The cultural studies wars have moved to Quiggin. John observes rather wryly, in response to an article claiming that pop culture is “subversive”:
I see this point being made all the time in cult-stud writing. No doubt it explains why the recent collapse of capitalism, in the face of withering postmodernist critiques, began in the United States, the home of mass culture.
Cultural studies originated in a sort of Gramscian sociology of culture - rejecting the idea that “high art” was progressive and damning it for elitism. Rather, it was argued, popular culture expressed the resistance of the masses to capitalism. Though this seems inherently unlikely, there were some reasonable arguments made. Authors like the literary critic Raymond Williams picked up on the work of historians such as E.P. Thompson to look at the distinctiveness of working class culture and British sociologist Stuart Hall and his colleagues of the “Birmingham School” studied working class subcultures such as the Mods of the 60s and punks of the 70s.
Much of the effort of early Cultural Studies was directed against the cultural pessimism of the Frankfurt School - whose leading lights such as Adorno and Marcuse claimed that pop culture was the modern equivalent of panem et circenses for the masses, and had a passifying and politically disabling effect. Cultural studies theorists in the 80s who argued that people weren’t passive receivers of information and entertainment but interactively watched and reacted to television and films had a point. But the political argument that this implied, or might imply, “resistance” to capitalism was surely wrong.
Fast forward 20 years and we get people like Professor John Hartley arguing that Big Brother has the same value as Shakespeare.
The original political radicalism of Cultural Studies seems largely to have been lost sight of. It was interesting to read last year Cultural Studies academic Terry Flew write in Online Opinion that “Popular culture will never actually be left wing”, and:
Rather than automatically assuming that cultural studies is a left wing intellectual field, it may be time, now, to ask what an approach to cultural studies that is not self-evidently left wing, may look like, today, tomorrow and for the next influx.
To some degree this might be a defensive re-positioning in the Nelson era, but it is hard to see (with some exceptions) what political force the increasingly institutionalised and disciplined Cultural Studies now has. The irony, of course, is that Cultural Studies continues to be attacked by the intellectual Right as an exemplar of all that’s wrong with Universities.
Hello Mark, does anyone take any notice of some work by Queenie Leavis and possibly Denys Thompson (I should do a google and check) where they looked at something like reading habits and cognate cultural practices in a vaguely sociological way, although they were mostly ultra-serious literary scholars. That would have been in Britain and probably in the 40s or 50s.
On the contemporary scene, there seems to be something the matter with cultural studies but I can’t really be sure what it is. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with serious studies of low or medium or even sub-low cultural products (say pornography or vandalistic graffiti). So the problem is not the subject matter. Is it the theories that are brought ot bear on the material, that is probably closer to the mark. I have got problems with the Frankfurt School approach and the Gramski approach, partly methodological and partly ideological.
Similarly I have problems with the post modernist approach but that is philosophical and methodological, not ideological because I take the point that large tracts of the humanities are not left-oriented (but then equally large tracts are).
I suppose the trick is to work out whether you (or the person you are reading) are doing sociology, history of ideas, criticism or politics and adjust your criteria of evaluation appropriately.
It would also be good for people in the field to acknowlege major pioneers like Jacques Barzun.
Mark (with help from John Quiggin) you set up a caricature of Cultural Studies with these primary attributes:
1) Anti-capitalist
2) Only concerned with popular culture
Both of which are, at best, flawed assumptions. To point to research that is explicitly concerned with neither of these qualities is easy; such as feminist/gender studies, work on leisure (not the same thing as ‘pop culture’), research on the health industries, work on diasporas, and so on.
The Terry Flew article is good for making people realise that the residue of the post-war, but pre-1989 world is just that, a residue. To continue to reframe research in that way is nonsense.
I have to disagree with Rafe and suggest the trick is not so much labeling research and attempting to fit it into (the residue of) disciplinary traditions, but to judge it according to whether or not it attempts to isolate, express, think through the necessary attributes of and affirm an antagonism within the contemporary. If it doesn’t do these things, for what I can figure out during my relatively short time in the world, then it is not doing Cultural Studies.
One of the reasons why I like Deleuze so much is because of the book Critical and Clinical. The introduction by Daniel Smith is very good. He opens the intro with a quote from an obscure Deleuze essay:
“The critical (in the literary sense) and the clinical (in the medical sense) may be destined to enter into a new relationship of mutual learning.”
Besides the appropriateness of the ‘critical and clinical’ resonance, I think ‘mutual learning’ is a very good way to talk about most of the practice of Cultural Studies. It does not seek to reproduce the rules of expertise in any extensive way, which is not the same thing as saying that there are not experts. ‘Mutual learning’ also implies something that changes with time. Drawing attention to a what seems to be an inconsistency between two different positions from two different people or groups over a 20 year gap is misleading. By the way, have you got a link/reference to where Hartley makes this claim? Just want to see that point in context.
Why does cultural studies need to “affirm an antagonism”? Surely this is the injection of a preconceived, unnecessary element into a realm where it does not necessarily have a place.
It seems that the study you describe is contaminated by presumptions which severely limit its potential usefulness.
Glen, I have read devotees of Deleuze talking about their projects on the Peirce email discussion group. It appears that they are practicing the most obscure kind of pomo sludge. See if you can explain your problems and issues to intelligent and intersted laypeople; if you cannot, try doing something different.
Pierce? Who is Pierce? I am but a layperson. j/k I don’t know what happens on the Pierce list, but on the main D&G list it is infested by schizo-poets who think they are being highly resistant to the world by posting shit poetry to the list.
Is a layperson going to care what a Deleuzian has to say? I’m sorry, but my work is certainly not written for any Joe Blow to read, no matter how interested or intelligent they are. Why should the Humanities be any different than any other form of scholarship? I don’t complain to my material sciences mate that I can’t understand the language of his thesis. Nor, do I suspect, that people want to be patronised by having things ‘explained’ to them in ’simple’ language. I am doing research, not bloody PR. Language is not an issue for me. If you want to understand a language, then learn to understand it.
Can I point out that (working from some sort of definition similar to the one I have given above) reactionaries who complain about Cultural Studies are doing Cultural Studies almost as much as those who they complain about. If you assume the exact position taken up by EP (”contaminated by presumptions”) in relation to an antagonism (for EP it is the notion of affirming an antagonism), it is then you commit the exact same ’sin’ EP is complaining about “which severely limit its potential usefulness.” For reactionaries the only antagonism seems to be ‘antagonism’ itself. The only difference between the two is that the necessary elements of an antagonism that need to be affirmed are immanent to the event of an antagonism itself. Otherwise you are more worried about simply trying to reimpose an already given order than discovery something new about what is being researched. ‘Newness’ is of course relative, maybe that is what EP gets grumpy about, what the ‘new’ thing gets compared to… dunno?
Glen, Hartley gave a conference paper on Big Brother and Shakespeare a few years ago. I haven’t done much searching but this google search turns up a fair bit about his argument.
NB - I think the link will only work if you’re using Firefox. If you’re not using Firefox, you should be!
On your point about language, I disagree.
A friend of mine who did a PhD in physics was quite able to explain to me what its thrust was - and I know nothing about physics. He was chuffed that people were interested in his research.
There is a need for some technical terminology in academic writing - basically for conceptual precision. But I fail to see how writing in an affected postmodern style does anything productive. It’s interesting in itself that much of this style is a model of translations of Derrida or Foucault.
It seems to me that the only point of overdoing it is to say “look at how smart I am”.
I’ve refereed some awful conference papers for TASA which basically said nothing when you read through the postmodernese. My supervisor has marked some PhD theses which add nothing to knowledge by doing “A Foucauldian genealogy of midwifery” or the like. He’s also marked some excellent ones - a few Law theses, for example which applied some of Foucault’s insights intelligently and interestingly.
If - as I am - you’re interested in the sociology of organisation, you’ll come across numerous papers which bang on about panopticons and make the trite point that call centres are sites of surveillance. Yes, but so what? This tells us something but it’s not the basis for a whole paper - particularly when no empirical research is done.
I also fail to see how not being interested in communicating the results of one’s research except to peers does anything other than reduce it to a closed and reflexive conversation about so-called “theory”.
Part of the reason I research and write about things like politics, religion and organisations is that I’m interested in explaining to people what forces are at work in the world now. That’s a major motivation for blogging too.
My personal goal is to write as lucidly as possible. I’m not arguing that there is some sort of transparency in language - there isn’t. But there is style that’s forbidding and intimidating. To write in such a style seems to me actually to be an anti-democratic move.
Btw - Pierce was an American philosopher of language whose work in the early 20th century in many ways prefigured some of the insights of post-structuralism.
Rafe - I haven’t heard of those scholars you mention - was Leavis a relation of *the* Leavis?
I’m interested at some point in reading Barzun but I don’t have time at the moment.
In general I agree with your observations, with the exception that I have greater sympathy for the Frankfurt School (at least early on - I’m not a Habermasian) and even more for Gramsci.
Glen, on one hand you say:
I think ‘mutual learning‚Äô is a very good way to talk about most of the practice of Cultural Studies. It does not seek to reproduce the rules of expertise in any extensive way, which is not the same thing as saying that there are not experts.
Ok, it’s about mutual learning. Then you write:
Is a layperson going to care what a Deleuzian has to say? I‚Äôm sorry, but my work is certainly not written for any Joe Blow to read, no matter how interested or intelligent they are. Why should the Humanities be any different than any other form of scholarship? I don‚Äôt complain to my material sciences mate that I can‚Äôt understand the language of his thesis. Nor, do I suspect, that people want to be patronised by having things ‘explained‚Äô to them in ‚Äôsimple‚Äô language. I am doing research, not bloody PR. Language is not an issue for me. If you want to understand a language, then learn to understand it.
So mutual learning is ok for your cult studies crowd, where apparently there’s no hierarchies (despite all the theorist worship - who decides “this year we’re reading Badiou”). But for the rest of us unwashed mob, your line is “I’m not going to dumb my research down to explain it to you.”
Maybe you’re affirming antagonism in your own text? Or maybe you’re contradicting yourself.
Who’s patronising whom?
My point about antagonism is that it should be discovered as a result of investigation, not imposed as an assumption.
Yeah, Kim, mutual learning between academics, not some utopian expectation that everyone learns from it. If you’ve got the impression that I have meant anything else then you have the wrong impression. Never said there weren’t heirarchies! There certainly are heirarchies. As I said, there are experts. Plus, never wrote, “this year we’re reading Badiou,” did I? So please, my mouth + your words = nonsense.
Mark, the example I gave and then your example you replied with I think illustrates exactly my point. My mate’s PhD was 480 pages, he explains his project to me in about 4 or 5 sentences. I know enough about math and physics to ask some reasonably intelligent questions. However, I have not done enough math or physics to understand pretty much any part of his thesis. I can explain my thesis in 4 or 5 lines, too. The weird thing about my research (into car dudes) is that everyone thinks they know something or have had some exposure to the culture and therefore feel like they can comment. Fair enough, but why should everyone be able to read my thesis? I was joking about Pierce. Also, I am not trying to defend bad research because we may use the same language. That is nonsense. If you want to attack bad research, then go for it, but attacking bad research because of the type of language they use is silly.
EP, then we are in agreement. I suspect you would like Badiou’s work on the event
Glen, the point surely is that much bad research can be disguised by the use of impenetrable language to say nothing or to make an observation merely trite.
Fair enough, but why should everyone be able to read my thesis?
Why shouldn’t they?
It’ll be placed in the University library after all, and possibly online.
What do you see the point of cultural studies research being? Writing for a tiny audience of your peers?
Yeah, what’s the point? I just read this as part of a description of a conference Glen went to yesterday on his blog:
In the first session the first paper was presented by Ann Deslandes on what she argues is the process of ‘aesthetic reflexivity’ carried out by Autonomous activists. Like a mass feedback system, activists continually have to reappraise the situation to engage with whatever is being protested. The complicating factor in Autonomist activist practice is the refusal of heirarchical organisations. This produces problems in various scenarios from situations where groups need some form of representation, such as dealing with the media, to organising protests themselves and mobilising the necessary resources to carry out the protest. Ann sought to demonstrate one practical strategy for resolving this tension is to distribute acts of organisation/mobilisation differently than the decision making responsibilities. This means that those who are in charge of organising things are not the same people as those who make decisions.
On further reflection, this is an interesting way to resolve the fidelity-decisionist (Badiou) versus manifest-expressionist (Deleuze/Negri) split in theories of (Spinozian influenced) militancy/antagonism.
I bet lots of activists are so torn between fidelity-decisionism and manifest-expressionism.
Next time I go to a pro-choice protest I’ll have to decide which side I’m on. Hang on, maybe I’ll be too busy reading Spinoza to go. Funny that.
I think the problem here isn’t so much one of Cultural Studies vs Empirical Research or even one of The Post-Modern Life but it is apparent that the issue is really the use of language. Having had some broad based contact with the cultural studies academy I have to say among the better practitioners that clear thinking and clear writing is just as valued in that sphere, as muddy concepts and turgid writing is prevalent (ie abundant).
Thinking back on the cultural studies type authors I dealt with as an undergraduate, the clearest written was probably Roland Barthes. Foucalt was readable but slightly turgid, however I think his ideas were fairly powerful. It’s not Foucalt’s fault that subsequent commentators wish to emulate the tortured style of his translators (as Mark points out).
Delueze though, is a special case. My wife, recently awarded her PhD in film studies, would sometimes relate to me antics of the Deluezian faction in the school. It seems to me that regurgitating these incomprehensible texts were an exercise in demonstrating to the Deluezian faction itself that the author, was a paid up member of the Deluezian faction. Rather like a Masonic handshake or other secret sign. Their dense and lurid style being designed to shut out those not paid-up members.
However I don’t believe that blanket, hand waving, dismissals of the entire field is any more productive than believing that an academic should be shut away from the rest of world, protected from it by a immense thicket of jargon and recycled language.
I’m not dismissing all work done in cultural studies - if people read my post carefully, they’ll see that.
I do worry about the implications of its depoliticisation and of the use of obscure jargon.
I do see that Mark, I wasn’t necessaryily referring to you. E.P. for one, even if he’s exactly right when he says “My point about antagonism is that it should be discovered as a result of investigation, not imposed as an assumption.” … In the other thread, there’s a tendency by some commenters to dismiss the “cult studies crowd” with a simple hand-wave.
Personally I think anyone, no matter their discipline, who makes some sort of claim that ‘popular culture’ is a priori some sort of left wing paradise, is missing the point of ‘postmodernism’ anyway. And people who try to disprove such laughable ideas by appeals to what ‘postmodernism’ says are being equally simplistic. Postmodernism is a description of a social condition, not part of the theoretical toolkit (unless we are architects, then it means something else entirely).
I would refer all such people to that incorrigable Marxist, Frederic Jameson, and his book “Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism”. How popular culture or postmodernism *resists* captalism when it is the very cultural expression of it, escapes me at present.
rex, I think a lot of people don’t get that Jameson is still a Marxist and take him to be celebrating po/mo - he’s really more of a Frankfurt School guy, as his book on Adorno demonstrates.
I agree that postmodernity is a social condition but I think we need to distinguish between it and postmodern theory. They’re not the same thing.
Kim, you are really good at quoting me with either made up quotes or out of context. What do I say in the very next couple of lines in my post?
“Or some shit like that. I wasn’t too sure, from Ann’s paper, who did what exactly, but this is more of a practical problem for actual activists and not dudes listening to a paper about it!”
Yeah… an actual problem for actual activists and not dudes listening to a paper about it. What I think about it would probably mean SFA to them. If you want to know about the expressionist vs decisionist split in readings of Spinoza then there is an excellent paper on the topic found on the _Pli_ philosophy journal site: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/philosophy/pli_journal/pdfs/laerke_pli_8.pdf
What about the rest on my conference report? Does that need to be explained further or what?
Mark, a very good example of why my thesis will not be able to be read (in any simple meaning of the word) by anyone? For me the classic example is of the ‘road’. Yeah ‘road’ in scare quotes. One of the minor things I am doing in my thesis is thinking about the _concept_ of the ‘road’. This means it is not written from the POV of people who merely want to administrate the road or from the POV of people who merely want to use the road.
Sure my thesis will be available online when done, which means everyone will have access to it, but that doesn’t mean it can be read by everyone. If people want to read it, then they will have learn how to read it.
Mark, there is a paradox in this:
“the point surely is that much bad research can be disguised by the use of impenetrable language to say nothing or to make an observation merely trite.”
If it is impenetrable, dare I say, for those that find it impenetrable, then how do you know it is bad research?
The bigger problem I see is when people think they have an understanding of a particular body of work or whatever, but they don’t have any idea at all. I came across a recent example of where someone thought they were being very good taking Negri and Hardt to task over their use of the ‘virtual’ in Empire. The person got it so wrong it is crazy. The critique was all about the internet and the ‘virtual’ in that sense. Ding dong! N&H mean it in an ontological sense. There _is_ a problem with their use of the ‘virtual’, but only because they reintroduce the ‘possible’ without explaining what they are doing or why.
Um, Glen, doesn’t Jack Kerouac do the same?
I can read this impenetrable stuff because I’ve been reading continental philosophy for nine years. It’s never too much to ask to ask people to clearly state a thesis, surely.
Mark I would like to sort some terminology out. When you say “postmodern theory” so you mean “theory about the postmodern condition” or “theory which exhibits the postmodern condition”?
Certainly if the latter, I can see the accusation about it’s “right wing” nature. Traced simply through the idea that postmodernity is the cultural expression of ‘late 20th century capitalism’, such theory must be consciously or unconsciously shot through with the dominate logic of society. Simplistically put.
I refuse to believe that it always requires complicated language to express complicated ideas. It’s as simple as that.
If the product of research isn’t clearly written, it might be that the reader doesn’t know how to read it, or it might simply be that the author has an inflated view of their audience. It does not mean that authors should write down, only have some care and treat their readers with respect.
If something is poorly written, there is no way to tell if it’s bad research or not. That’s the point of writing clearly. Simple, clear language stops misunderstanding, and makes it easy for complicated ideas to come across. Even intelligent, academic readers often do their reading while tired, distracted, stressed, or just not in the mood.
Reading should be pleasurable. If it is not, then typically people either stop reading, or skim, or just become hostile to the ideas that are being expressed poorly.
But unforetunately, ‘pleasurable’ is a subjective term. Lots of people find various musics ‘pleasurable’ that I find dreary, obtuse, and formulaic, and likewise, my tastes are seen as pedestrian by those people. I suspect the pleasure that you get from the text, is probably up to the reader.
I’m not trying to be relativist or defend obscurantist writing though, I guess I’m just pointing out that some people probably like it like that…
rex, I mean “theory which exhibits the postmodern condition”.
Jameson makes the point himself.
I don’t think I misquoted you, Glen. As to quoting you out of context, people can decide for themselves.
Coming in late, I’ll respond to Glen at #2 and say that I didn’t set up the caricature, this was done for me by Matchett’s article in the Oz, to which my post referred.
And while it’s scarcely novel to point out that much of what’s done in Cultural Studies is either politically quietist or overtly supportive of the existing order , there’s still a widespread presumption among both supporters and opponents that the whole enterprise is inherently ’subversive’, so it’s still worth refuting this idea.
WTF, Kim! I quoted the next two lines of my posted after your quote of my post that completely refutes your implication that I think theory debates are more important that actual protest and you think you haven’t quoted me out of context!?!?! Wake up to yourself!
Mark, the language isn’t impenetrable then, is it?
Jack Kerouac does what the same? Over my head… or do you mean the road? Nope, he sure doesn’t!
The bigger problem is not complicated language, but people who use a technical language incorrectly.
Glen, my point is that the language might be penetrable by those who’ve had the training. I’m still wondering who you think the audience for your writing is and thus what the point of it is?
Dunno who my audience is? Well, actually, I do. My markers. Did you see my post on thesis writing?
http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/2005/04/from-dissertation-to-book.html
Well, we are in agreement about the language thing then. I am not sure what the issue is. You need to be trained to understand how things are said, then it is possible to get at what is said.
So, yr just doing it to get the degree? I’m really confused - I’d have thought most people who wrote anything would want to have the widest possible audience. Who’s to say that someone who doesn’t talk the cult-studies talk might not get something out of it or be able to add to yr own understanding?
I’m sorry to say this but yr attitude really is fairly elitist.
Yeah, Kim, first priority is finishing and passing. Simple as that. It was hammered into us when I started. Remember, I am one of the new three year PhD’s. If I don’t finish on time, my scholarship runs out and I am stuffed. I have four years absolute max. My supervisors get grumpy with me whenever I do something not related to the thesis. I hold no illusions about what I am doing in the slightest. It doesn’t really worry me either, as I am relatively young, for example Mark has more than a decade on me, which allows me plenty of time to kick heads when I have finished.
There is life after a scholarship, Glen - it’s just very difficult to finish after a scholarship because you have to work all the time!
Glen,
Mark has ten more years’ experience kicking heads than you do, and you consistently ignore what he’s telling you. Good luck.
Kim’s right: you are elitist. Unfortunately, the “problematic” here is that you’re part of that faux “elite” known as the pointless intellectual. You’re researching a subject of limited interest, for a thesis that will be unreadable to any audience save that tiny minority who share your enjoyment of intellectual onanism, hence totally pointless. The grand total of your contribution to learning will be mediocre car journalism tarted up with post-modernist waffle, left to gather dust in a university library.
The bottom-line is that you’re studying for a PhD for it’s own sake, which I find profoundly sad. Particularly as it will forever mark you out as hopelessly over-qualified for any real job.
Fyodor, if I _ignored_ what Mark was saying I wouldn’t engage with him by replying would I? I think you mean, “Glen, Mark has ten more years‚Äô experience kicking heads than you do, and you consistently refuse to just give up and follow the dominant anti-cultural studies line. Good luck.” Thanks!
Limited interest? Indeed. Why is that I wonder? A quarter of a million car magazines are sold every month in Australia. Easily 10 or 15 times that in the US. Yet only one scholarly book has been written on anything that can be regarded as a related subject. Their has only been two PhD dissertations, which I have found, written on, again, anything that can be regarded as a related subject. You tell me what part of this equation is elitist.
I am glad you can foresee the future with your idiotic proclamations about what value my thesis will have. What are the lotto numbers going to be?
See, Mark, I was ready to rip into Fyodor for his fuckin retarded comments, but I refrained and attempted to be as civil as possible. I _can_ be civil in the face of grotesque stupidity hellbent on doing nothing but insulting me…
But Glen, you said above:
I’m sorry, but my work is certainly not written for any Joe Blow to read, no matter how interested or intelligent they are.
Surely therefore it’s irrelevant how many people are interested in car magazines, since they’re probably the “Joe [or Jill] Blows” that you don’t think are your targetted audience.
I write silly when angry don’t I. Ignore the incorrect grammar.
It’s fair to say that the purpose of the thread is not meant to be Glen’s PhD thesis - although I do note that it was Glen who started talking about his writing and its audience. It’s a pity that there isn’t a less personalised defence of cultural studies being made but it would be better to respond to the broader issues, and for everyone to keep their cool.
Yes, Kim, the interest is not from Joe Blows, but other academics who have ignored my research topic, when clearly it is something that should have been researched.
Glen,
Don’t hold back, please. You’re so much more convincing when not pretending to be an intellectual. If there’s anything else you’d like to get off your chest, but fear the dreaded Mark’s reaction, my email address is Fyodor_Bazarov@hotmail.com.
You’re not writing about car culture; you’re writing about “contemporary modified car culture”, which has a much smaller audience. However, the point is moot, because you refuse to engage THAT audience. No, your audience is a subset comprising post-modernist wankers that are also interested in modified car culture. Um, so far, that’s you and…Yes, that’s right, your whole exercise is a mammoth vanity project, funded by others. Pointless AND parasitic.
I won’t give you the lotto numbers. You’ve clearly already won the lottery of life. As I’ve said previously, I look forward to reading your opus magnum in Wheels, sorry, Street Machine. No doubt there’ll be waves of shock and awe through academe attending upon its birth.
Further editorial note
I’ll also note that it wasn’t my intention in the post to attack the legitimacy of Cultural Studies as a discipline, merely to raise some questions about its political significance. I agree with Prof Q’s comment.
I’m critical of my own discipline of Sociology as well in many effects but I think that the study of culture is a legitimate exercise. I do think that Cultural Studies needs to acknowledge that it has become a discipline, and to give up the rather righteous claim of superiority implied in its alleged transdisciplinarity. It’s quite untrue to Foucault’s arguments to claim that you can escape the power relations inherent in knowledge just by sticking a prefix in front of the word ‘discipline’.
I also think an established body of theory germane to the object of study and accepted research methods which disciplines have would help Cultural Studies, rather than its postmodern French theory cherrypicking.
Fyodor’s comment crossed with mine.
I think it would be of benefit for both learned gentleman to stop using accusatory and insulting language when addressing each other.
On the point of the relevance of topics, very clearly there is an expectation that where they receive public funding there is some implied audience for the dissemination of the knowledge they create outside the academy.
Personally, if you’re writing about contemporary society, I think you also need to take into account the political dimensions of the topic. The motivation for the choice of my topic was surely as much political as personal curiousity or disinterested research. I’m not massively interested in publishing bits of it in academic journals - though I will have to do so if I want to continue the academic career thing. I’m much more interested in contributing to an awareness of political forces among citizens more generally - hence also this blog.
I’ve never claimed to be a gentle man, Mark.
Apologies, Fyodor!
Pas de rien, mon vieux.
C’est un plaisir!
Dear Fyodor, you wonderful bellicose dandy, if I don’t know what my audience will be, I can’t see how you have the capacity for knowing it?!?! OH, but you DON’T know! You are making an assumption! Ahah!
I am not going to explain my thesis to you, ffs, but you have got it wrong. Trying to differentiate between forms of car culture (or driving cultures) is exceptionally difficult. If you want to tell me you know more about my research topic than I do, let alone my own thesis, then keep on smoking those drugs.
I try to raise a serious point about why there has not been more research done on something that clearly demands more research and you decide that means I am the only one interested in such research. ding dong! haha! for starters, check out the centre for mobility research at the uni of lancaster, uk.
A less belligerent response would point to questions regarding the reproduction of class and political allegiences in the humanities, and how that (re)produces pockets of interests, not why my research topic has an allegedly limited audience and is therefore a waste of time. lol!
Perhaps more theses should be written on Popper and free trade under the rule of law…
“I also think an established body of theory germane to the object of study and accepted research methods which disciplines have would help Cultural Studies, rather than its postmodern French theory cherrypicking.”
How would it help those within the discipline, Mark? To self-police the discipline or what? But then we wouldn’t need comments threads like this one!
1) Some people seem to assume that because I am not explicitly writing my thesis so it can be read by any monkey, then that means that it cannot be read by anyone. Great logic there… Anyone else writing a dissertation that can be read by anyone?
2) Technical language used badly, is exactly that and nothing else. People seemed to be inferring this means that all technical language should be dropped, for what? Some universal scholarly language?? Maybe we should speak in binary.
3) Mark, why can’t work originating from France be used in Culural Studies? Surely if there is a history of people drawing on the work of French academics, then this, in part, constitutes the Cultural Studies discipline as much as the British, US or Australian influences? Or not? Either you are implying that such work (from a French context) has no value — if so, then just say it — or you are implying that the value of such work should not be tapped by other scholars — if so, then why not?
I have to take the side of my old nemesis Glen here. Why should theses be accessible to everyone? Does this apply to theoretical physics which has a lot of fascinating things to discover and yet is possibly even less accessible than Cultural Studies? Knowledge should be pursued for its own sake, not because it’s ’socially relevant’. Stuff social relevance and political activism. Activism is ultimately for hacks, and there are more important things in life, I don’t see why ‘quietism’ should count against a discipline.
Well, just to clarify your turn of phrase, Jason, the relevance of a topic of study should not be determined by previous particular interests of a discipline. If that was the case, then we would not be capable of accounting for change in a ‘rapidly changing world’.
And, Jason, instead of making silly comments, have you got an example of a dissertation that is ‘accessible to everyone’? People seem to be invoking this utopian ideal without any concrete evidence to back up the rhetoric.
errm, Glen, reread my comment. I was supporting you.
Jason, maybe you should have translated your comment into Deleuzian?
haha, Jason, really? I don’t think implying that Cultural Studies is not ’socially relevant’ is helping me or is even correct. Show me a research project that self-identifies as Cultural Studies and that you can demonstrate is not at all socially relevant. It is a silly claim, hence my clarification.
Glen,
I think maybe you should step back a little and not take people’s comments on your thesis and theses in general so much to heart.
Jason is correct is backing up Glen, about theses being accessible to everyone. Theses simply aren’t for everyman. But this doesn’t imply they have to be obscure either. They need to be intelligently written , for an specialist audience. Clear writing is a bonus in writing anything, but you should not assume your audience is the mythical average adult.
But what would I know? I gave up in my Honours year because I thought earning money was a better idea. I do know from watching my wife spend 5 years of her life and a good part of mine too, writing her PhD thesis. I also know that at parties, when the general audience (in this case typically possessing a bachelors degree) finds out the topic of the thesis, they are quite to easily misinterpret its subject (a history of the human image in new media), even though on elaboration, its possible to explain it to this audience.
The idea proposed by Kim, that the thesis has to be relevant immediately to some outside audience I believe is incorrect. The thesis is placed in the _university_ library and the digital thesis online project. The audience of _that_ I believe not particularly general. The content of the thesis (its research) can be used by its author to produce books and articles, even books for the generalist audience. But this requires another level of ‘translating’ the thesis into those forms, as I have been witnessing my wife do in recent weeks. The publishing houses typically want to see 25% of the book already done in the proposal itself; they don’t want the thesis text itself.
Ok, fair enough. Have a read:
There are however a number of problems with the evidence adduced in support of the second argument against the validity of secularization. First, the exceptionalism of America and the differences in patterns of secularization count only against the most broad brush theories of secularization — Martin‚Äôs 1978 study A General Theory of Secularization is a nuanced and plausible argument which explains such variations. Secondly, surveys which report on the incidence of belief in (for instance) life after death necessarily reveal very little about the degree of importance placed on such beliefs (or often whether they are strongly held or specifically Christian) and it is difficult to see how the persistence of the cultural and symbolic significance of religion per se counts against secularization when it is a theory of differentiation in modernity and of a resultant decline in the social significance of religion. In addition, there are explanations for such survivals (particular in regard to rites of passage rituals and the historic origins of institutions such as marriage) in Martin‚Äôs theory which are rarely adequately refuted.
That’s from a conference paper.
This is from my thesis:
I argue elsewhere (Bahnisch 2002b) that the current world situation — and in particular the return of war as a symptom - needs to be understood as emblematic of serious decay in the existing political imaginary extending broadly from Westphalia to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet Union is itself — at the level of the symbolic — illustrative of the exhaustion of previously existent and hegemonic political narratives. It would be a serious mistake to take globalisation seriously as social theory, when in fact its emergence is a second order result of transient ideological and political constellations. These ideological symbols and their consequent political strategies, mistakenly unified under the rubric of ‘globalisation‚Äô, themselves reflect a shift in the understanding of the nature of the political, which needs theorisation from a comparative historical sociological perspective. In short, if globalisation is a social fact, it is so only indirectly in the way it manifests itself in political discourse and the impacts political language has on how we see the world, and it is an effect rather than a cause. To remain within the discourse of globalisation is to be unable to escape the way it narrows and redefines the scope of politics. Globalisation theory is itself a barrier to creative social action. It is not the role of social scientists to map out directions for political action. However, the contribution a critical sociology can make is to further understanding of the historical dimensions and underlying causes of the world‚Äôs current woes, and therefore clear a path for progressive action.
Does that make sense?
Mark, that makes sense to me, but I’m sure if was printed on page 3 of the Telegraph the audience might have a different response.
To answer your questions, briefly, Glen.
My point is that if the object of your investigation is (for the sake of argument) the way popular culture icons of femininity influences girls’ perceptions of their life chances (the topic a friend did her PhD on) then what you need to do to research this is to have a theory which can be tested against the data. In other words, you need to build on previous insights from theoretical and empirical research that is directly relevant to the topic and derive hypotheses from it.
If one wanted to be interdisciplinary, then it would make sense with a topic like this to look also at theory in cognitive and developmental psychology, and the sociology of childhood and youth as well as theory which examined the interaction between cultural products and subjectivities and identities.
If you just went and read Deleuze and then wrote speculatively then in my view you would be:
(a) applying a theory which has no relevance;
(b) writing at too high a level of abstraction;
(c) writing speculatively rather than iteratively moving between theory and data.
I presume in your thesis you are collecting data. What I can’t understand at all from your comments is how you organise and make sense of the data and how you develop a theory which will explain it.
That’s assuming that the object of your investigation is understanding a particular subculture. It may be something else.
It would seem to me that if you were going to be transdisciplinary that you would find a lot of relevant stuff in social anthropology and the sociology of deviance and accepted methods of research. That’s taking into account what you’ve said about there being little existing research in the field.
This is not “high theory” in the sense that you probably understand but social-scientific theory that can be used to make sense of phenomena in the world. If you wanted to use French theory, phenomenology would probably be a help.
I think that you’ve got what I see as being an endemic problem in Cultural Studies happening - a disdain for any “theory” that might have an immediate application to data and a hypostasisation of anything that comes from France.
Badiou seems to me, for instance, to be a thinker of little originality or interest. He’s just the latest person out of France that people want to talk about because he’s difficult to read.
Agamben is largely derivative and if you read Schmitt and Foucault, you’ve understood most of what he’s saying already. To some degree he builds on Foucault’s insights about bio-politics but unlike Foucault he fails to investigate comprehensively actual instances of what he talks about and his work is much more open to attack accordingly.
I just don’t see how reading Badiou, or Deleuze, or Agamben or Negri would help you write your thesis. That’s not an argument for not reading them of course. But I’ve found it very difficult to understand your explanation of how theory helps you in the research process.
What I’m talking about is the way that social-scientific research proceeds. Any text on research methods would describe it - it’s not particularly hard to grasp.
What I don’t understand about what you’re saying is:
(a) What the purpose of the research is - is it to contribute to theoretical debates or to research a real phenomenon? (It’s possible to do both but difficult).
(b) What the relationship between the theory and the research method is.
My sense is that a lot of cultural studies is in effect sociology without method or purely speculative thought. Perhaps I’m wrong. But nothing I’ve read in this thread has convinced me that I am.
Rex - I’d write it differently for a newspaper but I’m sure I could get the point across.
I think that if people knew what the term ’secularization’ meant the first extract is very clear. The second is perhaps a little more technical but reads well and I think it’s not too hard to pick up the drift.
Rex and Jason, I don’t think there is such a thing as “knowledge for its own sake” and Glen doesn’t think that’s what he’s doing. I think any research should be oriented to having a real impact - that’s not to say it should be dumbed down or be atheoretical. I think Mark is right when he says that Glen is lauding French theory for the sake of it. That’s the sense in which he’s being elitist. I think Fyodor showed that what he’s talking about is in no way comparable to technical language in a scientific discipline.
I, also, am still puzzled by the object of the thesis and the way that theory will be used to engage with the data.
And from my own experience, if you can’t spell out to examiners in a few sentences and very clearly what your research question is, then you’re in trouble.
A more specific answer to your third question, Glen:
Some French theory has value, some doesn’t. I use Derrida in my own work, as people who’ve been reading my stuff for a while know.
My principle point, though, is that reading French philosophy for insights into cultural practices means that you’re misusing a body of work that developed for other purposes and out of other debates. Your example about “virtual” in Empire should be an object lesson.
Mark, a question. What if the object of your study is something akin to literature - say ‘Modernity in the films of Hitchcock’ (I just made that up so don’t be too literal with it) or ‘The French Elysium. Constructing the Corot Legend’ (an actual thesis title at Sydney Uni art history I found after a quick google at http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/arthistory/Postgraduate/PGthesesold.html )?
And just out of interest, what do you make of a writer such as Andre Bazin, if you’ve ever read him?
Rex, well then you would use research methods appropriate to humanistic study. That’s what’s confusing me about the Cultural Studies thing. If you are investigating something concrete - that is to say the cultural practices of a particular subcultural group - then it’s appropriate to use research methods proper to social science, and methodologies (ie survey method, discourse or textual analysis, ethnographic research, grounded theory etc). Glen says Cultural Studies is a Humanities discipline (although he doesn’t like the latter word). So how does a Humanities thesis examine a sociological phenomenon? I’m curious.
Mark, I think this is where I get confused too. Perhaps there is some sort of talking at cross-purposes? I don’t think that the proper object of cultural studies is sociological phenonoma either. Perhaps there’s some confusion as to what’s being studied? For example, the idea of the hot rod as form of self-expression has a Humanities / Liberal Arts side as much it is as a sociological or anthropological phenomenon.
Yes, I don’t disagree, Rex, the boundaries aren’t strict - there’s a lot of work done on identity and expression and culture in Sociology. The methods though are fairly standard throughout social science. What’s puzzling me is whether to study a social phenomenon (all of which have symbolic dimensions) from a humanistic perspective implies a different method. Or is it just a sort of impressionistic essay informed by “theory”? I don’t know!
Weber of course claimed Sociology to be an interpretive science and some would argue it sits on the borders of social science and the humanistic disciplines.
Mark, without getting into the details, I agree with most of what you have written. I engage with subcultural theory (and the rather silly post-subcultural theory) and find it wanting. Everything I have written for a public audience (ie not me or my supervisors) so far has little or no Frenchie content in the slightest! Who knows what the final cut will be? I write a lot!
I should post some of my ‘hoon moral panic’ paper here, probably the closest thing to some of my actual thesis work that has been in public circulation, then we’ll see if people think it is unreadable!?!?!
Again, just because I am not writing for the mass public, doesn’t mean members of the public could not read it.
Hmm I don’t mention whether or not the object of my study is sociological or should be done in cultural studies or whatever. Maybe I should? Haven’t thought about it, really. I don’t really see the point? I just do research.
It is ironic that the only book on hot rodding (the post-war US culture of enthusiasm for hotted up cars) has been done by a _strict_ british sociologist (he gets angry with pomo and bcccs subcultural theory!) purely as a historical study of the hot-rodding ‘archives’ (mags, club minutes, other notes, etc). He doesn’t engage with the actual street-based practices of enthusiasts beyond what is reported in magazines or the papers and he didn’t do any fieldwork at all. I do everything he does (mags and stuff) but updated for contemporary modified-car culture in australia and I have actually done fieldwork on cruising and street racing. A massive difference he doesn’t have to contend with is the internet, which has changed things considerably, and the so-called mid-1990’s ‘rise of the imports’, which problematises any notion that the car scene is homogeneous.
Oh, I agree with Rex about the distribution of thesis work. I have already started distributing some of my thesis work in an oblique way. I interviewed ‘Mr A’ who is the executive producer of the infamous Getaway in Stockholm series of films. I gave a seminar on it while in Sweden. Most academics in Sweden had not heard of the film series. The GiS crew have sold tens of thousands of copies to 48 countries around the world. Part of my interview appeared in Autosalon magazine. Secondly, I have been helping some dudes in Melbourne make movies. Mainly with the language of press releases and thinking through concepts and stuff. So far, I think it is fair to say, their best effort is a short film called “The Chase is On” but they are also submitting something for the next Carnes Film Festival.
On your strict sociologist, Glen, that’s why I was suggesting social anthropology and/or grounded theory and ethnography both of which have valid and reliable research methods and inductive theory-building logics which are appropriate to studying actual cultural practices. There’s also a lot written about doing anthropological research on the net (posted on the net written about researching stuff on the net - if that makes sense.)