Remembering the Jim's Post-modernist litmus test (i.e. anyone who uses a word that post-modernists frequently employ, regardless of context, is a post-modernist)...I tried not to use any words that might induce you to label me a post modernist this time. Oops, I used the word critique I just noticed...Oh boy, here comes, "Steve Philion is a post-modernist...look, he uses the word essentialist in one post, and now, here he goes again with 'critique'.....hmmmm
Steve
On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Jim heartfield wrote:
>
> Well, the usual fireworks from Camille Paglia, but hardly warranting the
> epithet of racism. I should say it was a pleasure to find someone who
> felt so strongly about teaching. And on this score, she is absolutely
> right: the reduction of all knowledge to vested interests is a wholly
> pernicious influence on scholarship (it derives not from the
> revolutionary left, but the increasingly conservative Mannheim).
>
> If Paglia is the enemy, then its the wrong war.
>
> In message <v04210107b41c2bf2ef95@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
> >Jim heartfield wrote:
> >
> >>Is the original article available?
> >
> >Wall Street Journal - September 30, 1999
> >
> >The Right Kind Of Multiculturalism
> >
> >By Camille Paglia, a professor of humanities at the University of the
> >Arts in Philadelphia.
> >
> >The field of archaeology is under a political cloud because of its
> >allegedly racist and exploitative history. American Indians have
> >protested the "desecration" of tribal burial grounds by
> >archaeological digs. A longstanding argument rages about the legal
> >ownership of antiquities acquired by museums through donation or
> >purchase since the late 18th century.
> >
> >The brief against archeology for its physical predations has been
> >extended to its interpretive system. Militant identity politics
> >claims that no culture can be understood except by its natives, as if
> >DNA gave insight. All scrutiny by outsiders is supposedly biased,
> >self-interested and reductive.
> >
> >A related complaint comes from poststructuralism, specifically the
> >work of Michel Foucault, whom Edward Said introduced to American
> >literary criticism in his 1975 book, "Beginnings." Mr. Said, a
> >professor of literature at Columbia University and president of the
> >Modern Language Association, adopted Mr. Foucault's view of
> >oppressive power, operating in Western conceptual systems as a covert
> >instrument of domination, in his 1978 book, "Orientalism." Far less
> >talented academics followed Mr. Said's lead in the dreary movement
> >called New Historicism, which sees imperialism under every bush.
> >
> >Erudite, cultivated, accomplished and prolific, Mr. Said is a major
> >scholar. Unfortunately, his sharp critiques of European interest in
> >the Near East focus on literature (which he sees as a mask for
> >colonialism), to the exclusion of the visual arts and architecture.
> >In his central books, Mr. Said gives dismayingly short shrift to the
> >massive achievements of Egyptologists and Orientalists, fomenting a
> >suspicion of and cynicism about archaeology that have spread through
> >the humanities.
> >
> >This is regrettable, since archaeology is a perfect model for
> >multiculturalism in the classroom. During three decades as a college
> >teacher, I have found that archaeology fascinates and unites students
> >of different races, economic backgrounds and academic preparation.
> >
> >First, archaeology gives perspective, a vivid sense of the sweep of
> >history--too often lacking in today's dumbed-down curriculum. Second,
> >archaeology shows the fragility of culture. It illustrates how even
> >the most powerful of nations succumbed to chaos and catastrophe or to
> >the slow obliteration of nature and time.
> >
> >The epidemic of violence in American high schools is, I suspect,
> >partly a reaction to the banality of middle-class education, which is
> >suffused with sentimental liberal humanitarianism. Anything not
> >"nice" is edited out of history and culture--except, of course, when
> >it can be blamed on white males. Archaeology, with its stunning
> >panoramas of broken ruins, satisfies young people's lust for awe and
> >destruction.
> >
> >Third, archaeology introduces the young to the scientific method,
> >presented in the guise of a mystery story. Greek philosophy and
> >logic, revived at the Renaissance and refined in the 17th century,
> >produced the archaeological technique of controlled excavation,
> >measurement, documentation, identification and categorization. Modern
> >archaeology is one of the finest fruits of the Western Enlightenment.
> >
> >Stratigraphy, the analysis of settlement layers or ash deposits, is a
> >basic tool of archaeology, cutting through the past so it can be read
> >like a book. Dumps, latrines and cave floors are mined for
> >microscopic study of seeds and pollen and for radiocarbon dating of
> >wood, plant fibers and textiles. Chewed bones and worn teeth reveal
> >diet and diseases and help draw the map of migration patterns and
> >trade routes. With saintly patience, archaeologists laboriously
> >collect shattered potsherds and reassemble them like Cubist jigsaw
> >puzzles.
> >
> >Western technology has given archaeology a wealth of tools. Aerial
> >survey reveals the faint traces of buildings, earthworks and
> >irrigation channels. Underwater archaeology, born after World War II,
> >recovers artifacts from lakes and seas via scuba diving, unmanned
> >submersible vehicles and side-scanning sonar.
> >
> >Archaeology has restored human memory of vanished societies like that
> >of Pakistan's prehistoric Indus River Valley civilization or that of
> >the mighty Khmer empire centered at Cambodia's Angkor Wat. We now
> >know about the Olmec of Mexico, whose society began a thousand years
> >before Christ, or the Maya of Central America, whose pyramids at
> >Tikal were slowly buried in the tangled jungle.
> >
> >In the 1880s, thanks to European archaeologists, Akhetaton, the
> >utopian city on the Nile built by Akhenaton and Nefertiti and
> >destroyed by their political rivals, was rediscovered at Tel el
> >Amarna. In the 1890s, Sir Arthur Evans's excavations at the
> >labyrinthine palace at Knossos revealed the greatness of Minoan Crete.
> >
> >In the 1920s, C. Leonard Woolley excavated the forgotten Mesopotamian
> >city of Ur, whose ornate treasures grace the University Museum in
> >Philadelphia. In 1975 tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets found in
> >Syria helped resurrect Ebla, a commercial capital of the third
> >millennium B.C., and also deepened our understanding of biblical
> >texts. Archaeologists are still at work on the tantalizing conundrum
> >of the Etruscans, who heavily influenced Rome.
> >
> >The British Museum is currently celebrating the bicentenary of the
> >discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a second-century B.C. basalt slab
> >whose tripartite inscription was the key to deciphering Egyptian
> >hieroglyphics. The Rosetta Stone, found during Napoleon's invasion of
> >Egypt when it was still an Ottoman province, is a symbol of Western
> >intellectual virtuosity and achievement.
> >
> >The modern disciplines of knowledge, far from being covert forms of
> >social control as the leftist poststructuralists tediously claim,
> >have rescued ancient objects and monuments from neglect and abuse and
> >have enormously expanded the record of our species. Degree-granting
> >programs in archaeology are few and beleaguered in the U.S. Funding
> >for archaeology, at school and in the field, is as crucial as for
> >space exploration. Archaeology is our voyage to the past, where we
> >discover who we were and therefore who we are.
> >
>
> --
> Jim heartfield
>