The Trouble with Theory

The educational costs of postmodernism

Gavin Kitching

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000247213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Post-structuralisme en philosophie

Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Despite this Professor Gavin Kitching claims that, 'At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, deeply confused and misbegotten philosophy. As a result even the very best students who fall under its sway produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth and reality.'This is not another conservative attack on postmodernism. Rather, it is a carefully considered analysis from a dedicated university teacher who is convinced that we have gone terribly astray. He shows that postmodern theory is at best irrelevant to, and at worst undermining of, persuasive political arguments, and reveals the basic philosophical confusion at its heart which makes this so. Essential reading for any student writing a thesis in the humanities and the social sciences, and for their teachers.'It is the strongest and best attack on the ravages of routine post-modernism that I have ever read. I applaud the way he lists the good causes that students warmly espouse, and then suggests a simpler way to support them without the self-destructive it's all just language that is implicit in their work.' - Professor Sir Bernard Crick, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London'Gavin Kitching rattles the cages. Will the inmates hear this? They should, if only for the reason that there is virtue in learning to argue against yourself. This is a serious book.' - Professor Peter Beilharz, Sociology, La Trobe University'Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how and why postmodernism has had such disastrous pedagogical consequences.' - Professor David G. Stern, Philosophy, University of Iowa

PART I
tied in knots: theory and confusion

1.
‘Doing theory’, or creating a landscape

Since the subject of this book is a certain kind of poststructuralist or postmodernist political theory and its problems and weaknesses, we must first ask two very important questions. First, What is such theory?/How do we know it or recognise it? And, second (and closely related), How do students know when they are doing it/thinking it/writing it?

The answer turns out to be the same in both cases. This kind of theory is both a set of ideas or propositions and a way or mode of expressing those ideas. In later chapters I will examine the first aspect—the most hallowed nostrums or propositions asserted and defended by such theory—and find most of them unoriginal when true, and clearly false when original. In this chapter I wish to focus on the second aspect—the ‘theoretical’ way, or mode, of expressing ideas. For if students are required to write an opening ‘theoretical’ chapter or chapters to their thesis and/or to draft theoretical conclusions, they must know how to do this, which means, among other things, that they must know how such chapters should sound, what they should look like on the page. Interestingly, they will never be told explicitly by their supervisors how to produce this sound and appearance. Rather they will simply pick it up from reading theoretical books and articles deemed (by their supervisor or themselves) to be related to their thesis. In short then, the ability to do this kind of theory is picked up largely subliminally and en passant as an effect of a certain reading practice. But what is it exactly, in a linguistic sense, that students ‘pick up’ through this practice?

The quotations in Appendix 1 provide some answers to this question.

The first and most obvious observation to make on the basis of these quotations, is that:

• (1) In learning to do theory students learn to deploy a range of metaphors.

The single-word metaphors most commonly found in the fourteen passages quoted in Appendix 1 include: matrix, framework, space, flows, domain, machine, system, apparatus(es), bodies, transmit (and retransmit), network, centres (and central), subject, subjectivity, sites, location, bases, forces, fields, foundation and fragmentation. Some of the most notable metaphorical phrases include: process of transformation, create space, transposes movement, movements of desire, waves of ordering, effects of power, mechanism of power, discourse of power, social body, political technology, discourse of identity, sentiments of belonging, model of power, produces power, reinforces power, resistance to power, reverse discourses, counter discourses, local and specific sites, location of power, locate and establish bases, variable forces and discursive fields.

When collected and laid out in this way it becomes clear, I think, that these are metaphors of a quite distinct sort. What springs most immediately to mind is how rigidly impersonal they all are. Thus, the effect of deploying these metaphors in clusters is to conjure up an unpeopled world of things—often a mechanical or mechanistic world; frequently a world of spatial or geographical things (sites, locations, bases). So on the one hand we have a landscape, on the other a kind of technology park or industrial scape. But there are no clearly discernible people moving about the landscape or operating the technology. Of course, there is movement in this world, but it too is mechanically or inanimately produced by fields, forces and, above all, power.

The only even vaguely humanistic references in all these words and phrases are subject and subjectivity, along with the curiously clashing phrase sentiments of belonging. But even here the evocation of humanity is firmly impersonal. The theorist observes (from somewhere ‘outside’) masses of subjects possessed of subjectivity who experience, among other things, sentiments of belonging. But who precisely these subjects are we do not know—they certainly do not include the theorist, about whose subjectivity we are told nothing, and whose sentiments (whether of belonging, or anything else) are never revealed.

There is more to it than this, because we do not merely learn nothing of the theorist as a subject from these metaphors. Rather,

• (2) One of the main functions or effects of these metaphors is to remove the theorist as writer or author from the discourse—to make the theorist as writer disappear.

It will be readily apparent that in all the quotations in Appendix 1, in fact in virtually all the quotations in all the appendices, first-person pronouns and forms of the verb are entirely absent. In short, there are no ‘I think’s, ‘I feel’s, ‘it seems to me’s etc., let alone any openly introspective or reflexive passages. This form of theoretical prose is, in short, rigidly objectivist, both in the sense that it conjures up a world of objects affected or moved only by mechanical or inanimate forces, but also in the sense that the prose itself appears to have no subject or creator. It itself is an object produced by some kind of ‘automatic’ or ‘mechanical’ process (precisely the process of ‘theorising’). We shall investigate the deep significance of this latter point in Chapter 6.

This second prosaic characteristic of theory—its rigid objectivity and impersonality—is no accident. On the contrary, as we shall discover in Chapter 9, nearly every major exponent of poststructuralist and postmodernist theory was and is deeply hostile to what Althusser calls ‘the problematic of the subject’. Indeed one of the central theoretical postulates of postmodernism is that ‘subjects’ and ‘subjectivities’ are ‘socially constructed’ or ‘constructed in discourse’. I will discuss this contention as it is understood by the student authors in Chapter 4. For the moment I wish only to note that, in following this hostility to any ‘essential’ (as it is put) subjectivity consistently through into its very form of prose,

• (3) postmodernist theory leaves the epistemological status of the metaphors employed in it radically unclear.

That is, are we to understand words such as matrix, framework, system, flows, forces or structure, or phrases such as transposes movement, movements of desire or variable forces and discursive fields as metaphors, or are we to take them as names of real objects and forces? If we take them as metaphors then we would take a proposition such as ‘Prisons and punishment structures have become a spectacle and performance of power for the government’ (1.6) as a way of talking/writing about what prisons and punishment structures do—a way that could (presumably) be replaced by another way of talking/writing employing (presumably) different metaphors without losing descriptive accuracy or analytical acuity. If, however, we take spectacle and performance of power to be names of real objects and processes, then (presumably) these are not ‘mere’ metaphors, readily replaceable by functional synonyms, but rather the objectively correct characterisations of prisons and punishment structures revealed by ‘theory’ (or some such). However,

• (4) in removing or occluding any authorial subject, ‘theoretical’ prose tends to bias or weight the epistemological choice above strongly in favour of the second ‘realist’ alternative.

To ask ‘Why are we/you deploying these metaphors?’ or ‘Why don’t we/you deploy these alternative metaphors or descriptive techniques?’ I must postulate a ‘we’ or ‘you’ to whom these questions are addressed and who faces, or has, this choice. But if there is no authorial subject present then the reader (and the writer?) is, at the very least, strongly encouraged to suppose that what theorists are doing is ‘characterising’ or ‘identifying’ real (but hidden?) objects and forces ‘out there’ in society, and not just deploying metaphors. In fact, removal or occlusion of the author tends to leave both reader and writer, by default as much as by anything else, with a conception of theorising in which theory becomes a ‘reflection’ or ‘picture’ of the real. To put all that more simply, if nobody is writing this theory, then reality must be writing it (albeit ‘through’ or ‘by means of’ the theorist).

One further point: in English, indeed in all Indo-European languages, ‘proper’ sentence structure requires every sentence to have a subject (doer, mover, thinker, actor) and a predicate (the done to, the moved, the thought about, the acted upon).¹ As theoretical prose systematically excludes personal subjects, this means that

• (5) it becomes functionally or grammatically necessary to put abstractions in subject positions in many or most theoretical sentences.

Thus, we see: ‘constructivist theory can account for’ (1.1); ‘the theoretical framework of constructivism has made provisions for’ (1.1); ‘this theory fails to see the important role that’ (1.2); ‘I do not contend that Chinese culture cannot think causally, nor that Australia cannot think in terms of “tendency”’ (1.3); ‘this framework presumes’ (1.4); ‘International relations theory functions to create …’ (1.6); ‘knowledge and power relationships constitute …’ (1.6); ‘Society not only becomes involved in …’ (1.8); ‘security deploys a discourse of …’ (1.9); and ‘power relations function in the construction of truth’ (1.10).

Grammatically, there is nothing particularly wrong with this practice. All writers of English (and French, Spanish and German) give abstractions subjective powers sometimes. (Readers will find many examples in this book.) But when the technique is deployed as frequently and unremittingly as it is in this kind of theoretical discourse then the issue of whether people use language or language uses (and indeed ‘constitutes’ or ‘constructs’) people tends to be prosaically foreclosed—foreclosed by its very prose form—in favour of the latter. The question of whether the social or indeed linguistic ‘construction’ of identities is philosophically coherent will be discussed at length in Chapter 8. Here I simply want to note that when students learn to read and write this kind of theoretical prose, they also learn to deploy a prose that has a quite specific—and problematic—philosophical conception built in to it. They think they are just learning to ‘do theory’, but in fact they are simultaneously learning to reproduce a philosophical conception of the world that is partially (only partially) ‘validated’ in that prose form itself. Do abstract social forces rule people? Certainly they do in the prose world of ‘theory’!

2.
‘Relationships’, or arranging objects in the landscape

One of the logically inevitable concomitants of a metaphorical conception of theory as a landscape or space filled with a variety of abstract objects is that putting theory to work empirically will consist in large part of describing or characterising the relationships that exist between and among these objects. English in particular is a language with an immense relationship vocabulary, so it is possible to describe such relationships in very tight, constraining or determining ways, or in very loose, vague or uncertain ways. In other words, it is possible to fill this space or landscape with causal or mechanical relationships, in which some objects are pushed and pulled about haplessly by other objects that determine, structure or (even) cause them. But it is also possible to fill the space with a kind of metaphorical mist or smoke in which objects (perhaps, indeed often, the same objects) influence, modify, enable, form, render, limit, have a part to play in or make a difference to other objects. Thus when the conceptual mist lifts things have definitely changed, even if one is not quite sure how or why. Or, to put that more directly, when deployed in the conceptual space of ‘theory’, the immense richness and variety of English relationship vocabulary can allow for significant degrees of ambiguity, equivocation or (even) self-contradiction. In particular it can allow highly deterministic formulations to be advanced, reiterated, partially withdrawn and qualified, and then reiterated again, often within a single page or even paragraph. In the quotations in Appendix 2 we can see this happening.

POLS/IR 17 in particular (2.3–2.12) poses the issue very clearly. What, precisely, is its author saying about language or discourse? Is s/he saying that language or discourse causes or determines (in and of itself, as it were) what its users will think, feel and do in the world, or is s/he saying that it is, say, an important influence on these things, but not a totally exclusive or determining one? The web of theoretical metaphors s/he has woven makes it very difficult for a reader to decide. More importantly, it seems to make it very difficult for the author to decide. Indeed there are paragraphs, even single sentences, containing formulations that ‘point both ways’, as it were.

Thus, his/her very first proposition about ‘discourse’ says ‘The power of discourse—the way it can determine (alter, constrain, enable) the way an issue is conceived’ (2.3/6.2). But ‘alter’, ‘constrain’ and ‘enable’ are certainly not synonyms for determine. Constrain comes nearest (at least, if we give determine its stricter mathematical meaning), but the verbs ‘alter’ and ‘enable’ suggest a very different relationship.

Having equivocated in his/her very first attempt to define discourse, the author carries that equivocation through his/her entire analysis. The paragraph beginning (trenchantly), ‘In effect discourse produces the world …’ (2.6) provides a particularly rich example of the way in which highly deterministic propositions are followed rapidly by diluting or qualifying formulations simply by changing the ‘relationship-specifying’ verbs. Thus the author’s characterisations of the ‘relationship’ between discourse and its effects or consequences for human thought and action are (in order): produces, renders, shapes and changes, determines, inevitably leads, makes possible, excludes, produces (again), shape (again), influence, have enormous influence and legitimise.

The subsequent quotations from the same text confirm that this explanatory equivocation continues through the empirical sections of the thesis (which are concerned with the Australian government’s policies towards asylum seekers and their official justification through the rhetoric of security). At times the author writes as ...