Degrees work differently in the UK and students in secondary/high school specialise very early - by 17/18 you're usually only studying 3 subjects at most, people going onto more technical/practical subjects at university like music production or fine art might only do one subject. We don't have the tradition of having to take classes outside of your specialism at university, most people study one subject for their whole 3-year degree.
@ChastMastr I agree wrt the damage done by No Child Left Behind and dropping phonics in the US. In the UK phonics are still taught as part of the National Curriculum - I don't know about sentence diagramming for younger kids but it was being taught as part of A Level English Lang&Lit (pre-uni course for 16-18yos) in 2018 at least. The issue with that is that A Levels are optional as we leave school at 16 in the UK, and of course people can do whatever combination of A Level courses - there aren't any compulsory subjects, someone doing 3 STEM or performing arts subjects for eg doesn't have to do any grammar or writing related learning at all. I don't know how it works for English lessons for younger kids here because all my friends with kids only have preschoolers.
I am a bit puzzled by your reference to old books and their value - like of course there are old books worth studying, but their age and what they teach aren't related. After all, Donne and Milton are both around the same age and teach quite different things. In 1558, John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, John Dee's Propaedeumata Aphoristica, and Thomas Watson's Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne concerninge the Seven Sacramentes of Chrystes Church were all published - their year of publication is about all they have in common, along with two being written by men named John.
Well, I'm one of those awful people. As soon as I started studying critical theory during my degree, my thought on reading the bible was "it's a text". This meant that it was susceptible to examination in all of the ways I was being exposed to. This excited me greatly, and I still think it was a useful and valuable insight. I am completely incapable of ascribing any value to the bible that is not true of any other creatively produced text. All have the capacity to reveal the divine to us, and therefore of being the word of God, because they are all the products of both creation and creativity. Genre and history have their place in this exploration, but they are not all there is.
I don’t think you’re an awful person. ❤️ The people who hold such views as I’ve described aren’t the same thing as the views themselves. ❤️
I'm a bit confused by this. Surely the problem with awful views is that they make you do awful things? I wouldn't say that someone disagreeing with me on literary criticism has an "awful" view, it's just different. I don't understand how Post-structuralism as a view could be an actual enemy of yours, as opposed to something that would actually harm you.
Like, I hate Nazis because of their Nazi views. Those views are bad because they make them do terrible things, because our beliefs affect what we do. Believing that literary meaning is all constructed by the reader is not going to beat anyone up or burn a building down.
The belief that all truth is subjective and biased may not make liberal progressives do awful things, but it was a factor in the early justifications for the editorial philosophy of Fox News.
There are harms and harms of course. Not all harms are awful - some are first world problems.
One thought: it's been commented that there's much less literary criticism aimed at non-academic readers now than there was fifty years ago. There's less general awareness of books that are written before the current publishing cycle. Furthermore, the books that are published tend to be aimed at what will be teachable in academic settings: not so much of a problem for novelists but I think it may influence the selection of poems in poetry collections (individual or anthology). I think that's a minor harm - if only because it means that for people interested in older books written to an older aesthetic standard there isn't the general demand that leads to them being published.
So the belief, ' all truth is subjective' is in iteslf subjective? I'm reminded of Dr Johnson refuting similar views back in the 18th century by kicking a table! (or was it a chair?). As to philosophy and 'reality', I'll stick with Karl Popper. Johnson also opined, ' the only end of writing is to enable readers to enjoy life, or better to enjoy it'.
Amen to that!
But it's not difficult to find older books on the Internet Archive etc - it's never been easier to find older books, they just might not be physical (and it's not difficult to find someone who can bind printed sheets into a book). As an example from a different field, I dislike a lot of currently fashionable crafting patterns/ideas and have a big interest in old (including very old) crafting techniques eg Victorian knitting patterns or Viking nålbinding. Those are much easier to find now than they were in eg the 90s, because you are no longer limited to physical publishing.
Also wrt the example you use of Fox news - literary meaning being objective or subjective is obviously not the same as factual or non-factual journalistic reportage. Poststructuralism did not cause Fox News to make things up. That may have been their justification, but it doesn't make it true.
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
Also wrt the example you use of Fox news - literary meaning being objective or subjective is obviously not the same as factual or non-factual journalistic reportage. Poststructuralism did not cause Fox News to make things up. That may have been their justification, but it doesn't make it true.
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
You will note that I did not say anything about authorial intent being just one meaning our of many - a position I happen to believe. (Actually I hold the stronger position that it's only meaningful to talk about authorial intention if it may not be a meaning of the text at all. Intention implies the possibility of failure.)
What I said was Fox News justified itself by saying all truth is subjective and biased.
The Fox News justification seems to be saying that if there can be more than one narrative that can be considered true then any narrative can be. That basically if X contains more than one entity, then any entity Y can be X.
Also wrt the example you use of Fox news - literary meaning being objective or subjective is obviously not the same as factual or non-factual journalistic reportage. Poststructuralism did not cause Fox News to make things up. That may have been their justification, but it doesn't make it true.
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
You will note that I did not say anything about authorial intent being just one meaning our of many - a position I happen to believe. (Actually I hold the stronger position that it's only meaningful to talk about authorial intention if it may not be a meaning of the text at all. Intention implies the possibility of failure.)
What I said was Fox News justified itself by saying all truth is subjective and biased.
I didn't mean to suggest that you personally were opposed to a pluralistic (if that's an appropriate term) textual viewpoint, that wasn't what I meant. My last sentence was referring to the idea of the view being harmful, not suggesting that this was your viewpoint.
The Fox News justification seems to be saying that if there can be more than one narrative that can be considered true then any narrative can be. That basically if X contains more than one entity, then any entity Y can be X.
On which basis, my fish is a dinosaur.
Yes, which is also a very different situation wrt journalism as opposed to, say, poetry.
Degrees work differently in the UK and students in secondary/high school specialise very early - by 17/18 you're usually only studying 3 subjects at most,
In Scotland, school pupils don't specialise as early as they do in England. They sit Higher exams in five (or occasionally six) subjects at 17, and then three Advanced Highers at 18.
When I was at university there were people whose dissertations were marked down for not taking a structuralist approach - this wasn't in the English department but another humanities one that had a reputation for Marxist critical theory.
One of the lecturers cut up rough about that and got the work assessed independently and lo and behold, those sources gave it higher grades.
I don't have an issue with sociological or philosophical or other approaches to the critical study of literature, music or the visual arts- and no position is 'neutral'. I found I could use the 'tools' as it were and could meet them half-way, but it was the aggressively almost fundamentalist approach that I struggled with.
Unless you were spouting Foucault and Derrida you were seen as some kind of reactionary fascist.
This wasn't in the English department. They were aware of these things of course but hadn't quite caught up with it yet.
I didn't do a 'straight' English degree but double-honours.
Both/and. 😉
Trouble was that meant you fell between two departments and between stools.
I was too structuralist for one and not enough of one for another. Looking back, it didn't really do me any harm as I learned to tailor things and cut my cloth according to each.
I did end up dazed and confused at the end of it all though and wondered what the heck I was going to do next. I still don't know what I'm going to do when I grow up.
'Formalism' was the F-word as far as the structuralists were concerned and I can understand that. There's more to the study of literature or art than the technical devices or words on the page.
There is a continuum I think between an overly close attention to the text or artifact without considering cultural or ideological contexts on the one hand and, say, looking at the socio-economic and cultural factors at play within the Paris Salon without looking at the paintings themselves.
Or looking at the social context of The Globe without reading or watching a Shakespeare play.
When I was at university there were people whose dissertations were marked down for not taking a structuralist approach - this wasn't in the English department but another humanities one that had a reputation for Marxist critical theory.
Yeah, but part of the aim of every degree programme will be to impart a set of skills and then assess whether those skills have been acquired. So if you join a degree programme led by a department with those inclinations, that is only to be expected that you will be taught and expected to demonstrate those particular skills.
My first degree was somewhat more technical, but even then there was an element of some of the teaching being flavoured by the research interests of the various professors in the department who ran it.
@ChastMastr I agree wrt the damage done by No Child Left Behind and dropping phonics in the US. In the UK phonics are still taught as part of the National Curriculum - I don't know about sentence diagramming for younger kids but it was being taught as part of A Level English Lang&Lit (pre-uni course for 16-18yos) in 2018 at least. The issue with that is that A Levels are optional as we leave school at 16 in the UK, and of course people can do whatever combination of A Level courses - there aren't any compulsory subjects, someone doing 3 STEM or performing arts subjects for eg doesn't have to do any grammar or writing related learning at all. I don't know how it works for English lessons for younger kids here because all my friends with kids only have preschoolers.
I am a bit puzzled by your reference to old books and their value - like of course there are old books worth studying, but their age and what they teach aren't related. After all, Donne and Milton are both around the same age and teach quite different things. In 1558, John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, John Dee's Propaedeumata Aphoristica, and Thomas Watson's Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne concerninge the Seven Sacramentes of Chrystes Church were all published - their year of publication is about all they have in common, along with two being written by men named John.
There are certainly false notions in old books as well, of course, though often even then the common ground that they hold with better ones is still something we’re not getting now, and may help us see truths which are not common in our current marketplace.
C.S. Lewis talked about some of these concepts in The Great Divide (not Divorce, that’s a different work).
Well, I'm one of those awful people. As soon as I started studying critical theory during my degree, my thought on reading the bible was "it's a text". This meant that it was susceptible to examination in all of the ways I was being exposed to. This excited me greatly, and I still think it was a useful and valuable insight. I am completely incapable of ascribing any value to the bible that is not true of any other creatively produced text. All have the capacity to reveal the divine to us, and therefore of being the word of God, because they are all the products of both creation and creativity. Genre and history have their place in this exploration, but they are not all there is.
I don’t think you’re an awful person. ❤️ The people who hold such views as I’ve described aren’t the same thing as the views themselves. ❤️
I'm a bit confused by this. Surely the problem with awful views is that they make you do awful things? I wouldn't say that someone disagreeing with me on literary criticism has an "awful" view, it's just different. I don't understand how Post-structuralism as a view could be an actual enemy of yours, as opposed to something that would actually harm you.
Like, I hate Nazis because of their Nazi views. Those views are bad because they make them do terrible things, because our beliefs affect what we do. Believing that literary meaning is all constructed by the reader is not going to beat anyone up or burn a building down.
But it’s not merely about literary meaning in fictional works, but meaning in itself, in general, across everything. Even the distinction between real and unreal, truth and falsehood, sanity and insanity, good and evil.
But it's not difficult to find older books on the Internet Archive etc - it's never been easier to find older books, they just might not be physical (and it's not difficult to find someone who can bind printed sheets into a book). As an example from a different field, I dislike a lot of currently fashionable crafting patterns/ideas and have a big interest in old (including very old) crafting techniques eg Victorian knitting patterns or Viking nålbinding. Those are much easier to find now than they were in eg the 90s, because you are no longer limited to physical publishing.
And that’s one of the things I do find absolutely awesome about the present day, despite the awful things we’re dealing with currently.
As for why the notion that there is no such thing as truth or even external objective reality about which our thoughts could be true or false is my mortal enemy, don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be in a foxhole with someone who holds this view but is (though they may not be able to explain why according to their philosophy) still a moral and decent human being, than with someone who claims to hold to views I think more correct, and could logically articulate them to my satisfaction, but actually is a Nazi sympathizer. That doesn’t make one view any less false or less true. Truth matters, good theology matters, but one truth is that love and goodness matter more than even the most correct theology. “If I have not love…”
“ Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.”
But truth itself still matters, and goodness itself still matters, and to say they don’t exist is in my view horrifically false and bad. If someone really believed that and acted that way—rather than, despite the intellectual belief, acting better than that view would lead them (like the guy in the foxhole)—then they could indeed do very horrible things.
Some people may find this comic strip about postmodern literary theory amusing; it was around when I was in grad school in the 90s and I found it very funny and relevant. 😂
Yes, which is also a very different situation wrt journalism as opposed to, say, poetry.
Post-structuralism doesn't really see a difference in principle. Both are texts. Post-structuralism started as a methodology working on philosophical, scientific, and economic texts.
I think the original French post-structuralists, Derrida and Foucault, were saying something a bit harder to grasp than all truth is subjective (which would presuppose a contrast of objective truth) but neither was inclined to go out of their way to make their meaning clearer, and I think many of their Anglophone followers went with the easy interpretation.
I had a definite feeling in the late 1990s that these ideas were causing journalists on all sides to abandon even the ideal of objective truth and proudly lean into a partisan approach. It may have been a misinterpretation of the philosophy but nevertheless I think it had a baleful effect.
I had a definite feeling in the late 1990s that these ideas were causing journalists on all sides to abandon even the ideal of objective truth and proudly lean into a partisan approach. It may have been a misinterpretation of the philosophy but nevertheless I think it had a baleful effect.
I don't think it has anything to do with any philosophy. It's just an increased societal movement towards propaganda, associated with increased polarisation and confirmation bias.
I had a definite feeling in the late 1990s that these ideas were causing journalists on all sides to abandon even the ideal of objective truth and proudly lean into a partisan approach. It may have been a misinterpretation of the philosophy but nevertheless I think it had a baleful effect.
I don't think it has anything to do with any philosophy. It's just an increased societal movement towards propaganda, associated with increased polarisation and confirmation bias.
When I was at university there were people whose dissertations were marked down for not taking a structuralist approach - this wasn't in the English department but another humanities one that had a reputation for Marxist critical theory.
Yeah, but part of the aim of every degree programme will be to impart a set of skills and then assess whether those skills have been acquired. So if you join a degree programme led by a department with those inclinations, that is only to be expected that you will be taught and expected to demonstrate those particular skills.
My first degree was somewhat more technical, but even then there was an element of some of the teaching being flavoured by the research interests of the various professors in the department who ran it.
Sure. The two students I'm thinking of were probably a bit naive but their work passed muster elsewhere.
It wasn't that the standard of their work was poor, they just hadn't adopted the stance expected of them.
@Lamb Chopped has given us an account of how she felt she had to 'fake it' for her academic work to pass muster with a particular professor.
The point I'm making is that if I'd taken a structuralist approach in work submitted in the department where that wasn't expected I wouldn't have lost marks for doing so. They'd probably hsve applauded it even though it wasn't quite their bag.
However, if I'd not taken that approach in the other one I'd have been marked down.
Don't misunderstand me. I was quite comfortable using whichever critical theories were de-rigeur in whichever context but those who were always banging on about 'hegemonic coercion' and bourgeois this, that or the other could be pretty totalitarian and coercive themselves.
Degrees work differently in the UK and students in secondary/high school specialise very early - by 17/18 you're usually only studying 3 subjects at most,
In Scotland, school pupils don't specialise as early as they do in England. They sit Higher exams in five (or occasionally six) subjects at 17, and then three Advanced Highers at 18.
Thanks for the correction! I didn't realise that there were Highers and then Advanced Highers.
I had a definite feeling in the late 1990s that these ideas were causing journalists on all sides to abandon even the ideal of objective truth and proudly lean into a partisan approach. It may have been a misinterpretation of the philosophy but nevertheless I think it had a baleful effect.
I don't think it has anything to do with any philosophy. It's just an increased societal movement towards propaganda, associated with increased polarisation and confirmation bias.
Due to?
As I say, it's a general societal movement which primarily asks "how can we best spin this?" - not because of a philosophical question over the nature of truth but through being basically willing to lie or at heavily colour presentation to achieve a desired effect.
Creationists have been doing it for years and I'm pretty sure they don't believe all truth is subjective.
But what is the cause of that societal movement? Why does it feel as though it has gained ground? I think the philosophical climate enables it and I suspect we under-rate ideas and ideology as causative agents, instead being pre-occupied with questions of power and economics.
I hear what you say about creationists but I am not totally convinced by them as a counter-example. Might one not argue - many creationists operate on the de facto basis that their interpretation of reality through the lens of a literal reading of Scripture is primary, and so have stopped seeking objective truth as a corrective?
I don't think most people are aware of the philosophical distinctions we're talking about here; I don't think there is a philosophical "climate" as such. If anything, I think people are very convinced that their narratives - even when they verge on conspiracy theory - are objectively true and therefore (a) confirmation bias slips in and (b) a certain amount of carelessness with dealing with actual events, or even deliberate deception, is let go if it furthers the bigger truth.
So when someone reports that children identify as cats and are given litter boxes at schools it's promulgated by a lot of people who believe it's actually objectively true, and a good number who know it isn't but let it pass because it promotes the "bigger truth" of biological essentialism. I don’t think either thinks that there is no objective truth and one narrative is as true as another.
but those who were always banging on about 'hegemonic coercion' and bourgeois this, that or the other could be pretty totalitarian and coercive themselves.
I don't think it's particularly totalitarian to be expected to demonstrate the things they had taught you, unless all exams, tests and assessments are totalitarian now (I'm sure there's a Viz character along these lines).
.. a good number who know it isn't but let it pass because it promotes the "bigger truth" of biological essentialism. I don’t think either thinks that there is no objective truth and one narrative is as true as another.
Or equally who don't care if it is or isn't, but as you say believes it serves a wider purpose.
I have thought for a while that Trump is convinced of his own righthood. If he says it, then it must be correct. If somehow it is not correct yet then there are a team of people around him with all the levers to make it true.
I think Fox news just saw that there was a market for a particular spin on reality and produced an "entertainment" package that acted as if it was true.
Which is a particularly grubby thing to do. They know it is lies but they say it anyway.
I cannot directly think of a character in literature that illustrates this point clearly, but it is a little bit like Emma imagining a whole lot of things being true and then acting as if it was true and then expecting other people to act like it was true. Fox news is a bit like some other character who feeds gossip to Emma knowing that she thinks the world is some way that is clearly is not because there is some benefit to them of her repeating and believing the untruths.
No he isn't. He's every nasty, petty-minded, reductive, envious, resentful instinct in the Anglosphere, rolled into one person.
Yes, there are similar people elsewhere, but it is notable that his analogues have been around longest and most effectively in other countries that speak English. There seems to be something very conducive to his flavour of bullshit in our culture.
but those who were always banging on about 'hegemonic coercion' and bourgeois this, that or the other could be pretty totalitarian and coercive themselves.
I don't think it's particularly totalitarian to be expected to demonstrate the things they had taught you, unless all exams, tests and assessments are totalitarian now (I'm sure there's a Viz character along these lines).
It wasn't just that. There's a difference between being expected to demonstrate things you've been taught and being rude and nasty to people who don't share your convictions. They did that a lot.
The irony was that I reacted against their form of academic totalitarianism and ended up in a pretty totalitarian evangelical charismatic one.
Anyhow... all water under the bridge.
Interestingly perhaps, one of the 'enquirers' at church did a music degree and reacted against what he saw as 'cultural Marxism' there. I've had a few interesting discussions with him and he seems puzzled that I'm not as bothered by those things as he is. That said, I do have reservations about some of that stuff but not to the extent that I want to lurch as far in the opposite direction as this lad seems to be doing.
Friends who studied music at university had a lecturer who was an Anarchist and convinced that lectures, exams and tests were totalitarian.
So much so he'd walk out half way through a lecture saying he wasn't going to be party to an oppressive, bourgeois academic regime.
I bet he didn't say that when his pay-cheque arrived each month.
Going back to textual analysis and critical theory, I certainly have a high view of scripture and a fairly conservative approach to how we interpret and understand it and no longer see a 'threat' in critical analysis. That said, like others on this thread I do believe in absolute truth - Christ is the embodiment of that.
There's always a tension though - and I hope, a creative one.
Many of my co-religionists are just as fundamentalist and prone to 'magical thinking' as the charismatic evangelicals I took refuge amongst all those years ago.
I wouldn't want to 'deconstruct' all of that and think there's some mileage in the idea of a 'second naivety'.
Yes, and a willingness to deconstruct it, as part of a balanced intellectual and cultural diet, is vital to that. It would be reasonable to at least consider that anything one is not prepared to deconstruct is being treated as an idol.
Yes, I do think that conservative religion is idolatry designed to obscure the very mystery it purports to reveal.
Comments
I am a bit puzzled by your reference to old books and their value - like of course there are old books worth studying, but their age and what they teach aren't related. After all, Donne and Milton are both around the same age and teach quite different things. In 1558, John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, John Dee's Propaedeumata Aphoristica, and Thomas Watson's Holsome and Catholyke Doctryne concerninge the Seven Sacramentes of Chrystes Church were all published - their year of publication is about all they have in common, along with two being written by men named John.
I'm a bit confused by this. Surely the problem with awful views is that they make you do awful things? I wouldn't say that someone disagreeing with me on literary criticism has an "awful" view, it's just different. I don't understand how Post-structuralism as a view could be an actual enemy of yours, as opposed to something that would actually harm you.
Like, I hate Nazis because of their Nazi views. Those views are bad because they make them do terrible things, because our beliefs affect what we do. Believing that literary meaning is all constructed by the reader is not going to beat anyone up or burn a building down.
There are harms and harms of course. Not all harms are awful - some are first world problems.
One thought: it's been commented that there's much less literary criticism aimed at non-academic readers now than there was fifty years ago. There's less general awareness of books that are written before the current publishing cycle. Furthermore, the books that are published tend to be aimed at what will be teachable in academic settings: not so much of a problem for novelists but I think it may influence the selection of poems in poetry collections (individual or anthology). I think that's a minor harm - if only because it means that for people interested in older books written to an older aesthetic standard there isn't the general demand that leads to them being published.
Amen to that!
Nobody is harmed by someone saying that authorial intent with regards to fiction is only one meaning out of many.
What I said was Fox News justified itself by saying all truth is subjective and biased.
On which basis, my fish is a dinosaur.
I didn't mean to suggest that you personally were opposed to a pluralistic (if that's an appropriate term) textual viewpoint, that wasn't what I meant. My last sentence was referring to the idea of the view being harmful, not suggesting that this was your viewpoint.
Yes, which is also a very different situation wrt journalism as opposed to, say, poetry.
Degrees work differently in the UK and students in secondary/high school specialise very early - by 17/18 you're usually only studying 3 subjects at most,
In Scotland, school pupils don't specialise as early as they do in England. They sit Higher exams in five (or occasionally six) subjects at 17, and then three Advanced Highers at 18.
One of the lecturers cut up rough about that and got the work assessed independently and lo and behold, those sources gave it higher grades.
I don't have an issue with sociological or philosophical or other approaches to the critical study of literature, music or the visual arts- and no position is 'neutral'. I found I could use the 'tools' as it were and could meet them half-way, but it was the aggressively almost fundamentalist approach that I struggled with.
Unless you were spouting Foucault and Derrida you were seen as some kind of reactionary fascist.
This wasn't in the English department. They were aware of these things of course but hadn't quite caught up with it yet.
I didn't do a 'straight' English degree but double-honours.
Both/and. 😉
Trouble was that meant you fell between two departments and between stools.
I was too structuralist for one and not enough of one for another. Looking back, it didn't really do me any harm as I learned to tailor things and cut my cloth according to each.
I did end up dazed and confused at the end of it all though and wondered what the heck I was going to do next. I still don't know what I'm going to do when I grow up.
I've resisted my standard semiotic joke so far.
'Derrida? He's got Foucault to do with it.'
Sorry.
There is a continuum I think between an overly close attention to the text or artifact without considering cultural or ideological contexts on the one hand and, say, looking at the socio-economic and cultural factors at play within the Paris Salon without looking at the paintings themselves.
Or looking at the social context of The Globe without reading or watching a Shakespeare play.
We need both.
Yeah, but part of the aim of every degree programme will be to impart a set of skills and then assess whether those skills have been acquired. So if you join a degree programme led by a department with those inclinations, that is only to be expected that you will be taught and expected to demonstrate those particular skills.
My first degree was somewhat more technical, but even then there was an element of some of the teaching being flavoured by the research interests of the various professors in the department who ran it.
There are certainly false notions in old books as well, of course, though often even then the common ground that they hold with better ones is still something we’re not getting now, and may help us see truths which are not common in our current marketplace.
C.S. Lewis talked about some of these concepts in The Great Divide (not Divorce, that’s a different work).
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/lewis-great-divide
But it’s not merely about literary meaning in fictional works, but meaning in itself, in general, across everything. Even the distinction between real and unreal, truth and falsehood, sanity and insanity, good and evil.
And that’s one of the things I do find absolutely awesome about the present day, despite the awful things we’re dealing with currently.
“ Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/James 2:19
But truth itself still matters, and goodness itself still matters, and to say they don’t exist is in my view horrifically false and bad. If someone really believed that and acted that way—rather than, despite the intellectual belief, acting better than that view would lead them (like the guy in the foxhole)—then they could indeed do very horrible things.
https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/32104-breakfast-theory-a-morning-methodology/
Post-structuralism doesn't really see a difference in principle. Both are texts. Post-structuralism started as a methodology working on philosophical, scientific, and economic texts.
I think the original French post-structuralists, Derrida and Foucault, were saying something a bit harder to grasp than all truth is subjective (which would presuppose a contrast of objective truth) but neither was inclined to go out of their way to make their meaning clearer, and I think many of their Anglophone followers went with the easy interpretation.
I don't think it has anything to do with any philosophy. It's just an increased societal movement towards propaganda, associated with increased polarisation and confirmation bias.
Due to?
Sure. The two students I'm thinking of were probably a bit naive but their work passed muster elsewhere.
It wasn't that the standard of their work was poor, they just hadn't adopted the stance expected of them.
@Lamb Chopped has given us an account of how she felt she had to 'fake it' for her academic work to pass muster with a particular professor.
The point I'm making is that if I'd taken a structuralist approach in work submitted in the department where that wasn't expected I wouldn't have lost marks for doing so. They'd probably hsve applauded it even though it wasn't quite their bag.
However, if I'd not taken that approach in the other one I'd have been marked down.
Don't misunderstand me. I was quite comfortable using whichever critical theories were de-rigeur in whichever context but those who were always banging on about 'hegemonic coercion' and bourgeois this, that or the other could be pretty totalitarian and coercive themselves.
Thanks for the correction! I didn't realise that there were Highers and then Advanced Highers.
As I say, it's a general societal movement which primarily asks "how can we best spin this?" - not because of a philosophical question over the nature of truth but through being basically willing to lie or at heavily colour presentation to achieve a desired effect.
Creationists have been doing it for years and I'm pretty sure they don't believe all truth is subjective.
I hear what you say about creationists but I am not totally convinced by them as a counter-example. Might one not argue - many creationists operate on the de facto basis that their interpretation of reality through the lens of a literal reading of Scripture is primary, and so have stopped seeking objective truth as a corrective?
So when someone reports that children identify as cats and are given litter boxes at schools it's promulgated by a lot of people who believe it's actually objectively true, and a good number who know it isn't but let it pass because it promotes the "bigger truth" of biological essentialism. I don’t think either thinks that there is no objective truth and one narrative is as true as another.
I don't think it's particularly totalitarian to be expected to demonstrate the things they had taught you, unless all exams, tests and assessments are totalitarian now (I'm sure there's a Viz character along these lines).
Or equally who don't care if it is or isn't, but as you say believes it serves a wider purpose.
I think Fox news just saw that there was a market for a particular spin on reality and produced an "entertainment" package that acted as if it was true.
Which is a particularly grubby thing to do. They know it is lies but they say it anyway.
I cannot directly think of a character in literature that illustrates this point clearly, but it is a little bit like Emma imagining a whole lot of things being true and then acting as if it was true and then expecting other people to act like it was true. Fox news is a bit like some other character who feeds gossip to Emma knowing that she thinks the world is some way that is clearly is not because there is some benefit to them of her repeating and believing the untruths.
No he isn't. He's every nasty, petty-minded, reductive, envious, resentful instinct in the Anglosphere, rolled into one person.
Yes, there are similar people elsewhere, but it is notable that his analogues have been around longest and most effectively in other countries that speak English. There seems to be something very conducive to his flavour of bullshit in our culture.
It wasn't just that. There's a difference between being expected to demonstrate things you've been taught and being rude and nasty to people who don't share your convictions. They did that a lot.
The irony was that I reacted against their form of academic totalitarianism and ended up in a pretty totalitarian evangelical charismatic one.
Anyhow... all water under the bridge.
Interestingly perhaps, one of the 'enquirers' at church did a music degree and reacted against what he saw as 'cultural Marxism' there. I've had a few interesting discussions with him and he seems puzzled that I'm not as bothered by those things as he is. That said, I do have reservations about some of that stuff but not to the extent that I want to lurch as far in the opposite direction as this lad seems to be doing.
Friends who studied music at university had a lecturer who was an Anarchist and convinced that lectures, exams and tests were totalitarian.
So much so he'd walk out half way through a lecture saying he wasn't going to be party to an oppressive, bourgeois academic regime.
I bet he didn't say that when his pay-cheque arrived each month.
Going back to textual analysis and critical theory, I certainly have a high view of scripture and a fairly conservative approach to how we interpret and understand it and no longer see a 'threat' in critical analysis. That said, like others on this thread I do believe in absolute truth - Christ is the embodiment of that.
There's always a tension though - and I hope, a creative one.
Many of my co-religionists are just as fundamentalist and prone to 'magical thinking' as the charismatic evangelicals I took refuge amongst all those years ago.
I wouldn't want to 'deconstruct' all of that and think there's some mileage in the idea of a 'second naivety'.
Somehow we have to work with all this stuff.
Yes, I do think that conservative religion is idolatry designed to obscure the very mystery it purports to reveal.