[csaa-forum] no (conciliatory) capitulation

langley timmy timmylangley at yahoo.com
Mon Feb 28 12:52:41 CST 2005


dear ben,

thanks for your reply. you raise some very pertinent,
relevant and important points, and i agree with many
of them. however, i believe you have misread my
assertions (or i did not make them clear enough).
1. i was talking about 'perceived' (if not paranoid)
threat these critics see these disciplines pose.
2. these disciplines, i agree, should not have to
explicitly question traditional assumptions. as i
said, these different disciplines are and absolutely
should be heterogeneous. however, the 'perceived'
perception of these critics (not that i know what they
think; this is my reading of their writings) is that
these diverse disciplines and diverse and conflictual
(if not, at times, incommensurable) positions and
methodologies are a threat to (the importance and
positions of) tradition disciplines (english
literature, history; before the influence of, as
windschuttle has complain about in 'killing history',
poststructuralism, postmodernism, postcolonialism)
which implicitly and explicitly support (in
complicated and at time contradictory ways)
traditional assumptions (male/anglo-celtic etc). this
operation of western style academy (and its
implicit/explicit support of traditional often western
assumptions) has been explored extensively by numerous
postcolonial theorist. it is this heterogeneity of
these disciplines which is the precise reason why, and
not because of a 'reduced politics', these critics
dislike these disciplines: that the canon is no longer
the centre of analyses, or that the canon is read
politically (as it has been, particularly by
postcolonial theorists) as a western construction;
political analyses critics like windschuttle see as
postmodern/poststructural relativism. while
postcolonial challenges to the canon's (and
historically western pedagogy's) eurocentrism, is for
windschuttle (windschuttle is a fierce critic of the
postcolonial discourse theorist edward said),
irrational, unempirical and overtly political;
therefore wrong. 
you are absoultely right about the importance and
relevance of 'trac[ing] the presence (if any) of
Thucydides in pop-cultural texts, and evaluat[ing]its
relevance to present-day media consumers by conducting
surveys'. but that's what mini melleuish is critical
about: for melleusih (this is not my
opinion)Thucydides is too important for these
irrelevant comparisons, like the irrelevance (this is
not my opinion) of other 'everday' cultural analyses.
3. you are right on the last point: asking others is a
productive way to obtain information, granted.
however, is the reason why you chose winschuttle
because, as you say, he is 'the most infamous
characters on Australia's intellectual scene'?

cheers tim.

 --- Ben Hourigan <mail at benhourigan.com> wrote: 
> On 28 Feb 2005, at 10:52, langley timmy wrote:
> 
> > just a very quick response to Ben Hourigan:
> >
> > 1.these critics dislike all disciplines ending in
> > 'studies', not because of any (totalitarian)
> marxist
> > positions or methodologies (as mini melleuish's
> > latest attack demonstrates) but because these
> 'new'
> > discipline question (unsettle/challenge) universal
> > (male/anglo-celtic/christian/european) assumptions
> > that underline these critics subjectivities and
> > cultural positions.
> 
> Surely our entire discipline (and all the other "
> 'new' " disciplines 
> you refer to) cannot be reduced to this, which is
> simply one kind of 
> politics? What about the merging of sociological and
> anthropological 
> research methodologies with the methods of textual
> analysis we take 
> from literary studies and semiotics? What about our
> willingness to 
> study popular culture and the practices in which it
> is implicated?
> 
> I can't see why Melleuish et al. should absolutely
> be opposed to these 
> things. If Melleuish loves Thucydides so much, why
> couldn't he be 
> interested in research that, for instance, traced
> the presence (if any) 
> of Thucydides in pop-cultural texts, and evaluated
> its relevance to 
> present-day media consumers by conducting surveys?
> If that didn't work 
> out, how about some studies of the contemporary
> revival of the epic 
> classical-history film? I did a great subject when I
> was an undergrad 
> at Melbourne, called "Medievalism in Contemporary
> Culture," which was 
> very much in this vein (though with an emphasis on
> Mallory rather than 
> Thucyidides). True, I'm not going to do that kind of
> research, and 
> probably neither are you. Maybe Melleuish could do
> it himself? Or maybe 
> it's already out there, but he hasn't bothered to
> look for it (and nor 
> have I).
> 
> > they feel their naturally acquired
> > positions of power are under threat, and will use
> any
> > attack method necessary.
> > 2.there can be no 'conciliatory gestures' towards
> > these critics unless these disciplines stop
> > questioning these assumptions.
> > these vastly
> > heterogeneous discipline
> 
> There's no reason that *every single piece of
> cultural studies 
> research* needs to 'question'
> "(male/anglo-celtic/christian/european) 
> assumptions." If that was all CS ever did, it would
> be insufferably 
> homogenous and boring. That disciplines are
> internally diverse is 
> precisely what might enable Melluish and co. to see
> that they don't 
> have to hate CS per se. They might be able to find
> some uses for its 
> knowledges and methodologies themselves, and even to
> contribute to the 
> discipline by approaching it from their own
> political perspective, 
> which they evidently see as being opposed to the
> position of most CS 
> researchers. Bring on revisionist CS! Are you ready?
> 
> >  need to, in the eyes of their
> > critics, return to (unpolitical) readings of the
> > canon, and nothing else.
> 
> If there's one thing I imagine this entire list
> would agree on, it's 
> that our critics' readings of the canon (and of our
> work) are *not* 
> unpolitical. They are socially and politically
> conservative. They would 
> likely prefer that ours were, too. That's their
> prerogative.
> 
> > 3.i'm surprised ben found it necessary to email
> keith
> > windschuttle to find references on writing against
> > marxist cultural theory (if one were requesting
> > references to his own work, that's different). a
> > simple search on any database or subject
> catalogue, or
> > a question to a supervisor, would be efficiently
> > appropriate.
> 
> Supervisors are not omniscient, and even the most
> well-crafted Boolean 
> search doesn't have the same capacity to sort
> information as a human 
> mind implicated in networks of interpersonal
> relationships. Sometimes 
> it's nice to ask people for help or advice, just to
> see what you come 
> up with. And why not go straight to one of the most
> infamous characters 
> on Australia's intellectual scene?
> 
> >
> > cheers tim.
> >
> >  --- Ben Hourigan <mail at benhourigan.com> wrote:
> >> This post does eventually get back to the
> question
> >> of how we could
> >> respond to critics of Cultural Studies, so bear
> with
> >> me...
> >>
> >> In some off-list correspondence, Danny wrote to
> me
> >> and suggested that I
> >> couldn't reasonably suggest that we drop Marxist
> >> political theory from
> >> cultural studies in order to politically re-align
> it
> >> (I'm
> >> paraphrasing).
> >>
> >> (Excerpts from the email that prompted this is
> >> reproduced at the bottom
> >> of this post.)
> >>
> >> By writing this, Danny's reiterating a point from
> >> that post of Terry
> >> Flew's that started the whole "Is cultural
> studies
> >> inherently
> >> left-wing?" thread
> >>
> >
>
(http://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/Week-of-Mon-20050103/
> >>
> >> 000592.html). I don't think that's at all
> >> unfortunate. For the record,
> >> I agree: I don't think a Cultural Studies without
> >> Marxist theory would
> >> be the same kind of discipline we know today.
> Though
> >> part of the reason
> >> that Marxist theory is so central is that the
> >> far-reaching (and
> >> arguably totalitarian) scope of Marxism has
> caused
> >> that tradition of
> >> thought to produce a quantity of cultural theory
> >> that is probably
> >> unrivalled by any ideology active in the 20th
> >> century. As a
> >> non-leftist, however, this reliance on Marxism
> >> bothers me more than a
> >> little.
> >>
> >> No doubt it bothers our 'right-wing' critics,
> too.
> >> As you can see
> >> below, I'm no subscriber to Melleuish's
> particular
> >> grievances. But,
> >> while we are doing the work of refuting the
> >> particular arguments he and
> >> others put forward against Cultural Studies,
> could
> >> we perhaps make some
> >> conciliatory gestures towards them, rather than
> >> lambasting them for
> >> being 'right wing'? Could anyone ever add, to the
> >> current, 'leftist'
> >> brand of Cultural Studies, a liberal (à la Thomas
> >> Jefferson, rather
> >> than John Kerry) Cultural Studies? A conservative
>> >> la Edmund Burke,
> >> not Andrew Bolt) Cultural Studies?
> >>
> >> In other words, could we invite Melleuish,
> >> Windschuttle, Miranda
> >> Devine, and their like, to join us (at least from
> >> time to time), rather
> >> than try to beat us?
> 
=== message truncated === 

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