Posts by Geoff Lealand
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I feel like flying home and picketing parliament
Good to see new voices joining the debate.
-
The only outfit in the house that actually has a semi-consistent ideology (whether you agree with them or not) is the Greens.
Yes, but isn't politics also about flexibility, suppleness, willingness to accommodate other perspectives? When did the Greens last admit that they were wrong or misguided about anything? At times I really do want to feel some kinship with the Greens but thinking about Sue Kedgely always stops that.
-
...and he also wrote some pretty snappy fiction, most of it set on the mountain slopes of the Brecon Beacons in Wales
-
C'mon guys, pull yourself together! Even in media/cultural studies circles, po-mo doesn't have the currency it had 10 or 15 years ago. It is just another way of describing things--useful, for example, to pointing out intertextuality/bricolage/pastiche etc etc in The Simpsons, The Sopranos, Wall-E etc. Just another tool in the academic tool-box.
My personal fav amongst dead theorists is Raymond Williams. Acessible for students but a scholar who never lost his radical edge--indeed, he grew more radical as he grew older. I have a wonderful story about visiting his home village of Pandy in wales.
-
This may be sacrilege but is it compulsary to hold BDO in Auckland? My experience of Mt. Smart* is that it is one damn ugly place but I guess you aren't looking for scenery at such events. Western Springs would be good.
* on the bus to the 2008 BDO, I overheard the following conversation;
Q. Why do they call it Mt. Smart?
A. Because only intelligent people are allowed to go there! -
It's that journalism is both pervasive (one might even say hegemonic) and oddly unreflective as a profession
Well put. One could also say than many journalists are overly defensive when their practice/world view is challenged (the accusation that they 'can dish it out but can't take it'). There are, are course, notable exceptions to this but it does not deter some of their colleagues from demonising 'academics', for example, as if all people who teach in tertiary institutions share the same set of beliefs. This is not so--you will probably find more dissent, competition and outright bitchiness in the academic community than you will ever find in the journalist 'tribe'.
-
postmodernist thinkers (itself a pretty limiting label, but it will do in the context of this discussion), that complaint is used in a blanket manner,
Good point, Giovanni. As much as I am enjoying this conversation, I do have problems with the use of postmodernism or po-mo as a catch-all term for all that some people are having problems with. In respect of the cultural/ideological role of the news media, there is a whole different set of theory and thought which wouldn't ever think of labelling itself po-mo. I am thinking, for example, of Galtung & Ruge's analysis of the factors which determine 'news value'; which is a good starting point for examining conventional wisdom and self-confirming practice in journalism.
-
postmodernist thinkers (itself a pretty limiting label, but it will do in the context of this discussion), that complaint is used in a blanket manner,
Good point, Giovanni. As much as I am enjoying this conversation, I do have problems with the use of postmodernism or po-mo as a catch-all term for all that some people are having problems with. In respect of the cultural/ideological role of the news media, there is a whole different set of theory and thought which wouldn't ever think of labelling itself po-mo. I am thinking, for example, of Galtung & Ruge's analysis of the factors which determine 'news value'; which is a good starting point for examining conventional wisdom and self-confirming practice in journalism.
-
I have taken the liberty of copying a message from Roger Horrocks as he has long though, and written, about the persistent strand of anit-intellectualism in the NZ media:
Reading the discussion of "The journalist & the 'tosspot'," I thought it might be useful to mention an essay I wrote that looks in some detail at this issue of New Zealand journalists and columnists attacking academic "theory" - in the context of a general anti-intellectualism. The essay is entitled "A Short History of 'the New Zealand Intellectual'" and appears in the book Speaking Truth to Power, ed. Laurence Simmons (Auckland, AUP, 2007), pp.25-67. I don't talk about DuFresne but I do discuss Michael Laws, Paul Holmes, Gareth George, Deborah Coddington and other prominent journalist/columnists who strongly promote an hostility to theory and to academics.
Roger Horrocks -
Geoff, Geoff, Geofff - people don't pass through Hamilton at all, they only pass by
Well, you won't be getting any feijoas--other than those hurled in your direction as you pass by.
Seriously, though--can we have an end to snide remarks about Hamilton (and Palmerston North and Timaru) as they are kind of insulting to those who live there, and know of the pleasures that abound. New Zealand is really too small for such parochialism.
I really must get back to writing up my research...!