Can o’ worms…
Marek cleared up my confusion about what is the current “age of arts” (namely, “Unblinking Eyeball’s Lust For Manufactured Concerns”) with an adroit reference to Jerry Springer. Amazed at the synchronicity that today’s students would be sunk in the slough of post modernism AND blithely cite Jerry Springer as a cultural referent, I posted a bit on “Cultural Incompetents.” I really was only toying with the spelling and the sound of the word, “vive la differance” as they say, but Slim Coincidence, aka Krista read my posting and decided the label was directly aimed at her. As a “student of post modern theory” she disagrees with what I wrote, but as a student of discourse and rhetoric, I would hope she could give it a more careful reading and understand that I wasn’t necessarily criticizing Saint Foucault, indeed any criticism would fall on a cultural context that did not accept and understand the egalitarian distinctions that the post modernists labor so hard to make. I just think there are better things to do with the too brief time in class than work on things that are so fundamental. Anyway, poor flatulent Krista said:
Frank Paynter thinks I’m culturally incompetent. So be it.
He wonders why courses like the current Foucault Reading Seminar and last fall’s Queer Theory course (Language, Culture and the Queer Identity) are allowed to clutter up the academic landscape. I have only a brief response to his post, since I’m afraid we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this matter.
1. Yes, both of these classes are graduate-credit courses at a fully accredited university.
2. You’re right, there shouldn’t be a need for women’s studies, or ethnic studies, or queer studies. But until courses with more general themes stop ignoring the full spectrum of history, and until I can discuss these issues in a non-culturally-centered class as easily and fully as I can in special-topic classes, I’m going to keep on taking topic-related courses.
3. Even if there shouldn’t be a need for these classes, there will always be a place for them. I am a Rhetoric student with an interest in Gender Studies. My taking a class like Queer Theory is no different than a History student taking a course in Colonial Latin America or Early Modern Europe. It’s simply an opportunity to further explore a specific area with students who share an interest. It is not a symptom of any greater ills in the academic system.
4. I suspect that nothing I say here will convince you of the validity of postmodern theory, just as I won’t be convinced to abandon it. You’re entitled to your opinion, and I’m entitled to mine.
5. Since I do study postmodern theory, I’m happy to be in the Foucault seminar. And since one of the overriding themes of his work is the way that we categorize people, discourse and knowledge and then interlink those categories, it’s only natural that queer and gender issues enter the discussion.
Thank you and good night.
Mike Golby rode to my rescue in the comments. His first paragraph echoes my sentiment regarding Krista’s post nicely. His last paragraph also highlights something that’s nagged at me. In between he introduced this old lightweight to Jean Baudrillard. I found Baudrillard to be interesting indeed, and will read more. Can’t say that for the Sainted Michel F. Anyway, Mike G said:
Talk about ‘angels dancing on the head of a pin’. Frank’s asking questions on several levels. I don’t think you get it, Krista. Your studying the subject is not at issue. That the subject is on offer, is.
A non-intellectual thug, unlike Marek [the bloody Poles always vault to conclusions], I’m taking my time to think this through. There’s a lot of crap about [Frank’s blogroll and millions of others excepted] and it’s finding the good stuff that intrigues me.
“All this cerebral, electronic snobbery is hugely affected - far from being the sign of a superior knowledge of humanity, it is merely the mark of a simplified theory, since the human being is here reduced to the terminal excrescence of his or her spinal chord. … All that fascinates us is the spectacle of the brain and its workings. What we are wanting here is to see our thoughts unfolding before us - and this itself is a superstition.”
Yes, Jean Baudrillard. Right now, reading around several of his essays is teaching me a great deal.
Re: Marek. I watched De Niro in ‘15 Minutes’ [2002] last night. Panned by the critics, it might not have been rubbished at the time of ‘Natural Born Killers’ or ‘Pulp Fiction’ [early 90s]. Now we have ‘reality’ TV and virtual wars and ‘15 Minutes’ bores. Read Baudrillard’s ‘92 essay, Rise Of The Void Towards The Periphery, to which Chris pointed two weeks ago. Bada-bing, as my sainted Polish friend would say. Baudrillard offers a hyper-hyperlink to a future we have imagined for ourselves, a catastrophe already about us.
Read what JB says at the foot of this page of extracts. The sense of it forms the basis of my American myth, no matter what anybody [post-modern or otherwise] thinks, does or says. It’s great stuff. To my mind, Baudrillard is ‘On The Road’.
Then again, what would I know? I’m just an unqualified South African thug. To me, ‘teaching’ blogging at Harvard is a sick joke.
Notice above Golby’s use of links and his courteous attempt to draw the reader along and introduce her/him to matters important to the blogger. Too few of our blogging friends take advantage of the medium this way. Thanks Mike.
But Mike’s and my effrontery in criticizing any of the pantheon of the rhetoriically promiscuous was not to be so easily dismissed. Out of left, well RIGHT field, left field being too closely asscoiated with distasteful socialist and cooperative analyses of the common weal… out of right field rides another Quixote, Jeff Ward, lance lowered and eager for a little intellectual jousting. Well, perhaps not intellectual since that would imply an egalitarian respect for those with whom he would like the conversation to continue, but an urge to debate has overcome our gen-xer, and that’s for sure. Viz…
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