Posts by John Armstrong
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
If you can get hold of the newest number of the New Zealand Journal of History, Nepia Mahuika's article has some powerful things to say about 'learning the trick of standing upright here'. No online version yet I'm afraid, but it will more than reward a walk to your local library..
-
Hard News: Asking for a Contribution, in reply to Russell Brown,
Choice! But will it come with a CD? Written Hard Newses are a grand thing, but I do sometimes miss the nuance that comes with careful modulation of tone and appreciative background snickering. Ah the good old days..
-
I've probably missed the boat on this one now, but I wonder if the 'problem' with the humanities (in the context of this discussion) is that they generally deal with subjective or inter-subjective ways of knowing, which probably makes it difficult to justify them in terms of collective or social benefit. One way of doing it is has already been done upthread: argue for the value of the humanities in terms of the benefits they bring to disciplines or professional fields outside the humanities. This is fair enough, but I think that the subjective, and therefore often very personal nature of historical scholarship (my area of very limited expertise) and other humanities subjects has real value in its own right. One of the main lessons of postmodernism is that subjectivity inflects everything (including science, but that is another discussion). That means, for me, that a key skill for students and academics working in the humanities is the development of self-awareness. Acknowledging your own shit is a useful first step to acknowledging everyone else's. I am pretty sure that I am a better husband, a better father, and a more engaged and useful citizen now than I would have been had I decided to keep driving trucks at the age of 29, instead of enrolling in Waikato University's history programme. No offence to truck drivers intended.
-
I still think one of the sanest discussions about nationalism ever written in this country is this one by historian Peter Gibbons. Should be obligatory reading:
www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/webdav/site/arts/shared/Departments/documents-publications/PeterGibbons-The-Far-Side-of-the-Search-for-Identity.pdf
I won't try and summarise a highly nuanced argument, but I will say that it has made me deeply suspicious whenever I hear anyone - Don Brash or lefty blogger - invoke the term 'New Zealander' as if it is a term with any real or universal meaning. To steal Gibbons' phrase, it's little more than 'a shorthand device . . . for a multiplicity of places, peoples, products, practices and histories.' Attempts to define the qualities of the essentialised 'New Zealander' are discursive sideshows. Far more important to talk about the ways in which the term is used to justify a whole raft of dodgy thought and policy.
-
There are echoes here, at least for me, of the 'debate' that preceded the construction of the Clyde Dam under Muldoon's National Government. (Admittedly an obscure topic of interest, but relevant for me due to family associations). The government's initial proposal was to build a mega-dam that would have submerged pretty much everything between Wanaka and Queenstown (precise geography uncertain, but the point is that it was big..). In the shadow of such a destructive proposal, all subsequent smaller plans took on the appearance of reasonable compromises.
Brownlee et al won't legalise murder etc., but the fact that the possibility exists might make whatever changes they do impose look relatively restrained and reasonable.
Bowing to the superior knowledge of all other posters, what happens next? Who do we write to? What other options for protest exist?
-
How about some Buffalo soup Russell? Phoenix Foundation at the Powerstation tonight will perk you up no end..