It's too easy to be antifascist on the molar level, and not even see the fascist inside you– Deleuze & Guattari, 1000 plateaux
The main danger to academic speech these days is of course neo-liberalism in the universities, and the concomitant demand that academics turn a profit, or, by default, shut up. With characteristic neo-liberal hypocrisy, this isn't about the 'market' so much as the state, since it is the state that determines what educations are necessary: it is the one that stipulates all the high-earning qualifications at my university, either via the migration regime or through professional licensing (law, medicine).
Another looming danger is full-scale direct political interference in academic discourse. In Australia, this has so far meant some ministerial meddling in the allocation of grants, and of course some implications of speech-restrictive sedition legislation. A major danger, but one we can hopefully head off. While they crush us through the 'market'. Indeed, the only good thing about the privatization of the university sector is that it tends to remove universities from direct political interference, although in a sense it is a move by the state to crush them far more effectively than would have been possible in a blatant manouevre.
Another danger, superficially a polar opposite, is political correctness, with which I am busy having another adventure. When I say that political correctness is dangerous, it's not that I think that the ideas that are considered politically correct are themselves dangerous. It's rather the existence of a mode of argumentation that is in itself perfectly apt to be adopted by any political viewpoint, but that happens to be currently wielded by the left.
The left in the humanities enjoy nothing more than a local hegemony, if that. In society as a whole they are at a distinct disadvantage. But one should reflect on whether political correctness strengthens their position, or rather is, on the contrary, a reflection of an insecure position of extreme weakness.
It seems to me that it is, of course, the latter. This is exacerbated, or perhaps even caused outright, by the right-wing discourse about political correctness. The right use the phrase 'politically correct' as a term of abuse, and throw at, naturally, at whatever they disagree with. Case in point: Political Correctness Watch, a blog in which anything and everything that the rightist, Australian, retired sociologist author sees fit to label as such (the guy maintains a raft of blogs of similar dubiousness—particularly lame is his one where he takes quotations from Marx out of context to prove Marx is a racist etc).
On the basis of my recent run-in with political correctness, I'm particularly disturbed to find that, because I'm considered politically incorrect, I am denied any right of speech. In the particular instance in hand, my speech had initially actually invoked the notion of political correctness, which does mitigate things somewhat, although it seems to me that my opening comment was more or less completely misunderstood by my interlocutor, containing as it did a number of tongue-in-cheek elements. It then becomes somewhat Kafkaesque as it's asserted that I have no right to know on what basis judgments of political correctness are made, or rather nothing of the kind is asserted and I'm shouting into empty space, because at this point I can be ignored because, of course, I am already under suspicion of political incorrectness.
Now, I expect to get hit back for writing this post on the basis of what I take to be the overarching defensive principle of political correctness, which is to assert that calling political correctness into question de re is in itself politically incorrect, i.e. means that the one making these noises can be thoroughly ignored, has no right of explanation etc. This is what I encountered with my first online adventure with political correctness where I said something politically incorrect, was slapped down, and then made the mistake of complaining about political correctness.
Now, I'm all for unjustified aprioris – where would we be without them, right? Living in caves, eating our own hair lice, that's where. I just think they should be made explicit. Political correctness is using what is really a very old trick of concealing basic tenets as unquestionable. I'm not saying I'm opposed to these tenets by any means—in fact, it seems to me that I agree with most of them and to a much greater degree than most people. But right now they're being jealously guarded, it seems to me, as the hidden secret that gives power, albeit a rather pathetic power over an emaciated domain.
Of course, I ought to entertain the alternative possibility, that I'm just really narked at having been caught pissing in the discursive sink and am out to rescue myself by sublimating my shame into the foregoing cirumlocutions. However, it seems to me that in fact the most politically correct disciplines, by which I mean the disciplines in which fashionable prejudice is the least justified, are precisely those which are weathering neo-liberalism the best, which hints at a productive symbiosis between, say, cultural studies and neoliberalism. Barring direct state censorship, political correctness is a great tool because it allows for the easy production of oodles of discourse and therefore the appearance of 'productivity'. On the other hand, I don't like explaining myself either.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
My new adventures with political correctness
actually, I should call this "Big mouth strikes yet a-fucking-gain", but that would require taking some personal blame instead of putting it on broad social phenomena . . .