“In its broad broad sweep this is reminiscent of the vision that Manning Clark enunciated at the beginning of volume one of his History of Australia.”
- Gregory Melleuish on John Howard’s history speech, January 30, 2006.
13 Responses to “A Ripley moment”
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Well done suckhole. Move to the front of the conga line.
I know I’ve only just woken up after a very late night, but
(1) Didn’t Gregory Melleuish write that speech himself?
(2) If he did, does he honestly believe that he won’t be outed and subjected to public ridicule on a national scale?
(3) Wasn’t it Manning Clark that Geoff Blainey was mainly talking about back in the 1980s when he coined the strange phrase ‘black-armband historian’, immediately appropriated by people so ignorant that they thought black armbands had something to do with guilt, that was the conservative rallying cry in the earliest days of the history wars?
(4) Isn’t is the authority and influence of Clark above all others that Howard and his culture warriors are trying to tear down?
I’m sorry if these are stupid obvious questions, cs, but your post (even with the heads-up in the title) has left me with my mouth hanging open in disbelief.
“The Enlightenment sought to express the values of reason and rational inquiry. It was characterised by a systematic spirit of inquiry in opposition to an addiction to a dogmatic system.”
Addicted to conservative reason and rationalisation of dogma.
Just such a pity that His Darkness himself is not so embued with the values of “enlightenment” ie civilised, humane, tolerance, moderation, reason.
How mouthing platitudes “disproves once and for all… Howard’s understanding blah blah” defies belief. Is this guy for real in excluding the political dimension of his Darkness for the last 30 years?
Glen wrote: “Addicted to conservative reason and rationalisation of dogma.”
I can’t comment on the enlightenment per se, but I have to say that the scientific method was a vast improvement on what preceded it. The idea that one can raise questions on any topic is one of the strongest and most important there is.
… I much prefer it to relying on faith or appeals to authority.
It’s like Stalinist Russia, where tame intellectuals had to praise the great leader’s most banal musings! Melleuish used to be a reasonable CIS liberal type but he has turned into a shrill hack. He hasn’t been very intellectually productive; he has a book based on his PhD and one interesting slim book in 1998, not good for a staff member at his level. I suspect he finds writing silly columns easier than research.
sacha, scientific method is great, but only if you realise its limits. to imagine that you can compare history to a lab experiment is utter nonsense. believing otherwise is a leap of faith, no different to religious conviction. actually, no, I am wrong. It is exactly the same, in that in a lab experiment you have to control the variables to ensure that an experiment can be repeated. in history you need to select and control your archival resources to ensure that the narrative is repeated. The religiousity of his convictions in the ‘enlightenment’ is mildly disturbing for someone who works in the humanities. Sure the enlightenment was a good thing in some ways, but it is not a transcendental figure that organises one’s scholarly practice.
i posted a link to a short work of Melleuish’s on the word ‘history’ in the other thread on this. he talks about history being an unfinished enquiry, which, broadly speaking, I agree with. the selection of what chunk of our ‘pure past’ should be focused on is what is at stake, for it determines who is included in what way in one’s historical narratives.
Melleuish wrote:
“Former Marxists such as Stuart Macintyre have attempted to write religion out of Australian history. Postmodernists influenced by Michel Foucault see power and politics everywhere and have no time for the institutions of democracy.”
To ask “where has religion gone” is to assume it is worth looking. Talk about tribalism! Plus, I am not sure what part of Foucault’s body of work Melleuish has read, or thinks he is referring to, but considering democracy is a political system, then “power and politics” is everywhere! Maybe he has forgotten Weber’s work into the formation of social institutions/organisations?
Ah, so that’s “Believe it or not Ripley”, not “Get away from her you bitch!” Ripley.
ROFLcopter…sockpuppetry doesn’t even begin to describe it…
I disagree, Glen. The technologies of the modern laboratory silence criticism in a way narratives never can. I don’t think it follows that they are ‘transcendent’, but you’re suggesting that the ideal of Enlightenment is, no?
dk.au,
Let me rephrase your point: “The narrative of ‘technology’ is better than any other socio-cultural naratives at silencing criticism.”
Maybe! Especially if you live in a secular society where many people have faith in the narratives of technological development (ie particular manifestation of the enlightenment ideal of ‘progress’). However, from what I read and see it seems as if there is more criticism than ever about scientific experiments from false cloning experiments to nano-tech fraud results.
The enlightement is a complex thing, to put it mildly, but put simply the enlightenement is a complex cultural movement precipitating from determinsitic ideals, such as ‘man’ (’humanity’), ‘progress’, ‘peace’, and so on. An ‘ideal’ is necessarily a transcendental unity that determines a given field. The definition of ‘History’ (capital H) given by Melleuish fits with the notion of ’scientific development’, which a subset of ‘progress’. One works at History to uncover THE Truth, and only the Truth matters. The job of a historian is to know Truth from Error, to denounce Error and hold Truth up as the shining beacon of Humanity, Progress, Peace, Progress and so on.
Well said Glen - the central problem with Howard’s view is its reductive quality - the insistence of the truth of progress as a triumphant march to a consumeristic present. & where is Melleuish wandering off to by comparing Clark to Howard’s project? Personally would read Clark as lamenting the devolution of the Enlightenment project in the Australian context. Like Jackson warning his fellow Americans of the ruinous consequence of their fondness for commerce and riches. Clark as more a child of Kierkegaard than JS Mills.