Radical Enough?

Joshua,

Thanks for sharing your approach to queer theory, and for signing your article. On occasion we find pen names among the entries—both articles and comments—which creates a bit of mixed message about the whole exchange of ideas within academe. Perhaps some would say it’s prudence. It appears that you are attempting to represent a controversial subject in an objective format. Last night I finished the text of a little book entitled “A Brief Guide to Objective Inquiry,” so this is much on my mind. I’d be curious to know if you admit your own biases in this enterprise, though structure an objective process. I disagree with those who say students shouldn’t know your biases—which usually surface via a mélange of venues, and good professors help students to pursue objectivity all the same. One question I’d have if I were your senior advisor, “Do students perceive your class more on queer theory than rhetorical theory?"—which itself would be ripe for critique. While at Miami (OH) I recall lecturing during an uprising of the “gays in the military” debate. Those were heated days, with major protests on campus from national gay rights groups. What proved engaging and well received was a process similar to yours—having students read primary sources, then back into their analyses. The facts were the common ground. In this case we were discussing the Peloponnesian Wars, and when students who had been the most vocal learned that the historic victors had large contingents of homosexuals—the material itself prompted the discussion and their reassessment. It was a deep learning moment—and that also was the key, it was a moment. As a fellow, it was also a nervous moment at a conservative college, but one that proved positive. Also, it was one part of a much larger class on World Civ. I applaud your efforts to be objective and to own your teaching publicly, but also caution you to make it a moment and move on. Although I might personally come to a different conclusion on the merits of queer theology, I believe I would have found it helpful as a student to learn from a Dr. Gunn about its development and objectives. As a Christian, I find my biases more involved in my interpretation of such things not in a responsible discussion thereof. Once again, thanks. jp

Jerry Pattengale, AVP for Scholarship and Grants at Indiana Wesleyan University, at 8:10 am EDT on July 25, 2006

Emperor’s New Clothes?

Professor Gunn appears to hold his students in disdain. Perhaps instead of regarding them as benighted, he might consider the possibility that they see his “unraveling binaries” for what it is. Students have an uncanny ability to detect BS.

Publius, at 10:05 am EDT on July 25, 2006

Don’t see a problem with liberal humanism

Sorry, I don’t see a problem with liberal humanism. It’s the best hope we have in the face of a rising theocratic right wing. I don’t think humanism is automatically phallogocentric (when did that replace phallocentric?)— or any such.

I’m minded of a postmodern psychiatrist I ran into at a conference who, when I pointed out that R.D. Laing had already tried many of the treatment proposals he was advocating, cried out, “But he was a humanist.” Now, if that’s not “essentialist,” I don’t know what is.

I think it’s great that Nietzsche and Foucault wrote the things they did. They’re useful, if taken sparingly— as purgatives basically. I’ve read several works by each. I just wish that this hadn’t led to many academic factories trying to make more Nietzsches and Foucaults.

I totally support your right to run your class as you see fit. But I need to take issue with the stance on liberal humanism.

Henry Vandenburgh, at 1:25 pm EDT on July 25, 2006

Queer Theory...

...is a great soporific.

Louis Cypher, at 2:40 pm EDT on July 25, 2006

A few whiffs of disdain for students

“they’ll make their parents call deans and chairs attempting to get you fired”

“public drunken nudity and that charming southern hostility”

“y’all don’t seem to be bothered by the material”

“hetero hangups”

“Bush country classroom” (in Austin?)

“clinging tightly to the notion of universal equality rooted in phallogocentrism”

“pta-fication of the college”

“consumerist drive thru window attitude toward teaching”

“baby bear’s porridge”

Publius, at 4:25 pm EDT on July 25, 2006

Some Quals

First, thanks to y’all who find points of agreement despite differing political/ideological allegiances. Although I always disclose my biases to students (I come from a more cultural studies pedagogy that acknowledges the powerful influence of subjective commitments), I do nevertheless try to keep them in check, and my approach to teaching queer theory detailed above (I hope) tries to reflect that. I don’t believe “objectivity” is possible, and I think that those who claim it outside of the realm of formulae (e.g., mathematicians, scientists, etc.) are are on iffy ground, yet as an ideal “objectivity” is not too shabby.

Second, for Publius: of course when you strip someone’s remarks of qualifiers you can easily make a case: it’s called the “straw-person” or “straw-man” fallacy in argumentation literature. You conveniently omit the “some” and “sometimes” qualifiers from your examples of my “disdain” for students. I don’t believe that one or three bad apples spoil the bunch (tho’ they sure do get your attention on teacher evaluations). If I did belive one = all, I’d have left the academy—and thus folks like you—many years ago. The fact that you post such cheap-shots anonymously is telling.

Third, let me clarify that the dean didn’t have anything to do with this case; my chair did. I suspect most deans punt to the chair in situations like this. And I think my chair is the best, frankly. I cannot imagine if I was a chair how I’d respond differently to a situation such as this. I should underscore that my remarks about my superiors have less to do with individual personalities and more to do with the “system” that we’re in. The academy is a corporate machine these days, and the consequence is the erosion of academic freedom. Who is really surprised by that?

Josh Gunn, Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin, at 9:00 pm EDT on July 25, 2006

Two cultures

I leave it to others to decide if the words I read in the essay created the appearance of disdain, and I take Professor Gunn at his word that he only has a problem with a few recalcitrant students.

The problem is not the corporatization of academia but, to borrow a phrase from C.P. Snow, the emergence of two cultures on campus. For Richard Rorty’s cultural left, the work of cultural studies is rich, provocative, and therapeutic. For traditionalists, the whole enterprise is, well, uninteresting. Compare, for example, some of the posts here with French’s post on NR about Gunn’s essay (http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/)

My point was to suggest that living in the rarified air of cultural studies, Professor Gunn may need to be alert to the possibility that most students in Bush country and elsewhere are thoughtful members of the second camp.

Publius, at 7:35 am EDT on July 26, 2006

I Actually Agree with Publius. . .

. . . although I imagine I agree with him/her about little else and have sharply disagreed with other comments he/she has made on the insidehighered discussion boards. However, in this case, I think he/she’s correctly pointing to an arrogance within cultural studies, which can express itself as theoretical imperialism while claiming to be its opposite. To my mind, this might explain why Gunn expresses so much anxiety about inadvertently turning his students into liberal humanists by not being sufficiently poststructural. Likewise, I don’t think “cultural studies pedagogy” has any unique claim on “acknowledging the powerful influence of subjective commitments.”

“[M]y teaching assistant lectured on Peaches, and she received a standing ovation when she finished. That reaction told me that perhaps the e-mail had a positive effect.”Here’s another possible interpretation: Perhaps she simply delivered a fantastic lecture and the crowd’s reaction had nothing to do with the email.

Brian, Asst. Prof. at Large Midwest U, at 12:05 pm EDT on July 26, 2006

the “cultural studies” scapegoat

Publius and Brian would do well to define what they mean by “cultural studies” and “poststructuralism.” The tenor of their posts suggests that these terms refer to a kind of cultural elitism that has no regard for a student “culture” of “traditionalists.” This is simply not true. Aside from my problem with this “two cultures” thesis (I do not believe men are from Mars and women are from Venus either), it seems like these references to the “arrogance of cultural studies” and snide attitudes toward students have little to do with the experience I shared in this story. One commentator on another blog suggests I am a “radical leftist,” a good example of a “reading what you want to read” reading. I think the charge of “arrogance” seems rooted in a general beef against a perceived pedagogical menace that does not, in truth, exist.

Although one would be foolish define “cultural studies” in this forum—if only because this space is small and the loosely coherent field of cultural studies (if you can call it that) has a complicated institutional and conceptual history with many different inflections—I will say the charge that cultural studies is “rarefied” really misses the boat. One of the many histories of cultural studies traces its origin to post-war Britain and the so-called adult education movement. At least from my understanding, British cultural studies (or to some folks over the pond, “communication studies") originally represented a pedagogy that encouraged critical thinking, grappling with literature, and so on, by referencing objects of popular culture and everyday life. Cultural studies in this history, in other words, is the opposite of elitist (one could even argue it was populist in tone, although I will not). Again, defining cultural studies is difficult because there are so many approaches and different inflections, but “rarefied” it ain’t.

In our age of publicity and surveillance (where no “secret” is safe), I’m not surprised to see non-teachers, pundits, and the ignorant mischaracterizing what folks like me teach and study. It’s our habit, especially in the U.S., to misattribute motive to that which we do not understand or know. If you want to know what CS is really about, students who take classes labeled as such are probably the best go-to source. After that, there are a large number of books available that grapple with the “identity” of cultural studies that one can consult (e.g., the work of Larry Grossberg is a good start). Even so—and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I guess—before one summarily dismisses a large body of discourse and thought, it would behoove her to become more familiar with it.

Josh Gunn, Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin, at 1:30 pm EDT on July 26, 2006

Don’t Blame Yourself

Frankly, what I find most pressing in your excellent article is the question of how one is to resist the encroachments of power on truth. While I would most definitely not go so far as to say that your account depicts cultural studies as arrogant, what I do think it shows is that cultural studies has become institutionalized. While its origins might lie in an anti-elitist effort on the part of British academics, your tale illustrates fairly well how it comes, however unintentionally, to conform itself to something all together different.

In this sense, I think academics are going to have to take greater risks and to be actively willing to surrender some measure of security, even to the point of losing jobs, in defense of the truth or, rather, its pursuit. If we want to redeem that historical past, we must recognize, as Benjamin said, that “in every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.” I don’t see how that attempt can’t involve some discomfort and deprivation if it is to have any hope of succeeding.

Finally, and this really has little to do with everything else, I don’t think you should see recourse to humanism as a retreat. It is rather, I think, an encounter with the limits of Queer Theory’s Foucauldian ‘foundation.’ See Beatrice Han’s excellent “Foucault’s Critical Project” on this score.

Tom, at 5:00 pm EDT on July 26, 2006

I

” Us juniors should also remember that many of our deans are (necessarily) insulated from the classroom and by force of situation are often more sympathetic to students and parents in our age of the “cultural wars” and “zero tolerance.”

Apparently “teacher of rhetorical studies” does not mean “competent rhetorician” or even “minimal aquaintance with standard English grammar.” And yet, among the academics in Higher Education, he is taken seriously?

Rachel, at 7:40 pm EDT on July 26, 2006

Rhetoric “Expert(s)”

Dear Rhetorical Expert,

Unlike you, and the “teacher of rhetorical studies,” I don’t claim to be an expert in rhetoric. As an expert yourself, however, don’t you find it a bit troubling that your fellow expert can begin a sentence with “Us unders.."? Perhaps a slightly higher standard should apply to someone who believes he’s capable of teaching the subject at a prestigous public university.

As for your second:

Instead of policing language, perhaps engaging ideas is a more positive contribution to the discussion?What ideas are engaged here? To me, admittedly no expert, it seems that what this teacher is peddling is silly nonsense, packaged in muddy, jargon-filled prose.

Rachel, at 11:55 am EDT on July 27, 2006

Dangerous or boring?

“Still, NOW felt just a bit. . . tired. Whatever you think of the feminist movement—and I happen to deplore most of it—the women who got it started were forces of nature, interesting people with strong personalities. They seemed to be riding the wave of history (or “herstory,” as they called it). But now that the wave has crested, the current crop of NOW leaders seem less colorful than their foremothers. The issues are not new. I heard no interesting discussions, not one word of disagreement.” Charlotte Hays WSJ 7/28/06

For some reason, Hays’s reaction to NOW’s 40th birthday made me think of this discussion and the campus cultural left. David Horowitz sells books with the word “dangerous,” and the word probably both angers and thrills his targets. But can the comfortable campus cultural left— with its monotonous quest for edginess and its turgid, derivative theorizing— really be described as dangerous? Or is it becoming merely boring? Such a fate would be the unkindest cut of all.

Publius, at 8:30 am EDT on July 28, 2006

defending Publius

I’m coming to this late, but I’ll just add a response to Rhetor’s last quip:

“Yes, Publius ... your shrill faux commentary is far more boring than anything offered here.”

I disagree. I doubt I’d agree with Publius on vey much (I certainly am not a social or philosophical conservative by any stretch), but I found his dissenting posts here refreshingly polite, a stark contrast to the treatment he’s gotten here. Publius has been anything but shrill.

More generally, you don’t have to be conservative to think that a lot of cultural studies, while interesting and tittilating, simply doesn’t belong in the university curriculum — and what does belong there probably doesn’t need separate departments of rhetoric, cultural studies, queer studies, and what have you.

The “theory” (such as it is) so popular in these departments tends to be dominated by nebulous concepts and fuzzy arguments that would be laughed out of any major philosophy department in North America (a point made nicely by Martha Nussbaum in her review of Judith Butler a few years back).

The empirical work is often interesting but, lacking any serious theoretical framework, it often amounts to little more than ethnographic fieldwork married uneasily with hang-wringing about alterity, fractious negotiations of contested identities, destabilized centers, performativity and spectacle, heteronormativity, phallogocentrism, yada yada yada.

The end result can typically be summarized thus: “here is some identity and related practice that doesn’t get much attention in mainstream. Marginalization is bad. Have you ever stopped to question the grounds of your own beliefs?”

Yawn. We need who academic departments and dedicated journals for this?

Lucretius, assistant professor at a small liberal arts college, at 12:25 pm EDT on July 31, 2006

Toward discourse

Thanks to Brian, Lucretius, and Gently Serious. I was beginning to feel like a porcupine in a balloon factory.

Professor Gunn’s essay began this discussion with questions about the practice and ethics of sugarcoating “radical” theories. Some of us have raised questions about the merits of those theories and their place in undergraduate education. GentlySerious’s questions about how these theories fit in the broader context of the history of rhetoric are especially interesting.

The response of some posters has been an angry defensiveness. I look forward to reading more thoughtful responses to the issues raised by skeptics.

Publius, at 7:30 am EDT on August 1, 2006

Response to Professor Gunn

1. I apologize for any impolite posts and for initially reading your essay as being disdainful of students.

2. I restated my point in response to mischaracterizations of it.

3. I clearly did not claim that CS and NOW are synonomous. I was musing about the enervation of intellectual movements.

4. Taken together, two of your statements raise a question:

1."My response is that if the fields associated with cultural studies (which includes some philosophy departments, of course) are also the fields associated with critical thinking in the humanities tradition, then cultural studies is a crucial and necessary part of any university curriculum. Given our charged theo-political, warmongering climate, critical thinking is necessary for any curriculum designed to educate young people to question and think before they believe or consume."2. “I think dismissing cultural studies as “jargon-rife” is really a rhetoric of misdirection, that the dismissal is about its alignment with the political and cultural left. If this is the real case—and I think it is—then these remarks about eliminating cultural studies from the university curriculum because of its bad language or bad science are a ruse. In part, dismissing CS jargon is really about the anti-intellectual attempt to eliminate queer-feminist-Marxist-minority-poor-environment-alternative fuel-loving Lefties like me.”

You seem to be suggesting that CS does have a political agenda and that with this agenda CS is a “crucial and necessary part of any curriculum” to combat what *you* see as our theo-political, warmongering climate. Is that a fair statement of your position?

Publius, at 8:00 pm EDT on August 1, 2006

reply to Gunn

Josh, you took 1844 words to make points that frankly could have been made with far greater precision and clarity — another problem I have with so much of cultural studies. I won’t even get into your latest scholarly publication that spends an inordinate amount of time discussing feces before even citing Foucault.

You chide me for not defining cultural studies, but why should I? There are entire departments, undergraduate concentrations, and graduate programs dedicated to it, as well as the various other “studies,” and you yourself stress that the field (such as it is) is very diverse and contested — indeed, it seems to cover pretty much any attempt to apply some sort of critical (and especially postmodern) theory to anything that even remotely resembles a cultural practice or form.

I stand by my claim: what is intellectually valuable in this morasse could easily (and often is profitably) studied in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, literature, and politics departments. That isn’t to say that the entire richly diverse substance of cultural studies is to be banished (you don’t accuse me of this in summarizing my post, but I suspect you think I would claim such a thing). I simply don’t think we need entire departments and programs dedicated to cultural studies, or to this or that subaltern, contested, fractious identity.

I did indeed choose “major North American philosophy departments” deliberately: the dominant analytic focus of those places may be narrow and dry but, love them or hate them, they are technicians of argument and recognize good ones and bad ones (or muddled ones) when they see them. But of course this may merely reflect the tyranny of logocentrism ...

It also seems rather strange to an old fashioned leftie philosopher, historian and anthropologist, you comparing the muddled verbosity of cultural studies theorists and their followers to the seemingly arcane languages of mathematics and analytic philosophy. Are you seriously suggesting that this is just a question of mere preference for disciplinary languages and styles? that the turgid ramblings of, say, Judith Butler are as persuasive, useful, and enlightening as, say, the work of Henri Poincare in mathematics, or of Derek Parfit in philosophy, or Clifford Geertz in anthropology?

I share Publius’s implied worry that, in your closing passage, you basically sell the store: far from being unrelentingly critical in focus, much of cultural studies is simply a make-work project for a particular sect of the left (not my sect, I hasten to add: folks like me would side more readily with an Alan Sokal or Todd Gitlin than a Judith Butler or Gayatri Spivak).

And on this, finally, I would note that efforts to rid the university of muddleheaded leftists — or even, as I am suggesting, to welcome them to the academe, but prevent them from getting their own specialized and too-often politicized and ideologically homogenous departments — may be objectionable on your stated diversity rationale (perhaps we could lump them in with the creationists and accountants you mention?) but it need not be anti-intellectual, as you charge. Indeed I suspect such calls may often be rooted in a much older and philosophically partisan ideal of intellectual inquiry, on that is no doubt guilty of logophallonormativity or some such sin.

Lucretius, an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college, at 11:25 pm EDT on August 1, 2006

Mara, Josh, mathematics and cultural theory

Mara writes of some of her students “remarking that math is worthless and shouldn’t be required because ‘it’s hard.’”

So you believe that the only substantive distinction between, say, topology and queer theory is the domain of application? that both are difficult to learn, yet similarly powerful in their respective domains? If so, then you and Josh (who implied much the same thing) should argue the point. I for one am rather sceptical.

Lucretius, an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college, at 4:45 am EDT on August 3, 2006

Strategies of Decontextualization

I’m not sure how long discussions are allowed on posts. . . or if anyone is still reading. Regardless: Publius presents two tortuous citations as an exam, and asks virtual students of courses in critical thinking to take it. The first citation—apparently about the shift from Althusserian structural Marxism to articulation theory—is a good example of terrible writing. I laughed aloud trying to make sense of it (kudos to you for finding it, Publius). The second quotation is easier to read, and suggests that all domains of inquiry (in this case, science) are not “objective” but shot-through with ideology and so forth. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to assess the argument advanced in the second blurb (apparently a knock at modern assumptions about ultimate reality and some sort of unmediated, objective access to it?). Did I pass?

I am not interested in assessing the meaning or function of this kind of rhetoric (again, it’s part of what I’ve published a bunch o’ stuff on—a whole book, even!). I would like to address the rhetorical strategies of Publius and Lucretius in recent posts, however, because they represent the increasingly common, fallacious way in which public argument is made in an increasingly screened environment.

Some examples are helpful. After my recent “1844 word post,” as the snide Lucretius points out, Publius asked: “You seem to be suggesting that [cultural studies] does have a political agenda and that with this agenda CS is a ‘crucial and necessary part of any curriculum’ to combat what *you* see as our theo-political, warmongering climate. Is that a fair statement of your position?” I answered “no,” because the statement strips “my position” (on what?) of qualification and context. If one wants to know my position on academic jargon, or on the political agenda of cultural studies (every field has a politics), she can go back and read the 1844 word post. Although Lucretius is right—my points could indeed be made with greater precision and clarity—what I think I was doing in all those words was contextualizing and qualifying my arguments. (It seems to me online replies are a bit like blogs. It’s ok not to be as polished as one would be for a regular, formal publication, because the latter kind of labor gets rewarded; this kind of opinion-sharing does not. This is not an excuse for sloppiness, just an observation about the context of medium/venue).

This strategy of removing someone’s qualifications and extracting words from their proper context is not new and is exacerbated by the mass media. It is also a favorite tactic of folks who tend to take “either/or” kinds of positions (which is trouble for the “both/and,” always gray-area folks associated with the cultural left; the neo-cons are simply better rhetors on the television screen). In many ways, either/or thinking is televisual-thinking on a stick (note I qualified that sentence with “in many ways"). In part, this strategy has become more common because when one is “on the air” there are no references, no places to double-check, and one is often limited to 30 seconds of speaking time. Politicians are very good at making un-backable arguments and taking someone else’s remarks out of context for strategic advantage (those political shows on Sunday are a smorgasbord of decontextualzing “strategery"). And speaking of strategery, George W. Bush’s infamous remarks in many speeches after Nine-eleven are favorite example of Lefties: we now know many of the things Bush II claimed were untrue. Yet the “truth-effects” of his claims were immediate and deadly: we went to war.

I say “truth-effects” and not “truth” because, in our age of screens and quick-and-dirty arguments, verifying truth claims seems to be taking longer and longer. There seems to be a widening disconnect between what someone says on a screen and actually connecting it to some verifiable reality “out there.” Worse, there seems to be a dwindling interest in making those connections in favor of the “next thing"—preferably a short, quick thing (folks are probably skimming this, after all). Why worry about what the secretary of state just said when there’s a new and painless way to erase those wrinkles!

This strange speeding-up of representation and slowing down of verifiability is doing weird things to arguments and—making a plug for my colleagues—a number of rhetoricians are studying the trend. Regardless, the point I’m wordily coming to is that we see the same strategies at work here in many of the anti-cultural studies posts. Lucretius’ derision about the verbosity of the work that he considers “cultural studies” misunderstands the difference, for example, between a book-length argument and an article-length argument and norms of permissibility in a given medium. The reason cultural studies folks like me have a lot to say—aside from obvious narcissism and so on—is that context in all its varieties is considered to be very important. For those who are idealists or more “fundamentally” and evangelically religious, you get to make arguments like this: “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” The Lefties enamored with context and qualification tend to make arguments like this: “Although, in our fragile and painful emotional state, one is tempted to ignore the complexities of the political and historical situation and invade Country X, we need to think more carefully about our course of action. We are hopeful, however, that the world community will join us in protecting all innocent people from unnecessary violence. . ” and so on (and on and on). It’s just harder, and takes more words, to represent a complex view of the world and things, and this is very difficult to do in our current mediated context.

We can also discuss the issue in terms of cognitive complexity, a slightly more essentialist theory about “more cognitively complex” and “less cognitively complex” styles of thought. But this tempts the perception of character attacks, so I won’t discuss it.

Now, Lucretius’ suggestion that we hold up analytic philosophy as the model for clear and precise writing underestimates the importance of context and the fact that mystifying prose and clarity frequently go hand in hand. If he is a rhetorician, this is unfortunate because it bespeaks a basic misunderstanding of audience adaptation. He also overlooks the fact that philosophers, in general, write for other philosophers and not wider audiences (with notable exceptions), employing shorthand like “the cogito” to reference whole arguments (e.g., Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy). What if we rewrote Publius’ final exam with passages from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus? “1 The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. 1.2 The world divides into facts. 1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.” Go for it, Lucretius, you brave anonymous soul!

As an aside: according to Lucretius, apparently there are “entire departments” across the nation devoted to this long-winded, purpled prose. The implication is that such departments are sapping resources or are squeezing out more legitimate departments (there’s in impact to this observation, right?). Last I checked there were only a handful of “Departments of Cultural Studies.” There are departments of English, Philosophy, Sociology, Communication Studies, Anthropology, and so on that have a “program” or “concentration” in CS (here at UT there is an undergraduate “portfolio” that consists of a number of courses in departments across the campus), but few departments fly under the label (e.g., the University of Minnesota’s program in CS and Comp Lit). In other words, cultural studies seems more tribal and less familial. This is why I say it is important to specify what you and others mean by “cultural studies,” which gang or tribe you speak of when you use the term. So far it seems y’all mean “bad writers of the cultural left.”

Finally, I will give Publius a nod for having a sense of humor. Bad writing is bad writing, I’ll agree to that. Heck, in addition to my verbosity, I’m even guilty of producing some pretty bad writing myself! But, y’all know what they say about accidents, the secundum quid, babies, and bathwater?

Josh Gunn, Idiocy Specialist, at 10:05 pm EDT on August 4, 2006

Josh, Contexts, Theories

Josh, it is certainly true, as you say, that clarity and mystifying prose can go hand in hand (Wittgenstein is a good example, as you suggest). Merely asserting that possibility, however, does not justify any and all mystifying prose.

You seem to want me and other sceptics to say “ah, well, it seems mystifying, but if the initiates in the pantheon hint that there’s clear and persuasive argument and useful analysis in there, then I ought to believe them — I’m just not in the right audience, perhaps?” Alas, I’ve actually read Derrida, Bataille, Baudrillard, Kristiva, Butler, Spivak, and so many other luminary and not-so-luninary ‘theorists’ in vogue in the “studies” departments. You hint broadly that there is rich context that provides satisfying analysis and argument in these works. I disute this.

Gunn writes that, “according to Lucretius, apparently there are “entire departments” across the nation devoted to this long-winded, purpled prose. The implication is that such departments are sapping resources or are squeezing out more legitimate departments”

I meant to imply no such thing, although no doubt there are conservative critics in and outside of academia who do hold to such an implication. In contrast, I simply think that many of the various “studies” departments, programmes, and centers around North America tend to produce muddled scholarship, and too often provide academic shelter to politicized ethnographers and philosophers who, frankly, aren’t doing especially good philosophy.

Note well: this isn’t to misunderstand “norms of permissibility” in various media, but to assert that there are good and not so good scholarly ways to invoke, describe, and appeal to rich contexts as causal elements. The ways that dominate so many of the “studies” are theory-heavy without any clear methodology for using theory to structure analysis, and most critically to my mind, without much persuasive inquiry into whether the theories invoked are in fact theories at all.

So, you can make all the vaguely insulting and dismissive references you want about my naivity, conservatism, and inability to handle conceptual complexity, but my critical point is far deeper than many in the “studies” permit themselves to engage: I’m challenging the very coherence and utility of what many think of as “theory".

Notice also that departments, programmes, and centers that concern me needn’t constitute a majority or sap vital resources for my “too often” evaluation to have moral force: it’s the “muddled scholarship” that drives my point, and even a little is too much. When entire journals and graduate seminars are devoted to that muddled brew, then that’s a definite problem, in my view.

The repeated appeal to audiences and rhetoric is meant as criticism, but directed to someone who quite clearly believes in an older, philosophically partisan ideal of scholarship directly at odds with what seems to be your understanding of what the academe is for. It isn’t that I misunderstand the importance of audience and tailoring speech to one’s audience, and I certainly don’t dispute the sociological fact that insiders do often use language in ways that reinforce boundaries and exclude outsides. Nor do I dispute that such uses of languages can be studied in scholarly ways. But it isn’t ‘rhetoric’ all the way down — or at least, the half-baked post-Foucauldian pseudo-Nietzscheans who pass as theorists in the “studies” haven’t made a persuasive case. More typically, they find convoluted ways to assert and assume this clear, interesting, but controversial point.

To be utterly clear on this point: the older, partisan view I hold certainly embraces good scholarship about rhetoric and audiences, but denies that various uses of rhetoric constitute an important scholarly approach (the fact of jargon and speaking to one’s favoured audience are merely contingent facts about the academic division of labor). More pointedly, and yet again, to be entirely clear about what’s at stake in our exchange: this older view denies the ‘rhetoric all the way down’ claim.

Lucretius, an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college, at 12:45 pm EDT on August 6, 2006

On Lukettle’s Double-Standard

Thank you, Publius, for the compliment, and kudos to you for finding value in our exchange. I did too. It probably would not surprise you to know that some of my best friends are conservatives (joke intended), and that my favorite Sunday commentator is George Will (both are true, I swear).

As for Lucretius, I still trying to hold on to my patience. Lucretius: I worry that your schooling in analytic philosophy has failed you, or at least on the finer points of informal logic (for example, the hasty generalization and equivocation fallacies come to mind).

At the risk of decontextualizing you, but at your behest, let me see if I understand your argument correctly: So-called “Studies” programs and departments, which read, promote, and apply the work of Derrida, Bataille, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Butler, Spivak, and others of their ilk, produce scholarship that is neither coherent nor useful, but rather “muddled,” lacking in method of theoretical application, and fundamentally un-theoretical. A preferable standard of evaluation for scholarship, and presumably one that includes the correct understanding of “theory,” is the “older, philosophically partisan ideal” of scholarship. This ideal is “at odds” with my understanding of the academic enterprise (which is what? please let me know), as well as social constructivism ("it’s rhetoric all the way down"). Finally, you add that you appreciate absolutist, either/or demands because they force you to confront “the bare and conflicting essentials” of your positions on both morality and how humans come to know the world. Have I misunderstood you?

Presuming I have the gist, l will piece together, as best I can, the standards of clarity and precision you evoke as part of the “philosophically partisan ideal.” Let’s go with precision first. According to my dictionary, precision is the “quality. . . of being accurate.” Hmm. My dictionary also says accuracy is the “a quality of being precise.” Oh my. Well, I’m not sure how to slice precision, then, except as something defined tautologically. . . or by the “I know it when I see it” measure. And since you have a penchant for negative definition, the “I know it when I see it” measure you advance locates my prose, as well as that of Derrida, Bataille, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Butler, and Spivak” as examples of unclear and imprecise writing (Derrida is not precise enough for you? Oh my).

We find something of a positive definition of the “philosophical partisan ideal” in terms of word quantity. Looking back through your posts we find that I am chided for posting “1844 words to make points that frankly could have been made with far greater precision and clarity.” Clearly 1844 is not precise. In your last two posts it took you 925 words to make an argument that took me 124 words to make. Until you provide a better, more explicit definition of “precision,” I guess I’ll be Pot and you can be Kettle, and I’m saying: “black, black, black, black, black.” This is not what Freud meant by “kettle logic,” but I think your posts attract the label.

Now then, what about clarity? My trusty American Heritage says it is “the quality of being clear, in particular,” and “clear” is defined as “easy to perceive.” Presumably, since my tribe is accused of being “muddle headed,” your prose would be, well, “clear.” Alas, this is neither the case argumentatively nor stylistically, as I am having much trouble perceiving what you believe to be the standard of scholarly writing and the merits of a good academic program. One would hope that, perhaps, you’d define your “ideal” of scholarship by example, but you have dashed my hope. Let me explain why.

First, since you invoke the god-term “philosophy” a lot, I am presuming you know a bit about symbolic logic. What of informal logic? For example, the model of argument advanced by Stephen Toulmin? For Toulmin, every argument has a claim, data associated with that claim ("evidence"), and a warrant, or the reasoning used to connect data to claims. It’s a side-ways syllogism model, basically. Now, you have many claims in your argument, so let us address only a few of the largest of them in the order you made them, applying our Toulmin theory along the way. My responses and method of theory application are in italics:

1. The possibility that clarity can be mystifying does not justify all mystifying prose.

This is a statement of logical fact about overgeneralization. I never claimed to justify all mystifying prose, therefore, it is also a fallacious claim: where’s the data? I see no evidence to support the claim that I have justified the use of all mystifying prose.

2. “Derrida, Bataille, Baudrillard, Kristiva, Butler, Spivak, and so many other luminary and not-so-luminary ‘theorists’ in vogue in ’studies’ departments” only provide unsatisfying analyses and arguments. You imply these thinkers are examples of muddled work, or at least the role models of muddled work. And how do you know this? “I have read them,” you say.

Apparently your authority as a good reader is the warrant. You chide “us” on resorting to complexity and context because it is merely an “article of faith,” but you are asking the same of readers about your expertise. Most good arguments have data to support their claims. Why is Derrida’s work unconvincing? In terms of what criteria? Where’s the data? Where are the examples? Your posts are shorter than mine because you do not qualify or provide evidence to back up your claims. Instead, you pull the “because I know so” variation of the parent to the question of the two year old (and you imply I am dimssive!). This characteristic lack of evidence brings us to your third big argument:

3. The “older, partisan view” or “philosophically partisan ideal” of scholarship is better than the “muddled” scholarship of “studies” departments.

Hmm. What is a “studies” department, exactly? Does Communication Studies count? What is this older partisan view, exactly? I see it relies on “clarity and precision,” and by your evocation, that at least includes parsimony/lower word counts. It also must include a “clear methodology for using theory to structure analysis,” I suppose, although the difference between “method” and “methodology” here is unclear in your remarks. Nevertheless, we’re still in the dark: what is this partisan view, precisely? If you are going to provide us a satisfying and persuasive analysis, we readers need to be, well, clear about what we are to embrace at your urging. Care to, um, clarify? Again, as with the first two claims, here we have more claims without evidentiary support. In short, Lukettle—can I call you Lukettle?—this is an imcomplete—or bad—argument. So far, the only warrant for your claims, or for ignoring the data altogether, has been your authority as someone who “spends a lot of time exploring conceptual nuance and historical context.” Lukettle: we don’t even know your real name . That’s bad reasoning Golden Tongue! And I don’t meant to be “vaguely insulting or dismissive,” so let me be clear: you are a bad, unclear, imprecise arguer. Ok, one more:

4. I think I’m probably too kind to paraphrase all your claims (since mine are clearer), so I’ll let you do your own talking for this one: “[I]t isn’t ‘rhetoric’ all the way down—or at least, the half-baked post-Foucauldian pseudo-Nietzschens [sic] who pass as theorists in the ’studies’ haven’t made a persuasive case. More typically, they find convoluted ways to assert and assume this clear, interesting, but controversial point.”

“It isn’t” you begin. What is “it” here, exactly? Your “it” is what a grammarian would call an “unclear referent.” Ok, I cannot help but paraphrase (sorry), and assuming “it” is social reality here: “Social reality is not a symbolic construction, although this claim is very interesting. Scholars who unpersuasively argue the point are stupid (or stoned?), Nietzchean, post-Foucauldian, fakers who cannot theorize.” Well, there are some ad hominems in that one, for sure, but this isn’t an argument my dear Lukettle. What is a better example of “rhetoric all the way down” for comparison? What do you mean by “post-Foucauldian?” What is a “pseudo-Nietzschean” exactly, and where do I meet one? Does she like to dance and take long walks in the park? You claim that those who believe social constructivism of any stripe do not produce real theory (stupid fakers!). Where’s the data for this claim? Show us examples of half-baked, muddled scholarship. And is one example enough to generalize about so many French philosophers and theorists (with a couple of Germans and an American thrown in for a good sample)? And more importantly, what is theory? Like your “ideal” standard of scholarship, your definition is not prima facie obvious.

So you see, gentle reader(s) (I presume only one or two of you are left at this point), what we have are pretty much a series of assertions with no evidence, and this from a “scholar” who claims to be in possession of some “philosophically partisan ideal of scholarship” that he neither defines nor demonstrates. (Note that my training in rhetorical studies has provided me with some tools to better make sense of his posts, however.) Is the scholarly ideal Lukettle evokes merely a disdain for challenging theoretical work and a taste for stuffy, British prose? So far that’s all I can discern from Lukettle’s “salvos.”

In summary: Contrary to his own stated preferences, Lukettle has failed to advance a parsimonious, clear, and precise argument. We should, therefore, question the authority that he asserts as the primary warrant (or underlying reasoning) for making claims about Queer theory, cultural studies, deconstruction, feminism, postmodern theory, postcolonial studies, poststructural theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis (did I miss one of the authors he mentioned?), without the labor (or courtesy) of providing evidence. It should now be clearer why he prefers to post anonymously.

Josh Gunn, Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin, at 5:15 pm EDT on August 6, 2006

amusing correction

Obviously that should be Nussbaum’s critique of *Butler* referenced in my last missive, not her critique of Nussbaum!

Lucretius, an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college, at 4:30 am EDT on August 7, 2006

What is Truer Goal of Education?

This has been, for me, pleasurably fascinating: useful statement (by Josh) and posts (by various hands). But also pragmatically useful: especially fecund for me right now (as an educator currently researching “the teaching of thinking at post-secondary level”).

Two responses of mine. (1) Goal of a course, of education?... Is Josh ultimately teaching not simply information plus re-thinking, but an indoctrination into an ideology of “education-for-social-liberation?” As against “how to think things through,” in my humble biased insight *the* keystone goal of true education? (Counter-example: one teacher assigned Carl Cohen’s Four Systems, a serial description-defense of two kinds of democracy, communism, and fascism, and had students work through these conflicting visions and learn how to more-objectively confront these complexities, and by extension other complexities later on.) Would, could, Josh give a high grade to a student paper which critiqued the whole avant-garde post-liberal-humanism etc. etc. stance, but via competent thinking? Hmmmm….

(2) Plus, the political complexity of it all?.... Including polarities of A and Z, right and left, Conservative (etc. etc.) and Liberal and beyond (etc. etc.). Why do I feel I am hard-left in many things, right-attending in many others? I see the A or right or Conservative… pole as intriguingly, perhaps dangerously, mixed. This “Publius,” for instance, makes some really-problematic comments of the A-type stance of Ultimate Elevation (I call it)—disdain, wrong-kind-of-elitism, etc.—but then he’ll roundly-and-soundly makes some (I feel them) solid points in re that so-disparaged foundationalism and the like. All this, mine to untangle if and as I can…

So thanks indeed for this seedbed of ideas which are “potent/fecund” (note sexist-free or “both-and” phrasing) for my work currently.

Brian Kevin Beck, at 4:55 pm EDT on August 19, 2006