If saw the front page of the Opposition Organ or ABC online yesterday, you’ll have seen stories about Millions behind on basic skills, or Report shows 8 million workers lack job skills. It’s also attracted the attention of Harry Clarke.
The story comes from a “study” from Australia’s twelve industry skills councils, government-funded industry bodies which apparently assist in the provision of vocational education in a variety of ways, including the provision of training packages and serving as a industry contact point for VET providers.
The main thrust of the report seems to be the desirability of providing continuing literacy and numeracy training as part of vocational education. Fine. Great. Wonderful. But the statistics used for the headline grabs are rather less attention-getting once you look at them carefully.
The report does not contain new research at all; it’s a review of a variety of literature selected to advance their case. The claim about “eight million Australians” lacking literacy and numeracy skills comes from earlier surveys about adult literacy, the most recent apparently dating from 2006. Furthermore, as the report itself states, these issues date back many years:
Twenty years ago the first survey of adult literacy in Australia pointed out what many in industry already knew from their own experience: a significant
proportion of Australian adults from both English- speaking and non-English speaking backgrounds could not read and write well enough to participate effectively in work or training.Two further surveys of adult literacy, in 1996 and 2006, have since confirmed those initial findings. The enormity of these figures, representing approximately half of Australia’s working age population, can have the effect of making the problem too overwhelming or difficult to comprehend. But when the complexity of literacy
and numeracy demands in modern society is taken into account the figures are more easily understood.(emphasis mine)
Millions may be behind on basic skills. But, in large part, that’s because they’re behind a constantly advancing target that almost by definition will be out of reach of a significant fraction of the population.
Also, if the most recent data is 2006, its nothing the ALP is responsible for either. For all we know there’s a massive improvement in literacy since the ALP won the 2007 election (not likely, for the reasons you point out … but still). But you’d never read that in the media now would you? It’s all just Abbott carrying on about the BER, as if that’s responsible for the Howard Government.
“If saw” … “Millions may behind” …
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
As you seem to be saying, Robert, it was ever thus. The major difference between now and, say, 50 years ago (the Golden Age that the Kevin Donnellys of this world hark back to) is that back then the 50% or so of the population who had literacy and numeracy problems left school at 12 or 13 and got a job in a factory / on a building site / as a street sweeper. Those “opportunities” pretty much no longer exist.
Gosh, there’s so much going on here that it’s hard to know where to start! I work in the TAFE sector. One of the factors thay haven’t taken account of is the increase in people going to uni and into the services sector. Fifty years ago, those people would have gone into trades and been very good at what they did. So to be blunt, the people now trying to get into trades are people who would have been unskilled labourers back then, with the same lack of ability with literacy and numeracy. The male-dominated trades just aren’t getting the candidature they used to get, because other jobs are more prestigious and less grubby.
Robert wrote:
Personally I find it better for my mental wellbeing to avoid both the Coalition mouthpieces. Why encourage them with clicks?
Apologies for the formatting error. Must have mis-typed the blockquote close.
[Fixed - you didn't mis-type, you just left it out. - Ed]
As I pointed out over at another place, according to the PISA results about 4% of 15 year olds in Australia are below level 1 in reading proficiency, which as far as I can tell is pretty close to real illiteracy. Just under 10% are at level 1 which means that they can only perform the simplest reading tasks. Level 2 proficiency, according to PISA, is a “baseline level” similar to functional literacy.
So basically 86% of 15 year olds are functionally literate according to this standardised test. I find it difficult to imagine that literacy declines with age.
It’s possible that lower literacy levels are recorded among some adults, however, due to lower levels of educational attainment in the past, and the role of past unskilled migration, but this is likely to have declined significantly in recent decades, due to increased school retention and the changing skill component of migration.
It’s possible of course that employers want even higher levels of literacy and numeracy than level 2. however, there are only 5 other countries/areas in PISA that do better than Australia – Korea, Finland, Hong Kong, Canada and Japan.
So what’s the correlation between being long-term unemployed and having poor literacy ?
And what sorts of programs are being put in place to reduce/minimise/prevent young people leaving school with literacy so poor that they effectively can’t work ? i.e. on the way to becoming long-term unemployed. Is there a major role for TAFE here which is not being strengthened ?
My childrens primary school principle let me know last year that I am one of the few parents in the entire school that regularly reads to my kids. Of course that’s because I can read and enjoying reading myself. We don’t always read books, we sometimes use computers and e-readers, we also write our own stories on the computer.
After generations of severe cut backs in government financing of education it comes as no surprise that many Australians can’t read or write well.
To whose advantage is this situation? Who gains from such an appallingly low literacy rate in the general population?
Maybe they’re just judging all the apostrophe errors harshly.
Old Yobbo: I’ve no doubt that – amongst many other issues – literacy issues contribute to being long-term unemployed. And I have no direct experience, but would largely agree with the major thrust of the report – that, indeed, identifies that the VET sector needs to provide appropriate literacy and numeracy training. Heck, as somebody in the university sector one of our jobs is to provide appropriate literacy and numeracy training.
Eric: it may or may not be appallingly low, but I might suggest to you that literacy levels are probably as high as they have ever been.
Also, Eric, you’ve missed an apostrophe in children‘s, and a primary school’s administrative head is a Principal.
/skulks
Thanks Liam, I type quickly and I am mildly stupid when it comes to spellink and punktewatian anyway.
As yes Robert, as a migrant to this shore many moons ago it was always a strange experience to enter houses with no books in them. I had never experienced that before coming to Australia. I am sure that there are houses in Europe and the US with no books of course, it’s just that I had never seen sooooo many in one place before. That was across the suburbs of Melbourne btw putting in airconditioning, visiting a vast collection of houses every day, over 12 months, with all kinds of people in them, but very very few books. It was actually quite frightening. Loads of magazines…and no…books. Weird feeling.
Since that time it seems to me Australia has simply cut education and then cut education and then cut education. Forced teachers to teach in ways they know are useless. Forced up class sizes, while ridiculous idiots like Kevin Donelly talk complete rot at every turn.
Increase taxes across the board. Fund education properly. That would be a start IMHO.
It is to the advantage of the rich, this situation, it is to the advantage of power and control.
Old Yobbo @7, high. And something like 60% of prisoners in NSW are illiterate, including a fair group who can decode the words in a newspaper article but cannot then comprehend the article itself. The ISC report is here and does provide some sensible case studies of how literacy/numeracy can be improved in the workforce. (I’ve only skimmed the document so far.)
TAFEs certainly do teach literacy — my own has a range of programs, from learning to speak English from scratch all the way to English for Academic Purposes (for students hoping to go to Uni once their English is strong enough), plus special LLN programs for disadvantaged groups. We have little old Greek-speaking ladies who are learning English now their husbands have died and kids have grown up, but we also have people who grew up in Australia and never learnt to read.
If you think the stigma of mental illness is bad, try illiteracy — it is very, very hard to admit you have a problem, especially when you have no idea how to get help anyway, because illiteracy has rendered you ignorant of how our society works.
Declining literacy and numeracy are entirely unsurprising given grade inflation (makes education ministers look good), manifesting in, at the high end of secondary school, VCE maths courses that don’t include calculus and trig, and at the bottom of primary, kids prevented from being educated, when their minds are at the best age to soak up maths and language (the younger the better), until sometimes nearly 6.
Daytime activity for 4 and 5 year olds has been shifted from the state primary schools where kids learnt, into largely privately operated day care centres.
shift 4 year olds into primary school, as in my day (early 60s, when most of us didn’t have kindergarten and were expected to read john and betty or cat in the hat by the end of prep), keep kids down a class if they don’t reach the literacy levels required, and maybe there’d be a base for employers to work with.
And btw, class sizes of 40 were not uncommon in my day, but obviously didn’t prevent learning.
If the employers bemoan literacy levels as inadequate, perhaps they shouldn’t have pushed cuts in government spending, perhaps they shouldn’t have pushed tax cuts, or perhaps they, as the user demanding a literate workforce, pay for remedial education for their workers, in line with their philosophies.
DI(nr),top comment. As 730 Report pointed out last night, what’s the point when everything is being offshored, anyway?
However the point Robert makes is valid, ongoing or continuing education reflects these changes, given the end of the times of job security, most of all for sh-t kicking in factories.
– Peter Whiteford @7
Nevertheless, Peter, Table 2 of the ABS literacy survey ) shows clearly that it is still true that the majority of functionally illiterate people in Australia are aged over 50.
Employers have been whingeing about the lack of discipline and basic skills among their workers since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They don’t seem to acknowledge that literacy, obeying authority, being courteous to strangers, following a clock, etc are all deeply unnatural skills which it takes a lot of training and indoctrination to achieve. And inevitably not everyone will achieve it.
“Declining literacy and numeracy are entirely unsurprising given grade inflation”
Actually, grade inflation is basically unrelated to declining literacy or numeracy. In addition, there’s no good evidence that literacy is declining in the last few decades, and if you look at maths, the reason it is declining is not because the poor are getting worse, it’s because the mean has shifted very slightly and the right tail has been killed (i.e., the really bright kids are getting sucked back into the mean).
@Dave Bath
So what’s the story with Finland, where primary school starts when kids turn 7 but achievement rates are equal to the best in the world?
I’m absolutely stunned by the levels of functional illiteracy of those who have been through high school. If you can’t read and understand what you’re reading then you’re dependent on radio and tv for most of your information. Is it no wonder that there is such confusion in the community over issues like global warming?
I wonder if there needs to be higher levels of intervention in high schools when students with literacy/numeracy problems are detected. Try things like narrowing the curriculum for those students until they reach minimum literacy/numeracy levels.
Dave @ 15 – I agree with you – how about we go back to letting children start school when they are ready rather than at a set age?
Very interesting, dd @ 17. I guess having literacy and numeracy thrashed into us did hurt us, after all.
If kids complete year 12 as they are advised to do, and in the subjects that are required for the career path they chose around year 10, then they will have the required literacy, numeracy and even higher maths and physics required.
Obviously that ideal has several ways it can break down such as kids not being able to decide what they want to do, or not attending information sessions, or not having parental support, or leaving school early for the family business.
My son is in year 10 and is doing physics. The teacher asked for a show of hands for who wanted to do physics next year and only my son and 2 others raised their hands.
My son is very able but I have also tried to switch him on by giving real life examples of how the things he learns in school will be used throughout life.
High school never switched me on. I was told that I was going to be fitter and turner apprentice and became switched on to learning after seeing the relevance during the first few months. I heard the same thing from others on talkback radio today.
It seems relevance is still a problem in high schools but they do have an awesome bag of challenges these days with poor social policy and rapidly evolving vocational requirements.
If your industry requires specific entry level skills, then make the entry level wages attractive. I’m sure it will sort itself out.
A mate doing a DipEd recently posted his hated terms from the course: “Literacies… pedagogies… multiple intelligences… cognitive and metacognitive learning… metalanguages… designs… frameworks … network topologies” etc.
I was surprised to see this sort of bullshit still existed anywhere in academia, let alone in a course designed to train teachers of maths, science, English etc for school-age children. I’d assumed it would have died long ago, of shame and learned helplessness.
Maybe if we can wipe up the last remnants of postmodernism in the education sector we can get to grips with actually teaching students, instead of confusing them to no effect.
jimbo, I tried doing a Dip Ed by correspondence a couple of years ago (at Charles Sturt, iirc), and bailed because of the things your mate is complaining of. When I told a mate who is a teacher that it was like post-modernism, but without the intellectual rigour, beer came out of his nose.
No postmodernist I (see my pseudonym), but it’s not true that postmodernism in general lacks intellectual rigour and it’s a mistake to think otherwise.
Some jargon is necessary. My objection to unnecessary jargon is more that it butchers a language I love and also creates extra barriers to entry to a field – but that’s true with or without the postmodern infection.
“Network topology” – WTF? Does that mean how tables are arranged in a classroom? Then why don’t they say so? It’s a useful phrase when you’re hooking up a router, but in 6 years of teaching English, I’ve never encountered it. “Classroom arrangement” is good enough for ESL teachers.
I don’t have a problem with jargon per se, as long as it’s shorthand for something concrete that everybody understands. Take “set”, a mathematical term for a thingy that can contain other objects. Everybody in the maths biz uses the word the same way, and it’s easy to teach it to seven graders.
What I don’t like is jargon that elevate everyday terms to pseudo-academic profundities. It’s not so helpful when you’re trying to get your trainee teachers up to speed on instructing stroppy high-schoolers. Especially the ones who are so distracted by their growling bellies because their parents were too slack to provide breakfast that morning.
I started – then stopped – a Dip Ed some years ago. The introductory seminars were interesting, because they were talks from actual experienced teachers. What’s it like to teach in prison, for example? Bit of an eye opener that one: lots of things couldn’t be brought into the joint, because even your everyday paperclip could be used as a weapon. I can’t remember the actual lectures from the Dip Ed; I just recall that they were unpleasantly jargonacious.
In contrast, I found my CELTA and my Cert IV in Training and Assessment lacking in bullshit. Perhaps it’s because they are more specialised than a Dip Ed, perhaps it’s because they are far shorter that a Dip Ed, and perhaps the assumption behind them is learning to be a teacher involves lots and lots of on-the-job practice.
Check these facts out:
From here. In other words, literacy is improving!
dd, post-modernism has got a bad rap from all the half-baked jargon-laden crap that has been perpetrated in its name, hence my scathing reference.
Best book I ever read was “Intellectual Imposteurs” by Sokal and Brickmont.
Next best was the defence of the publication of the hoax by all the totally moronic post modernists.
I fell about for a week after I read only the title.
“Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”
Only those wankers at “Social Text” would consider a paper with a title as blatant as that one.
Ha ha – after all these years it makes me laugh.
However since I left school at 15 and only ever went to universities to fight coppers and pick up chicks I escaped from all that.
Huggy
Ahhh yes, the post-modernist chardonay swilling academic talking about communication in a way that no ordinary person could possibly understand; what is more: living the life of riley on all our taxes and colluding with the the yartz and free to air media, destroying our cherished way of life and turing our children into green voting supporters of gay marriage, what??? next they’ll be putting fluoride into the water and turning us all communist.
Well said Eric Sykes.
Luce Irigaray-noted post modernist and feminist. “Is E=Mc² a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged that which goes faster.”
She absolutely and totally does not get it. What a tool.
People wonder why we of the uneducated masses have nothing but contempt for all this Pomo bullshit. After the revolution, all Arts and business school graduates will be stood against the wall and machine gunned with Pomo tracts.
Huggy
“Literacies… pedagogies… multiple intelligences… cognitive and metacognitive learning… metalanguages… designs… frameworks … network topologies”
Not a ‘pomo’ concept among ‘em (if we’re talking about Sokal’s usual suspects). All these are concepts coming out of education and associated disciplines and you’re referring only to the jargon in that field. The plural forms here serve an obvious purpose: if you can accept ‘literacy’ and ‘pedagogy’ as concepts then its not a stretch to at least admit the possibility of an argument that there are more than one of each. Nothing daunting there. Cognitive, metacognitive, metalanguages: I bet none of you could find a useful short-hand plain English term to replace any of them in context, and practitioners know what they refer to when they are used. Designs is an everyday word. Need I go on?
I’m glad you’ve found the dumb Irigaray quote you needed to discredit all ‘postmodernists’, Huggybunny. Of course nobody other than ‘postmodernists’ has ever uttered foolish, ill-considered or stupid sentences, have they?
My problem with this sort of ‘criticism’ is that it is all too willing to throw the intellectual baby out with the pseudo-intellectual bath-water, and takes no meaningful position on what might constitute useful or otherwise jargon within the fields it purports to criticise. The stupidity of aligning educational jargon with the Sokal offenders is in line with this general contentedness with ignorance. They may very well both be wrong for different reasons, but sliding one into the other because you understand neither is intellectually lazy.
It’s worth mentioning that PISA results from 2009 suggest that:
(These 2009 PISA results do make an appearance in the Industry Skills Councils document released a few days ago.)
Adam@34,
I totally plead guilty to being a totally uneducated old lout.
Like I said I left a Marist brothers school at 15 and never went back. Was never molested either, but then I was a really ugly kid.
I just love that list of words you give at the beginning, came over all shivery I did.
These days for my sins I am forced to attend business meetings and to talk to lots of Professors. I must say that the Profs are now far more cogent and less prolix than the Bizoid nongs.
You see, the Pomo has has escaped from academia and has made its way into the business world. While it dominated the Profs in certain disciplines it did no harm as they were irrelevant to the “real world”.
Now I am forced to add most of the words in your list to my Business Bingo (BB) list along with “going forward” and all the rest. (In my version of BB you must leap to your feet at the meeting and shout “Bingo” after 3 cliches on your the list are uttered)
It is as well that I am a totally unread and ignorant person.
Huggy
What intellectual baby?
Some time ago I had thr grave misfortune to review a history/politics book wrutten in post-modernist jargon. Its something the history profession usually escapes. The book was utterly, completely incomprehensible, some kind of pompous literary joke, or at leasy thats how it read. But, as I said, usually the history profession avoids this kind of rot.
Adam said:
Well said. Withiout endorsing what has come to be known as “POMO” objections to it often amount to a form of sub-intellectual populism.
oops … forgot the blockquote in the middle para above …
[Fixed - Ed]
Adam,
“Of course nobody other than ‘postmodernists’ has ever uttered foolish, ill-considered or stupid sentences, have they?”
Maate I do those all the time but mostly when I am baiting POMO’s.
Huggy
Quite a few of the post-modernists write in a humorous or ‘playful’ way – you aren’t necessarily meant to take it at face value.
I know nothing about Luce Irigaray, but I would guess (and hope) that the above quote is meant in that spirit.
Paulus: I think not. She also thinks that the reason we haven’t solved ‘the problem of turbulence’ is because fluid mechanics is a feminine science (I believe she likened it to menstrual fluid) and has been left to one side while the more masculine solid mechanics (again, I think some kind of phallic imagery was used here) has taken centre stage.
It’s just bullshit.
P.S. I’m not sure what she means by ‘the mathematical problem of turbulence’ and I’m not sure she does either (Navier-Stokes global regularity maybe?). IIRC both quotes are from a chapter in This Sex Which Is Not One. Alan Sokal (of quantum hermenutics fame) gave her a whole chapter in his recent book.
Does she write comedy scripts too?
I guess it’s fun to write in a playful way – I don’t know what Irigaray would make out of F = ma. I suppose that would keep her busy for a year or two on taxpayers’ money, enough for anyone to rub their lips together.
But away from POMO, and back in the real world, there is something wrong with an economy in which people are relatively (i.e. on a world scale) healthy and affluent, but in which fifteen or twenty per cent of able-bodied people are not working, but being supported by the other 80-85 %. What would Marx think, I wonder – or Lenin, with his stricture that he who does not work, neither shall he eat.
So the task, i uppose, is to construct mechanisms to move able-bodied people from their current ‘inability’ to work to where they can work, and not live off the labour of working people (and no, neither should the filthy rich either). So; better TAFE programs ? More relevant and appropriate skills-training and meaningful apprenticeships ?
Do we go about changing reality or do we just observe it ?
Sorry if I’m talking out of turn, I don’t know the correct pecking LP order
Fuck the pecking order.
I suspect the problem of the long term unemployed and unemployed in areas where there are few employment opportunities are as complex as the problems surrounding disabled pensioners. (see Rex Newcombe’s comment on Saturday Salon.) And that long=term unemployment lasts even longer the more economically and socially one becomes.Hopefully there’s some-one out there on LP with more knowledge in this area who can expatiate on this. Funny how such considerationd don’t even occur to this Government.
@ 45,
Ooops. Meant economically and socially disadvantaged one becomes.
” …. the more economically and socially [disadvantaged] one becomes ….”
But the point is: do we leave it at that, and condemn the long-term unemployed to (relatively) empty and boring lives,
OR
should governments do whatever is needed, by way of skills-training programs, to bring able-bodied people out of that condition to the point where they are not living off the labour of other workers ?
Paulus,
Lucy is just a pathetic joke. The quote is typical of her blather.
Jess
Her total crap about fluid mechanics was because it could be associated with menstrual flow, men would not want to study it.
The truth of course is that fluid mechanics is one of the most researched and vigourous fields of them all. Billions of dollars are spent every year on research and applications in virtually every industry,
Huggy
The ‘Mechanics’ of Fluids
Jess and Huggy, can you show me where in this translation of her 1974 essay she says those things (fluid mechanics is a feminine science, associated with menstrual flow, men would not want to study it etc)?
Nick, You are looking in the wrong place.
Look in “Sujet delascience, sujet sexue” p 1987 in “Sens et place des conaissances dans la societe” pp 95-121
What you don’t read French? Get thee from the POMO tribe.
Huggy
And would Irigaray have linked the study of tribology, the study of friction, adhesion etc. with that of fluid mechanics ? Who said physics wasn’t sexy ?
I think Paulus at 40 has come closest to what the pomos and French feminists were about, at their best. It’s very good Socratic thinking, challenging paradigms and memes that remain obscured in hegemonic culture and one of its hallmarks is “playfulness” and irony as Paulus observes.
Am sorry to read Huggybunny escaped from a Marxist Brothers school at fifteen, obviously a traumatic experience and this victim was turned off education for the rest of his/her/ its life.
Paulus is totally wrong about Luce Irigaray, she has absolutely no sense of humour at all. She is a self and sex obsessed psychopath.
She has no understanding of basic physics at all, as her blather about E=MC2 totally illustrates. Further illustrated by her total rubbish about the “feminisation of fluid mechanics”. What a wanker.
A warning to POMO intellectuals, if you want totally uneducated cretins such as myself to take you seriously get your basic physics right, get your logic right and stop reading French POMO tracts.
That much I learned from the Marxist brothers; when they could take time out from frolicking with the other boys in the showers, that is.
Huggy
#53, The English lefty academic Terry Eagleton is pretty dubious about them, too.
I understand you message, “stop it or we’ll go blind”.
There are folk amongst the readership who know exponentially more about cultural studies/ crit theory than than we do, but are remaining silent, largely one suspects to see how far we can go, in butchering a discussion on it.
Huggy:
Strewth, you don’t have her number do you?
@55
that is very funny. Touche.
Well, hopefully I’m not butchering anything by pointing out “feminisation of fluid mechanics” is pretty much the exact opposite of Luce Irigaray’s argument in that essay…the dying mother/son/overgrowing garden story told in Tarkovsky’s ‘Sacrifice’ is closer to the mark, imo (he ‘fixed’ it for her, when he took her outside to see, she was mortified…he’d ruined it).
Re. the science of tribology – hmm…real sexy.
Jimbo:
Jimbo, those are not postmodernist terms. Those terms all pre-date the proliferation of postmodern theory. I’ll type it again more slowly so you can follow along:
Those. Terms. All. Pre-date. The. Proliferation. Of. Postmodern. Theory.
I hope your mate abandons the DipEd, and never darkens a classroom doorway.
It would be sooooo nice if, just once, a self-styled “critic” of postmodern theory actually demonstrated the most rudimentary level of understanding of that which they purport to criticise.
Well, my students are so “confused” by all this stuff they just placed third in the state in a linguistics and mathematics Olympiad, and are in the National Round with a chance to go to the USA for the global competition. Is that confusing enough for you, Jimbo?
“It would be sooooo nice if, just once, a self-styled “critic” of postmodern theory actually demonstrated the most rudimentary level of understanding of that which they purport to criticise.”
Conversely, there will be a lovingly iced grandma’s recipe cupcake awarded to anyone who can succinctly explain anything beneficial to have come from the field.
By ‘beneficial’ I mean that it must not only be “good” (in a way that what it purports to supercede was not), but also be comprehensible as such without doing violence to the basics of my language or reason.
I continue my wait… cupcakes at the ready…
Buffy!
I can haz cupcakes nao?
So it’s not just garbage but derivative garbage. I’m glad you’ve cleared that up.
*headdesk*
I don’t think the literacy problem is with the current generation of school-leavers.
“Conversely, there will be a lovingly iced grandma’s recipe cupcake awarded to anyone who can succinctly explain anything beneficial to have come from the field.”
There are areas of linguistics that might be considered post modern, and they have some credibility (e.g., some areas of cognitive semantics and cognitive linguistics). In the least case, they have highlighted that traditional linguistics has problems with trying to deal with things like metaphors and the connection between them and human experience — i.e., it’s nice to have structural descriptions of various linguistic things that 99% of the population doesn’t know or care about (I like them), which is what you get from traditional linguistics, but it would also be nice to have some way of relating them to the subjective human experience of language and knowing.
Can I have the cake now please?
In addition, I also agree with Mercurius — I think that most critics have no idea what they are talking about — they’re basically just repeating what people have said for political purposes. Post modernism isn’t one homogenous field, and what a lot of media critics have done is simply chosen extremely bad examples of it and said “this is what it is”. I could do the same, for example, with mathematics mumbo-jumbo papers that proliferate in some fields (e.g., economics, mathematical psychology etc.), but they wouldn’t sound crazy to the average person. They’d just sound like maths. Similarly, there is also sorts of awful research going on in other areas, e.g., neuroscience, as witnessed by the two articles which Brian has posted recently, but somehow or other a picture of the brain and a few correlations make these scientific masterpieces and not the bad science that they are. Yet no-one complains about them.
“In the least case, they have highlighted that traditional linguistics has problems with trying to deal with things like metaphors and the connection between them and human experience”
Sorry, but carping about the tiny inadequacies of a superbly rigorous and endlessly fascinating field – inadequacies that amount to nothing more than “your descriptions of language don’t quite capture my lived experience of it”, does not constitute a benefit to me. I knew this already. It is bone-jarringly obvious. It resides in the very nature of study – the thing being studied is not identical with the study itself.
“it’s nice to have structural descriptions of various linguistic things that 99% of the population doesn’t know or care about (I like them) [FDB: don't get me started], which is what you get from traditional linguistics, but it would also be nice to have some way of relating them to the subjective human experience of language and knowing”
Yeah, it would be nice, if anyone had done it. As nice as a cupcake. But without the actual existence of it, the cupcake will remain similarly beyond your grasp, sorry.
“Post modernism isn’t one homogenous field”
And therein lies a humungous flaw. The accusation of a “lack of rigour” in postmodern theory consists of this basic point (when it’s not just uninformed blather, which I readily concede is commonplace).
In fact, if pressed for a “definition” of postmodernism [presses self], I would supply the following:
“The pernicious asking of questions which nobody has any intention of even attempting definitively to answer, because they are asked in such a way as to render answers impossible”.
NO CUPCAKES!!!
Anyone else want to have a crack? These cupcakes are fucking delicious.
You’re a cup-cake fascist FDB, going around promising things when you’re obviously entirely unaware that other people’s realities happen to differ from yours. Piaget would say that you’d never developed a decent Theory of Mind, the ability to understand that my subjective experience is different to yours.
“And therein lies a humungous flaw. The accusation of a “lack of rigour” in postmodern theory consists of this basic point (when it’s not just uninformed blather, which I readily concede is commonplace).”
It’s no the worse than any other field. For example, the politics and brain study Brian posted uses simple subtractive logic to hypothesize about massively complex processes. I.e., if you do task (a) and then task (b), and then subtract the activation from task (a) from task (b), what is left over will tell you something meaningful about how political identity is processed by the brain and what political identity is. Hahaha, and people take that crap seriously (it’s in a good journal after all). Sometimes people never learn anything from scientific dead-ends, especially when there are big machines involved that produce impressive looking pictures (although we once loved phrenology without the big machines, so perhaps humans just like simple 1-to-1 relationships).
“The pernicious asking of questions which nobody has any intention of even attempting definitively to answer”
There’s no definitive answer to many questions, especially ones that concern people’s feelings and judgements — which are very important parts of being human. Given this, no definitive answer is going to help you, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth trying to understand. For example, why do people think pictures of brains are more scientifically valid than a statistical function? I don’t know — there’s probably a 101 different reasons, and none of them will explain 100% of your data.
Sorry FDB, my last post just hit moderation, although it wasn’t offensive.
[the auto-filter doesn't judge, it just holds comments according to the strings we place in it ~ moderator]
“other people’s realities”
Priceless.
Okay, help yourself to a fucking delicious cupcake in your reality. I doubt it will taste as good as the real one I hold here in my hand, but of course I can’t prove that to you.
Nor would I really want to – after all, in my reality, real cupcakes are much more important.
I always thought that was the whole point of reality.
“It’s no the worse than any other field.”
In any other (scientific/academic) field, it would be utterly trivial to provide me with a clear example of cupcake-worthy benefit resulting therefrom.
Utterly. Trivial.
Sorry FDB, the first paragraph was satire (I thought the cup-cake comment would have made that obvious, but humour never works too well on blogs).
“In any other (scientific/academic) field, it would be utterly trivial to provide me with a clear example of cupcake-worthy benefit resulting therefrom.”
Provide me with one fMRI study that has told anything about language use and processing that we didn’t already know (I’ll even admit that my own work I’ve done with fMRI doesn’t fulfill this). Since you won’t be able to do this (even if you knew the literature), can I have the cup-cake?
“Provide me with one fMRI study that has told anything about language use and processing that we didn’t already know (I’ll even admit that my own work I’ve done with fMRI doesn’t fulfill this). Since you won’t be able to do this (even if you knew the literature), can I have the cup-cake?”
The failure (if you wish to so describe it) of haemodynamics to give you special insights into language is neither here nor there.
Likewise the weakness of certain particular studies in the field.
It is a real place to study real things (in both of our realities I hope) relating to blood flow and oxygenation.
The cupcake will be awarded for (and ONLY for) explaining a benefit to humanity from postmodern theory, not for pointing out problems in other fields.
Wow. This pomo stoush is getting really entertaining. I think I’m actually partly responsible, as I believe I was the first person to explicitly sneer at post-modernism on this thread.
Can I have a cupcake, FDB?
People who agree with me are automatically entitled to one, M. Le Holocaust-denier-but-not-really.
And I will cheerfully extend the offer to anyone who can identify a strain of academic endeavor as bereft of benefit as postmodern theory. fMRI – horrifyingly lame as some of its studies are – does not qualify.
Homeopathy is the only example I can think of, so I herewith exclude it.
Actually, FDB, I don’t think homeopathy would qualify as an academic pursuit anyway, so you’re safe.
True, but at least nobody can accuse me of being ungenerous now. Pomo isn’t being singled out, just assessed on its merits.
I’d say Huggy’s problem, and he/she isn’t alone here, is that he/she doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about when it comes to “post-modernism”. Many of the intellectuals often cited never reference themselves as “post-modernists”\, it’s not like there’s s club in Paris where they all hang out and construct very long sentences.
PatrickB, that sounds an awful lot like special pleading.
And it sounds nothing like a robust defence of pomo theory.
Still… thanks for playing.
In other words…
Don’t just keep telling me I “don’t have a clue”.
Fucking GIVE ME ONE!!!
I’m a smart(ish) dude! I can handle the task of thinking about a thing! Give me a thing to think about!
I wouldn’t bother with FDB’s “post-modern” cupcake challenge. I would say that like any pseudo-post-modernist he’s being playfully ironic by not allowing anyone to actually qualify for the prize. It is an infinity relative game. Of course it also so the rest of us how inadequate his understanding is.
“usually the history profession avoids this kind of rot”
Oh yeah? Here’s a piece of jargon for the wilfully ignorant – Post-Colonialism. Which in my experience is usually lumped in with the post-modernism “rot”.
But Adam @ 34 is dead right. Absolutely none of that jargon is post modernist.
Oh right, but I forgot, it’s all TEH POSTMODRENISMS FAULTS TEH KIDZ CARNT SPELLS.
Actually I would like to challenge anyone on this thread (pro-or-anti) to produce any sort of definition as to what exactly, a “Post Modernist” actually is. How does one recognise a post-modernist when one is in their company? And Just wow does the modern academic discern their writing (“bad” is not an answer here because that’s circular logic, and neither is “jargon” because all academic fields have jargon)?
Because I will give you mine. In my experience of the subject as I have found it in my university life, “post-modernism” is a THING that is to be studied, not the way of studying it – to quote Frederick Jameson, it is “The logic of late capitalism” (although not as late as he would have liked, I guess). In my reading of it, it seems you could substitute a word like the Situationists’ term “Spectacle”, if you were of that inclination. Now I don’t know if such things truly exist in a really rigorous way – although it seems to me that Guy Debord was onto something very profound – but my guess is that a “post-modernist” is someone who studies such thing.
So I see that just as I am a “Romanist” or a “historian” not because I’m an actually History (I hope), or an actual Roman, but because that’s my area of specialisation: it’s my topic (as I would explain to a non-specialist – to a specialist there’s a bunch of jargon I would employ to be more precise about my specialisation, which to a non-specialist is wide open for misinterpretation!). And in my field there are many different topics and many different ways to approaching them. And there are *plenty* of old cobblers about in the area (and not just some old guys who don’t get newer ideas either), but it doesn’t invalidate the entire field.
I certainly found Jameson eminently readable. I’ve found others, much less so. I either persevered because I required the knowledge or I gave up on that writer (and sometimes it’s the translator!). I didn’t bag out an entire field because I once found a writer I hated.
Patrick B. None of them have jack on Cicero for “long sentences”
Well, whaddyagonnado Patrick?
a) Give me something to think about
b) Wimp out and blame me
Your dilemma is hilarious.
You’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards, and admitting as much is too serious a thing to countenance, so here we are…
Well, Foul-mouthed Dick for a Brain (FDB) I would have thought the collected works of Foucault provide an excellent place to start. His exposition of discourse is essential for anyone interested in the media. Perhaps you need to take some time off and have a read?
“Actually I would like to challenge anyone on this thread (pro-or-anti) to produce any sort of definition as to what exactly, a “Post Modernist” actually is.”
I gave you one. What do you think of it?
And as I said, you’re playing a gane, even though you don’t get it, that no-one can beat you at. Have fun you onanist.
#84 should not be dignified with any more response than this.
@87
Oh dear, no just and onanist, a sensitive one.
“as I said, you’re playing a gane, even though you don’t get it, that no-one can beat you at. Have fun you onanist.”
Oh mercy.
That’s the most refined example of irony I have ever seen.
This is the entirety of my criticism of postmodern theory. You’ve captured it more elegantly and than I could ever do, so hats off for that. I’m a wobbly, wordy tool, and I aspire to the heights of economy you have shown me.
Man, these cupcakes are fucking delicious.
Actually, I gave you a definition of what post modernism was FDB, you seem to be conveniently ignoring it.
I demand a fucking cupcake! (actually, no, I am fucking hungry, so I demand Quiche!).
Oh. Lets.
“Post-Colonialism.”
I too am suspicious of pomo. Because pomo comes from the centre and stretches its tentacles outward to empire, seeking to recolonise all over again. It’s just endless deferral and endless play. Europe with too much time on its hands. Anyway. Its oh so easy to deconstruct what you aint gunna lose anyway, dead white guys. No postco. Postco is da bomb. Postco has defo political aims in mind – decolonisation ation ation. While it may utilise the same linguistic and strategic techniques of pomo, postco comes from the periphery and heads straight for the centre in order to deconstruct you dead white guys.
Now femo postco, femo postco, how exciting. I’m not above Spivak’s strategic essentialism here. What do you think my Ruby Woo lipstick is about eh? Yes, mimicry, you vewy scared I might actually look a little too much like you and not a witch? Green skin Red Lips White Masks anyone? I assure you. I threaten the colonial and patriarchal space like nuthin else.
Could I have a cupcake Please? PLEASE?
Tyro Rex,
One can describe a camel, or an igneous rock, or a tape-worm, as well as their resepctive relationships with other organisms or formations, and even produce one for inspection, because they exist.
One can surmise about griffins, or Yowies or Loch Ness Monsters, but until one can be produced and examined, such an exercise remains nothing more than a playful parody on the genuine search for knowledge and truth.
So it is with POMO, and until it can produce something substantial, the most ‘playful’ thing anybody can do is to laugh at it for the pompous waffle that it is, at its best.
Now, back in the real, serious, world of illiteracy, exclusion and long-term unemployment …….
I suspect that Pomo is a method of grooming the young to be politically and socially apathetic, It was a devious response by the French bourgeoisie in the universities to the rebellion of 1968.
It has no other purpose and hence defies definition.
In essence it a form of abuse of the young.
Huggy
I want whatever Casey is on. No … wait. I need a sharp mind these next few years so I can has doctorate.
Old Yobbo, I don’t know anything about Yowies or Loch Ness Monsters. I don’t recall either of those topics in Jameson’s book. Perhaps you trying to say that “late capitalism” (which is to say modern society) doesn’t exist?
And why are you the sole arbiter of “something substantial”? I posit that it’s YOU and your ilk who guilty of the “nothing substantial” waffle. You spend all your time swiping at the air where ghosts and illusions are thought be be seen and burning straw men of your own fantasies, and spend all your time projecting this motivation onto others.
None of you can even give any sort of categorical definition of what this “POMO” is, nor name any of its alleged adherents, exactly, beyond a vague and nonsensical hand-waving at “bad writing”, “bad scholarship” and “stuff I did not understand” (which you conflate with the first two categories). It’s just sophistry – in the post-Platonic, modern sense.
Just let us know when you get one of FDB’s cup-cakes, TR.
Both you and FDB got nothin’. Not a fucking sausage. You don’t even know what it is you’re talking about, you two are Alan Jones anti-carbon-tax rally of intellectual debate. Haterz gonna hate, I guess.
Maybe this fine fellow can explain it to ya.
@92
she lives;
hallelujah
Postmodernism?
Well, probably a discussion about what it is should begin with what it replaced and what problems it attempts to “solve.” I think, Henrock in TRex’s vid above starts off strong (loses his way rap-hideously though.)
The short story is that post-modernism is used to describe the over-complexity of our society. The problem isn’t the so-called grand-narratives (in themselves) like progress, rationality etc. The problem is much more pragmatic, a bit like the Chinese Whispers game — due to the complex nature of our society, by the time a “narrative” or an idea gets from “place” A to B it means something different. I think it’s fairly easy to accept that, that’s how we roll these days.
Postmodernism then, is an investigation of how this works or might work: With the added problem, that if you accept something like the above definition as your starting point, the problem of investigating this situation is reflective and so unstable from the start. It’s a fascinating concept: a paradox.
And then, you can find postmodernist “thinkers” all over the place, in particular: literature and literary theory, visual-art and architecture, philosophy, culture studies, etc. The other thing which is important, I think, is post-modernism’s historical context — which I think, in particular is the cold war.
I don’t call that living Ambi.
Where’s my fracking cake.
It’s not my thing, but post-colonialism also seems to be just one more thing that binds the colonisers to the colonised.
Political antagonism, especially today, isn’t really where it’s at and I wonder if there is any evidence of post-colonial thinking leading to an improvement in the lives of people?
Gee, I don’t know Joe. Tell you what. I will ask Gary Foley on Facebook if political antagonism got Aboriginal people anywhere, especialy today, and will relay his response to you as soon as I get through the 35000 facebook comments from Aboriginal Australia telling me I am a complete moron and to frack off.
Of course, Noel Pearson, may well agree with you and may I recommend to you his excellent essay on white guilt and the radical centre for your perusal.
I am feeling a bit whithered. And I feel, deeply, sorry for you, because you have to read that essay, which just going from th title, sounds truly mind numbing.
But my point is something else.
Joe, your thinking is always somethin else, I am quite aware.
What is post-colonial thinking in your terms?
And for that matter, please define for me post-colonialism.
And what is the political antagonism of post colonialism?
TR,
Before you get too far up yourself, just try to understand that POMO and POCO are both enormous steps to the Right, there is nothing Left about them: they are the gutless releases of stale gas aimed at the real, hard world, entreaties to drop out and carp from the sidelines rather than attempt to change reality. i.e. the worst betrayal of Marx’s 11th Thesis.
Somebody asked readers to nominate their worst exemplars of POMO/POCO: I would go for Spivak, Bhabha, Foucault, DeLeuze, Lacan, for starters: skinny soy latte in one hand, something else in the other.
No, not in MY hand either …..
“Conversely, there will be a lovingly iced grandma’s recipe cupcake awarded to anyone who can succinctly explain anything beneficial to have come from the field.”
FDB, I don’t really think postmodern is a useful catch-all for any particular group of thinkers and it certainly doesn’t constitute a field.
So to answer your question, I’m going to need some help: you’re going to need to specify somebody who you see as quintessentially postmodern, and I’ll tell you why their work is useful for a particular field, if I know enough about that field to have a go at it.
To get the ball rolling, I’m going to defend Deleuze in the field of practical and political philosophy. What is so interesting about Deleuze (with collaborator Guattari) is that he provides an immanent conception of utopia that can orient our thinking about politics something like a regulative ideal without all of the conceptual dependencies or assumptions – about reason, about the transcendental – that usually accompany such an idea in political philosophy. I can go into further detail about why that’s important and interesting if you’d like. To put it simply, it’s an alternative immanentist philosophy to that provided by analytic philosophy.
And yes, as Tyro Rex suggests, for a number of thinkers postmodernism is an object of study – it is a feature of contemporary culture that is produced by a set of material relationships. I tend to dispute that account, if only because so much of what we might want to call postmodern is modernist. The assumption that there is something fundamentally new and postmodern in culture is an artifact of the way in which modernism as a cultural phenomenon was understood post-WWII.
And finally, none of jimbo’s list of sinister jargon terms are ‘postmodern’, and neither is Piaget (who I think is a Kantian). And that is according to *any* available definition of the term. Which makes this a derail of a derail. There are no rails left.
Casey,
I really think you’re the expert on this, and I don’t just mean that as an excuse or whatever for me to be able to say stupid stuff. I probably should have asked a good question, anyway…
I think that if post-modernism is based in communication and especially subjectivity, location etc. post-colonialism is an extension of postmodernism focusing on a particular type of communication, which is more generally culture (or cultural reproduction) and in particular tradition.
All I meant by my comment, was that sometimes I have the feeling that when I read something about post-colonialism is that behind the discussion about how the dominant colonial culture redefined the aboriginal culture and behind even the political conflict, which such a discussion is generating, the colonial economy is still exploiting their old colony. That seems to be accepted and acceptable. “It’s tragic, but you know…”
I guess, I just think that’s problematic. I don’t think the answer is what Noel Pearson wants to do, which is to completely re-shape a culture. But I still think it’s a valid criticism.
“You don’t even know what it is you’re talking about”
I know precisely what I’m talking about, and have described it in plain terms for you Tyro. Whereas all you’ve done is shove around vague and vaguely offensive piles of steaming horseshit.
Example the first – the following “definition” of postmodernism:
“A thing to be studied”
I’ma just let that flap about in the breeze for a bit.
“A thing to be studied”
“A thing to be studied”
What am I supposed too USE it for? What is good about it? Not relevant apparently.
Example the second – your insistance that is ought to be up to the detractors of pomo to give a proper definition of what they’re detracting from, when it is precisely its lack of precision which is at issue.
Casey – did you actually say anything at all just now? I’ve re-read a few times, but I’m still coming up blank. Maybe (just for my humble sake) try taking out the humour and the grandstanding, and just say something about how helpful postmodern theory is.
Seriously, I don’t know if I can eat all these fucking delicious cupcakes before they go stale.
FDB, when it’s said that postmodernism is a thing to be studied, what is meant by that is it’s a way of describing the culture we live in. If you study postmodernism, you study contemporary media, or some other cultural phenomenon, and generally it means you’re doing so from a perspective informed by late C20th marxism.
It doesn’t mean you study Deleuze, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault or whoever. That would be described as ‘studying C20th French philosophy’.
“FDB, I don’t really think postmodern is a useful catch-all for any particular group of thinkers and it certainly doesn’t constitute a field. ”
Alrighty then. Everything is as I would have it.
There still seem to be a large number of people believing pomo has some explanatory utility, and that it does constitute a field, but at least you’re with me in thinking them foolish.
Adam – you are describing modernism.
I think the confusing part of the term is the way that postmodern so often has an ‘ism’ attached, which implies it’s an agenda of some sort. But that’s only true of some of the ways the term has been defined. When one speaks of ‘postmodernism’ in feminist political theory (eg Iris Marion Young) it is indeed something like that.
When one speaks of a condition of postmodernity (Harvey), or postmodernism in culture (Jameson circa mid-1980s), then an intellectual or political agenda is no longer the sort of thing that we are talking about when we use the term.
Different objects, phenomena, things. Same, or similar terms used by thinkers with different assumptions about who or what they are talking about.
No, I haven’t been describing modernism. I’ve been describing postmodernism in it’s several distinct definitions. Just because you disagree with how the term has been used, doesn’t mean those arguments haven’t been made. I don’t know how much more clearly I can put this for you.
FDB,
No, it’s not modernism, because modernism is based on reason. Cultural phenomena, OTOH, are often not very rational. Often they’re very kind of superficial. If you think about modernism as being form-follows-function you have a quite clear separation of the surface and it’s logical internal justification.
What Adam said is very important:
And I think that this, OTOH is very controversial:
Postmodernism often seems to imply some hidden agenda. It’s got this anticipatory thing going on. Atmospherics…
“a way of describing the culture we live in”
So what then Adam?
Postmodernism is the study of contemporary things?
THAT I can certainly get on board with. It’s very important that we have a way of viewing/analysing contemporary reality. But as a way of approaching epistemology, or even ontology, that’s hardly a novel approach, and it has no “theory” of any kind underpinning it.
None.
Joe, indeed, it is controversial, as is pretty much everything within political philosophy. And as are most defenses of Deleuze outside of a handful of areas in the humanities! But it is a significant contribution to a recognisable field that I’m positing, one acknowledged by experts in the field (Paul Patton, William Connolly) and as significant – and arguably ‘beneficial’ – as many other contributions from thinkers who aren’t generally considered postmodern thinkers.
To be honest, I find Derrida more interesting for political philosophy, and Hannah Arendt more useful.
Joe – so postmodernism is an acknowledgement of the limits of reason? We’re back at square one then aren’t we?
Viz:
“The pernicious asking of questions which nobody has any intention of even attempting definitively to answer, because they are asked in such a way as to render answers impossible”
No postmodernism is not the study of contemporary culture. Contemporary culture is, when studied, seen as postmodern by some thinkers (often marxists). Others think it is modern and argue that the notion of ‘postmodern’ has little utility when used in this way (and I tend to agree).
And yet others have no stake in that argument, but their thinking is described as postmodernist, and so a whole other set of arguments about their work is felt to be about the same thing. But it’s not, and the relationships between these two distinct arguments are not at all obvious.
The latter part of your comment is still about trying to drag this back to a single, uncontested definition that encompasses both seeing it as an intellectual agenda, and as an object to be studied. But some definitions are contested, and this is among the most contested, as much of this thread has shown us.
“The pernicious asking of questions which nobody has any intention of even attempting definitively to answer, because they are asked in such a way as to render answers impossible”
And your initial question, though not pernicious, was asked in such a way as to render reasonable answers impossible from those who understand the debates you’re referring to. The reason we return again and again to definitional issues, is because the questions that many critics of ‘postmodernism’ ask of it are incomprehensible unless they can be more specific about what they think they mean by the term.
joe @ 115: “modernism is based on reason”
No. Modernism is based on concepts such as death of the old. It has nothing to do with reason.
Adam – again, that sounds like a retreat into “you don’t know exactly how things seem to other people than yourself”.
Of course I don’t.
Is that it?
First up, Old Yobbo, I don’t really care if an intellectual pursuit is “right” or “left”, that’s not a foundational category of validity, I think. The sciences are hardly judged by that categorisation, nor any other disciplines. Certainly no-one’s ever told me my thesis nor any of my papers about various aspects of classical society where insufficiently left- or right-wing.
What I do see though is that the list of writers you produce are not really in the same school. Foucault I thought was a sociologist, who wrote about the history of ideas. I though that “Discipline and Punish” and “The History of Sexuality” (I only read pt 1 & 2) were very interesting reads. Deleuze is a philosopher who wrote on a wide range of topics including film. There are a lot of film studies people around who greatly admire the “The Movement Image” and “The Time Image” – personally I’m not qualified to comment. Lacan was a psychiatrist and a structuralist. He knew the palaeontologist and anthropologist Leroi-Gourhan – also regarded as an important structuralist – and who I’ve read extensively. Leroi-Gourhan had some very interesting theories about technology, language, speech and gesture. His work Le Geste et la Parole (Gesture and Speech) is a highly interesting work only translated into English in the 1990s, which has some fascinating insights into the relationship of technology (as a development of gesture) and language. I don’t know how valid they remain in paleo-anthropology, however. Still, the discovery by neuroscientists that the gestural aspects of bodily movement (particularly the hands) are controlled by the language centres of the brain and not the motor centres are in broad concordance with what he wrote.
So, in conclusion, I think you’ve merely cited a grab-bag of mostly French intellectuals as somehow “representative” of “postmodernism” but there’s neither an appraisal of these thinkers as to exactly how they are related and should be regarded as a single “school”, neither in methodological nor in terms of their respective fields and there is also no sort of actual critique of their thinking or writing.
Some writers use ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’ as synonyms. An example, chosen for no other reason than that I happened to be rereading him recently, would be Marshall Berman. The further one gets from literary studies, the less likely ‘modernist’ is to mean a distinct set of aesthetic priorities and the more likely it is to refer to a set of broad intellectual or cultural trends. One reason for these debates seeming interminable is that they often cross disciplinary boundaries, and thus implicitly change the sorts of questions one might want to ask.
Also, my failure to ask the exact, magical question that would provoke a rigorous defence of postmodern theory’s utility is cheerfully admitted.
[HINT: I'm not referring to any 'debates'. I'm asking what might have been achieved by the whole shebang]
I have failed to provoke any such thing. Abjectly.
But by the same token you have failed to produce it, and to help me with asking the question better.
No FDB, you don’t seem to understand the content of ongoing debates you’re explicitly referring to and attempting to weigh in on. Do your homework, figure out what *you* mean by the terms you are throwing around, then you can set some parameters for discussing what is ‘beneficial’.
The fact that you think postmodernism is a ‘field’, only suggests to me that you don’t know what you’re talking about. What I want from you is some clarification about what you think you’re talking about, and then I can get to answering your question (which is nonsensical to me).
*Or* you could go with the tentative answer I offered about Deleuze. If the dirty dozen picked out by Sokalites is what you mean by ‘postmodern’, then that’d be the preferred option.
What do you mean by postmodern theory? Which theories? Which theorists? Do you mean poststructuralism? Do you mean those who theorise the postmodern condition? Do you mean a particular, arbitrary grouping of French philosophers? They are different things. I’m not asking for a magical question, I’m asking for clarification about what you mean when you ask what, to me, reads as a nonsensical question.
And how about my defense of Deleuze? If all you mean is the usual suspects, then that’s my answer. I’ll give you more if you want to confirm that that’s what you mean by your question.
To simplify: what do you mean by ‘the whole shebang’?
That’s what I’m asking you, Adam.
Post-modernism is the Catholic reaction to modernism and reflects the wish to return to traditional Catholic values. It rejects objective scientific truth, especially evolution and its implied atheism.
I’m asking for you to explain *your* terms, not mine. To what are *you* referring when you ask your question. You may think it’s too obvious to articulate.
Do you mean the thinkers picked out by Sokal et al? Is that what you mean when you say postmodern?
If yes, then I’ve given you an answer well up-thread. I’ll give some more.
You don’t want to talk about Deleuze? What about Foucault: a major and beneficial contribution to the history of sexuality (History of Sexuality volumes); a controversial but arguably beneficial contribution to historiography (across his entire oeuvre); a beneficial contribution to the study of power in modern institutions and government (the influential interviews; the lectures and other material on governmentality); a controversial but arguably beneficial contribution to thinking about literature (“What is an author?”).
Is that an answer for you? You see, I can’t tell because you refuse to confirm that you are talking about the postmodern in that sense.
FDB I will get your alleged argument now;
I don’t know, and it’s not up to me really, what you use your everyday contemporary life for. Its yours, and you only have one, non-returnable, non-refundable, everyday life. Use it as you want.
But if by “What am I supposed too (sic) USE it for?”, you mean, not everyday life itself, but its critique, then I’m basically defending the entire enterprise of western intellectual effort these last two and half centuries, something I have no desire for, and probably not the intellectual capacity either.
If you are one who posits a thing exists – and it is YOU who so posits that “postmodernism” is a classification of a school, a movement, an artefact or a technique of a certain class of intellectuals, then its up to you to define what you mean. This is a pretty basic scholarly skill, expected in most disciplines (certainly every one I’ve ever had contact with).
Yes. Postmodernism is simply an approach or a methodology. It is a state of society that is posited by certain thinkers (e.g. Jameson). It is as you say “contemporary reality”. Well, I think that is WAS contemporary reality, in the last decade its become different yet again.
To break it down as I incompletely understand it. Modernity is the label we give to society from some time in the 19th century (I guess – personally would say that ‘modernity’ is a European development that starts in the 15th century and lasts until the later 20th) to the end of the second world war. Thereafter, it is said, that society changes – Jameson argues that it becomes detached from historicity* – and develops into something with a different character than modernity – post-modernity.
* by this he doesn’t mean it becomes in actuality detached from history – how could anything do that? – but that it gives off the appearance of being detached from historical forces (what Debord refers to as the “perpetual present”).
As a formal type or coherent movement of thought I would only say that “post-modernism” is nothing but a style of post-WW2 architecture invented as a counter to the high modernism of the internationalist school (and they invented the term, actually). The condition of society, as is often the case, then becomes named after its material aesthetics.
As a classical historian the demarcation of historical periods with labels comes pretty naturally.
Yes, it’s a puzzle – how do you define something, or elucidate its value for humanity, when it’s nothing but piss and wind ? Mind you, it’s provided lucrative careers for umpteen French wankers and their post-colonial myrmidons.
Indeed, what might be called moral literacy skills are lacking not only in the trades …..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism
Apart from my own analysis @ 130, the poster who comes closest to this analysis is Huggybunny @ 94:
To Huggybunny’s analysis I would just add that the French bourgeoisie is Catholic.
I also want to congratulate Yobbo who to his credit observed that “POMO and POCO are both enormous steps to the Right,” which accords with Wikipedia’s critique of Pomo as serving the reactionary forces.
Folks may also want to consider why so much of Casey’s writings are obscurantist, given her Catholicism, and why she supports the philosophy of Noel Pearson.
“Folks may also want to consider why so much of Casey’s writings are obscurantist, given her Catholicism, and why she supports the philosophy of Noel Pearson.”
Silkworm. You are a fucking idiot.
It’s only obscurantist to you, cause you are an ignorant amoeba that swam up out of some primordial soup only to land on this blog and proceed to argue without any braincells whatsoever. Anyone whose done a modicum of undergrad postco will know what I am parodying right there. Again with the Catholicism. The only person on this blog that I see obsessed with the religion is you. It’s embarrassing. Why don’t you go join the priesthood. You are obvious erotically attracted to it or something to keep on finding reasons to bring it up on every single post. . As for Noel Pearson, you intellectual giant, I have spent the best part of this weekend on this blog complaining about him. God how thick can you be? Do you have any idea how many millions of allusions you miss? Oh its tragic.
You missed the parody, you missed the satire and oh, silkworm you miss the irony of yourself. A pathetic little sectarian that is so obsessed with Catholicism he can’t go a day without thinking about it. That’s called love Silkworm. Love. Go marry the Pope and shut the fuck up will you?
Who’s. Any one who’s done…
FDB, Silkworm, Old Yobbo — I think you need to chillax a bit. I realise there are cupcakes at stake, fucking delicious fucking cupcakes even, but all this fulminating against postmodern(ism) leads me to suspect you would hurl them at anyone who came close to satisfying your challenge.
Point the Firste — to the best of my knowledge, nobody occupies a Chair of Postmodern Studies at a major research institution, nobody is a Professor of Postmodernism, no public money is expended on research studies in the Faculty of Postmodernism. So, you know, your strident calls for demonstrations of its utility seem to miss the point a little. Has the audit culture so infested our minds that even old orthodox Leftists now demand a receipt for every paper published?
Point the Feconde – In the field of philosophy, postmodern approaches seem to have escaped the ivory tower and been picked up by scholars whose primary training is not in philosophical method. This may lead to the lack of rigour you identify in some areas. It’s like decrying climate science as bunk because of the way Christopher Monckton practices it, or even as FDB alluded to…should we take homeopathy as an indictment on the medical sciences??
Point the Therde – In history, at least, where I have some rudiments of training, you would (I hope) not dispute that the classic western approach is to attempt to classify periods and eras. Tyro Rex @132 gave a decent recount of where the ‘Modern’ era (in Eurocentric terms) supposedly gave way to the ‘Postmodern’ era at the end of WWII. That is, notions that guided a lot of (European) modern political and social movements (perfectable societies, deterministic views of history, belief in inexorable progress towards white male European perfection), were fractured by the cataclysm of total war, and we entered a new, less certain “age”. Of course, ‘Postmodern’ analysis didn’t start at the end of WWII, it began a generation later when the then-rising generation of historical scholars looked back on the post-WWII period and decided something essential had changed in (European) society at that point. Postmodern historical analysis did indeed attack the fundamental premises of classic Marxist theory (you can’t have dialectic materialism if there are no deterministic forces driving history!), which presumably explains the hostility of Old Yobbo and Silkworm.
Point the Fourthe – In sociology, Ulrich Beck’s 1992 work Risk Society would, on its own IMHO, sufficiently redeem the entire Postmodern(ist) enterprise, and quell anxious minds, and be awarded cupcakes.
Point the Fifthe – I don’t think it’s possible to appreciate much of what’s happened in historical and social analysis since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, unless you are willing to take a postmodern approach to language and culture. Lots of things that are difficult to read, and even more difficult to understand, are not ipso facto useless. But we all understand cupcakes.
Point the Fixthe – Sometimes the utility of open-ended enquiry is in working out where the blind alleys lie. Have a little patience. Maybe there is a beautiful butterfly nascent in the horrible grub. We wouldn’t have modern chemistry without centuries ‘wasted’ on the pursuit of alchemy…
Oh and, you know, I read somewhere that Literacy Skills Are Not Only Lacking In The Trades…
Casey, you have bewitched me..
Let me know the bristles of your besom before handing it over it to TigTog.
It should be recalled actually, that large and crucial sections of the French intelligentsia have been or are actually Euro-Jewish or Protestant and or athiest or agnostic, bouncing off Catholicism.
What we arrive at is a signification that is actually contrary to Silkworm’s assumption that France is a Conservative/Catholic monoculture- the tensions actually produce an interesting dialectic or discourse that drives their investigations of culture.
Myrmidons. Weren’t these supposed to be sooled by Shier and Macdonald onto the ABC in the cause of dumbing down, back half a dozen years ago?
“It is a real place to study real things (in both of our realities I hope) relating to blood flow and oxygenation.”
FDB, you are sounding like a grumpy old man (or women). The fact that something looks real and has some obvious connection with reality doesn’t make it good, and vice versa (most of psychology doesn’t — and there often competing views based on different sets of assumptions also). At least in terms of the social sciences, as far as I’m concerned, you should be interested into things that can provide some novel insight into human behavior (of course playing with big machines can be fun). If they don’t, then no matter how impressive they look, it’s a waste of time. If looking at things from different perspectives helps provides this, I don’t see what the problem is.
I have only one comment.
WTF happened to my post?
Robert, I think we all agree that you were spot on, and so we’ve been looking for other things to argue about.
This is a fascinating discussion and I’m learning much. I just want to thank everybody, whatever side of the argument you’re on. Keep on going, please.! Will check back later today.
Paul,
Sometimes problems are so huge that nobody has a clue what to do about them, so the easy way to deal with them is to ignore them. So paradoxically, the larger the problem, the more it is ignored and the more people affected by it are (or strive to be) oblivious about it.
Hence literacy levels in a rapidly changing economy always seem to be falling behind needs, and sometimes this is too glaringly obvious.
But wait !
Post-modernism (as nihilism and existentialism did before it) can come to the rescue and provide anybody who is slightly worried about this, or any other, seemingly insoluble problem with the means to ignore or even deny that there is a problem at all, that there are more lofty things, and thus to return to oblivion, and to sip his or her skinny soy latte with good conscience.
There will always be a need for something like post-modernism, a playful diversion from serious matters, a means to sound concerned and committed while backing out at full speed. Ideal for ex-progressives who have found secure and comfortable life-long niches away from the barricades and the cares of a mundane world.
Well Old Yobbo, in fact Ulrich Beck has much to say that is of use when considering the literacy needs of young people entering the work force — in fact much of his work on Risk Society can be usefully applied to show how modern policies are designed by western governments to devolve blame and accountability for structural inequalities and unfairness onto exactly the people who are least to blame and most let down by the prevailing economic order, as Robert Merkel posted about.
Meanwhile, for those of us whose daily toil is indeed, as you put it, on “the barricades” dealing with and providing for the literacy needs of young people who are about to apply for jobs in the trades *cough, cough*, maybe, just maybe, a chance to talk and think about something besides that on our weekend/vacation is a much-needed respite.
Pass me my coffee thanks – black, no sugar, instant.
As a non-academic who was educated before postmodernism came along (well, before it reached Western Australia) I probably have the popular view: postmodernism says that everything is subjective and therefore no view can be privileged over any other view.
OK, that’s probably not postmodernism, but then where did that idea come from? There’s probably something that sparked off that simplification. What’s the difference between that ‘definition’ and the real thing?
Old Yobbo – that doesn’t seem right about existentialism (that had just reached W.A. in time for me). As I remember, the previous belief about life was ‘essence precedes existence’, whereas the existentialists proposed that existence came before essence and that we had to create the meaning of our lives. And the act of creating that meaning implied a solidarity which had political consequences.
Russell, some of the thinkers whose work is called postmodern *have* questioned the limits of some prized existing categories or assumptions and have been read to endorse radical subjectivism (in epistemology) or cultural relativism (in ethics etc) or social constructionism (in many areas). But if we’re talking about poststructuralist thinkers (Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault) then none of those three objections bear much relation to what their actual challenges represent. Each of those positions – subjectivism, relativism, social constructionism – have longer and more diverse histories in philosophy, sociology and elsewhere and have little to do with the content of poststructuralism.
In my opinion the willing reception of misreadings by critics, but more importantly by some of those endorsing these thinkers, has led to the persistence of such associations as the one you describe.
@146 – Russell, that constellation of ideas is relativism/subjectivism. Look them up. They are centuries old. They certainly pre-date postmodernism. Subjectivism is also a formal paradox (asserts as a universal tenet that there are no universal tenets…)
The rise of relativism tended to accompany the rise in individualism in western polities — lots of people seem to have decided that they are entitled not only to their own opinions, but also to their own facts. I don’t know why “postmodernism” is blamed for this condition — it would seem to me to be a simple result of too many people being encouraged to believe for too long that they are the best arbiters of truth — “believe in yourself” — and other such redundant cliches (one’s self is hardly a matter of belief now, is it? Descartes figured that out…)
I have no idea how postmodern theories became implicated as necessarily relativistic or subjectivist. They don’t have to be — any more than uranium has to be used to make bombs.
LOL — Russell, you just asked a very postmodern question. You’re a practicing postmodernist, and you don’t even know it!
“You’re a practicing postmodernist, and you don’t even know it!”
That can’t be right, because I never took drugs.
I thought the whole ‘everything is subjective’ thing came from experiences with hallucinogenic drugs, no? Has the link from drugs to postmodernism not been accepted yet?
FDB, I think you’re going to have to send Mercurius a cupcake.
@149, Russell — Shirley you jest.
Oh, and with a nod to Derrida, I am led to speculate that FDB stands for ‘Forever-Deferred Boulangerie’.
Maybe teasing a little. Still I don’t think you deserve the cupcake because you and Adam have said a lot about what postmodernism isn’t, but not much about what it is.
You offered this: “can be usefully applied to show how modern policies are designed by western governments to devolve blame and accountability for structural inequalities and unfairness onto exactly the people who are least to blame and most let down by the prevailing economic order”
But to me that’s just good old critical analysis. Yes, I was taught to do that – ask who benefits from telling this story, whose story is it, who else could tell this story from a different viewpoint etc. I always thought that PoMo was more about disputing any notion of truth – thus the relativism.
The problem is being asked to describe something that I don’t think really exists, at least not in the way that others here seem to think it does. It’s not a ‘field’, and it’s not a definite way of thinking with its own agenda.
What it is (as I’ve repeated again and again): either it’s a quality of contemporary culture (see Lyotard, Jameson, Harvey), a group of particular thinkers with not that much in common except that they tend to be the subject of people railing against postmodernism, or it’s a set of approaches within a particular discipline (for example postmodernism in political theory – see the work of Iris Marion Young).
Depending on which of those you’re referring to, you’ll get different answers about what the term is supposed to mean.
Pomo may have started in France as a Catholic reactionary backlash against the spirit of the sixties, which they called “modernism” or “modernity,” but it spread to America where it was taken up avidly by the evangelicals. Watch these church guys explain post-modernism and weep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL8MhYq9owo&feature=related
If you can’t be bothered watching it, I’ve extracted the juiciest bits.
And it goes downhill from there, until we get to the end, when we hear from D.A. Carson, Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who tells us:
Now knock yourselves out.
“a Catholic reactionary backlash against the spirit of the sixties”
Except that poststructuralism (which is what you seem to be talking about) was nothing of the sort. In France it was very much bound up with that spirit.
Just as an example, here’s Terry Eagleton on Derrida:
“[Derrida's] first great works appeared in Paris on the eve of the political explosion of May 1968, at a time when he was close to, but critical of, the French Communist party. Since the party had cravenly supported the French repression of Algeria, and since Derrida was an Algerian Jewish colonial, his oblique relations to official Marxism were understandable.
But he remained a staunch member of the political left. He aimed to prise open classical leftist ideas such as Marxism to the marginal, the aberrant; in this sense his project had affinities with the work of Raymond Williams, EP Thompson, Stuart Hall and the 1970s feminists in Britain.”
Unless you’re thinking of the next generation of media savvy French thinkers – Bernard-Henri Levy and company – who emerged in the 1980s and better fit your characterisation.
Silkworm,
Apart from the god bits, that doesn’t sound too far off the mark.
Maybe early POMO, Jamieson, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Baufrillard, has had its day, and if I was a charlatan of the POMO variety, I would be busily developing a post-post-modernist critique of such out-dated forms of POMO, Old POMO, from even loftier heights than they declaim from, and tout myself as the latest authority in Real POMO, or New POMO.
Shirley, that would suck some people in: perhaps the next generation of 18-year-old sociology students. Reinventing the wheel is such fun.
‘Baudrillard’, forry.
Well OK, but I’m not responsible for your misconceptions. What a lot of the philosophy that has since come to be described as ‘postmodernist’ did was, quite precisely and with considerable linguistic rigour, demonstrate that notions of truth are slipperier than we might ideally like them to be for everyday purposes — which leads to immense difficulties in communicating, meaning-making and mutual understanding. It teaches us precisely how and why meaning and truth can be and are obscured in the very act of attempted communication.
A lot of the misplaced opprobrium towards (the shadow-boxing construct of) postmodernism seems to be an uncomprehending reaction against the rise of Theory in literary criticism. When I consider how much fulminating and fury this “movement-that-is-not-a-movement” has engendered, blinking bemusement is the only reaction I’m left with. It’s like people getting terrible het up over, say, a theatre review they didn’t like.
It’s like Derrida said (in his best French!) ‘there is no outside-of-text’, and everybody shat themselves. But when it comes to a field, or a movement, or a program, or an agenda, or an -ism, for postmodernism, well — there is no “there” there.
I’d definitely echo Adam’s remarks that ‘postmodernism’ is most usefully applied to describe a condition under which (developed, globalised) societies now operate — a dissolution of formerly stable life trajectories and reliable life-long social identities as the bases of accords between labour and capital, resulting from liberalised trade policies.
At any rate, what does this mean for people entering the trades with impaired literacy? Ulrich Beck would probably point out that their life-choices and agency has been circumscribed by far larger forces than those they presently control, but that the implicitly neo-feudal logic of risk society will nevertheless entail that they, in fact, are responsible for the circumstances in which they find themselves, and not the policy architects who have determined that the yoof must all be “learning or earning” before us respectable adults will deign to tolerate the yoofs’ existence.
Is that a postmodernist prescription you can handle?
In other words, postmodernity is to blame, just not in the way that Russell, Old Yobbo, FDB, et al think. Oh, the humanity!
Cupcakes for everyone!
“Jamieson, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Baufrillard”
What would you say these four have in common, Old Yobbo?
Ta for good try at 159. nao yoo haz teh cupcakes.
Hold the cupcakes, if that was a good try, it didn’t necessarily help.
Mercurious wrote: “What a lot of the philosophy that has since come to be described as ‘postmodernist’ did was, quite precisely and with considerable linguistic rigour, demonstrate that notions of truth are slipperier than we might ideally like them to be for everyday purposes — which leads to immense difficulties in communicating, meaning-making and mutual understanding. It teaches us precisely how and why meaning and truth can be and are obscured in the very act of attempted communication. ”
and Adam wrote: “some of the thinkers whose work is called postmodern *have* questioned the limits of some prized existing categories or assumptions and have been read to endorse radical subjectivism (in epistemology) or cultural relativism (in ethics etc) or social constructionism (in many areas). ”
So there is some connection (that I asked about earlier) between the popular conception of postmodernism – that everything is subjective, there is no truth – and what those writers were writing about.
But it would make it clearer if Adam could describe what Iris Marion Young’s ‘set of approaches’ were (nothing by her on Google scholar), and Mercurious could describe how postmodernism “teaches us precisely how and why meaning and truth can be and are obscured in the very act of attempted communication”. We were all analysing communication (starting with the game of Chinese Whispers?) before PoMo came along … what did PoMo add?
How about you do your own research, Russell. The last time I taught political theory I asked my students to read some Rawls, some of his communitarian and feminist critics, and a few other things and then we got to Young. Have you done that reading? Otherwise what Young has to say is going to require more explanation than I care to give for free.
…errr…if you want to call a gross, over-simplified misunderstanding a “connection” well I can’t stop you. Sometimes, if you don’t understand something, it actually is your shortcoming and your problem. Like, I don’t understand higher mathematics, and I don’t get Kabuki — but I don’t hold mathematicians or Japanese dramatists (respectively) responsible for that.
Russell, there are plenty of first-year primers on this subject. Time you invested in some reading if you honestly want to piece together the riddle for yourself.
On literature, I can recommend from OUP by Jonathon Culler — “Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction” — it’s cheap and readily available online — and for history, since I’ve referred to it heavily: “Beck, Ulrich (1986) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.”
Heck, wiki-frackin-pedia can give you a good street-level view of postmodernism, literary criticism, relativism, subjectivism, post-colonialism and the whole darn lot. Happy reading!
There are dozens of books and articles by Young listed by Google Scholar. What gives?
But isn’t that the problem Sokal posited about postmodernism’s contribution to our understanding of gravity?
And the same would apply to higher mathematics.
Perhaps there are large swathes of our experience of the world that postmodernism has nothing to contribute to and it should be much more modest in its pretensions to our understanding of the world we live, in including its contribution, such as it may be, to describing a condition under which (developed, globalised) societies now operate — which may be a dissolution of formerly stable life trajectories and reliable life-long social identities as the bases of accords between labour and capital, resulting from liberalised trade policies, or may not.
Adam @ 161:
It’s been fifteen and twenty years since I bothered with post-modernist stuff – life is really too short
But it was good to brush up with Sokal and Bricmont, and Sokal’s ‘Beyond the Hoax’ and Gross and Levitt’s ‘Higher Superstitions’, which were great for a laugh.
Actually, come to think of it, I never read anything by Lacan, only comments on his work: how come charlatans always seem to gather acolytes, no matter what bullshit they spout ? Sort of academic Charlie Sheens, I guess.
OTOH, do you count Zygmunt Bauman as a post-modernist ? Or a genuine scholar writing about post-modernity ? Provocative and ground-breaking stuff.
Meanwhile, pace Robert @ 141: yes, why isn’t anybody writing about literacy needs in a rapidly changing and globally-oriented economy ? Oh, I forgot: most of your girls are already literate, so it’s not really an issue, is it ?
Yep, that’s why I was saying that stuff about Irigaray’s essays all the way back at 42.
At the end of the day in mathematics you’re either right or wrong. We know why certain problems are hard (e.g. in the case of 3D NS existence/stability it’s the lack of an strong enough energy-like bound, or useful transformation to a simpler system of equations). And the reason is not that we’re missing the input of lots of very intelligent women (cause we already have that).
I’m not sure that a feminist critique (or indeed any kind of philosophical critique) of these problems really carries much weight.
Jess @ 169, I used to have this argument with my ex-missus (who, I suspect, misunderstands what post-modernism is all about) that the scientific viewpoint is just one way of understanding the world. (She was attempting an Arts degree at the time. That isn’t meant to be disparaging, btw, it’s just for context. She never got the notion of mathematical axioms either.)
Well, no, it’s the only way to understand the natural world.
I think it’s just a naming issue. If it were called ‘transcendental postmodernism’, it would be much clearer.
Just out of a perverse sense of duty to Robert’s comment at 141: some person anecdotal evidence to suggest it’s not just the trades that are lacking literacy skills.
Most physics and chemistry majors (at undergrad) can’t write to save themselves. The lack of literacy there manifests itself in the lab reports I have to mark as a complete lack of coherent sentence structure, or correct use of punctuation. And just wait until you set a 1000-word essay question as homework…
I’m not trying to pick on physics/chem here (although that is all I have experience with teaching). Point is that many teachers in these fields don’t see communication as a necessary skill to teach these kids (many in my school included), especially in terms of the Howard-esque ‘career factories’ that many university courses have become. Unfortunately in the real world all the physical understanding in the universe is no good unless you can communicate it effectively to someone else.
My point, Old Yobbo, is that you’ve named four thinkers who are very different. In trying to discover what it is you mean when you say postmodern, that list gives anybody asking the question too little detail. Mid to late C20th, and three of them are French. That is about as much as I can discern. You may as well have said: Erving Goffman, David Harvey, Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida. Or Richard Hoggart, Chandra Mohanty, Michael Sandel and John Searle. That’s the degree of philosophical or intellectual commonality between them, not only in terms of the questions they want to ask, but the answers they arrive at.
Hence my question: what is it that you assume they have in common?
Goffman and Derrida, or Hoggart and Sandel, sharing a degree of philosophical or intellectual commonality ? Bit of a stretch, Adam
So what have just those four got in common ? I guess they all purport to critique modernity from what they claim is a novel stand-point, they write in similar opaque styles, and all end up saying very little that is innovative. Hence the temptation not to waste one’s time. There is so much else to do, and to read.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, the real buzzing world, millions of Australians are relatively illiterate – what should governments do about that ?
Well, as Robert’s post implied, such a problem is to some degree intractable because the goal-posts are always shifting when it comes to literacy and numeracy.
It strikes me that industry groups should be approaching educational institutions to get employees access to the training they need to update their skills. And that governments could offer some subsidies or sweeteners both to workers improving their skills and to employers willing to promote this among their employees. The role of government, maybe, would be to ensure that this sort of ongoing training was not too narrowly vocational (since it is better for workers and for the economy that their skills be transferable) and also that there was some degree of quality control.
I teach software engineers. As part of the assignment that’s due at the start of next week, they have to write a 500-word report.
I’m not looking forward to marking that part of it…
So it is a critical approach to modernity you object to, Old Yobbo? Not keen on Nietzsche or Marx as intellectual precursors?
You’ll get no defense from me of the usefulness or originality of most of Baudrillard. The early 70s stuff, perhaps.
But you can’t deny the importance and originality of Foucault in the history of sexuality, to critical work on governance, to thinking about institutions, to historiography (even if you might want to disagree with him on many points, as I do). And I would add that opacity in the case of Foucault is also about reading him in English. I’m assured that Foucault in his native French is a pleasure to read.
I gather poor levels of literacy and numeracy can be a problem in most discilines, to the point of not being ablr to comprehand articles written in plain English. Maybe there are people coming into unis nowadays who just don’t have the intellectual capacity to be there?
I don’t doubt that there are some who just shouldn’t be at uni, Paul. And there are more pathways now to allow those people to stay and sometimes take degrees (and to accumulate more debt).
I’ve got a friend who was recently ‘encouraged’ to pass an undergraduate thesis for a student that had already failed several times, and had again produced work that should have been failed. I’m not going to say in which discipline – though it was one where you’d really want someone with a degree to know what they were doing for the sake of public safety.
Having brought, I admit, a spork to this academic rigor gunfight (bunfight? Nah, let’s not mix our pastries), I then suffered the breakdown of both my computer and my bowels, thankfully in unrelated incidents.
Thanks (at least to those of you who did) for indulging me with some genuine, some thoughtful and some amusing comments. I have some more reading to do before I respond properly, but for now…
“Forever-Deferred Boulangerie”
Well it beats Patrick’s effort for wit, sho nuff. The cupcakes are all gone though, I’m afraid (which fact is probably not connected to the chip fan burnout on my motherboard, but may well be to the digestive troubles). I’m now into these anchovy/tomato/onion puff-pastry tartlets I made last night with the only 4 compatible edible things in my house. Delicious, but maybe of narrower appeal as prizes.
Paul Burns, that’s a terrible thing to say about the Professors!
But seriously — I don’t see how we can go from university participation rates that were in the single-digits a couple of generations ago, to the present situation where university participation is in the high twenties, nudging towards the low thirties — and expect to preserve the kind of academic elitism (in the most positive possible connotation of elite) that once pertained. The one-quarter to one-third of the eligible population that now participate in university cannot all be elite, by definition.
Oh my gawd — it’s a bloggy bake-off!
I’ll see your tartlets and raise you one home-made fetta, accompanied by fresh-picked tomatoes and shallots from the garden. Asparagus side-dish will have to wait till after Anzac Day, as I’m transplanting it from the neighbour this afternoon.
Your tartlets sound sensational FDB.
Jess and Robert (172-176) – It’s an ill wind etc. Daughter has just landed two part time jobs tutoring pre-med (Gamsat) and Year 10 science students in essay writing. Therefore, she may yet achieve her 6 months in the US for which she’s saving. She calls it her “revenge on the nerds”.
Adam @ 175, see OY @ 144.
Mercurius @ 181: 30 % ? Why ever not ? Because they couldn’t possibly be ALL elite ? I don’t know, but a third of all my class mates, the top fifteen or so, in every primary school class I was ever in, could have gone to uni. A lot of the boys too
Isn’t this elitism on your part, with a somewhat negative connotation of the term ?
@ Helen: good luck, she’ll need it!
I suspect that the lack of writing skills, especially in the physical sciences, is partially to do with a phobia of teaching staff to mark anything harder than a yes/no answer in these fields. Why trawl through someone’s essay when you can just tick off ten questions for a homework assignment? Unfortunately it means that students never receive training in the writing skills they need.
Blessed are the cheesemakers, Merc.
I thought it unnecessary to tout the homegrownness of my tomatoes, being as how I’ve smugged it up on that score plenty already.
Tonight – pork forequarter chops braised in homegrown tomatoes and wild pine mushrooms (gathered last winter and dried). I have no idea how they go dried, but had forgotten them and found them in my search for tart toppings last night.
But Old Yobbo, your point was about large problems being ignored because they’re so large.
Mine was, following Robert’s reading of the report, about how the problems are themselves defined being part of the reason that they look so difficult.
Adam,
I guess that’s how large problems are ‘dealt with’, re-defined, played around with – the point is that attempts at their partial solution are often half-hearted, or go over old ground, precisely because they seem so protean, hard to define and to grapple with. But let’s not fall for the old Platonic crap about those who are born to lead, the people of gold (by chance, and by good luck, us), and those who are born to follow, the people of clay (not us).
What I am trying to get across is that nobody should be left behind, the ‘system’ should be reformed or revolutionised, if necessary, to cater for resolving a major problem in an era of rapid change. What good does it do for the poor buggers, or for society as a whole, to leave people behind, because their issues are hard to resolve ?
I wonder what Lyotard or Derrida would have said about that, from their lofty towers ?
Worthwhile sentiments, Old Yobbo, but you’re still missing my point which is that they aren’t as intractable as they appear, but rather an artifact of changing expectations. So not only do I agree with you about not leaving people behind, but I’m more optimistic than you about being able to name specific reforms that would deal with the issues.
You really should read some Derrida. His commitment to social justice is everywhere in his work. He was an educational activist for much of his life.
FDB, you got it all wrong
Post-modernism gave us the cupcake (or you can bet it would have if it’d been around a few hundred years ago). Individually decorated, no mess, no knife, guilt-free convenience food for one – now with added built in nostalgia for the ones your grandma used to make.
And of course, it makes you realise how nice it is to share around a big cake…
Cupcakes: postmodernism avant la lettre.
Now just because I’m feeling whimsical, I thought I’d share that I’ve had a list going for a while of “Things I Should Take To Heart”, which consists of (often painful) criticisms made of me, by people who know me well enough to make them.
#2 on the list is “Even an autodidact should pay attention in class”.
Not that I’m strictly an autodidact in postmodern theory, but still… good call old friend, and certainly applicable to a degree here.
Having re-read that last, I’ve realised the (wit-)criticism about my narcissism should have top spot, but currently it doesn’t.
More work to be done then! Self-help work is narcissistic by definition though – what’s to be done?
“the (wit-)criticism about my narcissism ”
Which was, by the way, “admitting you’re a narcissist doesn’t preclude you from being one”.
If, as Freud suggests, narcissism is a necessary complement to our instinct for self-preservation, then admitting you’re a narcissist is like admitting you breathe air. In my opinion, the idea of ‘self help’ as some distinct realm of action is only really possible in a culture that has still got all its hopes pinned on selflessness.
“the idea of ‘self help’ as some distinct realm of action is only really possible in a culture that has still got all its hopes pinned on selflessness”
Well said.
I was being like, ironical, but am handicapped by eschewing both emoticons and proper re-reading of my own comments for flaws.
Isn’t irony at the heart of post-modernism, FDB? Or have I missed something?
I’d assumed it was at the heart of the 90s, postmodern or otherwise. Maybe that was just sarcasm.
“Isn’t irony at the heart of post-modernism”
Post-modernism has a heart?