Further to my posts on the preposterous Carolyn Guertin and Jacques Derrida’s unhinged and fraudulent prose, this may be of interest. It’s from a lecture by Keith Windschuttle, author of The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past. It’s a longish extract, but bear with me. I think it’s worth your time and, perhaps, grimly amusing. Windschuttle points out how “unproblematic prose” and “clarity of presentation” are regarded by some – guess who – as the “conceptual tools of conservatism.” Thus, if you prefer arguments that are (a) comprehensible and (b) able to withstand scrutiny, you must be a conservative, i.e. The Enemy. On the other hand, if you denounce such bourgeois trifles, you’re “radical” and very, very sexy.

“Though all the great historians I just mentioned were wonderfully clear writers, postmodern academic fashions have declared clear writing to be ideologically contaminated. The editors of one recent collection of postmodernist essays inform us: ‘The ideal of a transparent, tempered and accommodated prose’ is ‘the approved mode of expression for the society and values of the newly empowered middle class.’ (Innovations of Antiquity, ed. Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden, New York 1992). Another has declared ‘unproblematic prose and clarity of presentation’ to be ‘the conceptual tools of conservatism.’ (Mas’d Zavarzadeh, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, cited by John M. Ellis, Against Deconstructionism.) Since today’s typical postmodernist academic would rather be declared to have a communicable disease than labelled ‘middle class’ or ‘conservative’, let me give you an example of what now passes as acceptable prose style among the postmodernist fraternity (and sorority).

This is from a gentleman named Homi Bhabha, a former professor of English at the University of Chicago, who has now been appointed to Harvard. He is writing about nineteenth century attempts by Britain to establish governments in its colonies that mimicked the government of the imperial centre. Rather than examining the evidence of how these colonial governments actually worked in practice, Bhabha instead gives us a deconstruction of the concept of ‘mimicry’. He writes: ‘Within that conflictual economy of colonial discourse that Edward Said describes as the tension between the synchronic panoptical vision of domination – the demand for identity, stasis – and the counterpressure of the diachrony of history – change, difference – mimicry represents an ironic compromise. (To) adapt Samuel Weber’s formulation of the marginalising vision of castration, then, colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognisable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say…’ (From Tensions of Empire, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, University of California Press, 1997)

I won’t try to translate these sentiments into English. How could anyone talk seriously about the vision of castration? Let me simply point out that they are representative of their kind, containing the usual quota of invented terminology and postmodernist clichés – ‘difference’, ‘irony’, ‘the Other’ – not to mention the obligatory reverent citation of approved gurus. Writing of this kind should remind us of George Orwell’s observation that muddled prose is usually an ‘instrument for concealing or preventing thought.’ Unfortunately, in academic life today, this kind of prose is routinely adopted by the most successful people in their fields. This happens to be a very effective tactic to adopt in academic circles where there is always an expectation that things are never simple and that anyone who writes clearly is thereby being shallow. Obscurity is often assumed to equal profundity, a quality that signals a superiority over the thinking of the uneducated herd. Moreover, those students who put in all the work needed to comprehend a dialogue of this kind very often become converts, partly to protect their investment in the large amount of time already committed, and partly because they are bound to feel they have thereby earned a ticket into an elite. Obscurity is thus a clever way to generate a following.”

The full lecture can be read here.

Further to recent posts on PC bigotry and the redefinition of racism, La Shawn Barber has highlighted another example of students being steered towards approved kinds of prejudice.

Seattle high school students have at public expense been sent to the annual White Privilege Conference, the stated aim of which is to provide “a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression.” Topics headlined for ‘exploration’ include “white man’s pornography”, “multiple systems of oppression” and “transforming whiteness in the classroom.” Given such tendentious subject matter, readers may be forgiven for questioning the extent to which realistic discussion will actually be encouraged, or indeed permitted, and for questioning whether the White Privilege Conference does in fact provide “a challenging, empowering and educational experience.”

Visitors are, however, assured that the WPC is “not about beating up on white folks,” but is instead about “working to dismantle systems of power, prejudice, privilege and oppression.” Whether those two statements prove compatible in practice is, alas, not entirely clear. Dr Peggy McIntosh, a “highly sought-after speaker” on multicultural teaching methods, describes white privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets… like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” If that explanation isn’t sufficiently clear or convincing, Dr McIntosh also provides a White Privilege Checklist, which defines white privilege as the ability to “be in the company of people of my race most of the time” and to “avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.” The ability to go shopping without being followed or harassed is, Dr McIntosh asserts, another indicator of heinous racial advantage, as is the ability to find publishers for articles on the “invisible, weightless” phenomenon upon which she happens to opine.

La Shawn Barber notes that racially-fixated ideology isn’t exactly unknown in Seattle’s educational system. Dr Caprice Hollins, the Director of Equity, Race & Learning Support for Seattle’s public schools, has previously criticised individualism, long-term planning (or “future time orientation”) and the speaking of grammatical English as “white values.” The expectation among teachers that all students should be responsible individuals and meet certain linguistic and organisational standards is, according to Dr Hollins, a form of “cultural racism.”

Behold your tax dollars at work, shaping young minds for a brighter tomorrow.

More here and here.

“One has to wonder what kind of ‘awareness’ Islamic Awareness Week was intended to cultivate. Evidently, a free and frank discussion wasn’t – and isn’t – a welcome outcome. And one has to wonder exactly when students became so delicate and so allergic to dissent, even to matters of historical fact.”

Further to this post and this one, Lepton has steered my attention to another example of censorship in the name of religious ‘sensitivity’. From an article by Greg Lukianoff, president of the campus free speech campaign group, Fire:

“Today, Fire announced the decision by a disciplinary panel at Tufts [University] to find the conservative student newspaper, The Primary Source, guilty of ‘harassment’ for, among other things, publishing a satirical ad that listed less-than-flattering facts about Islam during Tufts’ Islamic Awareness Week.”

The advert, available here, suggests a week of alternative discussion topics to “supplement the educational experience.” Topics include slavery in Islamic history, intolerance of criticism, the treatment of gay people and the role of women under Islamic law.

In light of recent posts, this could be interesting. Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary, Indoctrinate U, examines censorship, political lockstep and compulsory ‘sensitivity’ on American campuses. Take a minute to watch the trailer – if only to marvel at the placard, “U.S. out of Berkeley.”

More here and here. (H/T, Instapundit.)

In response to this article, some readers have been discussing PoMo politics and its various “trickle-down” effects. Readers who’ve been following that discussion may be interested in some points made by Fabian Tassano over at his blog. Tassano addresses the broader subject of leftist bias in academia and the creeping censorship that follows:

“The larger part of academia has become obsessed with jargon and formalism, at the expense of meaningful content. An academic’s principal options in fields such as economics, psychology or sociology are now (1) become a number-cruncher (do tedious empirical research with plenty of highly technical statistical analysis, much of which is likely to be questionable), or (2) generate pseudo-theory of a kind which reproduces the currently fashionable terminology. In either case, taking care to say nothing that conflicts with received wisdom. In fields such as literature or philosophy, there is only option (2). The high level of technicality and referencing typically masks the triviality — or absence — of genuine content.

The purpose of academia has changed from producing real insights to generating reinforcement for the preferred world view… It should be obvious by now, to anyone who cares, that the principle of free speech is being gradually eroded in the West. Either by straightforward ditching, or — more subtly — by redefining it in ways designed to legitimise the prohibition of ideologically incorrect viewpoints. For example, not long ago an editor at the Index on Censorship admonished us for being too literalist about the issue: ‘People shouldn’t think that the Index is against censorship on principle. It may have been so in its radical youth, but it is now as concerned with fighting hate speech as protecting free speech.’ (Rohan Jayasekera, commenting about the murder of Theo van Gogh.)

…Where we get dissident research being done at all, it is — inevitably — funded by bodies with links to commerce and/or right wing politics, since those are the only organisations with an incentive to challenge the il-liberal consensus. This is used by the mainstream both (a) to prove that there isn’t a restriction on what research gets done, and (b) to discredit that research.”

The article can be read in full here. Tassano’s book, Mediocracy, may also be of interest.