Extreme Academia, Safe Hermeneutics

8 Responses to “Extreme Academia, Safe Hermeneutics”

1. danny
   January 27th, 2005 @ 10:32 pm

   No, it’s pretty cheap and I reckon you’re right. Disappointing because I’ve used Giroux’s work in the past and of course he’s done great stuff. But half of this article is a summary of news reports that at least 10 blogs have done better, then some very general speculations on teaching practice that he’s covered before. It’s a bit sad when “global media events” inspire op-ed in academic journals, instead of careful research. Anyway, at least you’ve found something to be crabby about, it’s therapeutic!

2. Glen
   January 28th, 2005 @ 12:17 am

   Yeah!

   Fire up!

   [new nickname]

   Mel ‘Givemhell’ Gregg

   [/new nickname]

   Well, [after a smoke] maybe not… I dunno. Because ‘giving someone hell’ (in Aussie vernacular), which means ’sticking it to them’ (in some other mode of commonspeak, probably Empire), which means having the passion to speak, to be critical, to ‘let them have it’ (again, from somewhere, probably Iraq), means having the gumption – the ‘guts’ (in all their affective glory) – to be passionate enough about something to do something about it.

   The [becoming-rhetorical, almost] question I have, then, is how do you navigate this line, drawn in the politico-discursive sand, of ‘passion’?

   Clearly we have to be passionate about what we do, you would not have finished the huge amount of work that went into your PhD if you had not been passionate, and you would not find the words to speak your concerns and target your worries if you were not passionate enough about them. But passion is exactly what is being mobilised by the ‘enemy’ – those forces of Empire that actively reproduce the state of affairs in which we find themselves. A passionate disinterestedness in the world and all its suffering.

   That is what Grossberg missed, because he was too early, the absolute passion for dispassion. People don’t care about anything besides the maintenance of the state of affairs that allows them to continue not caring. (Perhaps this is why Beazely is such a bad replacement, because he will allow people to switch off, he is not going to be a better John Howard, therefore people won’t give a fuck about changing anything. Dunno??)

   It all feels a little too much sometimes, I think… but perhaps this too-muchness is exactly what is being mobilised against itself and peddled is the political release from the too-much of the world???

   Perhaps it is exactly this mundane passion for the everyday that you draw attention to in your call for more in-depth research?

   I guess, ultimately, I am fighting for ‘passion’ or maybe just passionately for anything but this terrible world I dunno, but I’m in its corner, whatever it is, in this weird boxing match of a world that feels like a staged fight being held in a ring that unfortunately has no corners. Because I’m passionate…

3. Glen
   January 28th, 2005 @ 2:12 am

   Ok, some less rantful comments. I can generate so much bullshit sometimes…

   “Either ethics makes no sense at all, or this is what it means and has nothing else to say: not to be unworthy of what happens to us. To grasp whatever happens as unjust and unwarranted (it is always someone else’s fault) is, on the contrary, what renders our sores repgunant — veritable *ressentiment*, resentment of the event. There is no other ill will. What is really immoral is the use of moral notions like just or unjust, merit or fault. What does it mean then to will the event? It is highly probably that resignation is only one more figure of ressentiment, since ressentiment has many figures. If willing the event is, primarily, to release its eternal truth, like the fire on which it is fed, this will would reach the point at which war is waged against war, the wound would be the living trace and the scar of all wounds, and the death turned on itself would be willed against all deaths.” -Deleuze, LoS p 149.

   1) Mel, I reckon you are too harsh. The US has a _very_ different climate to Australia in terms of the public opinion over the war on terror. Speaking from experience, when I was in Pittsburgh last year I was shocked by the saturation of the urban landscape with symbols of patriotism. Perhaps his work needs to be placed in a context. Do you think he is writing that for us?

   2) I don’t think he is attempting to take the moral high ground in the slightest, rather he is arguing the opposite (hence the deleuze quote above). He is examining the distribution of ‘morals’ across the discursive terrain of the media.

   3) The key point he hammers home (and maybe, Danny, he has written this before, but I haven’t read much, so there you go…) relates to the key point in Deleuzes words above. Who is the ‘us’? Is it merely the ‘US’? It is a question that CS/poco people have been dealing with for ages and I think Giroux does a good job of pointing the related problems in this context.

4. danny
   January 28th, 2005 @ 8:06 am

   Glen, I’m sorry, I just think it’s journalism and should be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Where it would be fine and make the points you identify. But I thought the idea of academic journals was to make a contribution to the field, whereas here Giroux just performs his “take” on nationalism and the war. It’s cool, but to me it’s not research as we might usually think about it, particularly because its references are predominantly mass media rather than showing any respect for the actual labour performed by researchers. If you want to suggest that “Who is the ‘us’? Is it merely the ‘US’? It is a question that CS/poco people have been dealing with for ages” then we could at least expect Giroux to give some detailed reading of how that question has been “dealt with” and hopefully extend our understanding of it. I didn’t get that from the article.

5. mc gregg
   January 28th, 2005 @ 10:08 am

   Thanks Danny, I think describing it as journalism helps clarify things. I still think there’s an important article in there had there been more strategic editing, and I don’t doubt the passion or good faith of the piece. The conclusion probably sums up my main problem: ‘As a political and moral practice, education must be engaged… as one of the primary conditions for constructing political and moral agents…’ I have deep reservations about this point on its own, but when it’s coupled with a parting gesture that posits democracy as something that shouldn’t be ‘limited to the nation-state’ but ‘extended to the international community’, we are talking about a colonial relation of benevolence, and there seems to me something highly culturally insenstitive about this. Yet again, there is no possibility for an Other to speak, let alone refuse the best intentions of the American Right or Left (for both agree on the same principle that democracy is universally desirable). In a situation like the Abu Ghraib incident, which is only one part of a highly contentious invasion, I think cultural studies ought to be offering more than another American perspective. It is at times like these that the cultural specificity of the American world-view needs to be contextualised rather than reified. Glen, it shouldn’t fall on an international readership to make allowances for the particular climate out of which this work is generated. US publishers rarely grant us the same luxury.

6. Glen
   January 28th, 2005 @ 12:39 pm

   Danny, oh, I haven’t ever read the chronic’ of Hi’r Ed. Maybe it should be there? But then we are patrolling the boundaries of what has to be academic work. Maybe, in all seriousness, I am not ‘academic’ enough to really be able to tell the difference?

   But maybe no other journal would publish it? Or maybe CultStuds has a much wider readership of the right people?

   Again, I would ask, is he writing it for us? I don’t think so, not at all. ‘Not us’ along two axes. ‘Not us’ because we are not part of the introverted US nation state and ‘not us’ because we are not involved in pedagogical practice in the US – from intstitutionalised education primary school to hi’r ed to everyday education and social reproduction.

   So what if it is published in the wrong journal? I guess if I had an article on the line and it was pushed out by this piece then I would be annoyed. But that probably won’t ever happen…;)

   The full quote:

   “Education after Abu Ghraib must imagine a future in which learning is inextricably connected to social change, the obligations of civic justice, and a notion of democracy in which peace, equality, compassion and freedom are not limited to the nation-state but extended to the international community.”

   I think you could rewrite that (going overboard to make my point, and I guess yours, Mel):

   “[US] education after Abu Ghraib must imagine a future in which learning is inextricably connected to social change, the obligations of civic justice, and a notion of [US] democracy in which peace, equality, compassion and freedom [-- the alleged ideals of US democracy --] are not limited to the [US] nation-state [or within US borders] but extended to the international community.”

   His point was not so much ‘democracy’ being spread around the world, but the ideals (attributes) of ‘peace, equality, compassion and freedom’ (that supposedly define US national democracy) should not only apply to the US nation-state and her people or be bound by national borders. What is being sold, cajoled and controlled atm is the rotting husk of ‘democracy’ without peace, equality, compassion and freedom. I think he was making a very simple point that deserves to be made.

   I am always suspect when people tell me things like “Oh it is far too parochial.” Which to me is code for “It doesn’t fit into the US-centric worldview.” So I certainly agree with you both on that point. This paper is speaking from the heart of Empire and I think to ‘cut it some slack’ requires reading throught the Empirese.

   BTW, I read the below as slight jab at N&H’s concept of the ‘common’ deployed in _Multitude_:

   “Critique also had to come to grips with the affective investments that tied individuals, including critics, to ideologies and practices of domination and how an analysis of the deep structures of domination might help to provide a more powerful critique and healthy suspicion of various appeals to community, the public and the

   social. Clearly, while it is imperative to reclaim the discourse of community, the commons, and public good as part of a broader discourse of democracy, such terms need to be embraced critically in light of the ways in which they

   have often served the instruments of dominant power.”

7. danny
   January 28th, 2005 @ 5:08 pm

   Hey Glen – OK, yes it is interesting in and of itself, and in some ways it shouldn’t matter where it ends up. But I felt that Melissa’s concern in this post is both about the limits of the rhetoric (which her comment covers ably) and what it means for cultural studies, the discipline her research is heavily invested in. So I think a leading journal publishing something that is not really research is sort of concerning in itself, and when one adds the neo-colonial aspect in (I mean, you can’t really tell from the piece whether he’s actually read the research in the previous issues of CS), I can see why mc would be grumpy about it!

   It’s fair enough to say simple points need to be made, but is that the case across the board? Is one of the few places where complex points are made about culture also supposed to be subject to this? I just get the feeling that unless you consume a heck of a lot of US media, the article just isn’t that insightful. Are you asking to have it read on its own terms? Well, I’m over the terms, I’ve given up reading most of the “public sphere” bloggers who covered the war/US election (Tom Tomorrow, Atrios, etc.) because that discourse just doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere outside of a very particular space.

8. Christian McCrea
   January 29th, 2005 @ 5:10 pm

   Fuck I love you guys right now. (word)

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