Author: Ophelia Benson

This is a deeply irritating article in the Washington Post. The guy who wrote it seems to think (as so many postmodernists and ‘theorists’ seem to think) that postmodernism thought of everything and that nobody thought of anything before postmodernism came along, or independently of postmodernism after it came along. But that is not the case.

Sitting in the shadow of the Capitol, on some of the most prestigious real estate in Washington, the new museum has emerged with ambitions far greater than simply putting a sunny face on the kind of anthropology represented by Mead, or becoming a Disney-style happy magnet for native peoples. It is a monument to Postmodernism — to a way of thinking that emphasizes multiple voices and playful forms of truth over the lazy acceptance of received wisdom, authority and scientific “certainty.”

Um. For one thing, ‘the kind of anthropology represented by Mead’ in fact has a lot in common with postmodernism; Mead is to a considerable extent a hero figure to postmodernists. For another thing, Mead’s research has been sharply criticised in recent years for sloppy research techniques, but not by postmodernists. For another, blindingly obvious thing, postmodernists are hardly the first or the only thinkers to question ‘lazy acceptance of received wisdom’ and authority. It is not very difficult to think of others who have done that sort of questioning. A few thousand, in fact. For one more other thing, scientific ‘certainty’ is a straw man. Scientists don’t (on the whole – yes there are no doubt exceptions) talk about certainty, they talk about evidence. It’s the people they’re talking to who have an ineradicable tendency to translate that into certainty, as I’ve mentioned here many times, with examples. (Seriously. It’s a journalism thing. Scientist will say ‘there is good evidence that’ or ‘there is no evidence that’ and Reporter will answer, ‘Okay so there’s proof that’ and Scientist will sigh [and probably weep, tear hair, kick the table, pretend to throttle self with the mike cord] and say ‘I didn’t say there’s proof, I said there’s evidence.’ And 99 times out of 100 [I’m estimating] the reporter will neglect to report that, because it makes the reporter look stupid, which she/he is.)

And that’s only the beginning. The article goes on in the same damn silly way.

When “The West as America” catalogue was published, Alex Nemerov contributed an article quoting Remington on the merits of using violence against unruly minorities…But when the National Gallery presented an exhibition of Remington’s paintings last year — a very popular exhibition — they did so mostly in the absurdly abstract yet ecstatic language of Art Appreciation. The exhibit was focused on the painter’s “nocturnes” — studies in light and composition and surface control. Remington, the cultural and historical actor, was gone, and his reputation was restored to a more convenient category: great artist. In the words of gallery director Earl A. Powell III, “Remington sought to capture the elusive silver tones of moonlight, the hot flame of firelight, and the charged interaction of both.” Getting free of this kind of glossy art-speak, and wresting control of native identity from the legacy of painters like Remington and the hauteur of scientists like Mead, has been a long road.

Sneer sneer sneer. Absurdly abstract yet ecstatic, convenient category, glossy art-speak, hauteur of scientists. All to back up the odd assumption that it is required to talk about an artist as a cultural and historical actor instead of talking about him as an artist. That’s not to say that the cultural actor aspect is not interesting and important, but it is to say that it seems reasonable for an art gallery to talk about art as art, for Chrissake. And then that business about the ‘hauteur of scientists like Mead’ – it’s such a giveaway, that. Oh those pesky scientists with their hauteur, ignoring all the wonderful daring playful revisionist postmodernists who are the first people ever to notice anything – how we hates ’em.

The Heye Center’s approach was a trial run for the current museum, an attempt to put Indian voices on at least an equal footing with “scientific” ones. It would, wrote scholar Tom Hill in a catalogue published at the time, be in the vanguard of a new reordering of museum priorities — a reordering that sounded like the first step in a broader, societal reformation. “Traditional native values can help guide museums as well,” he wrote. “No longer monuments to colonialism, these institutions may be led to a truly new world in which cultures have genuine equality and creators and creations can be seen whole.”

Note the scare-quotes on ‘scientific’ – because we all know there is no such thing as ‘scientific,’ right? Right. And cultures have genuine equality – well in what sense? In the sense that no culture should have all its artefacts casually scooped up and taken away, fine; but one can think of other senses that would not be so fine. It would depend on the cultures, for one thing. The Taliban have a culture. The Mafia have a culture. ‘Culture’ covers a lot of territory, and so does ‘equality’. But that’s kind of a revisionist thing to say, and revisionism is a monopoly of postmodernism, it seems, so maybe I should leave it to the experts.

Then there’s a hilarious paragraph in which the staff writer tells us to note the language of an article in the Baltimore Sun. He’s a fine one to talk! He uses quite a lot of revealing language himself. (Yes I know – even now there is someone somewhere even nerdier than I am, pointing out all the revealing language I’m using in this comment on someone else’s language. Sit still and be quiet.)

Truth is what individual people say about themselves, beyond refute and suspicion — which is perhaps the most powerful, and radical, challenge that Postmodern thought has proposed.

Hmmm.

Already, in the new museum’s inaugural book…you can see the dizzying Postmodern playfulness at work…This delightful little game can stand for any number of basic Postmodern conundrums: that truth may lie in what isn’t said, that the right to hide meaning may be more meaningful than anything that could be revealed and that, ultimately, the only real truth in the world is the lack of a single truth. This basic mind dance — a corrective ritual to old, stultifying notions of truth — has been driven out of our society, for the most part, by a conservative intellectual entrenchment. But in the National Museum of the American Indian, it is being reanimated, and grafted onto the remnants of a diverse and ancient worldview. On the run most everywhere else, Postmodernism has a victory arch on the Mall.

Old, stultifying notions of truth. What would they be, exactly? Not playful, of course; not ‘revisionist,’ because apparently no historians ever disagreed with previous historians until postmodernism came along (which would be news to Beard, Gibbon, Hume, Thucydides…), not haughtily and bullyingly scientific, not ‘conservative’.

Mock mock. But it’s beyond a joke, really. Because the thing is, postmodernism is not, as this writer apparently takes it to be, some sort of enabler or precondition for critical thinking; in many ways it’s the opposite, and a preventer of it. If you don’t think you can get at the truth, or that there is a truth to aim at, to get closer to or farther from, how critical is your thinking really going to be? Judging by this piece of innuendo-ridden nonsense, not very.

Another update. Crumb Trail has a post on the pigs comment. He points out something –

It’s only funny if you know pigs. They scream for the fun of it, to socialize. Even the wild (feral) pigs that infest the woods around here scream at one another, other animals, the sky, the moon, whatever. They’re vocal like coyotes. Two pigs, or coyotes, can make enough noise in enough distinct ways that you might think there were dozens of them involved in some life and death drama unless you knew their ways. They scream more when they find something yummy than they do when they are being eaten alive by a predator.

Fair point. Pigs do scream a lot – I do know that. I did think of it while writing the comment – that pigs just are vocal, that they scream for anything or nothing. I thought of mentioning that, but the trouble is, the way I remember it (and I may remember it wrong – memory is not infallible) the screaming was concentrated at the end of the chute. So I didn’t mention it, lest I get myself entangled in one of my usual tangles of qualifications and clauses. But Crumb Trail does have a point.

But I’m not sure I think it’s what you might call a knockdown point. The fact remains that the pigs were just sent down a straight open chute instead of a twisting closed one of the kind that Grandin designs, and that they did have time to see hear and smell what was happening. I don’t see why that’s either necessary or useful, or why it shouldn’t be done differently. Therefore I don’t see the point of this part:

Those completley detached from the real world – from nature, food, birth, death and material reality in general – make consistently bad decisions due to lack of information and understanding. There’s nothing amusing about that since they do great harm while feeling innocent. This lack of grounding in reality, detachment from the world, is correctable like any other form of ignorance. In a very real sense they choose to remain ignorant by looking away from contrary information, preferring to see only things that reinforce their biases or perhaps being too emotionally engaged to become intellectually engaged?

Great harm. Hmm. I’m doing great harm by suggesting that humane methods of slaughter are preferable to inhumane ones? Why, exactly? And how? And where does ‘feeling innocent’ come in? And I’ll tell you one thing. If there’s anything I’m not detached from, it’s food. I love the stuff, I’m deeply attached to it, and I spend a lot of time cuddling and embracing it and making it part of my life. So there.

The discussion continues to continue. Norm has more, so does Harry, so does David T. Plus I had a long talk with Polly Toynbee on the phone earlier. No I didn’t, that’s just one of my jokes. (Or irony? No, just a joke. I don’t know from irony.) There’s quite a lot of agreement this time around. This from Harry’s –

For what it is worth I am not a supporter or defender of fox hunting nor am I opposed to a ban. I accept Ophelia Benson’s criticism of Polly Toynbee’s phrase “Liberals should always be wary of banning people from doing as they like”. There clearly need to be some qualifications added to such a statement although wary does not mean should never.

Indeed. But I’m wary even of ‘wary’ – at least as it’s stated there. As Harry points out, it’s the missing qualifications that cause the wariness.

Actually, of late, I have been giving a lot of thought to the whole issue of our treatment of animals and meat-eating given that my six-year-old daughter has woken up to where her meat comes from and was horrified by the fact. Her reaction (and I am being literal with the term horrified) has me contemplating vegetarianism again.

Yeah. That made me think of a not very fond memory of my own. As you may remember if you’ve ever read ‘About,’ I used to be a zookeeper. (Funny, that ‘used to be’ came up earlier today, too. There is a passage in Sokal and Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense about how one reacts to seeing someone come screaming out of a lecture hall, shouting that there is a herd of elephants stampeding inside. One cautiously looks, and if one sees no elephants or trail of elephantish destruction, one calls the police and the psychiatrists; if one sees elephants, one [runs away and] calls the police and the zookeepers. Ah yes, thought I, I’ve been there. I have. The elephants did get out a time or two, and I was called. ‘Get back in there right now you bad elephants!! Boo, Tote, Chai, Sri: Corner!!’ I was muy macho in those days.)

But that’s another story. I once had to go to a slaughterhouse. I bet you’ll never be able to guess why – it sounds quite odd. To get blood for the vampire bats. True. It was a weekly job for the commissary keeper, which I wasn’t, but I suppose Rachel was sick that day or something – anyway I was deputed to go. A pig slaughterhouse. It was absolutely horrible. A nightmare – literally. They scream. They line up, they’re forced down a chute, and as they get to the end, they start to scream, and they go on screaming until they’re killed. And of course since it’s a production line, there are always pigs in the chute and pigs getting to the end and pigs being killed and pigs screaming – so they hear the screaming long before they get there. It’s horrible.

I’ve upset myself writing about it. But it is horrible. And disgusting – it could have been done another way, surely, if anyone could have been bothered.

Thank goodness for Temple Grandin. She designs chutes for slaughterhouses that work so that the animals do not know what’s happening and are not stressed. They’re still killed, but they’re not made to watch it all beforehand. She’s high-functioning autistic, Grandin is, and she thinks the autism is the reason she understands what’s going on with animals. Interesting, that. Also doesn’t say much for ‘normal’ human intelligence.

A change of subject; but not really. The basic subject is suffering, and how to think about it and what to do about it.

Update: Dave at Backword asks a good question:

Factory farming also has utility, but I’d get rid of it if I could. I hadn’t heard of Temple Grandin until I read this Butterflies and Wheels post, but why aren’t her slaughterhouse designs compulsory?

Why indeed.

Update 2: Dave’s post inspired me to Google, and I discovered that Temple Grandin has a web page, with a lot of information on humane slaughter (and its absence). Remarkable what a lot of difference one person can make.

Maybe I should do one before anyone else does.

I was just thinking, while staring out the window in a daze and scratching, that books are one thing and people are another. How about that.

People don’t like science. What’s up with that?

Multiculturalism – hmm – one sees the point, and yet.

I’ve been reading this book. Here are some quotations from it.

Here are some more quotations from that book I’ve been reading.

Richard Dawkins rocks.

I’ve read another book. Here are some quotations from it.

Here are some more quotations from aforementioned book. Aren’t you thrilled?

People say silly things sometimes. Here’s an example. Here’s why it’s silly. I never say silly things.

I agree with my colleague about that. [Okay that one’s pure fantasy.]

Secularism rocks.

My colleague is always right about everything. [Okay more fantasy.]