity work is conceptualized and experienced by those who do it. The research centers around interviews of diversity professionals. Damningly, they speak of their own work as repeatedly beating their heads against a brick wall.

The book delves deep into the Kafkaesque maze of justifications and rationalizations that make up the meat of this labor. The first job of a show more diversity officer is to create a diversity policy. Once the policy is created, it needs to be reviewed, approved, and disseminated. Naturally, after that, it will have to be frequently revised. The job then quickly becomes a matter of creating and moving papers around. If the papers are publicly lauded, then the institution is considered "good at diversity".

It's not long before complaints of racism or bias can be refuted simply by pointing to this paper which clearly states the institution's commitment to diversity. "We can't be racist" or "You can't have experienced racist behavior" because that would violate the institutional policy. The work of the diversity officer in many ways becomes to prove that the institution is not racist, rather than correcting the racist structure of the institution.

Despite the necessarily superficial and ineffectual nature of this work, diversity practitioners still face tremendous hurdles to accomplishing even this much. Blame is shifted easily from the one who has committed an offense to the one who witnesses it. Despite having a top notch diversity policy, academic institutions continue to be remarkably white and male. And naturally, the racism that pervades the institution remains unchecked and frequently unremarked upon.

This is not an uplifting or optimistic book, but it is an extremely clarifying look into the belly of the beast. I found it extremely enlightening and it helped me put into words issues I've sensed but been unable to fully grasp. show less

Hans Magnus Enzensberger seems to be almost a parody of the high-profile German intellectual, famous for always being in the foreground when there's a camera or a microphone around, and usually with a political opinion that's at ninety degrees to those of the other intellectuals around him. Inter alia, his legend includes a Quixotic attack on the all-powerful Spiegel and FAZ in the fifties, borrowing Khruschev's swimming trunks and sheltering Baader-Meinhof terrorists on the run in the show more sixties, and supporting the US side in the first Gulf War.

But that's all short-term stuff. What matters about him is his work as editor of a couple of now-legendary literary magazines and the bibliophile series "Die Andere Bibliothek", through which he was able to promote numerous previously-unknown writers (most famously W.G. Sebald), and of course his gloriously rebellious lyric verse, which has been hitting its targets with precision, fluency and wild originality for well over half a century.

Enzensberger seems to be determined that the "Selected Poems" he leaves for posterity should be his own choice, and consequently he has to keep reissuing new versions of it, updated to include the last two or three collections. I have the "1950-2015" version, which rather oddly seems to have been published in 2014. Logically it should thus have included some poems he was planning to write later, but more prosaically it turns out that it concludes with three new poems not previously published.

There's a huge range of subject-matter and forms, although free-verse predominates. There are poems about current affairs, renaissance painters, the weather, language, love, the author's nose, you name it. And he can find the ridiculous in anything. A superb parody of legal language ("Vorschlag sum Strafrechtsreform") is followed two pages later by an Audenesque celebration of the wonders of shit ("Die Scheiße"). A book everyone who reads German should have on their poetry shelf (only to replace it by the "1950-2020" version, when that comes out, of course!). show less

This is an academic (but very readable) look at the act of doing and being diversity in an institutional context. The foundation of Ahmed's book is a series of interviews with diversity professionals at universities in the UK and Australia, as well as her personal experience as a woman of color in the institutions where she's worked. Ahmed doesn't give the reader any easy steps to take, but instead brings us a clear look at how institutions work and what that means for the people or groups show more who are trying to change an institutional culture that reproduces and favors whiteness.

Much of what she talks about reflects concerns and experiences I've heard from friends and colleagues of color. Other topics shone a light on things I'd never thought about, but that I recognized as an obvious part of the institutional foundations I've experienced. Ahmed's narrative includes looking at the language we use to describe this work (including why "diversity" is such a beloved term), how whiteness as the norm impacts workers and students of color, what actually goes on in committee meetings, the way an institution can be personified, how documents can help and hinder communication, and she ultimately explores some philosophical approaches to thinking through these efforts in a fresh way.

Although there are aspects of the interviews and assertions that are unique to a UK context, most of what Ahmed discusses is just as applicable to institutions in the United States. And while her philosophy and academic background can sometimes make this a dense book, her clear writing style makes it an easy read (and one that made me want to underline every spot-on sentence). I'd really recommend this book for anyone interested in picking apart the successes and failures of institutional diversity efforts (particularly in higher education). show less

Ma chi è questa Josefine? Questa modernissima anziana signora, campionessa del pensiero indipendente, dell'understatement, della provocazione?
Non lo scopre il protagonista, e non lo scopriremo certo noi, che non abbiamo gli strumenti del mitico Enzensberger, che per carpirne i segreti mette in campo tutti i trucchi contenuti nel suo enorme bagaglio di letterato.
Ma forse Josefine è un po' ciascuno di noi, e quindi è inutile innervosirsi con la vecchia signora.