[Oriane Stender]

Yay, we have achieved Sashimi. The Vulcan Mind Meld. Go forth and enjoy your vacation.

O

[Mark Allinson]

Well, we have been through dozens of such threads over the years, and it does get boring to hear the same old arguments (mine, and others') over and over.

This thread was more about alerting members to a new publication on the issue. And since I haven't yet read the book, I can't argue for it.

But I do support the principle, and I am relieved to know of other intelligent minds who feel something of the same "rage" (see Tallis, above) at the present situation.

For me, personally, it all comes down to this: I was in my mid-30s when I returned to university study, when I finally discovered my true vocation, as a teacher of literature. I loved it.

I taught for six years at Monash university before the funding cuts and the amalgamations of institutions and the new wave of Marxist-Pomo culture warriors put an end to my brief career. Finding a tertiary teaching position with my qualifications (a doctorate on Donne) was quite impossible (then, as now), so I started my own literary studies school for fee-paying adults. But I always missed teaching younger, inquiring minds.

A few years back I tried to teach in a Pomo-Marxist-feminist course in a local campus of university here, and it nearly fused by brain-box. The mindless mantra-chanting and sloganizing would make the Chinese leadership look like amateurs. And the degree of intellectual feebleness and dishonesty in the course was simply astounding. I would gladly prefer death by starvation to teaching in that department again.

But, as I said recently, I am at present teaching in a media studies unit (television studies) which is intellectually challenging (yes, the televisual has it's own fascinating aesthetic), and without a trace of the tub-thumping, symbol-clashing, mindless mantra-chanting of the Pomo-Marxist stuff.

So who knows, maybe there is a future for education after all, beyond the rigid, intolerant dogmas of the new religion of "Social Constructionism".




[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 03, 2008).]

[Stuart Farley]

Strange - I always thought that Postmodernism was, in part, a rejection of Marxism, along with other dogmas and doctrines.

Isn't a 'pomo-marxist,' therefore, an oxymoron? Unless of course one is a post-Marxist... (Oh dear, that's bound to ruffle a few feathers!)


Stuart

[This message has been edited by Stuart Farley (edited August 03, 2008).]

[Mark Allinson]

Stuart, it sure is a weird witch's brew of theory out there at present - I can't get a grip on it either.

It seems as if contemporary "social theorists" in the literature departments, are able to pick and choose from the range of ideological weaponry they have in their arsenal. I don't think many have actually thought their positions through - but it doesn't matter, so long as you are trashing the "patriarchy" and all its works.

As I quoted above, Pomo is "often regarded, with some justification, as a philosophical delivery system for a left-wing agenda." So there is a coalition of anti-Patriarchal forces.

Some people believe all this nonsense came and went in 70s and 80s - I wish!

It has become entrenched now as a self-perpetuating culture - a de facto religious movement with its devout leaders, rigid dogmas and heretics, and its sometimes puzzled but lock-step followers, mechanically chanting the mantras but frightened of speaking up for fear of losing their jobs.

But take the term "patriarchy" alone - what possible sense does this word have in a world where matriarchy has NEVER been seen in any culture in the history of the planet. It is a meaningless term, invented by abstract, disembodied idealists who simply hate human reality.