To cult studs, I'm a reactionary,
but I don't care. Read the article in The Common Review and decide for yourselves.
I think that cultural studies of the American brand is profoundly anti-intellectual and a-historical while promoting at the same time a new brand of academic/professional virtue "I don't criticize what's popular, unlike Theodor Adorno" seems to have been their mantra. In this piece, I compare Andrew Ross's take on the New Age and Theodor Adorno's critique of superstition, modernity and Enlightenment.
I think that cultural studies of the American brand is profoundly anti-intellectual and a-historical while promoting at the same time a new brand of academic/professional virtue "I don't criticize what's popular, unlike Theodor Adorno" seems to have been their mantra. In this piece, I compare Andrew Ross's take on the New Age and Theodor Adorno's critique of superstition, modernity and Enlightenment.
3 Comments:
A fantastic read and, as a "rhetorician," I'm persuaded by your argument re the quick turn from Enlightenment values. I'm not so sure, though, about this "anti-intellectualism" label you stick to Fiske, Grossberg, and Ross. You use it a lot. What do you mean by "anti-intellectualism?" I only ask because my own critical remarks about the jargon of cult studs has been met with a similar label.
Bolibuckness,
I haven't read your criticism of Fiske and company, but I wouldn't attack them for their use of jargon. Jargon can be a legitimate specialized language that requires initiation. I would criticize them for what Adorno called "the jargon of authenticity" and the cult studs attempt to make this a professional language not based upon expertise, but rather on a crypto-piety with regard to whatever sacred cows some one thinks up -- like "ordinary people" or "alterity" or whatever. You get the idea.
Anti-intellectualism is first and forremost a historical concept for me -- read Richard Hofstadter on anti-intellectualism and you'll see that it has a rich tradition in the US, tied at first to the legitimate suspicions of Southern and Western populists that the East coast economic monopoly was being underwritten by a cultural one. Hofstadter actually traces it as a movement within American educational policy against obscurantism for a kind of radical pragmatist. Home economics instead of Shakespeare or something of that sort that triumphed he says in the post War education policy. Specialization even in the humanities was helped by the fears triggered by Sputnik and the Cold War battle for hearts and minds.
But as time passed, this suspicion of specialized knowledge turned reactionary -- and justified an American philistinism that was fanned into fanaticism by Father Coughlin and more recent Right-wing personalities.
So while I nourish a populist sense of outrage at Bullshit -- witness body studies, intellectual life and work that is not immediately transparent or applicable as such is something that a radical democracy should defend.
I've not criticized Fiske per se, but have been critical of the way the critical jargon is used to hurt people and in general be mean in grad school (not so much the jargon of authenticity as much as the jargon of sadistic glee). The way SOME students behaved in CSDS classes (and especially one Adorno-fan boy) was inexcusable. I can recall asking someone to clarify the term "jouissance" in class one day, and I was beaten up for not speaking French for having digested Lacan and Barthes (I was only 25 years old an an MA student to boot).
Your discussion of a historical anti-intellectualism is very helpful, and I look forward to seeking out Hofstadter. I'm glad to see there is grounded, historical argument to the use of this label. Sometimes I do think "anti-intellectual" gets slung around a bit too much to designate "that academic perspective which I do not like." It's very clear figures like Rick Santorum are deserving of the label . . . less so Larry Grossberg (and I'm on the fence with Fiske).
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