apologies for what you're about to read. it's a rant inspired from my experience of listening to 5 old white men talk about knowledge and intellectualism today.
it's 5 men. 2 have just published books. all are cynical about post-structuralism and calling for a state of emergency in academia - "what are we teaching these kids? the kids are 'bluffing'! they don't need to be drawing on all that theory, particularly if they don't understand it properly. give them a copy of Wittgenstein and a slap on the wrists!"
don't get me wrong - i like Wittgenstein. i'd encourage people to read him too. but i wanted to challenge so much of what was said. as usual, i didn't. the words i wanted to say could not cohere in my mouth. perhaps i felt threatened as much as these men did.
apparently post-structuralism doesn't apply to scholars 'here'. it's need and usefulness is obvious in france where structuralism was the order of the day, but not for us. we can never understand it in the way the french can. maybe. but should we then abandon what might contain some useful practices and ways of knowing?
apparently if you want to use a theorist you have to know what 'he' is responding to, where he's situated, the context of his writing. maybe. but maybe not. maybe the author is dead!? but i wouldn't have dared to utter that.
apparently there's no room for contradiction in academic pursuit. to that i just wanted to raise my hand and shout "i believe in contradiction". it was a provocation, surely, but nobody else seemed unsettled. the man who said it had already shot down Latour, Woolgar, and all the other sociologists i read.
i wanted to say that social practices - everything we do - is full of contradiction. that that's the process of living. as John Law has pointed out, life is mess and social research is part of this. it is not beyond the social (dis)order. to deny this is to raise the social scientist above the everyday person, as the enlightened voice who can speak for others; as god. hello neo-colonialism. but we're all there, feet on the ground, walking through the mess that we study (even if we don't officially study). and these spaces, these experiences, bristle with contradiction.
these men seemed to think they have a crucial role in protecting the edifice that is the university, or rather, its knowledge foundations. we need to know, explain and understand everything. we need to no longer 'obfuscate' (word of the day) with theory. we need simplicity. there's a Wittgensteinian thread here, which I like, but the use of his theory seems pretty fucked up. as i understand it, Wittgenstein was of the everyday, and looked to 'ordinary language' - or the language of the day - because this gets us closer to the experiences we speak of. this might be seen as simplification, but i doubt it. because his work is complex, and this premise does not deny the shifting roles and use of language - 'the language games' that we're all engaged in. but these 5 men seemed to suggest that we should stop obsessing about language. upon the linguistic turn (as much as i hate that expression) they look away, towards their own certainties about how things really are and why it matters to say so. their foundations are being eroded and they're clearly threatened. old men on comfortable salaries with books published (which are partly motivated by the threat of being made intellectually redundant). which must suck, i'm sure. and it must be hard to be wedged so tightly by your beliefs in pure knowledge that you find yourself being challenged from all levels, including the 'bluffing' essays of students.
which is another point i wanted to interject on. perhaps we read different Wittgenstiens, but isn't bluffing part of our language games? isn't this a tactic (as per Certeau, inspired by Wittgenstein's language games) that we all engage in, whether undergrad students appealing to what the tutor wants, a postgrad student pre-empting the desires of a marker, or the academic going for an ARC grant? we're all bluffing! this is how we practice competence (as per Lyotard - another name I dare not mention). we are all 'poaching' (Certeau) - be it from theory, from data, or the people, things, and ideas around us that can elevate us, or better position us, or just get us laid - whatever it is we want. we are at play. how can we not laugh at the stupid things we do in these games? surely if you believe that this is significant and crucial (and far from game-playing), and a question of value, then maybe you deserve to fall with your sandstone castle.
or maybe it's okay to believe that something is significant and crucial. obviously some things are. like efforts to stop war, famine, suffering. values have a significant function in interrupting such events, as do institutions that can elevate us in making demands for change. but still, pure knowledge is not going to work on its own, only as one of many tactics, within language games, to get what is wanted.
oh man, how did i get here? oh that's right. famine was mentioned too, as a valuable concern, by the guy who dissed Latour and contradiction. and i guess i'm suggesting that because i believe in contradiction i'm not relegating myself to a relativist impasse where anything goes. my belief in contradiction has a political agenda. and that's a politics of practice which extends beyond (though also through) what i read and write (and my use of theory). more so, it relates to how i read and write. and somewhere in there is a need for not only contradiction, but obfuscation too.
in regard to obfuscating language, perhaps the task of coherence can be portioned to readers as well as writers. but that's another rant for later. until then, long live dead authors!
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