Comments on: What if they held a History War and nobody came?

By: Adrien

Adrien — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:06:06 +0000

And traced it back.

Sorta. Foucault’s concerned with that period (ca 1780-1830) where the modern world came into being and attempts to trace this by describing the change in political apparatus, the organization of knowledge, the relationship of the individual to the State, the nature of the subject itself.
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Foucault’s historiography has a certain utility, he asks us to look at different things for example: the design of schools and prisons and what can be gleaned therein regarding ideas and practices of power. But his history isn’t exactly the peerless. That doesn’t matter except insofar as people seem to forget this. They also seem to forget that there was a world before 1800 and that, tho’ much changed around about then, much did not.
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I contend that after the ‘discontinuous’ 20th century where all that was has been left in broken bits we need to make again the past seem continuous to reinvent what was once called tradition.
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To wit:

No Shakespeare where I was schooled

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
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Oh well.

By: zorronsky

zorronsky — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:02:04 +0000

No Shakespeare where I was schooled but jeez I liked “The Play” by Cee Jay. Wont be around when Ginger Mick’s a hero tho’.

By: Ambigulous

Ambigulous — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:00:17 +0000

“Compare Howard’s notoriously hopeless deliveries in Pakistan.”

Yes – one of the funniest pieces of TV footage from those years. Cricket Tragic? nuh: a Cricket Catastrophe

By: Lefty E

Lefty E — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:46:25 +0000

Speaking of culture wars – dont underestimate the power of Rudd dismissing Mathew Hayden with his offies yesterday!

Compare Howard’s notoriously hopeless deliveries in Pakistan.

By: FDB

FDB — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:43:14 +0000

Don’t worry Ambi.

It’s just Greenfield.

By: Ambigulous

Ambigulous — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:18:21 +0000

“Prolier”??? Is that a proper word?

Speaking on behalf of the bourgeois Correct Spelling and Syntax Corps, may I say
i) we have no wish to kiss you anywhere
ii) we will not entertain your political views until you have corrected your many errors of English
iii) English is the language of many notable and glorious dissidents past
iv) Ingsoc has been abolished (Ingsoc Abolition Act, 1985; and regulations pursuant thereto)

God Save the Gillard !!!

By: Prolier Than Thou

Prolier Than Thou — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:45:15 +0000

Them bourgeoisie can kiss my ass coz I’m prolier than thou at last.

By: glen

glen — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:36:52 +0000

I agree, the question of worth is central.

“I reckon teaching history to postmoderns means reversing time’s arrow. Start now and go back.”

AKA Genealogy! This is how Foucault did history. He did a ‘history of the present’. He asked the basic question, how the present state of affairs (or particular set of relations) emerge? And traced it back.

By: Adrien

Adrien — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:31:47 +0000

Glen – I don’t read Donnelly or any of these Culture Warrior stiffos.
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The phenomena you talk about is obviously present and the only people who seem to pay all that much attention to it however are the Culture War stiffos. The Culture War ‘commos’ tend to caricature anyone who might allude to the problem as “people need to learn Shakespeare in school”.
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Well I think people should learn Shakespeare in school but that’s besides the point. The logocentricity of education has been dealt a fatal blow by the rise of various technology driven modes of cultural expression. There’s a small circle of highly literate persons who’ve read Milton and Proust and can apply various esoterica from the history of philosophy to present-day situations. You can see their work in a script from The West Wing or one of those rare gems amongst the vast sea of tripe that passes for American polemica.
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But for most of us conversation is deliberately incoherent. I was, like, no. And she was like, whoah dude that’s so like 2005. And I was like yeah but that’s gnarly.
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What does that mean?. We’re devolving into gibberish.
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However this is part of a larger cultural transformation which sees much of our traditional culture recede into history and awaits the creation of new forms. (The graphic novel The Sandman expresses this wonderfully.)
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Still those things we appear to be losing will not be entirely lost because we require them. There remains a need, for example, for good manners, but we might find that the standard manners developed by the English and French courts are not relevant to a faster, paced, more democratic, capitalist technosociety. We will develop new manners as we go. In the meantime we lack certain etiquette.
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The same goes for the teaching literature and history. (And teaching in general I’d wager.) When I was at school, history bored most of my peers. They simply didn’t understand why Julius Caeser or Cleopatra were relevant to their lives. They didn’t understand the enormity of the past either. An old history teacher of mine ran into me once and said: I miss you, the other day I got an essay outlining the profound influence of Christianity on the Minoans.
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I reckon teaching history to postmoderns means reversing time’s arrow. Start now and go back.
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In many ways teaching writing and reading skills might need some kind of revamp as well. One that is neither ‘postmodern’ (ie about hegemonies or competancies or whatever) nor ‘traditional’ (trying to teach in some antiquated Dickensian manner would be worse than useless).
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I haven’t thought much on it. But I do understand that to make classics live one must needs reinvent them from time to time. The old 19th century take on Shakespeare, for example, that it’s all about heroes with tragic flaws should be shelved: it’s the bourgeois take – individuals and their psychologies. We’ve moved on. Those people once described as bourgeois do not exist anymore. And thier take on Shakespeare succeeded earlier takes. Teaching Romeo and Juliet to 14 year olds however should stay, it’s effective for obvious reasons. And despite the bad taste it might give to the purists such treatment as Baz Lurhmann gave it will switch people on. It’s a classic, it connects us to people who lived and died 500 years ago and does so by telling a story that resonates with every adolescent.
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Other media too have proved effective at making classics live.
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At bottom however exposing the young to the classics of their culture is a for the direct benefit of those select few who’ll appreciate them. The general benefit comes from the sense of continuity that can come just become some of us carry the torch as it were. The specific benefit of high literacy for the general populace is the technical capacity to express a wide variety of specific meanings with a variation of nuance.
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We ‘kids in America’ might not understand why we need to hear Poe when we’ve got Jay-Z (oh you ign’ant fools!) but it’s pretty simple to explain that having excellent communication skills will get you a better job and more money. If, as has been said by many tertiary level teachers, students’ literacy skills are poor – that is the literacy skills of university students are poor then they’re obviously not getting them.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:06:07 +0000

Be interested, glen. Don’t forget those book reviews, though!