[csaa-forum] Rebecca and the beach

[Jason Jacobs]

Thanks to Catherine for her robust response. Of course social and 
historical conditions are important, as my own work makes clear; I was 
objecting sarcastically to what I see as a banal tendency to praise and 
celebrate cultural works for being what they cannot help but be - products 
of their time. We shouldn't limit ourselves, our teaching and criticism to 
simply delineating social and historical conditions: knowing the time and 
place of something is a blunt little tool when confronted with, say, the 
brilliance of Agnes Moorhead in The Magnificent Ambersons, or why one 
episode of the Sopranos is more successful than another, or in accounting 
for the power and impact of the first movement of the Eroica. 

I understand why, in the present environment my claims seem strange. I 
think there is a knee-jerk response to evaluative criticism that seems to 
think it is about claiming that art works have  *this much* importance and 
*this much* achievement and therefore belong at *this* position in the 
critical hierarchy. But evaluative criticism is not a court of law. It is 
a contribution to a debate that anyone may question - indeed cultural 
studies has shown that questioning hierarchies and canons is pretty much 
its bread and butter - without intervention from the cultural police!

I have no investment in absolute aesthetic value, whatever that is, and 
Adorno was probably one of the greatest mystics of the last century 
(remember this populist claimed that the only way to 'listen' to music is 
to read it in silence!); if anyone has any illusions about the theoretical 
power of Adorno I recommend reading the first chapter of Istvan Meszaroz's 
The Power of Ideology. 

If anyone can find a scholar working in cultural studies who is pro-human, 
pro-Enlightenment, and anti-relativist, I'll eat my words.

Finally, to return to the original topic, it is truly astonishing that 
anyone working in academia should complain about their time. I cannot 
think of another profession where we have so much flexibility in 
organising our time. About from fixed venues, like teaching and meetings, 
the time - 24hrs - is ours to organise, plus we get a significant amount 
of time during the long vacations (even longer I think in the UK). There 
are many things wrong with contemporary higher education - the degradation 
of standards, the assault on the integrity of academic judgement etc - but 
time is hardly one of them. 

Jason

PS: if anyone wants a copy of my Screen Aesthetics course outline I'll 
happily send it. 


Dr Jason Jacobs
Senior Lecturer
School of Arts, Media and Culture
Griffith University
Nathan Campus
Queensland 4111
Australia
Phone: (07) 3875 5164
Fax: (07) 3875 7730





Catherine Driscoll <catherine.driscoll at arts.usyd.edu.au>
Sent by: csaa-forum-bounces at lists.cdu.edu.au
11/08/2004 04:40 PM
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        Subject:        Re: [csaa-forum] Rebecca and the beach


What a strange set of claims.

Relativism arrogantly claims to have all the answers, while claims that 
particular works are just without question excellent does not, apparently, 

make any claim to have the answers. By association at the very least, all 
theorists not used by you are theoretically bankrupt mystics even when 
they 
would clearly share your concerns about relativism and your investment in 
absolute aesthetic value (as Adorno would). All these bankrupt mystics are 

also clearly, by your blanket assertion, "anti-human, anti-Enlightenment, 
anti-reason, anti-judgement and pro-relativist", as are all of us with the 

temerity to notice that our students are often much more comfortable with 
generalisations and transcendent human "truths" than they are with 
acknowledging that what we see and hear is constructed by social and 
historical conditions.

I, for one, would be most interested in seeing this curriculum.

Best wishes,
Catherine

At 03:01 PM 11/08/2004 +1000, you wrote:

>I don't buy the story that before the meteor of cultural studies 
clarified 
>everything humanities teaching and research was a theoretical Jurassic 
>forest, full of nasty creatures. In fact cultural studies today is every 
>bit as ideologically naive as what came before. Today the ideology is 
>this: anti-human, anti-Enlightenment, anti-reason, anti-judgement and 
>pro-relativist. You see it dripping from every set of scare quotes 
>('truth' 'real' etc) and every lame assertion that what we see and hear 
is 
>constructed by social and historical conditions. (What insight!) I'm 
>currently teaching a new course which is about cultivating judgement, 
>eschewing relativism and actually engaging with artworks (film and 
>television); the students find it hard because it does not arrogantly 
>claim to have all the answers. It grants that there may be aspects of the 

>world that cultural studies has neither the imagination nor the theory to 

>grasp, that there are works of excellence whose achievements might take a 

>lifetime to account for. I'd rather be teaching that than supplying the 
>false idea that everything can be explained (or 'approached' - since I'm 
>sure there can be no 'final' 'truthful' explanation...) by a bit of 
>Foucault, Adorno, Deleuze or any other theoretically bankrupt mystic.
>
>
>Dr Jason Jacobs
>Senior Lecturer
>School of Arts, Media and Culture
>Griffith University
>Nathan Campus
>Queensland 4111
>Australia
>Phone: (07) 3875 5164
>Fax: (07) 3875 7730
>_______________________________________
>
>csaa-forum
>discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>
>www.csaa.asn.au

---------
Dr Catherine Driscoll
Lecturer
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
University of Sydney
Phone: (61-2) 9036 9503
Fax: (61-2) 9351 5336
--------- 

_______________________________________

csaa-forum
discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia

www.csaa.asn.au


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