Hard News: Quantum Faster
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Ahem. Could way just say I found them more lucid, broad-minded and persuasive?
Sure. Am I allowed to question their broad-mindedness, and yours? If writing "Derrida, etc." isn't a sign of antipathy, I don't know what is, and you're more than entitled to it, but I think it speaks to Phelan's argument some.
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Antipathy might be warranted. Derrida has some useful ideas, but really, I'm sure 99.9% of people would rate him extremely high on the wankery scale.
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Not that I'm against broad-mindedness. I think sometimes academic cultural theorists don't go far enough to see their own tribes as a culture of their own.
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Madness and Civilisation, The Order of Things.
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Derrida has some useful ideas, but really, I'm sure 99.9% of people would rate him extremely high on the wankery scale.
Yeah. I warrant that 0.01% of them has read him though.
Now excuse while I go bang repeatedly my head against the desk and remind myself (if I'm still conscious) to a) take my pills and b) STAY AWAY FROM THIS BLOODY CONVERSATION that I always seem to end up having with people.
(And I always "lose", if there is such a thing.)
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I saw him do his thang at the Town Hall - a full bloody house it was too.
can't quite remember, but he was deconstructing some French phrase - did everything put put the poor thing in a figure four leg lock.
as for us...
millions died.
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I think sometimes academic cultural theorists don't go far enough to see their own tribes as a culture of their own.
Ya think?
;-)
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the wankery scale
Ooh! A chance to use Joe's 'wankfest on stilts'!
Bugger the postmodernists*: I'd just like young journalists to know useful contextual things like history. It helps.
*I only said that so Gio would splutter. Italianly. Because that's where he's originally from.
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Surely "losing" is such an absolute concept, Giovanni. :)
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Bugger the postmodernists*: I'd just like young journalists to know useful contextual things like history. It helps.
I think there's also great benefit in either working outside the bubble before starting in journalism, or taking a break and doing something else in the course of a career.
To say that it offers helpful perspective to have been something other than a journalist is putting it mildly.
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THIS BLOODY CONVERSATION that I always seem to end up having with people.
Perhaps I'm cycnical, but I like this from the linked comments:
a lot of rubbish or obfuscation is talked by art people – but some of the rubbish is better rubbish than others...
Having said which, I have every intention of wending my way through the rest of that conversation, eventually.
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I think the trick would be to repackage all the business about cultural context and the dominant paradigm as Common Sense, sort of as a sugar coating to suit the gullet of the kiwi brain. I think as a nation we could handle that much.
But then again, some bastard in the back row would always go, "Wait a minute! This is postmodernism!" and ruin everything.
On the bright side, Giovanni appears to be the underdog.
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couldn't agree more Russell.
history and context can be dug from our archive, nous and empathy have to be learned yourself.
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And who doesn't appreciate those postmodern asides on Boston Legal about spin-offs, extras, etc?
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(trying to demonstrate popular relevance)
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the wankery scale
Like the Dick-o-meter...
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history and context can be dug from our archive
OK, now you're making *me* splutter.
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just keeping it real - it's impossible to know the background of every story you're asked to write.
oddly enough, not even the most clever clogs of journos is a card carrying mastermind on every subject they're tossed at.
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Phelan sneers at practitioners, but no activity would exist without its practitioners. Academic theory is only an interpretation of practice. What Phelan appears to want is influence over practice, a desire which is beyond the normal bounds of academic work.
It does strike me that many PoMo theorists talk about power and privilege in derogatory terms while demanding power and privilege for themselves. They will not even let authors speak for themselves; only the opinions of the theorists matter.
Thank you for summing up in two neat paragraphs
The other thing which occurred to me - and which Russell's anecdote provides a very good example of - is the sheer distance between those who theorise on journalism and those who practice it.
I can't think of a single discipline where the gap is so great. And yes, I think the onus is on the theoreticians to move towards the practitioners, instead of squirting out a lot of defensive ink about a group of long-gone French and German philosophers.
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To be fair, Giovanni, there are some writers who have discussions informed by theory without the theory being so in your face. Pomo is a bit self-consciously confronting like that - and excessively turgid at times, which I wonder isn't partly a cross-cultural phenomenon in itself.
One of my tutors in political philosophy used to despair that the best writers, as writers, on the course were the classical conservatives - Burke and Oakeshott (her own thesis was on something to do with feminism).
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That Oakeshott piece that Craig shared here last year was beuatifully crafted.
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If writing "Derrida, etc." isn't a sign of antipathy, I don't know what is, and you're more than entitled to it, but I think it speaks to Phelan's argument some.
I don't see how you can claim that, given Phelan himself uses the phrase "the insights of critically engaged thinkers like Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu, Laclau, Fairclough, etc …”
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I got a pretty heavy dose of the various maligned philosophers mentioned here during the course of my undergraduate history degree. If it hadn't been for my subsequent Honours year, where we basically got to strip what we did as history students apart with those theoretical tools and then put it all back together again into an actual craft practised by actual people, I would have left with a very different degree.
The way I see it now is that a large part of coming to peace with postmodernism is being aware of what it is that you're doing and using the theory on offer when it might be productive. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't - if you try to second-guess everything that you're doing in (for instance) history, you end up going around in circles.
It's better just to be aware as much as possible of your fallibilities and positions of power et cetera and then just do what needs to be done as best you can - as long as you've been honest with yourself it'll generally be okay, and at least then you've produced something of value for the next generation to deconstruct.
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it's impossible to know the background of every story you're asked to write
If I'm following:
The point here isn't about their context. It's being aware of yours.
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yeah, sure, but I think we're talking about different things here. I was replying to danielle's 'knowing history' line.
for mine, life experience is far more useful when you're face to face with the mother of a dead child than an understanding of what some French philosopher has to say on deconstructionalism.
in the end most of what we do is the seemingly simple task of relaying someone's personal story.
as for taking that on a more eclectic contextual bent, well that's a luxury deadlines don't always provide. as far as I'm concerned play a straight bat.
as for what danielle was referring to, the most dangerous situation is often when someone is writing about something they think they know pat. that way lies the tar pits.
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