[csaa-forum] Conformist and lacking critical force
John Grech
John.M.Grech at student.uts.edu.au
Tue Aug 30 05:15:48 CST 2005
Hello Anna, Melissa, Jean et al,
Thanks for your post Anna, it sort of got the conversation back to
where it started for me, sending me back to Melissa's original post
in an effort to try to make sense of this and related threads. While
I find the contributions by Graeme Turner Stephen Muecke, Eslpeth
Probyn, Stephanie Donald, and Simon During really interesting, I do
not feel able to enter into that debate any further than to say that,
in my view, it reflects some of transnational divides that I see in
the Western academic world, particularly those that exist between the
US, to some extent Europe (although I note that no cultural studies
people living/working in the UK have entered this discussion), and
Australia. I must say that, with all respect to Simon During, I agree
with Stephen's comment that there is a certain disconnected
ambivalence towards 'down under' by others living in the Northern
hemisphere, an ambivalance that shows itself in a lack of knowledge
and direct experience of the state of affairs in Australian cultural
studies. From what I see, there is still a distinctive but subtle
cultural arrogance in the Northern Hemisphere towards the antipodes
but that's another story ...
However it is really Anna's recent post that has prompted me to write
this email, and try to make my own contribution to this debate. I
will commence to do so by addressing some of the things that Anna
raises.
In contrast to you, Anna, I have completed an MA and now a Ph D in a
faculty (Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS) that at least
constantly refers to and even has helped to shape and define cultural
studies in Australia over the decades that the discipline has existed
there. However, my undergraduate studies and my first post graduate
work (a Grad. Dip) were in the Visual Arts (Sydney College of the
Arts, Sydney University). One of the reasons I opted to go to UTS to
do my MA was precisely because, although the institution that I had
first grown my academic wings had a reputation for a highly
theoretical and philosophical orientation in the course of studies. I
personally found this to be superficial and generally lacking in
thoroughness and sophistication. So I decided to go to UTS where I
found people actually knew what they were talking about.
All that is to say that, after two degrees, I finally feel I have
reached a point that I identify most strongly with cultural studies,
and feel that I am an early career cultural studies person, even
though I have been in the game for quite a long time. Also, unlike
Anna, I have over a decade of casual teaching experience at just
about every University within the broader Sydney region. Ironically,
however, I came to the point of identification with cultural studies
after spending four years living in Holland, and working towards my
PhD as an international associate at the University of Amsterdam's
School for Cultural Analysis. Here I should add that, with all
respect for Mieke Bal and others at ASCA, Cultural Analysis is *NOT*
the same as cultural studies, and, in reference to an earlier post
this year by Geert Lovink, the sorts of cultureel wetenschap that
takes place in Holland and in Germany, which does indeed have a
history of nearly two hundred years, is *NOT* cultural studies either.
Although I did an MA in a faculty which I believe has produced some
of the finest cultural studies work in Australia, and I had, as if by
infusion, begun practicing cultural studies while producing the
thesis (a non traditional thesis incorporating a gallery exhibition,
a performance piece that was presented at the CSAA conference in
Melbourne one year, and a text), I actually started to pinpoint the
disciplinary parameters of cultural studies from a wonderful book by
John Storey called Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture:
Theories and Methods. From Storey I learned that, as Simon During
correctly states, Marx is indeed a very important figure in cultural
studies, as are people like Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Roland
Barthes, Stuart Hall, as well as Ien Ang and Meaghan Morris, and a
great many others. However, like a lot of people, I find Marxist
analyses, particularly those produced or are inheritors of ideas
generated in the 60s and 70s not always appropriate in describing the
realities of the world today. Having said that, please dont get me
wrong, I think Marx produced what is arguably the most insightfull
analyses of capitalism ever, and to the extent that capitalism,
albeit in its modified manifestations, is still a basic conditioning
factor in the world in which we live, a Marxist critique remains
essential, although it also needs to remain concurrent with the way
capitalism works in the world now.
Well so much for the background, now on to the questions posed by
Melissa's email.
- disciplinarity: what it means (practically, ethically,
conceptually) to do "media and cultural studies" within the CI
paradigm
I cant really talk about the "Creative Industries paradigm" because I
have not lived in Australia since 2000 and am not familiar with it
but, from what I gather, it is a catch-phrase, a slogan if you like,
that tries to indicate and identify something in terms of the
political rhetoricof the last decade. Such a phrase, I suspect, seeks
to position creative work that has long been in existence in the
discursive landscape created by Howard and his cronies, and Pauline
Hanson (Pauline who ...?). Now given the political agenda of the last
10 or 15 years in particular, and the name "Creative Industries", I
would say that the term refers to the latest attempt at
industrialisation, and hence commodification, of the creative
endeavour. As such, it would appear (and I am only guessing here)
that it tries to identify and indicate something that is going on and
that has been going on for a long time, and which has an important
role to play in the on-going affairs of human society today, even in
the age of global capital. I have nothing against such rhetorical
manouvers, really, in fact I see it as a necessity given that not to
do so, and to remain located in political discourses that are seeped
in a by-gone era is, in today's rapidly moving world of free-floating
signifiers, to become irrelavent. I might be wrong about this
assessment, and those who know more about Creative Industries might
like to correct me on that.
As regards disciplinarity, I believe that, generally, throughout the
world, there appears to have been a closing of ranks in the
intellectual disciplines over the last decade, and to the extent that
cultural studies, the cultural studies that I know about and identify
with, is genuinely inter- and multi- disciplinary, cultural studies
is struggling today to maintain its place amongst the old world
disciplines like Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Literature,
History, Art History, Anthropology, and so on. I guess people who
identify with those areas will take objection to this, but I think
there is a case to be made that cultural studies, and inter- and
multi-disciplinarity generally, has come under increasing pressure
from the longer established Faculties and disciplines of academe for
quite some time now. This is happening in the US, the UK, and greater
Europe, as well as in Australia.
What this means practically is that it is more difficult to do
cultural studies at the moment. Ethically, it means that one is faced
with either declariing what you are doing and face the prospect of
being rejected or at least heavily scrutinised for that job or
research funding application, or you try to disguise your work as
something else. Depending on whether you decide to call your self
cultural studies or not can however have a dramatic impact on the way
you concieve your work. For this reason that I still call my work
cultural studies.
- opportunities for and the politics of academic labour for RHD
students and Early Career Researchers in the context of the shift
from individualistic "humanities" research to project/team-based
approaches
I am not sure what is meant by RHD, but Early Career Researchers,
well, unless things have changed an awful lot since I was in
Australia, then an early career researcher is still someone within 5
years of finishing their Ph D. However, as a result of a conversation
with a friend recently, I have some doubts about whether this
continues to be the case because, as I am now in my 40s, she
recommended that I lie about my age in applying for jobs. So early
career researcher may in theory refer to anyone who has recently
finished a PhD, irrespective of age, but in practice, it may be that
one needs ideally to be somewhere in the late 20s to mid 30s. Well
hopefully I am wrong about this because I am facing a life of
unemployment otherwise.
Turning to the main point however, I think the move to working in
groups is a good one because it means that one can work much more
easily in a context. In the Physical Sciences, this practice has been
going on for a long time, and there are already well documented
issues about this way of working. The most significant, for early
researchers, is that their position in the research team needs to be
credited and regarded equally with those of the project leaders. In
Science, often what happens though is that the Project Leaders,
usually big name scientists who put their name to the grant
application, also put their names to research produced by lowly
researchers whose names appear somewhere at the end of the Credits
line. There are serious problems with this model, therefore, that
should be addressed before researchers in the Humanities adopt this
approach (or is it too late already?). Furthermore, I think there
must also remain space for individual research, no matter what field
or discipline one works in, although this kind of research is also
the most lonely and can also be the most frustratiing, in terms of
communicating your findings to anyone else, no matter how important
your work is or could be to the rest of humanity.
As far as project work is concerned, I personally have always worked
in this way, whether as a visual artist, a cultural producer, or a
cultural studies researcher. A project is a nice way of putting an
envelope around a field of study, and should not mean that once it is
finished, each project does not have on-going repercussions on the
work of a researcher or artist. Its just that the name of the project
changes, and with the the specific focus can shift somewhat onto new
ground. But knowledge gained in earlier projects accumulates, in my
experience, and each project I have ever executed has grown and
developed according to the histories of the earlier works.
- the changing research culture of Australian universities,
especially the perceived incommensurability between "pragmatic" and
"critical" approaches as evidenced in the following quotation:
This conflict between 'pragmatic' and 'ciritical' approaches is not
new. It has been around as long as I can remember. Within an
Australian context, it often was used to make us work within the
limits and boundaries of the establishment, in contradistinction with
critically engaging those limits and boundaries and trying to do a
'paradigm shift' on them. Australians have a myth about themselves as
being a 'pragmatic' people. This comes partly from Anglo-American
philosophical discourses where utilitarianism is seen as inherently
more useful and real than so-called idealistic and critical
discourses of Continental Philosophy are. I think it would be more
useful to forget about this catagory and remember that, in a genuine
cultural studies context, a critical approach is in every sense of
the word a 'pragmatic' intervention, even if its just a way of
articulating something. Some of the most effective critical
interventions in cultural studies can takes place through a pragmatic
intervention in the language people use to think about something. The
Dutch are another people who think of themselves as being pragmatic,
but, unlike many Australians, they can often make use of different
schools of thought and approaches to everyday problems. Again, I
think Australian cultural studies researchers generally benefit from
looking further afield, and by that I am not at all suggesting
Holland should be seen as exemplary - far from it - but there are
benefits from looking at and trying to adopt and adapt approaches and
methods found in other places and disciplines. This is, after all,
one of the features of cultural studies, and, as I can recall from
the cultural studies environments I have been associated with in
Australia, many cultural studies practitioners there do this quite
well. Still there is always scope for exploration.
In finishing off, I would like to add that, as someone who believes I
am doing cultural studies, stronger and better than ever these days,
and speaking as someone who is, still, I believe, an early career
researcher in cultural studies, I dont think the work I am doing is
either conformist or lacking in critical force. In fact, I strongly
believe what I am doing now is more critical and non-conformist than
ever before. What I would suggest is that we do live in a period in
which there is a strong conservative re-emergence, both politically
and in the academic world generally. That makes it more difficult to
produce genuinely critical, challenging work that has both the power
and force to make people think again about the way things are done. I
like to think that the fact that I have always struggled to find
permanent employment or solidify a place in the fields of my
endeavour testifies to the critical force and lack of conformism that
work has. I have chosen to work in the way that I do because not to
do so threatens the conceptual viability of my projects.
Nevertheless, such decisions are made inspite of being aware of the
potential costs to one's 'career' prospects. In other words, as your
questions seek to find out, this can also be regarded to amount to an
ethical stance. So please, before claiming that all cultural studies
lacks critical force or is basically conformist, keep in mind those
suffering individuals who haven't been fortunate to end up in a post
doc somewhere, or even a junior lecturing position, but have to
endure singular, impoverished, isolation in realising their work. And
please, lets have some respect for the endeavours of those whose
non-conformism has not made it possible for them to find a stable
platform in the world from which to promote and circulate their ideas.
Well now if anyone's managed to take to time to read this entire
post, there's a good chance you might be under-/unemployed, cos
anyone who is working these days seems to really struggle to find the
time to properly engage with others for a longer bout of writing.
This, it seems to me, is one area where Australian and UK cultural
studies academics in particular have suffered greatly from attacks
from conservatives, particularly in relation to their counterparts in
mainland Europe, although its slowly changing there also. Still there
is a lot to be said for making quick, short, interventions in the
world - a kind of hiku cultural studies. If anyone has any
suggestions or wishes to share their ideas about how to do that
without losing the depth of one's critical engagement in what they
want to say, then please, lets start another conversation about how
to do this. I could really learn something from that.
cheers
john grech
--
*****************
John Grech
Artist & Writer
*****************
On-line Projects:
Interempty Space : The Global City <http://www.jgrech.dds.nl>
Sharkfeed
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/25402/20020806/www.abc.net.au/sharkfeed/index.htm>
On-line Writing:
"Beyond the Binary: New Media and the Extended Body"
Mediatopia on-line exhibition and symposium
http://www.mediatopia.net/grech.html
"Empty Space and the City: The Reoccupation of Berlin"
Radical History Review
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v083/83.1grech.html
********************
On-line Projects:
Interempty Space : The Global City <http://www.jgrech.dds.nl>
Sharkfeed
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/25402/20020806/www.abc.net.au/sharkfeed/index.htm>
On-line Writing:
"Beyond the Binary: New Media and the Extended Body"
Mediatopia on-line exhibition and symposium
http://www.mediatopia.net/grech.html
"Empty Space and the City: The Reoccupation of Berlin"
Radical History Review
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v083/83.1grech.html
********************
--
*****************
John Grech
Artist & Writer
*****************
On-line Projects:
Interempty Space : The Global City <http://www.jgrech.dds.nl>
Sharkfeed
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/25402/20020806/www.abc.net.au/sharkfeed/index.htm>
On-line Writing:
"Beyond the Binary: New Media and the Extended Body"
Mediatopia on-line exhibition and symposium
http://www.mediatopia.net/grech.html
"Empty Space and the City: The Reoccupation of Berlin"
Radical History Review
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v083/83.1grech.html
********************
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