RSL, Conclusion

F. débaucher is, according to Littré and Hatzfeld, derived from n. bauche, of which the precise sense and origin are according to the latter unknown; according to the former it = ‘a place of work, workshop’, so that desbaucher would mean orig. ‘to draw away from the workshop, from one's work or duty’.

Oxford English Dictionary

I usually introduce my writing workshops by explaining the etymology of "debauchery". Today, the word means "a vicious indulgence in sensual pleasures", but it stems from "seduction from duty, integrity, or virtue; corruption." The modern sense of "debauch" apparently emerged in the 17th century, i.e., at the beginning of the modern era, when we began to separate the pursuit of profit from the pursuit of pleasure. Today, of course, these pursuits are specialized, and localized in places like factories and brothels, office buildings and movie houses. We commute back and forth between drudgery and debauchery, meaningless toil and mindless fun.

The central message of this book is that we must learn to "get back to work", that in a "post-industrial" age that is becoming a little too comfortable with the idea of "knowledge production", we must insist on research as a craft. A workshop is a place to take craftsmanship seriously and derive pleasure from the first-hand manipulation of materials. Quality in any art, I believe, depends on integrating (and in our age this means reintegrating) productivity and sensuality, industry and creativity. It is the opposite of the vicious indulgence in sensual pleasures, the pursuit of false pleasure, we might say. Quality is a true pleasure; it is the sensuality of work. We are not just 'producers', we are makers.

It is precisely in the development of a craft, after all, that it is important to see yourself as someone who makes something, not a merely particular kind of being. It is true that becoming a scholar will change you as a person, but it is your activities that will change you, not some act of will, and certainly not some state of mind. I have found, for example, that many students, and even young faculty, need to become much more assertive, much more confident about what they have to say. Some of them think they are following the example of the self-deprecating scholar who always reminds you how little they know, how new this topic is to them, how difficult it is even for them to understand. The students who witness this performance forget that it is an exercise in irony. The pose of the searching, uncertain scholar is grounded in an underlying confidence in one's ability to speak intelligently on a range of subjects (those that define the field). Don't think that if a famous scholar admits to being uncertain then your uncertainty, and your willingness to admit it, is a sure sign that you've got a future in scholarship. Look at what scholars do, not what they say they are, and ask yourself whether you can do it too.

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