Intellectual barbarism is no improvement, the bourgeois humanities had many fine achievements behind it, it was rational, realist and disciplined. And it most importantly sustained a level of cultural debate which was essential to developments across the class divide.
I am frankly shocked that anyone could make as much room as you have for the fashionable, deeply irrational, relativism and the intellectual chaos that now reigns.
As far as I am concenerned the bourgeois humanities was destroyed (nearly or partially) by the most reactionary radicalism since the brown-shirts. It was never a pointless exercise the old style humanities in fact it was the powerhouse of bourgeois culture. Coroportaism has MacDonaldisied so much of culture, but the humanities stood firm until white-anted by ambitious and vaccuous academic storm troopers.
Identity politics Good - politicising cannon! Deconstructionalism politicising theory!
I suppose if you believe their rubbish you could go along with this, afterall this is what they claimed from the begining - unfortunately it was not what they did was it!
Usually I maintain my cool in these postings, I try never to make too much of points I disagree with, unfortunately this is not an exception.
I closely identify post-moderneism and all its accessories with fascist theory, indeed specifically that it descends directly from a fascist philosophy (literally). Second, this intellectual stream was positively fostered by university administrations in conjunction with right-wing think tanks in order to destroy proletarian and left bourgeois tennets within universities.
No doubt, these two accusations will be seen as extreme, however, I stand by each despite the fact I have no evidence whatsoever for the second accusation except my own observations. As for the underlying fascist concepts within Post-Modernism (its accessories and predecessors - all the way back to semiotics) that is available for any one to find who is prepared to do the spade-work.
Sorry Dennis, your position on this is not just a matter of disagreement but is in fact a point of struggle. It was not that you espoused Post-Modernist concerns, these unfortunately are common enough, but supported their propaganda directly echoing their vain illusions as if there was a grain of truth in them.
Joanna Bujes was right, this came as a theif in the night, then attacked swiftly without warning, cameleon-like, they adopted and then abandoned, fashion after fashion, making defensive moves useless.
It amazed me just how comfortable administrations were with these storm troopers who, Rhoem like, pouted their radicalism so readily. A good leftists might take years to gain entrance into a university position, and even having attained it could only hold it by fending off constant attacks. But these barbarians seem to have been given passes to all the best spots, occupied them without administrative protest, and then like barnacles swiftly cemented themselves in place to begin reproduction.
Give me an old Latin Professor that actually knew something, than the pratting, empty, self-agrandising, nonsense which now is in residence.
Who, twenty years ago, would think that anyone could pine for the solidity and knowledge of old bourgeois liberals as a golden time.
That knowledge itself would be sacrificied on the golden double arches by a coven of ambitious dons whispering incomprehesible incantations.
A minute's silence for the demise of the humanities - not to mourn it, so much, as to mourn what this loss will mean for all of us.
--- Message Received --- From: Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 13:24:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: The point of the Humanities
On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, joanna bujes wrote:
> Then came identity politics! BANG!, Deconstructionism! BANG! BANG!!,
> academic professionalism! BANG!!! BANG!!! BANG!!! And before you knew it,
> the humanities became a pointless exercise in intellectual masturbation.
An improvement over its previous function, as a pointless exercise in jacking off the ruling class, no? Identity politics was a Good Thing (TM), it politicized the canon, the same way that deconstruction politicized theory. Professionalism has nothing to do with it -- thirty years of austerity, budget cutbacks, and the transformation of humanities departments into trade schools for memo-writing 101 have wrecked the place.
I have mixed feelings about our nomenklatura. On the one hand, there's the Slim Shady voice saying that these are a bunch of fuckers, who will do their damndest to prevent people like me from *ever* having a teaching job, not despite but precisely because I've written more theory in three years than the entire Yale English Dept. has in three decades. Then the Dr. Dre says, well, when things get bad enough they'll organize unions and fight academic capitalism. So far, Slim is ahead on points.
Dennis
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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