It’s the postmodernism, stupid

Posted on | April 11, 2007 | 13 Comments

Wow. If you wanted to take an opportunity to collapse every workplace grievance you felt in one very public statement, this feature in The Australian’s Higher Education lift-out today would seem to be a pin-up example. Let’s see: Cultural relativism = postmodernism / poststructuralism = cultural studies = Alan McKee & John Hartley = radical philistinism. Apparently, ‘the present situation is one where educational institutions are beset with wilful ignorance and culturally the ruling slogan appears to be “the grosser the better”.’ Well, last I checked QUT’s trademarked slogan is “A University for The Real World” – where people can be quite cruel and nasty, and also get very rich by exploiting society’s perceptions of disability. I suppose it’s lucky for Hookham and MacLennan that in the real world of Australian politics, this kind of argument is what passes for intellectual debate.

Category: Academia, Politics, Work

Comments

13 Responses to “It’s the postmodernism, stupid”

  1. glen
    April 11th, 2007 @ 4:47 pm

    meh i agree with much of the higher ed article. only problem is that I don’t think they take it far enough and properly understand the genius of manipulating stupidity, they go in the opposite direction and believe that the wilfull production of offensive cultural tools within the cultural industry to individuate audiences is somehow less of an art than Shakespeare’s work!?Q!?! shakespeare and BB or whatever are singular and are not comparable.

  2. melgregg
    April 11th, 2007 @ 5:27 pm

    But Glen! Don’t get all post-structuralist! :)

  3. glen
    April 11th, 2007 @ 9:42 pm

    I was fed after midnight (breakfast?), sorry, so I was turned into a poststructuralist gremlin. However, my reproductive cycle requires more than just water to multiply into more cute little cultstud PhD mogwais. But that would be like totally awesome, could save heaps on booze and other stuff.

  4. barry
    April 12th, 2007 @ 10:09 am

    god, not this again. the phrase ‘useful idiots’ springs to mind.

  5. jean
    April 12th, 2007 @ 10:50 am

    oh, i feel all confused and helpless in the face of all the critical truthiness. mission accomplished, toxic warriors.

  6. jean
    April 12th, 2007 @ 11:09 am

    more seriously, I do know a bit about this project and what happened at Michael’s confirmation seminar. The argument (which the authors of this wilfully ignorant diatribe failed to gloss at all) goes something like this: taboo subjects for humour reveal the boundaries of social inclusion, therefore treating marginalised social identities humorously promotes the perception of them as inside, rather than outside, the social imaginary. This is the argument used by another of Alan McKee’s students, Andrew King, in his doctoral study of sexualised representations of Indigenous Australians. In both cases, I think there are serious problems with that argument from an ethical point of view – you can always laugh, even cruelly, at the powerful because any harm you do them is a useful balance to their power. Think about the trope that making evil dictators ridiculous is the best way of getting rid of them (Joh Bjelke Petersen, for example). And in any case, in my (postmodern relativist post-structuralist philistine) version of cultural studies it’s the reception of texts that generates their meanings and social implications, and not the intentionality of the author. So if the first principle is ‘do no harm’, and if your jokes or sex scenes make real people feel hurt, then you’ve got it wrong. I’m sure when Michael’s work makes the transition from PhD project to “Controversial Hit Series” we’ll be hearing a lot more about all that. And by the way, do no harm? That’s a lesson in ethics that the lonely little members of the Creative Industries Resistance might take to heart.

  7. Mel
    April 12th, 2007 @ 1:16 pm

    The thing that struck me most about this is the ugliness of making a workplace grievance public. I was like, “It’s just fucking tacky and unprofessional to bitch about your co-workers in a public forum.”

    Could this happen in other industries? If, for argument’s sake, you work at a market research firm and you have a major disagreement with your workmates about the ethics of a research project, it probably won’t end up as a broadsheet broadside like this – it might get into Crikey, if that.

    Of course, it’s just like The Australian to offer to referee such demeaning bitchfights, and to pretend that they constitute legitimate public dialogue.

  8. jean
    April 12th, 2007 @ 2:10 pm

    Mel, no it wouldn’t happen in the ‘real world’ (heh), because you’re bound by “corporate loyalty” and don’t have “academic freedom” (which apparently includes the freedom to irresponsibly misrepresent the work of and arguably slander your workplace enemies). And yes, and it’s the second time The Australian has done exactly the same thing. shame, Oz, shame.

  9. Kim
    April 13th, 2007 @ 12:10 am

    Trackback:

    http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/04/13/laughing-at-the-disabled/

  10. danny
    April 13th, 2007 @ 6:48 am

    Jean’s points are great re: the project. But I’m intrigued at the relationship between the Australian and disgruntled QUT CI academics, as this is not the first such article. I think it’s worth remembering back to the very effective use of the Australian and popular media channels for advocacy purposes by Hartley and Cunningham in the CI heyday. I think there’s something in here about living and dying by the sword… and perhaps an indicator of unintended consequences that can emerge from certain forms of popular advocacy of academic work.

  11. danny
    April 13th, 2007 @ 7:11 am

    By which I don’t mean to support Hookham and MacLennan’s wilful misrepresentations of postmodernism and appalling dirty laundry clearing in any way.

  12. event mechanics » Blog Archive » Sonnet #IB
    April 15th, 2007 @ 1:50 pm

    [...] Inspired by a number of occurences and events — first Shakespeare being mentioned in a university workplace stoush about poststructuralism in a newspaper article via Mel’s blog, and second the other Mel’s post about Beyonce being Crazy in Love in part in reference to a previous post on event, structure and romance, and last a fuse blowing at work — here is my “Sonnet #IB”. [...]

  13. Laughing at/with/for/about people with disabilities? No one’s laughing now » The Bartlett Diaries
    June 11th, 2007 @ 2:06 pm

    [...] Kim at Larvatus Prodeo was not very sympathetic of their line of argument, although it seemed to me to be partly in reaction to the personal nature of some of the criticism, as well as the use of post-modernism as the whipping boy. However, she made some valid points. She is an amputee, so is able to bring the perspective and experience of life with that disability to her comments. Other commentary made at the time included Mel at Home Cooked Theory, and Verity at The Dead Roo.  As is usual for me, I can see some validity in all the varying perspectives, but none of that justifies sacking people for six months because they were publicly critical. [...]

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