After the Hunt

Have a good day, madame.

- Good morning, Professor. - Good morning.

Not wallowing in myopia.

Kierkegaard said that, I think...

Yeah, but isn't that, like, implied?

That it's preferable for one to focus only on themselves.

Mmm. Busy week, Alma.

Mmm. I'm aware.

PATRICIA He's at Knox's lecture, sucking up. Ha!

See you tonight, Patricia.

Foucault paints a picture of public torture

performed in order to maintain the social contract

of a time in which displays of power...

Faviola.

- The table looks beautiful. - Thank you.

I'm not contesting the...

perceived existence of a collective morality.

I'm...

saying that...

I'm saying that

pretending that the ethics of a society

hasn't always started with the highly biased

stone-throwing court of public opinion...

Maggie.

Uh, yeah.

Is a convenient illusion.

Aimed at what?

Aimed at making us, as people, feel as though

we once had a plan for ourselves. We were...

better or more united.

Weren't we?

Would you say we've always agreed on...

God or sex or race or politics,

or were there just fewer voices,

less easily amassed in dissent?

That reminds me, what did you say?

What was the thing you said?

What's that thing you said?

- "Performative discontent." - Discontent.

Ah! Oof!

You read Maggie's dissertation, right?

Of course.

She's giving me little scraps.

That's all I'm getting, little scraps.

But what I have read is...

- Is barely coherent? - No.

I'm curious what you think, Alma.

I think it has potential to be great.

Truly great.

So why're you hiding it?

Why? Why? You're tight.

Why're you so tight?

All your generation,

everyone in your generation, you're so tight.

- Fuckin' why. I'm so sorry. - Look at life. Look at that.

Perfect. Exemplar.

What are you scared of?

Scared of saying the wrong thing or, uh,

- offending someone. - I'm sorry about that.

When did offending someone

become the preeminent cardinal sin?

I mean, I don't have a date exactly...

That's fine.

...but maybe it's around the same time your generation

started making sweeping generalizations about ours.

Are you scared that we're gonna think less of you

if it isn't perfect?

Whatever shame you have around your self-expression,

it is...

it's false. It's bullshit.

- It's bullshit. - Bullshit.

- It's bullshit. - Bullshit?

You can't corrupt your individual purpose,

your clarity of voice. It's...

it's too lucid.

Okay. Um...

That feels like my cue to use the restroom.

Why?

'Cause you need the restroom or...

Oh, honey, uh,

don't go to the usual one, 'cause Frederik has a...

project in there.

Uh, go to the guest one down the hall.

'Kay.

And then she said that all along, you know?

Man, I cannot...

I agree with her in the beginning...

Keep it up, okay?

This is exactly the tactic and it's doing things.

Well, I don't wanna always be a contrarian.

Why not?

My sense is that the two of you

might feel rather bereft

once you've gotten the thing you've been

so fixated on for the past six years, hmm?

Sometimes...

a wish fulfilled...

can be more baffling than the...

longing preceding it.

It's not a sure thing.

Oh... Hey, come on, Alma.

Don't let your modesty veer into delusion.

It's not a, um...

it's not a mountaintop, Fred. It's not some egoic...

teleological pursuit to tenure. It's...

It's a threshold. It's just a threshold to more freedom...

to freedom, to follow any impulse,

any desire, any interest you want

without fear of systemic reproach.

Oh, I'm not questioning its value.

I'm saying that...

well, it is a significant thing

to work your whole life for, hmm?

Being above accountability,

uh, consequence.

What happens if, uh,

one of you gets it and the other doesn't?

Oof.

If it's me and not you, will you be angry?

Yeah, I'll be rageful. Yeah.

Me too.

If it's you and not me. Furious.

Or will the strain of it

be too much for your friendship?

Hank, I'm fearing, doesn't like to lose.

Shit.

Fuck.

But seriously, how many of the people we teach...

Mmm, mmm.

have private lives that wouldn't pass today's muster?

Hmm.

- All. Well, most. Plenty. - Most. Precisely. So...

But we forgive it. Why? Because...

- we have to figure out... - Best to forgive it.

...how to forgive it, because they're canonical.

Nietzsche easily lends himself to

- Lebensraum propaganda. - Carl Schmitt...

doesn't just lend himself, he was a Nazi.

Sure, sure. Um...

Hegel, uh, couldn't...

- control little Hegel. - Okay.

- Heidegger. - Little?

Heidegger treated Arendt like shit.

Well, that whole dynamic, fucked up.

So I don't think we can

appropriate blame one way or the other.

Aristotle, xenophobe.

- Oh, they were all racist. - Yeah.

- And Freud was a misogynist. - Hmm.

Did you hear that, darling?

Freud was a misogynist, darling.

Oh, it was a different time.

Um, you know, if you're

- worried about tenure... - You okay?

- ...you shouldn't be. - Yeah.

Me? Oh.

Oh...

Um...

Well, I mean, you were gonna get it anyway,

but you'll definitely get it now.

What do you mean? Let's not.

No, come on, I'm interested.

- Illuminate us. - Okay. Okay.

You can't deny it's the culture.

- Mm-hmm. - The common enemy

has been newly chosen,

and it is the straight, white, cis man.

Okay, Arthur, I'm so sorry,

'cause I just had, like,

I had no idea that you were going through this...

that you were feeling so victimized.

I literally never said that.

You didn't have to.

But you're still bemoaning the fact that you're...

white and male and, uh,

straight and, regrettably, cis...

in a time when the overt culture

is just pretending,

like, you know it's pretend, right,

pretending to not prefer these things,

and that makes you, what,

the first man in this room or...

- or in history... - History.

...to feel fucked over by society's bad opinion?

- No. - All I'm saying...

is that it used to be that a man would edge out

an equally qualified woman

because he was a man.

But now a woman does just edge out

an equally qualified man because she's a woman.

So let me get this straight.

What you're saying is...

that even despite...

the many professional accolades I have accrued

over the years in a...

deeply misogynistic environment,

even despite coming back after a...

protracted absence,

only to affirm my singular position

as a woman in the field,