The Floating Phallus
Further to my article on the stunningly fraudulent Carolyn Guertin, some readers have suggested that the “radical cyber-feminist” is merely an anomaly, albeit a vivid one, and not a reflection on her corner of academia. I’ve subsequently argued that one has to ask how Guertin’s “work” survived evaluation and peer review, and how she has come to find an audience “at conferences and events across Europe.” The fact that Guertin has been employed, and is still employed, by otherwise reputable institutions suggests a systemic dysfunction. Indeed, I’d suggest that Guertin is merely a symptom of a much broader malaise – one that has rendered large areas of academic study irretrievably tendentious and intellectually worthless.
Evidence to support this view can be found via Durham in Wonderland, where the estimable KC Johnson casts a gimlet eye over Duke University’s history department and its postmodern leanings. One faculty member, Professor Pete Sigal, will soon be shaping young minds with courses on colonial Latin American history and a seminar titled Sexual History around the Globe. A synopsis of the seminar asks, somewhat breathlessly:
“What does it mean to sexualize history? How does the historical narrative change as we use sexuality as our reading practice? What happens to the sign of history when confronted with the sign of sexuality? …When we read a military history, we will ask not just about sexuality as a topic within the military (Did soldiers have sex with other soldiers? Did soldiers impregnate prostitutes?), but also about sexuality as a reading process. What happens when we centre our entire analysis of the military by sexualizing the bodies of the soldiers?”
Heavens. Somebody hand that man a towel.
Professor Sigal is, clearly, eager to “confront” students with the question: “What happens when we focus a feminist and queer analysis on history?” To resolve this burning issue, Johnson turns to Sigal’s previous scholarship, most notably his book, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire. The “historical” themes explored by Sigal include The Phallus Without a Body and Transsexuality and the Floating Phallus.
Professor Sigal’s academic discoveries are, naturally, staggering and numerous. Among them are revelations that Mayan social structure was based on a “phallic signifying economy” and that “Mayan writing ostensibly was about politics, religion, ritual, and warfare, but subtextually was about gender and sexual desire”:
“The gendering of blood signified the transsexuality of fantasy and desire . . . The Maya fantasy world showed that the people would allow the phallus to play a central role in creation… The phallus certainly was vital, showing a male dominance, but its vitality was most important when it was attached to nobody.”
Johnson notes,
“Maya society, it seems, was a hotbed of sexual radicalism. But when Sigal explained how he reached his conclusions about ‘the central location of homosexual desire’ in colonial Latin American history, his arguments sounded a bit more dubious. [Sigal] conceded that much of his evidence was not readily apparent in the texts – even that other scholars had examined the very same documents he used and not detected his ‘previously unrecognized pederastic political rituals.’ How, then, did Sigal achieve this historical coup? He combined insights from ‘poststructuralist gender studies and queer theory influences’ with use of philology and postcolonial theory to ‘understand the texts that I read as literary devices which I decode in order to represent the cultural matrix.’”
Johnson observes that Sigal has previously warned students against “reading the evidence too literally,” and has cautioned that sources contradicting his claims, of which there are many, “cannot be taken at their word.”
He continues,
“Some people might call Sigal’s ‘matrix’ little more than a rationalization intended to produce an outcome that fits [a] preconceived political and social agenda.”
Indeed. Some might even suggest the professor’s ‘matrix’ serves some autoerotic purpose. Now, I’m all in favour of homoerotic fantasies, even ones involving Mayans and colonialism, but I’m not convinced one should parade them in the classroom disguised as serious history, while appealing to “evidence” that doesn’t actually exist. Perhaps Sigal’s speculative talents would be better applied elsewhere, churning out a certain genre of pulp fiction. You know, homoerotic historical romps, set in some dark continent populated by bare-chested savages, with lots of sweating, shouting and spears. He could call it loincloth lit.
Johnson’s article is part of an ongoing series highlighting the dubious scholarship of other Duke faculty members, specifically the way in which their emphatic political views have frequently overridden academic proprieties. Johnson also reminds us that, “the people profiled in this series will craft future job descriptions for Duke professors; and then, for positions assigned to their departments, select new hires.”
It is, I fear, time for some academic sack beatings. Please, read it all.
Update: Readers with a taste for Professor Sigal’s imaginings may wish to explore his latest proposal, on Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism and Anthropological Knowing.
Ah, David, mock on, mock on. The concepts quoted really aren’t all that hard to understand. History itself is constructed–and that’s not postmodernism, that’s Karl Popper. We can read history a number of ways. Sigal is foregrounding sexuality. So did Freud. Indeed, there’s probably more Freud in this stuff than Sigal would admit.
He cautions that we should not take the Spanish observers at their word. Seems like sound scholarly advice to me. Look at the texts available, see if something other than a “literal” reading makes sense. Again,m perfectly reasonable, or we’d have literature students think that Jonathan Swift advocated eating babies.
I’ll leave Sigal’s colleagues alone for the moment. Sigal’s latest proposal, incidentally, makes a good deal of sense, at least to me. The links between colonization and sexualization are hardly a new discovery, after all. Frankly, it’s pretty mainstream stuff, and free of all that jargon you dislike, too.
Dr Dawg,
You really shouldn’t presume that mockery automatically entails heathenism or a lack of understanding. I tend to target idiocies I have some acquaintance with. I’m not suggesting that Sigal’s concepts are “hard to understand”; merely that they’re not entirely reputable and carelessly used, as in the examples linked above.
Suitably motivated, one can, I’m sure, “read” texts and events to suit almost any personal or political agenda, or to retrospectively project contemporary fixations; not least when one is willing to disregard contrary evidence and resort to “poststructuralist gender studies” as a validation of rather loaded and fanciful suppositions.
I realise that if one is schooled in such notions, and their habitual misuse, one can come to identify with them, and with their misuses. But that you rush to defend Sigal and, abortively, Guertin does you no favours, I think. If you follow the links above, I suspect you’ll spot a pattern of deception in the Duke humanities.
David:
I did read Sigal’s proposal, and also the article you linked to, before posting a comment. So there is nothing of the kneejerk in my response.
I don’t thinking that “reading a text” means that one can simply use the text as a backdrop for one’s own inventions. Readings must be intelligible, coherent and text-based. I haven’t seen any evidence that Sigal is doing anything but textual analysis. The word “literal” doesn’t equate to “facts and evidence”: it means taking a text at face value. As noted, that would leave “A Modest Proposal” as monstrous policy wonkery à la W.W.Rostow, and, for that matter, most literature would become simply unintelligible.
Ah, you will say, but that’s literature and I’m talking about history. But if the stuff of history comes down to us as textual fragments, then textual analysis only makes sense. And reading those texts literally, you will likely miss a great deal.
This reminded me of the “Goddess mythology” which was just starting about the time I graduated.
http://www.debunker.com/texts/goddess.html
http://www.debunker.com/texts/goddess_rem.html
http://jbburnett.com/resources/atlmo-goddesses/atl-mo-allen-goddesses.html or
http://www.rickross.com/reference/wicca/wicca31.html
This is the idea of a feminist prehistory, where people were cooperative, not competitive; peaceful, not warlike etc etc.
Slightly less convincing than Erich (ancient Egyptians never knew rope) von Daniken
Dr Dawg,
You really must try to stop throwing straw around too. You continue to accuse me of making points I haven’t actually made and then attacking them as if I had. (This is, I think, the sixth time you’ve done this since you arrived, or possibly the seventh. Unfortunately, issues I have raised previously have been lost in the confusion.) In this instance, I haven’t argued that all texts, literary or historical, should be read literally, in the sense you suggest. None of which exactly validates Sigal’s colourful claims or his methodology, such as it is.
TDK,
Well, quite. The Däniken comparison is funny, and not entirely misplaced. I would add, however, that many of the culprits I have in mind who ‘re-imagine’ history based on almost nothing tend to do so as a vehicle for their comments on the present. Unfortunately, those comments tend to be rather uniform in their disdain for capitalism, bourgeois values, etc. Which, for some reason, doesn’t foster enormous confidence in the theory, or the intention behind it.
David:
The fault here was mine. I had conflated your views and those of Johnson, who wrote:
“In a 1998 article, Sigal wrote that historians needed to avoid the ‘traps of reading the evidence too literally.’ (Facts, indeed, can be inconvenient things.)”
It was that sentiment to which I was reacting. But back to Sigal. As noted, there is little new in terms of concepts in what has been referenced. The notion of the phallus as a signifier of power, for example, is more than a century old. I may be thick, but I can’t discern through all the mockery what, specifically, you dislike about Sigal’s analysis. For instance, you reference his new proposal, which I read with interest. What’s wrong with it?
If I have indeed been throwing straw around, please accept my apologies. I’m still learning your style, and perhaps you aren’t being as outright dismissive of postmodern thought as I had imagined. But you do seem to have a habit, if I may say so, of simply putting something before the reader, saying “There!” and breaking into a laugh. I’d like a little more by way of critique.
Dr Dawg,
Well, facts can indeed be inconvenient things, and for Sigal I suspect they’re a real thorn in his paw. Sigal’s work does appear to be, at the very least, tendentious, and, frankly, absurd. I don’t care to trawl through it’s details further as I fear the absurdity may induce nausea. I did it with Guertin to make a broader point, but it’s tiresome work and not hugely rewarding.
I confess I’m rather baffled by your apparent willingness to defend Sigal’s speculations, based as they are on almost nothing, and defended as they are with appeals to equally speculative devices of questionable repute. And his desire to “centre [his] entire analysis of the military by sexualizing the bodies of the soldiers” scarcely needs further comment. I’m sure the gags will write themselves.
But perhaps you’re being mischievous.
TDK, In the PoMo mind, History is like Anthropology and Archeology. With just a little bombast and word-smithing It’s conclusions can be reconstructed to fit a “scholar’s” needs, just like a hem can be raised for a skirt’s new wearer.
But, when every aspect of written history refutes feminism’s utopian, pacifistic designs, it’s not enough for the Fems to fiddle with a hem-line and add a few new buttons. No, the entire robe of history must go in the trash, along with all the supporting “Patriarchal” sciences, so that these academics’ wish-filled accounts can stand as unrefuted “history.” Their Goddess History must become the “one true history,” and any competing narratives provided by the modern sciences must be quashed.
I still laugh when I recall how my fem professor-friend asserted, with a straight face, that all those implements found with the bear skulls in European caves were not weapons. She’s sure that they were farming implements. This applies equally, I assumed, to the spear point found in the Neanderthal child’s cranium, too, but I did not ask.
Maybe the point was a shard of a rudimentary digging tool that accidently got stuck in the little girl’s temple: a farming accident.
The sad part is, my friend is considered “smart” by her peers in the university, and worse, my tax dollars pay her salary and health insurance. So we all have to subsidize this idiocy. Mon Dieu!
Dr. Dawg: Let’s apply a little postmodern analysis to your letter, shall we?
“Ah, David, mock on, mock on.” — You use Mr. Thompson’s first name, while arrogating to yourself the title “Dr.” in your signature, thereby establishing a hegemonic relationship.
“The concepts quoted really aren’t all that hard to understand.” — You presuppose that “concepts” are inherently understandable, and that therefore David’s transgressive refusal to participate in your narrative represents a personal failing rather than an alternative response to signifiers.
“History itself is constructed–and that’s not postmodernism, that’s Karl Popper.” — Note the inherent paradox of making an assertion of “historical” fact which states that history is a construct. This slyly invites the reader to understand that “Dr.” Dawg is using a self-contradicting argument to support his hegemonic narrative. The reader can either assent, thus becoming complicit, or dissent — but the act of dissenting from the historicist argument itself affirms the statement.
“We can read history a number of ways.” — Again, the use of paradox, by stating that history can be used to support any number of narratives, yet using this statement as part of one particular hegemonic narrative.
“Sigal is foregrounding sexuality. So did Freud.” — Note his repeated use of white/male “authority” figures to ground his postmodern discourse. But Dawg subverts his own narrative by playfully dragging in figures from unrelated disciplines, as if to point out the fundamental absurdity of relying on the “authority” of individual viewpoints whose value derives solely from their role in the greater Western hegemonic narrative.
“Indeed, there’s probably more Freud in this stuff than Sigal would admit.” — By referencing Freud, a bisociative figure at once known for his “authority” as the founder of a new style of psychological “analysis” and yet also as a transgressive figure who shattered the paradigm of Christo-European patriarchal repression, he seeks to reassure the reader that Sigal is _not_ transgressive and thus can be an “acceptable” actor within the presumed hegemonic narrative.
“He cautions that we should not take the Spanish observers at their word.” — Again, a retreat into a highly conventional, indeed almost Victorian Protestant narrative, disregarding “Spaniards” because of their presumed “untrustworthiness.” This is part of the long “Lejenda nera” tradition of Anglophones stigmatizing the Hispanophone Other as simultaneously hyper-devout and sinful, sexualized and repressed — not to mention displacing the “guilt” of imperialism onto them.
“Seems like sound scholarly advice to me.” — Again, the ironic appeal to authority, inasmuch as it is advice to ignore the authority of eyewitnesses in favor of the modern Anglophone narrative.
“Look at the texts available, see if something other than a “literal” reading makes sense.” — This represents a kind of ontological imperialism in which the experience of the modern reader is privileged over the mundane, and thus “unreliable” experience of the historical Spanish observer.
“Again,m perfectly reasonable, or we’d have literature students think that Jonathan Swift advocated eating babies.” — Dawg continues his playful irony, this time adducing examples from explicitly “fictional” texts in order to place in tension the very concept of “fact” and “fiction.” How, he asks, can we know if Swift was being “literal?” How can we know if Sigal is? Or Dr. Dawg? Or Cambias? All texts, he suggests, are equally fictitious, which means that for Sigal to teach his own “interpretation” in a class is equated to a form of “performance art” expressing Sigal’s own truth rather than the “truth” of historical observers or hegemonic narrative.
“I’ll leave Sigal’s colleagues alone for the moment. Sigal’s latest proposal, incidentally, makes a good deal of sense, at least to me. The links between colonization and sexualization are hardly a new discovery, after all. Frankly, it’s pretty mainstream stuff, and free of all that jargon you dislike, too.” — He closes by invoking his paradox of “authority,” invoking “colleagues” and the “mainstream” to affirm Sigal’s place in the hegemonic narrative even as it acknowledges Sigal’s “transgressive” attempts to deconstruct that narrative. The reader is left in doubt: what is authority? What is real?
Heh. Don’t make me flick the lights on and off.
ROTFLMAO!!!
I was laughing so hard that I forgot to make one correction. The title “Dr.” is used ironically, its presumed authority subverted by “Dawg,” signifying a cartoon animal. Contrary to the charge that I am establishing a hegemonic relationship, therefore, I have constructed a non-hierarchical subject-position.
So many big words…
So little comprehensibliity…
I think the single most important question about this pomo dreck is one every Parent of a student should be asking. Is ANY of this worth the $40,000 a year I am paying?
Are we sure that that discussions about how queer ancient Mexicans were are worth the same as say – a years study of Bio-chemistry?
If this ersatz wisdom is supposed to be worth something, how come there is no market for it outside the hallowed halls of Academia?
We should take all these marxist buffoons and gas them like badgers.
We should take all these marxist buffoons and gas them like badgers.
Now, that’s going a trifle too far.
To Dr. Dawg
I posted this question at DIW and it attracted no responses. I would bet $100 that every paper and lecture produced at the conference was unfavorable to to Caucasians-Capitalism-Men. In other words the Race/Class/Gender would be adhered to with slavish orthodoxy. Would you expect any scholarship that runs counter to this orthodoxy?
The extension of this question is if the results of the scholarship are known before hand should resources be put into the research and is the research honest?
“The links between colonization and sexualization are hardly a new discovery”
What did you have in mind?
I’m aware of a theory that homophobia was introduced to Africans by Europeans. Does that fall under the scope?
“Gas them like badgers.”
“Now, that’s going a trifle too far.”
I have suggested targeted sack beatings as a compromise. They’re not so indiscriminate and they are quite effective.
But really – is this kind of drivel how we want the era we live in to be remembered by history?
Can ANYONE honestly say that in 100 years people will speak of the “Greats” and list Popper, Freud and Sigal? It really does sully the names of Popper and Freud to mention Sigal in the same breath.
We have created a “make-work” academic culture; our universities are, in the name of “diversity”, replacing honest endeavour with politically motivated boondoggle. It strikes me that all the left (and let’s be honest, it IS the left we are talking about here, since they have firewalled themselves into control of large swathes of academic life and will tolerate anything EXCEPT diversity of opinion) wants to do is project its’ own prejudices about today onto the past.
None of this “research” has any real philosophic or intellectual enterprise.
TDK:
“The links between colonization and sexualization are hardly a new discovery”
What did you have in mind?”
Well, this sort of thing:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/POCA/POC-col.html
I’ll try to dig up some better references, but the sexualization of the Other is hardly controversial.
I think it worth pointing out to The Thin Man that Karl Popper was (and is) generally disliked by academics because he was a trenchant critic of the enemies of Open Society, which included Marxists and National Socialists. He dismissed Freud as pseudo science.
“None of this ‘research’ has any real philosophic or intellectual enterprise.”
Well, we wait for someone to address the points raised regarding the value of such “work” outside its immediate academic context and the broader, habitual, bias against certain political targets – generally bourgeois values, capitalism, territoriality, masculinity, Western wickedness, etc. As has been suggested, the disreputable methodology and its prejudicial objectives suggest very little of value (intellectual or otherwise) is actually taking place.
If someone calls something “Transsexuality and the Floating Phallus” and litters it with fanciful and unsupported claims, many of which are simply perverse, and then asserts it as scholarship, they can scarcely be indignant when it is viewed as unworthy of study. The fact that Sigal may call himself a scholar doesn’t automatically mean what he does is scholarship, or that it’s deserving of attention. Though there will always be some who feel obliged to defend appalling flummery for reasons of their own. But contrarianism in and of itself is not the greatest virtue, or the best use of one’s time.
And I think The Thin Man should win something for his use of the word “boondoggle”.
Strange isn’t it how so many young people could actually choose to attend such an institution as Duke University ? This could only occur with the full co-option of MSM.
You really have to stop making sweeping statements like “the sexualization of the Other is hardly controversial”. It starts to sound like you don’t really believe it yourself. If you are right, you don’t need to say it – it will be self evident.
Let me extract a quote:
“Critics such as Richard Slotkin have called this genre [ie a rape story] representative of the North American mode of contact with the Indians.”
It would be “silly” (another sweeping word) to deny that people were and are raped. Some questions occur:
Did every European rape?
Did every European approve?
Did others rape too?
Did the Indians rape Europeans?
This is a thesis like Orientalism. Yes such events occured, but the question arise as to what makes it noteworthy. For this type of theory to have any value at all it relies upon the notion of Western exceptionalism. It can’t be just a rape, it must be more than that. If all races indulged in such behaviour then we have merely an list of European atrocities that could be matched by a list of atrocities carried out by other races. It is noteworthy that no curiosity exists in academia to develop such a list of “other” atrocities. Why should that be?
The mass destruction of temples in Indian by the Muslim invaders is documented by Muslims, yet it is a virtually unknown fact in India, let alone the West. Estimates of the slaughter of Hindus by Muslims range from 40m-100m during the period 1000-1700AD with some rulers recording the fact that they aimed to kill 100,000 people every year. THis from a base line population of approx 200m in 1000AD.
Muslim slave traders are estimated to have enslaved approximately twice the number of Africans as enslaved by the west (over a much longer period). Those slaves are estimated to have died at a rate of 9 out of 10 as they crossed the continent. Slavery persists today. The “creation” of eunechs was a risky process in the sense that the majority died within days. It goes without saying that rape was a common experience for women and men.
I’m not the slightest interested in whether you agree with the numbers; we can quibble about details. However, I would like you to point out the university faculty running a course on any aspect of the colonial experience of those of suffered under this imperialism. It doesn’t even have to include sexuality.
Let me narrow that slightly – Western faculty please
This is turning into a hilarious collection. Thanks for posting the link in mayberry David. Are you in London?
Mikek,
I’m happy that you’re happy. And no, I’m not in London. I’m in my fortress, on the battlements, howling at the stars.
“What happens when we centre our entire analysis of the military by sexualizing the bodies of the soldiers?”
Well, what happens when we centre our approach to driving by closing our eyes, throwing the car into reverse, and focusing on our seventh chakra?
I think that if you look into his legacy further, David, you’ll find that [accusing people of making points they haven’t actually made and then attacking them as if they had] is Dawg’s established modus operandi, which he apparently does in lieu of doing something useful to contribute to the overall benefit of humans in general, much as we have come to expect from other postmodern fraud artists like Duke’s Gang of 88 and their fellow travellers who attempt to redefine language in order to conceal their illegitimate agenda of fantasy excursions to mythical worlds.
Wayne:
“I would bet $100 that every paper and lecture produced at the conference was unfavorable to to Caucasians-Capitalism-Men. In other words the Race/Class/Gender would be adhered to with slavish orthodoxy.” I regret to inform you that I believe that any Race/Class/Gender analysis will end up being unfavourable to capitalism, and the patriarchy.
To all:
The problem I’m having over here in general is that there is an obvious clash of epistemes that is creating a hell of a din. If one simply doesn’t believe that colonialism generated constructs and language that mask power and oppression, and had a sexual dimension, then anyone who offers a contrary view won’t get very far in the comments section of a blog. Ditto with unequal power relations generally. When I defend a caution against over-literal readings of texts, for example, this is simply brushed aside. All these discussions are good fun, of course, but there’s a serious side to them too.
David (for one)maintains that he is talking about excesses, and raises the straw man issue when I take perhaps an over-general approach in response, but the whole of postmodern thinking does seem to be at stake sometimes in the discussions we’ve all been having. I haven’t seen any defence of moderate PoMo here, for instance, or any attempt to make distinctions–just a battery of examples of unclear language, not all of it meaningless, by the way, but all of it dismissed out of hand as fraud or banality or sloppy thinking or an attempt to intimidate. I don’t think it’s setting up straw men to point any of this out.
To John Ryan, I can only respond that I accept the Orientalist thesis, but I do not consequently reject serious treatment of the other issues of oppression that you raised. Not having my finger on the calendars of all NA and UK universities, I don’t know whether the latter is adequately covered in the academy or not. Personally I think bringing some of the postmodern arsenal of concepts to bear on these other matters would be fruitful. But, as Mr. Ryan says, the Indian example is largely forgotten even there, although the atrocities in Darfur make the African example perhaps more current. The effects of Western colonialism, however, are reverberating to this day, people are interested in studying them rather than wishing them away, and hence we see considerable scholarship on the multiplicity of issues raised–some brilliant, some good, some simply unreadable or absurd.
Vitruvius’s lies about me deserve no response, incidentally, other than to point out that his assertions about “postmodern fraud artists” (in whose number I’m apparently being included) are precisely what I’ve been talking about all along. Sweeping. Silly. Non-analytical. In fact, intellectually dishonest.
Every opinion is a gamble, every decision a bet.
First off changing the sign of history with out good reason is wrong.
Second suppose the sign is really an imaginary number. Consider two signals I and Q. One in quadrature to the other. What is the historical significance of reaction forces at right angles to the original impulse? How do you demodulate that without a reference? Is the right hand rule of any use here? Can the coulomb barrier be overcome? Will fusion leave us more fulfilled or will it just occasion a loss of energy?
i.e. sociology for physics majors.
If only I could sling POMO as well I’d be a tenured professor.
Dawg,
You can see the repercussions of colonialism every where. Those countries that were well colonized (mostly by Brits) are doing well. India is a prime example. After floundering for 50 years after the Brits left they are returning to their Brit roots – meritocracy, capitalism, science – and prospering. Those countries that have rejected those roots are failing some of them spectacularly (Zimbabwe is a prime example).
You can run a country based on talent and let that talent earn its own reward or you can use some other criteria and system of rewards.
Where talent prevails countries prosper (c.f. China in its modern incarnation) where something else prevalis (family, clan, tribe, ethnic origin) liberal modernism is hard to come by (c.f. China in its Maoist phase). Angry studies is a return to tribalism. Tribalism is non-competitive in the modern world.
Fortunately we have two systems in America academia and business. Them that can, do. Them that can’t teach.
Let me also note that China is prospering by adopting the Brit model (Hong Kong).
Will the straw man catch fire? Will the tin man corrode out? Will Dorothy be able to find red shoe polish?
Can we prove F = m a? No. Can we prove the displacement principal? No. And yet we’ve never found a case where they don’t work, at least in the sense that the values in the range of the functions are as far as we can measure correct as long as the values in the domains of the arguments respect the constraints of the functions.
In other words, the proof of the pudding is in it’s eating, pace the interminable dissertations of periphrastic circumlocution that are promulgated upon us by the snake-oil salesmen for the purveyors of doom.
PS to Simon: I know some professors who can do and do teach, both at the same time. Of course, they’re engineers, not postmodernists, which may have been your point.
Some help with the British/English please.
Why is always a gentle pelting with soft fruit? Why not vegetables?
Dr.Dawg What does the NA in “NA and UK universities stand for?
Does a “sack beating” refer to covering the upper body with a sack or a targeted attack on a man’s testicular region?
Gentle refers to the behaviour of gentlemen. Pelting refers to being swathed in furs. Soft fruit refers to the left side of the isle. Hard vegetables refers to those who do. NA stands for Not Applicable. Sack beating refers to being beaten while in bed, which reminds me, it’s time for me to hit the sack. Yes I’m jesting. A conversation without wit, or at least attempted wit, is a conversation that soon dries up, which is yet another reason why postmodernism will ultimately fail: it is witless.
Morning all. I see you’ve been busy, and a wee bit surreal. Good-oh.
This caught my eye:
Wayne Fontes: “I would bet $100 that every paper and lecture produced at the conference was unfavourable to Caucasians-Capitalism-Men. In other words the Race/Class/Gender would be adhered to with slavish orthodoxy.”
Dr Dawg: “I regret to inform you that I believe that any Race/Class/Gender analysis will end up being unfavourable to capitalism, and the patriarchy.”
I think the exchange above sums up a key problem of postmodern political “analysis” and the bias that arises from its own theoretical frameworks, its own terminology and its own ideological assumptions. Dr Dawg’s belief that “any Race/Class/Gender analysis will end up being unfavourable to capitalism” is a common one, and all but ubiquitous among enthusiasts of postmodern politics. Being “unfavourable” towards capitalism is, it seems, not a discovery, but an objective.
It’s all but inconceivable that a postmodernist dissertation would arrive at a conclusion that isn’t hostile to capitalism, and by extension hostile to individualism and to intellectual progress. I struggle to imagine one that doesn’t “problematise” bourgeois values, or territoriality, or masculinity, or whatever else doesn’t suit a range of current leftist prejudices. Is this a happy coincidence?
If postmodern political analysis really is an impartial tool for revealing hitherto unseen power relationships and hidden political agendas, why are these things found – or imagined – so selectively, and with such dreary conformity? Why does almost every postmodernist paper I’ve seen focus on capitalism as a malign construct with no profound redeeming attributes? Why is capitalism, so construed, so often shoehorned into analyses of apparently unrelated subjects?
Where are the earnest and withering PoMo dissertations on the “patriarchy” of non-Western societies, in which that patriarchy takes rather more dramatic and oppressive forms? Or on the monstrous indoctrination of small children with jihadist ideology, as found in school textbooks from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Or dissertations on the power dynamics of collectivism, or on Islamic imperialism (in terms of brutality and sheer numbers the most formidable imperialism of all); or the brutish colonial projects of non-Western cultures (independent of Western evils), or the prejudices found among members of the racial grievance industry?
Where are the papers exploring the benefits, accidental or otherwise, of colonialism – say, in matters of literacy, infrastructure, economics and law; or the colonial insistence that – contrary to custom – Indian widows shouldn’t be burnt alive simply for being widows? Where are the endless, tedious, PoMo volumes “problematising” the inherent defects of Socialism and its moral and practical evils? Are these political agendas and power dynamics unworthy of study, or simply not conducive to some Greater Cause?
Why, I wonder, are these things so hard to find? And, perhaps more to the point, why don’t we expect to find them?
Ah yes, bear skulls in caves. See here:
http://rightwingnation.com/index.php/2006/08/27/1882/
Wayne:
North America.
M.Simon:
That’s great stuff, but it’s better done on Star Trek. “Captain! The hyper-module is leaking quarks and the temporal transponder is going off-line!” –done in a Scottish accent with the obligatory shower of sparks.
[Anyone know why science fiction on film or TV envisages a future where the electronics appear to be back in the days of tubes (valves)? Or, for that matter, why swords still make those metallic rasping sounds when they come out of scabbards that were made of leather?]
But I digress…
David:
“Where are the earnest and withering PoMo dissertations on the “patriarchy” of non-Western societies, in which that patriarchy takes rather more dramatic and oppressive forms?”
Chandra Mohanty comes to mind right away. I’ve read quite a few papers, in fact, about the complexities of oppression in the so-called Third World that are rather more subtle than blaming everything on the Age of Discovery.
Dr Dawg,
Who mentioned “blaming everything on the Age of Discovery”? My point remains: is the range of postmodernists’ critical targets wide and commensurate, as one might hope from an impartial philosophical approach, or is it remarkably narrow and thus easy to parody?
David:
Mohanty has published widely on patriarchy, and intersections with class and “race.” As I said, she’s more subtle than assigning blame for all ills on the West, although she is a strong critic of globalization (and, by the way, of much Western feminism). (There are those who *do* blame everything on the Age of Discovery–some of your favourite targets, perhaps?)
But, to the main point, she’s far from alone. See, for example (since the notion of sexualizing the military came up), Cynthia Enloe, “Nationalism and Masculinity,” in her “Bananas, Beaches and Bases’ (1989). Or her “Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women’s Lives” (1983). On societies ither than Western ones, Maria Mies, “The Dynamics of the Sexual Division of Labour and Integration of Rural Women into the World Market,” in Beneria, ed., “Women and Development: the Sexual Division of Labour in Rural Societies.” (1982). Or Kate Crehan, “Women and Development in North Western Zambia: from Producer to Housewife.” (Review of African Political Economy, 27/28 (1984). Or Joke Schrijvers, “Manipulated Motherhood: The Marginalization of Peasant Women in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka.” (Development and Change 14(2) (1983). Or Diane Wolf, “Daughters, Decisions and Domantion: An Empirical and Conceptual Critique of Household Strategies.” (Development and Change 21 (1) (January 1990).
There are a pile of critiques of traditional socialist approaches, too, which deal inadequately with what Marxists used to call “The Woman Question.” [wince]
But maybe all this, while social science, doesn’t conform to the going definition of PoMo. Am I wrong?
Dr Dawg,
Thanks for those pointers. I may call upon your familiarity again, if I may. Until I see the essays, I can’t really say whether they qualify as postmodernist, social “science”, or, perhaps more likely, some hideous fusion of the two. Though Diane Wolf’s “Daughters, Decisions and Domination: An Empirical and Conceptual Critique of Household Strategies” has that trademark smell about its title, so to speak. Either way, I’m sure they’ll be grist to the mill.
“There are a pile of critiques of traditional socialist approaches, too, which deal inadequately with what Marxists used to call ‘The Woman Question.’ [wince]”
Well, to return to my basic point, I suppose the obvious question here is whether those critiques of “traditional Socialist approaches” are themselves equally hostile to capitalism and advance a leftist position of some kind, or whether they register Socialism as a failed and wicked enterprise. I’m guessing not, somehow. 🙂
David:
Why social “science?” Granted, the social sciences are weak on prediction (by their nature), but so is the theory of evolution. Good social science depends upon careful observation and empirical adequacy, just like any other science.
That Socialists criticise other Socialists is hardly news. From Ice picks to the People’s Front of Judea, we know they disagree. I think David seeks specimens that advocate individualism rather than collectivism A vs collectivism B.
“Good social science depends upon careful observation and empirical adequacy, just like any other science.”
Then why are they mainly still socialists? One has to ask whether they share more in common with “Creation Science” than with the science described by Kuhn or Popper.
Dr Dawg,
“…just like any other science.”
Methinks you elevate social studies way above its station. The tendentious and politicised nature of much social study is, I think, the source of its doubtful reputation. (And, yes, I’m sure this irritates the more conscientious social researchers, who no doubt exist.)
Now, to return to my previous point I’m going to quote myself:
“I suppose the obvious question here is whether those critiques of ‘traditional Socialist approaches’ are themselves equally hostile to capitalism and advance a leftist position of some kind, or whether they register Socialism as a failed and wicked enterprise.”
Perhaps you could clarify which is the case?
That’s a red herring, Dr. Dawg – a tactic that Vitruvius pointed out is your ‘modus operandus’.
The theory of evolution is not and never was set up to have a predictive capacity, based as it is on the open potentiality of randomness.
And social ‘science’, understood as data-based analyses offering basic causes of social behaviour, ought to be able to predict future beahviour based on this analysis of causality.
By the way, all your references on one topic are in the 1980s – 20 years ago.
That’s “modus operandi,” and it was not what Vitruvius was accusing me of. You might want to look up the meaning of “red herring,” by the way: what’s the main issue that I’m supposedly distracting you from?
Karl Popper took care of your assertion about predictability in the social sciences. It’s impossible, because we can read those analyses and change our behaviour. Then you need meta-analyses, and so on. But science, to be science, doesn’t require predictability. That was my main issue, and I’m sticking to it.
So what if my references are from the ‘eighties, by the way? What’s your point? Did PoMo start last year or something?
If I can cut in here.
“What’s the main issue that I’m supposedly distracting you from?”
[ cough ]
“I suppose the obvious question here is whether those critiques of ‘traditional Socialist approaches’ are themselves equally hostile to capitalism and advance a leftist position of some kind, or whether they register Socialism as a failed and wicked enterprise. Perhaps you could clarify which is the case?”
[ cough ]