In case you’ve been wondering what all the fuss is about, and live in Sydney, here’s your chance to find out: (courtesy of Phil Gomes)
7pm, Thursday 14 April
Dr Timothy Rayner will speak on “Who is Antonio Negri?”
This event is a product of the recent controversy surrounding Negri and his intended visit to Australia. Dr Rayner’s paper promises to reveal the truth behind allegations made in the Australian press and to bring attention to Negri’s current work and status as a leading theorist of globalisation. Who is Antonio Negri? What does he have to contribute to world political debate?
Location: Reading Room, Holme Building, Science Road, University of Sydney
Update: The dialogue between Jason and Glen (aka the ‘flame war’) has now migrated to Catallaxy.
“What does he have to contribute to world political debate?”
Based on a brief skimming thru the book in a bookshop once, I’d have to say - nothing sensible but a load of verbose jargon. Nonetheless he should be free to come here and bore audiences shitless …
Jason,
I am glad you are so quick to reaffirm your delicate scholarly sensibilities.
“What does he have to contribute to world political debate?”
Based on the number of Negri’s books and your posts I have read, I’d have to say - nothing you’d understand.
Glen, that’s unnecessarily uncivil. If you want to explain to all of us what you feel Negri’s contribution has been, please feel free to do so. But there’s no need to denigrate Jason. It’s particularly unfair to denigrate Jason on the grounds of his intellect which is formidable. But it’s just unnecessarily rude to personalise things. Please refer to the comments policy - there’s a link under the comments box.
Glen
Difficult books are my thing - if you want difficult but promising read Douglas Hofstadter, read Wittgenstein, read Nietzsche, read Popper or Bartley on scientific metholodology, hell, even read Marz who at least peppers his critiques of capitalism with actual tables and data unlike Negri who claims to be writing about globalisation. Negri seems to be playing at sophomoric theatrics for people who want to pretend to be intellectuals by reading books with convoluted jargon
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=435
Sooo, Mark and Jason, it is reasonable to dismiss an author based “on a brief skimming thru the book in a bookshop once”?
Yeah, right!
My comments were meant to be uncivil as they were written with total, utter, and absolute contempt. I have flicked through a number of books in bookshops, I certainly don’t feel like I have the capacity to speak about them in any qualified way. Unless Jason has the same powers as Superman for speed reading then neither has he the capacity to comment about Negri’s writing. If he does think he has the capacity for commenting on Negri’s work, which is what I assumed because of his post here, then he is must have a very strange conception of informed critique — as I would assume that would involve having actually read some texts read.
Yeah, thanks for the link. It demonstrates the stupidity of Johann Hari. It is funny that he is the same age as me… Even though I think some of his Zizekian-inspired writing is silly, Mark Kaplan (aka K-Punk) wrote a response: http://charlotte-street.blogspot.com/2004/08/exhibit-h.html
We all have our understandings of what a ‘difficult’ book is, for me it is Difference and Repetition. I think ‘difficult’ is closely allied with ‘interesting’, so that some of the books I have the most difficulty with are some of the ones I find the most difficult. Maybe it is because of Deleuzian trial-by-fire but I find most of Negri’s work ok and his work with Hardt relatively easy to understand.
I am sick of people who have problems _reading_ Negri and think that the language is worth complaining about. ffs, go away and LEARN HOW TO READ IT! Then come back with something sensible to say.
Glen, I agree that one shouldn’t dismiss books on a quick flick through. I don’t find Hardt/Negri particularly difficult to read but that’s probably because I’ve been reading continental philosophy stuff for 9 years. I might find some of the economic theory that Jason likes to read difficult because I’m not used to its particular language, as it were.
I still think you were uncivil to Jason and I’d remind you again of the comments policy. You’re most welcome to disagree - indeed debate is encouraged - but not personalisation of the debate.
umm, yeah Glen
I haven’t read Negri because he’s too difficult and I’m intimidated and you’re oh so smart. Negri isn’t ‘difficult’ as in conceptually difficult, just verbose and pretentious, my impression anyway. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be uncivil but I am blunt but I’ll call a charlatan when I see one. Right, maybe I was a little flippant and dismissive but time is limited and there are many, many interesting thinkers to read. Having read various reviews of his work my impression is that he has a cartoonish view of history full of revolutionary polemics, and he writes a whole book on globalisation without one single statistic. If you think I’m denigrating him because he’s a leftist (you seem obsessed with that - lots of mentions of ‘Righteousness’ on your blog), you’re wrong - unlike most pseudointellectual Leftists, I’ve actually read Marx, a man who made the effort to teach himself algebra and calculus in writing Das Kapital and who pored through reams of industrial research and statistics to write the same book. But seeing that you belong to the intellectually flabby post-modernist left, you probably haven’t read Marx, though you obviously know a lot about cars or at least the ‘representation of cars’ and perhaps Big Brother. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, ‘I know Marx and Negri is no Marx’. So anyway to cut a long story short, I’ll give Negri a pass, not comment on each him anymore and go on reading actual serious thinkers.
[waves frilled cuffs in melodramatic fashion]
Jason Soon is declared IRON INTELLECTUAL!
[much sycophantic bowing]
Whose meme will reign supreme?
Don’t stop boys, this is fun!
Jason, civility infringement notice issued to you soon, but maybe Amanda’s right, a stoush might be fun! Ah, intellectual daggers drawn at two paces! Fyodor, I take it you’re offering to act as second? Reminds me of the Bunuel movie where two gentlemen (a Jesuit and a Jansenist) were duelling while exclaiming “you are wrong sir, God’s prevenient grace is received into the soul”!
fair enough, Mark, I was out of line.
It was a flippant remark and I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
Jason,
Dismissing a book or a body of work before you have even read any of the work properly certainly does not speak to someone’s intelligence. I just think you’re upset that someone has called you on the silly premise, evidenced by your first post in this thread, that you obviously believe you can, with any authority, dismiss a body of work without engaging with the body of work beyond second-hand accounts and a ‘flick thru’.
So this time you have argued that because you don’t have the time to read any of Negri’s work that gives you free reign to pass judgement without actually having properly read any of his work? Uhuh, ok. Another zinger of an argument… Oh yes, I have never read the bible, but because I haven’t had the time to read it, I must be able to say whatever I like about Christianity… Oh yes, I have never read any medical texts, but because I haven’t had the time to read any, I can assure you that growth on your neck is absolutely normal… Oh yes, I have never read any of Antonio Negri’s work, but because I haven’t had the time to read any, I can assure you it isn’t worth reading. Oh HANG ON! that was YOUR argument…
yep…
Not all of us are accountants! Some of us study within the humanities. Facts and figures only get you so far. I have learnt this through my engagement with the road safety industry.
haha, dude, attempting to attack me about my phd research on contemporary modified-car culture is extraordinary. Unless you have spent a lifetime being a car-dude or the last 3-4 years doing intensive research on the topic, then perhaps you should think about coming after me via that line of attack. Oh, but hang on, you have read my blog, so you must know everything about my thesis… ahahaha…
hmm, ok Jason has retracted his comment after during my the construction of my last smell bomb. err… sorry, yeah, so how’s the weather?
Glen, the weather in Brisvegas this afternoon is beautiful.
Glen
I am no accountant! As an economist, that’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been called. Was Marx an ‘accountant’because he bothered to learn calculus and look at industrial research? Was Adam Smith an ‘accountant’? Was Weber an accountant for engaging with facts? It’s interesting that you relegate the world of facts to ‘accounting’.
I’ll be Jason’s second.
The problem with cultural studies IMO is that it’s become sociology without systematic social research or statistics and philosophy without rigour. A mixture of claims that pop culture is the thing with a faddism and theorist worship. Glen’s reading Agamben and Negri. Everyone in cult studies is reading Agamben and Negri. Next year they’ll all be reading someone else - European, of course. Nor do most cult studies practitioners have any background in philosophy - so we get this hypostasis of theory - all disconnected from the real and all flitting across the po/mo stage for fifteen seconds of faux fame.
Cult studies is itself proof of the truth of critiques of the postmodern - it’s a symptom not an analysis - and deeply implicated in capitalism and the postmodern ethos of productivity (how many articles can you churn out on post-colonial studies and get that DEST point count up?).
It once had a radical edge, with the Birmingham School, but now it’s just become “sexy” and has even lost sense of the Butlerian politics as performative to be just well, performative.
I’m off to the library and then tonight to an antique auction and dinner afterwards - so, play safe, kids!
Damn. I was so looking forward to a duel by cannon at dawn. You PoMo intellectuals are soft, I tells ya, SOFT!
Final comment before I head off - as a value-free social scientist I of course take no position on these matters
But Weber after all did say that the reduction of political questions to cultural ones was an effect of a society without a soul. That’s ok to say - as Weber of course was the one who set us on the value-free route. As he also said, the world was now a contest between warring gods.
You’ll be pleased to hear, Jason, that Weber was deeply influenced by Nietzsche.
See ya!
Oh, man, just what I’ve been waiting for for so long. A no-holds barred, no-gloves cage fight between the empiricists and the relativists.
Are you going to do tag teams? Smack each other with folding chairs? Please! Tell me there’s going to be some economics and cultural studies jargon trash talk and some man-to-man smackdowns!
I want to see Glen in the corner use his famous “Discipline and Punish” toe-hold, and Jason rejoin with the deadly combo of OECD stats scissor grip, followed by a smack in the kidneys with the latest Senate Estimates papers. It’s not just wrestling entertainment, it’s the future of academia at stake.
Can you smell what Beaudrillard is cooking? Yaaah!
Liam, very few punches thrown from the cultural studies corner of the ring in the last eight hours!
Maybe Fyodor is right?
hmm, I’m not sure how I got painted into the ‘empiricist’ corner. I thought I was taking a perfectly sensible centrist line.
Empiricist in the sense of basing conclusions on empirical research, I think, Jason - ie your comments on Negri’s book not having engaged with any actual data about globalisation - make sense?
As Jason’s second, I appeal to the referee - as there’s been silence from the cult studies corner for over 24 hours - is Jason the winner by a knockout blow?
err, sorry, didn’t know this thread was still happening! I have been working… or that my call of Jason’s non-thinking dismissal of a body of work has come to assume the status of a battle between ‘empiricists’ and ‘relativists’. Talk it up! Is someone making money from this? Is it being broadcast on Fox? Such excitement!
Well, Jason equates ‘facts’ somehow with being an economist. Sure, whatever floats you boat. But the factuality of a situation cannot be entirely enveloped in figures and calculus. Witness the rising oil prices: how much of the oil price is constituted by a non-rational appraisal of the contemporary geo-political order, which may even be incorporated into mathematic models of the contemporary, but can only ever be approximate assessments…? (btw, I did some modeling maths at uni, I was v. good at physics and maths at school, but I failed uni maths! 8am lectures anyone? uber-nerds? bugger that… haha)
However, sure, lets allow ‘facts’ into the discussion, and I apologise for flogging a dead horse, but my central contestation is that perhaps someone actually reads Negri and knows the ‘facts’ of Negri’s _philosophy_, so we can talk again (because I still have some unanswered questions on Negri!). The central tension is that some people assume that because Negri attempts to get at what cannot be represented in so-called ‘facts’ (the elements of the contemporary situation legitimated via discourses of… economics?) means that he is somehow not worth reading?!?! WTF!?!? so economics or whatever owns the contemporary discursive terrain on globalisation?!?!?!
kim, the next philosophical fad will be (is?) Badiou! Although it is slightly alarming that you are historicising academic fashions in such a way that does not take into account that I am but a postgrad. A postgrad with no academic history beyond roughly half a dozen years. I cannot be associated with a historical series within academia, fashionable or otherwise, simply because I don’t have one! but, what fashion am I a part of, exactly? and what is fashion? Is reading A Thousand Plateaus a fashion? What about a reprint of Kant or something? It is a cop out to suggest that such work is mere fashion, when all academic work is mere fashion. I think what is at issue, is not the concept of ‘fashion’ per se, but the screaming contemporaneity of an excess of academic work being produced and to which most academics are exposed. ‘Excess’ relative to pre-internet days…
Of course, if my postgrad status is being taken into account, the implication, therefore, is that I should learn exactly what previous researchers have learnt, researched and published, because…? Why? So they can remain the strutting cocks of academia without having to push their thinking or their research anymore? or maybe that everything that is worthwhile of being said has already been said? That I should discuss things in exactly the same way as previous researchers, because…? Why? So the reactionary popularist ‘intellectuals’ who make a living from pumping out the same diatribe within the ‘culture wars’ have a hegemonic grip on the language?
and, lastly, kim, if you think I am not aware of the complicity between the publishing regimes of contemporary academia and the neoliberal order, then you have never read the posts on my blog where I attempt to address what is essentially a deep ambivalence with my role as trainee scholar. I am not stupid, but the subsumption of antagonisms within academic discourse is not something I can easily address or let alone resolve…
Glen, I never said you were stupid - I’m well aware that yr not
My point is this - when I finished my thesis in the late 90s we were all Foucauldians or Derrideans. Except I wasn’t - perhaps it was having done my undergrad and honours in Sociology - or perhaps it was the fact that I took Foucault’s warnings about slavish adherence to a “theorist” to heart of Michelle Le Deouff’s (a French feminist philosopher very sympathetic to analytical philosophy) injunction that feminists should never be “some man-ians”.
Who or what Badiou is, I don’t know? But I bet he’s a French philosopher? He’s not writing in cult studies, n’est-ce pas? What relevance does his thought have for cult studies’ object? And incidentally, what is the object of cult studies?
In rigorous scholarly work, you build upon past research and construct theory inductively if a theory doesn’t fit the facts, or test hypotheses - including theoretically derived hypotheses.
Cult studies by contrast seems just to pour out theorist worship - and never engage with facts at all - or any of the accepted canons of scholarly research. Agamben has his time on the stage, and then Badiou strides across. How is knowledge advanced?
Jason’s comment about the intellectually flabby postmodern left has validity.
Some cult studies research centres have closed down because they’ve been unable to sustain research grants and commissioned research because they wouldn’t know a methodology if it were asking if it were a pipe. It’s such a self-referential little discipline - its claims to transdisciplinarity having validity only insofar as cult studies academics need to hire Sociology postgrads who know their way round SPSS when they actually want to do some research as opposed to pontificating and “theorising”.
Excuse my tone - it’s not directed at you personally - cult studies makes me angry because it’s such a waste of political energy that could be better employed.
Someone once said to me once that cult studies was either aging ex-Marxist blokes in tattered leather jackets denying they’re getting old and hanging out at gigs trying to look hip or 20 something postgrads and junior scholars sitting in bars sipping cocktails and making jokes about French theory.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
I’m not having a go at you - you seem to be a person committed to learning and thinking - I just wonder if that’s common in your discipline.
I’ll come and fight on yr side, though, when Nelson finds out what cult studies is and tries to close it down.
ps - how come cult studies theory worship is always of French *blokes*?
Round Two! Mark, start growing your ‘fro NOW, dude! We could sell this on pay-for-view in Sociology Departments everywhere and make, like, $4.57.
However, I have a nagging suspicion this is going to end like Million Dollar Baby.
$4.57 wouldn’t buy a cocktail in a funky St. Kilda bar, Fyodor!
Kim,
Nature has gifted the French with preternatural powers of condescension and a facility with mangling the English language. Plus everything sounds cooler in French.
oh, btw, I am planning on going to the lecture tomorrow night. so if anyone can figure out who I am, come up and say hello! yes, my general bodily disposition is as raucous as my blog posts/comments. we will probably (well, maybe) be grabbing a $5 steak after the lecture, so join us!
C’est vrai!
I might turn up, just to heckle.
What a pity I don’t leave in Sydney - I could come along and lure EP into some sperm theft shenanigans with my femonazi wiles!
“Cult studies by contrast seems just to pour out theorist worship - and never engage with facts at all - or any of the accepted canons of scholarly research. Agamben has his time on the stage, and then Badiou strides across. How is knowledge advanced?”
Kim, this question is problematic. My contestation is that people have to actually read aforementioned texts or bodies of work to figure out if they have any value and not base whatever value they have upon how quickly or not they enter or leave the scene. Or, to put it another way, if I judge your appraisal of cult studs according to the same methods by which you say academic knowledge should be judged — that is through an engagement with the facts of a situation — then such dismissals based on what something or another ’seems,’ such as your appraisal of cult studs, should also be dismissed. I am not sure what sort of generalisations you are working from, but they are simply false. Perhaps you have not looked at the research centre where I am located (the Centre for Cultural Research at the University at Western Sydney).
I am in a relatively unique position with regards to my research topic (on hotted-up cars and stuff). In the history of the universe (well, last 60 years), roughly three dozen texts have been produced on the subject, and those three dozen leave much to say… Therefore I am forced to be creative with my thinking on the subject. You realise that the lack of established work on my topic therefore implies that I am, in fact, unfashionable?
Well, on questions of gender and before we even get to why patriarchial imperatives are reproduced within the French academic scene and then transposed across the trans-national networks of ‘international’ cult studs, a point I failed to raise in my previous rant, is that using the term ‘fashion’ is a discursive feminisation of a particular empirically historical trend.
btw, Badiou is a neo-platonicist with a Lacanian bent. He is big on maths… as I have said elsewhere, and it is highly ironic in this thread, ‘maths’ appears to be the new philosophical black.
university OF western sydney… how spastic of me, lol!
on questions of gender and before we even get to why patriarchial imperatives are reproduced within the French academic scene and then transposed across the trans-national networks of ‘internationalΔτ cult studs, a point I failed to raise in my previous rant, is that using the term ‘fashionΔτ is a discursive feminisation of a particular empirically historical trend
And you’re doing a thesis on hotted-up cars?
This is the death of academia.
You know what, EP, I bet Brendan Nelson would agree with you. The irony of course is that cult studies thrives in a quasi-marketised model where funding follows student choice - offer a subject with “Big Brother” or sex in the title and watch the students bums sit in the lecture theatre all with a big fat dollar funding allocation attached. But more rigorous disciplines are underfunded.
Glen, I’ll have a look at the research centre when I have a chance - can you post a link please?
As to your question, surely if yr interested in a particular problematic you look for relevant theory first not just “whatever everyone’s talking about this year” and try to make something that originates in a very different problematic fit your research question.
ps - if cult studies ppl are interested in philosophy or mathematics, why not study in those disciplines instead of getting some second hand reflection?
hey EP, get fucked. what possible value are you adding to the world, besides spreading and generating hate? you piece of shit.
kim,
you link academic rigor to academic topic. this is a fallacy. why should a topic determine whether or not scholarship is rigorous? again, if you read the scholarship, then you wouldn’t be making such assumptions.
http://www.uws.edu.au/ccr
yeah, I did look at what theories are relevant, ie ANT and so on. Then I trace their work back to other theories, ie Deleuze amongst others. I read the others for fun.
why should they study philosophers in ‘philosophy’ or maths in ‘mathematics’ (whatever those imagined hypostatic disciplines are meant to be)? this is nonsense. so because I do cultural studies I am not allowed to go into the archives and trace modified-car culture through enthusiast car magazines, because that would be doing history?
Glen, please don’t be abusive to other commenters. EP might just be being provocative and I’d suggest to you that you ought just to let it pass, or if you think he actually has a point then please engage with him civilly. Please read the comments policy - linked below the comment facility.
On Kim’s point, Glen, and I’m not saying that I agree with all that she wrote, there is value in studying philosophy precisely because a disciplinary education trains one’s mind to make the sort of derivations to other theories that you talk about. I made the point in my post on Derrida at Troppo (I don’t have time to find the link right now as I’m logging off soon to finish an article for a deadline but there’s a link to the archive under ‘About this site’ on the sidebar) that the misunderstanding of continental philosophers such as Derrida - and consequently much of the opprobrium they attract is a consequence of their appropriation by people working in literary studies who have little understanding of the history of philosophy or the complex philosophical problematics in which post-structuralist thought arises.
I’m very well aware that resource constraints in academia mean that even Sociology honours students often get a poor grounding in the bases of the discipline. Postgraduate study, and this is explicit in the North American model with “comprehensive exams” before the dissertation, has always been about imparting broad disciplinary competence in order that people can understand debates and thus enhance their particular research efforts.
There is a danger that this fundamental part of scholarly skill is lost in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary studies.
mark, no, EP did not have a point. Nor do I let provocative comments go through to the keeper. Civility should not be used as an excuse for allowing reactionaries to make insulting comments about whoever they like. Where I grew up there was a strong economy of respect, you gave respect where respect was due. If EP is going to insinuate that I am somehow representative of the death of academia, when I have spent the last three years of my life working on my project and he or she has no conception of my thesis in the slightest, then whoever ‘EP’ is can suck my balls. He or she deserves exactly ZERO respect. If you think EP was being ‘civil’ in his or her above comment, I think you are mistaken.
I don’t work in literary studies and I do not read Derrida, so I can’t comment on your example.
I don’t think you need to be trained in a discipline to have a conception of what scholarship is or be able to practice such scholarship. Jason, in one of his earlier posts, talked about Marx teaching himself calc or whatever. What was his discipline? His work was one of the driving forces behind what would become discipline; I think it is called ‘political science’, no?
How is it possible for the problematics that drive scholarship to be tied to the axiomatics of disciplinary form, except through specific relations of power? I am not saying such a link does not make the pedagogy process easier or that it is not beneficial, only that it is not necessary.
I’m sorry, my bottle’s full:
1) problematic is not a noun;
2) ditto axiomatic; and
3) “pedagogy process” is usually referred to as “teaching”.
I strongly doubt that EP will be sucking your balls. He’s frightened enough of being on the receiving end.
[calmly awaits pistol shot, en profile]
Well, Fyodor, I am glad you have staked out the limit of your understanding for everyone. And, yes, I have an very poor grasp of the English language. Obviously.
If anyone wants to actually engage with what I have written, then I welcome it.
I don’t think EP was civil, Glen, but I’d ask you to show me some respect and refrain from using language like “get fucked” here.
Also, I think Fyodor was being a bit playful, Glen [see his last line].
I’m happy to engage with you - just in the middle of writing an article that’s overdue at the moment - so may come back and do so in due course.
Glen, yes, but the Foucauldian point about power and discipline isn’t escaped by calling yourself “transdisciplinary” as Cultural Studies folk do. They’re well aware - and it’s debated as you would know - that they’re reproducing themselves as a discipline - with journals, conferences, professional associations, particular conventions, hierarchies and everything else that’s proper to a discipline.
My point simply is that I think I can claim a broad knowledge and grounding in Sociology because that’s where I’ve had my postgraduate training, but wouldn’t make the same claim about Philosophy, though I’ve read widely. I’ve nothing against the autodidact, but there is a difference.
And I think everyone in every discipline should do five postgraduate years of Popperian studies
[note - comment made to work the traditional half century reference in].
Yes, I lost my temper. I apologise for any offence my use of language may have caused, either by using the phrase ‘get fucked’ or using specific, and dare I say it, _technical_ terms that others do not recognise as nouns
But I certainly do not apologise for the malice behind my comments to EP. Making sweeping generalisations about the ‘death of academia’ in the context of my research project, for me, is about as offensive as you can get. If people think that is funny, that’s great, but I don’t.
Mark, I am not denying the cult studs can be understood as a discipline. I have no problem with disciplinarity (axiomatic practice). But social problems or whatever are not organised in terms of disciplines (problematic reality). I don’t really see myself as ‘doing’ cult studs, that is how others seek to recognise what I do. I see myself researching the culture of hotted-up car stuff. My research is organised around my research topic and not along disciplinary lines, but I do normally tell people I work in the humanities (specially people from the road safety industry;).
Problematic in this sense is really just a straight translation into English of a French noun - made famous by Foucault but not original to him (as Foucault I’m sure would acknowledge, his entire research programme can be found in one aphorism in Nietzche’s “Gay Science” - “one day someone should write the history of punishment” etc).
Social problems are indeed not organised in terms of disciplines - I agree, Glen, on this I like Wallerstein.
No probs re - apology. If you knew and loved EP as we all do, you’d respond by mentioning sperm theft and/or Sweden, that normally distracts him from his substantive point (see the comments at the top of the thread).
Yes, Glen, I think Mark’s recommended catechresis as a rhetorical prophylactic against EP. I, of course, as EP well knows, am plotting to use my femonazi wiles to steal his sperm. EP - email me for the nude pics if you want to play into my cunning and nefarious plot. Enter my (inter)web!
Glen, you wrote about making sense of Difference and Repetition - the point I was trying to make is that someone who had been trained for many years in the sort of philosophical tradition common in France (explication du texte) and Germany - thoroughly immersed in the problematics (hello, Fyodor!) and history of philosophy, would find it came easily. That’s not me btw! You may not be reading it to apply to yr thesis, but I’m trying to point to a problem that cult studies in general has in appropriating theorists without appreciating their genealogy and even if they’re not particularly applicable to what the cult in question is.
I still haven’t had a look at the website - sorry - probably unwisely given the current state of my health I’ve had a few wines tonight so might not be able to do it justice.
Email me, EP, you know you want to.
My point was that anyone who takes such theoretical gobbledygook seriously is unlikely to be capable of understanding hotted-up cars or the people who hot them up.
Yes, Hotrod, it’s that obvious. I won’t engage with what you’ve written because it’s overwrought drivel.
Good luck with the PhD - I look forward to (mis)reading it in Wheels magazine. Make sure you include plenty of car pics - it’ll distract from your godawful text.
Civility, Fyodor!
We can’t have Andrew dismissing this as a flame war!
I think things would have to get very inflamed indeed before Larva Rodeo escalated to anything resembling a “war”, Mark. For my money, Jason nailed it first and every time, as did Andrew. Life’s too short to waste it reading deliberately opaque text.
EP, before I started my PhD I worked as a freelance writer for Street Machine. The difference between Street Machine’s (everyday) language and the language of academia and in particular French-inspired Cult Studs is exactly the first thing I address in my thesis.
What this thread boils down to is that it seems that a number of reactionaries simply cannot handle the fact they need to learn how to read certain texts and bodies of work before they can understand it.
Buff my reactionary boot, grease monkey.
wooooahhh! chill out people.
1. negri is opaque but in many ways so was marx. a lot of work is opaque but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth reading - but the author should work on their writing skills.
2. sociology VS cultural studies. This is a mute debate since most research projects involve sociologists working alongside cultural studies pundits (whomeva they are), psychologists, biologists, and so on. to enter into a polemic debate about the relative merits of each discipline only entrenches them as disciplines with histories that are very restictive and tend to contained thought/research.
3. i actually study surfing and masculinity (their interactions, how men live in this field accordingly, what ti smeans to their lives, and so on), and in some ways parallel Glen’s work. However, as for not being rigorous i think you will find that most researchers have worked through and with methodologies - indeed my own work uses ethnography, quant. analysis, ethology blah blah, hardly what i would call non-rigorous considering the effort that goes into working out what these are and how to do them. what popular cultural topics offer is a lens through which to address important issues as they arise ‘on the ground’ and as lived by the people. this in turn makes new ideas, readings, and possibilities accessible to others who would like to partake in the debates but find a lot of theory too dense and haven’t the time to read them - unlike my privileged position as a PhD candidate. i recognise my responsibilities and to suggest that researchers who do cultural studies do not fails to take into consideration excellent work that is being prduced - think the National Rugby League ‘playing by the rules’ research project. this has had excellent outcomes and will continue to do so due to the dedication of those involved to put their research to good use.
4. a lot of this cultural war mumbo jumbo is posturing and jockeying for the very limited positions of cultural commentator and their accompanying pay-checks. sorry, bit of a cynic in this regard.
better to continue to do research and write regardless.(well, that’s what i tell myself considering my limited employment opportunities:)
5. Negri does ramble incoherently at times (soz glen) - but then so does Nietzche, weber (but hemanages to make it boring too ;), hegel, marx, even, dare i say it, popper. of course, all in differing degrees. i think writing is an issue here and not their ideas per se. the french and italian influence has been important but cultural studies also heavily emphaises work from asia, the americas, oceania, etc.
6. but then again Alan Jones would just call me a bleeding heart. And Bolt - well, his aggression and polemic arguments require some direct conversation. (he would pop down to maroubra, the boys would like to show him how his method only works when not face to face, of course we’ll be friendly hehe;) [just jokes, of course]
whoops, no i’m getting heated up. lol. now, where did i put that beer (there’s the perfect methodology for you. rofl).
Andrew would like to dismiss it as a flame war, then instead of it being an argument or discussion it is based on the exchange of silly insults. Therefore he would not have to participate in any proper way. Yet, he has engaged with it through a post on his own blog… Reactionaries love defining the terms of the debate.
hi clif! haha!
Yes, of course…that’s it! People who disagree with you are reactionaries! Poor, deluded fools. If only they learned - sorry, pedagogically processed - how to read proper they would understand your deep insight.
It’s so typical of those nasty reactionaries to define who’s allowed to participate in their bourgeois contretemps.
Speaking of people who “love to define the terms of debate”, Glen, it was your wonky redefinition of the word “inform” in another thread that first got me offside.
However, I was a bit too harsh in my criticism of your project in this thread, and for this I apologise. I should properly reserve such treatment for those who have earned it.
oh. the love xxx
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thank you clif
if glen had made his points in as considered a manner as you have instead of taking el testeroni for a spin drive, this wouldn’t have degenerated into a flame war
EP, you’re such a pussycat at heart!
Sadly, today is the day I’ve just bought a new computer and chosen to get broadband cable installed so I won’t be around to referee/participate in this debate. So play safe kids!
In defence of Weber: If there’s a single thinker who’s done more to establish the terms of how we see the world from a social-scientific perspective, I don’t know who it is. His reflections on ethics and politics in “Politics as a Vocation” and on the role of academics continue to be challenging. Part of the problem is that *none* of us are educated as he was and have such an amazing erudition - but few of us are as original and insightful in their view of the world. I know I’m not.
And I wouldn’t criticise his writing unless you’ve read the German.
In defence of Andrew Norton: He’s no reactionary but a very thoughtful and consistent classic Liberal who is willing and prepared to engage in debate.
In defence of Fyodor and EP: If you guys think this is a flame war, you should have participated in some of the Troppo culture wars, or go over to some of the RWDB blogs and tussle with some RWDB attack dogs. This debate - like LP generally - is very feline and tame by comparison - as it should be.
Just try to keep your sense of humour!
“Andrew would like to dismiss it as a flame war, then instead of it being an argument or discussion it is based on the exchange of silly insults. Therefore he would not have to participate in any proper way. Yet, he has engaged with it through a post on his own blog… Reactionaries love defining the terms of the debate. ”
errm, so you can’t ‘engage’ back by commenting on the blog? what about if I cut and pasted andrew’s comment onto this glen? or is this still to oppressive? and if he has engaged with it through a post of his own, then isn’t he participating in it? or can A equal not A? Oh, I forgot, Aristotle’s logic is old hat, you need some French guy to reinterpret it for you first
err, Jason, I have posted a comment on Andrew’s blog. If it hasn’t come through yet, that is because he moderates comments.
‘Considered manner’? wtf? so your opening salvo was written in a ‘considered manner’? Whatever you can gleam from a book merely by flicking through it is not substantial enough to write off either the book or that person’s entire body of work. However you try to argue that point or defend your original comment is nonsense. Sure, I dismiss books by flicking through them, but I would never have the audacity to use that ‘flicking thru’ upon which to base a comment like ‘he can offer the world nothing sensible but a load of jargon’. What a load of tripe!
Fyodor, yeah, often I do find myself disagreeing with people who are reactionaries! So what? haha!
Glen
comments are moderated to keep out spam. no other reason. we recently moved to a new template,etc and are still having minor teething problems. another attempt to plsy up this ‘oppression’ meme, eh?
Hegel of course disagreed that A doesn’t equal not A is always true. I just thought I’d throw a reference in to the dialectic to see what happens! Aristotelian logic isn’t the only type around.
Can we have a real culture war, please, Mark? It’s getting a bit more of the same-ey over here.
we are starting up an Empire reading group
How about a ‘Tarnsman of Gor’ appreciation thread - actually there’s one going over at he who must not be named’s place.
Doesn’t sound very promising Rob.
Suggest another one - but not about English curriculum stuff or homosexual teachers. That’s been done!
OK, Kim.
Why do so many people pretend they like Polanski’s crap film ‘Chinatown’?
Why do we think pigs can’t fly when I regularly see their shapes darkening the moon?
Was Teiresias right about the nine parts of desire and what kind of sex was he talking about?
Hmmm, I genuinely like Chinatown, Rob!
On 3 - please elaborate/elucidate (and please use the word ‘myrmidon’ or similar)…
One day, on Olympus, there was a huge fight between Zeus (top Greek god) and his wife Hera about who enjoyed sex more - men or women. Hera said men did, Zeus said women did.
Coincidentally, in the mortal world, there lived a man called Teiresias. Years ago, he had been travelling in the forest, and seen two serpents having sex (no, he didn’t know that either). He killed the male, and the female spat on him. This turned him into a woman. For a few years he roamed around Greece, having sex as a woman. Then he found himself in a forest again, watching a couple of serpents having sex. He killed the female, this time, and the male spat on him, turning him back into a man. For a few years he roamed around Greece having sex as a man.
Hera recalled this story, and said, ‘Teiresias will know, let’s get him up here and ask him who enjoys it more’.
So they did. Baled up on Olympus by the gods, Teiresias thought long and hard when the question was posed. Eventually he said, ‘There are ten parts of desire. Men enjoy only one par of desire. Women enjoy nine’.
Enraged at losing the argument, Hera turned to her myrmidons and ordered them to blind Teiresias. To compensate for his blindness (no god can put right what another god has done) Zeus gave him the gift of long life and prophesy. Hence he turns up in the Oedipus plays of Sophocles as a seer.
Question is - was he right? And was he only talking about heterosexual sex?
(There are various versions of this story, I should say. This one is based on my bad memory of Ovid.)
Update: The dialogue between Jason and Glen (aka the ‘flame war’) has now seemingly migrated to Catallaxy - what’s the deal, LP flame wars not good enough?