Author: Ophelia Benson

Oh dear. The Independent has misplaced its marbles. It is very difficult not to choke with laughter.

No one likes to be labelled a conspiracy theorist. The term is generally associated with the sort of people who believe the world is run by aliens disguised as humans, or who think the moon landing was a hoax. But it is very important that we do not allow our desire to avoid pejorative labels blunt our critical faculties. Scepticism can be a healthy instinct.

Um…yes, it can indeed; but scepticism about what, exactly? Critical faculties in relation to what, were you thinking?

It is unfortunate that most vocal critics of the standard narrative regarding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed – which was outlined again by Lord Stevens’s report yesterday – have not been impartial or, in some cases, credible.

Ah. Scepticism about the standard narrative; I see. Yes, it is unfortunate about the non-credible witnesses; makes whoever wrote this leader look monster raving loony. Well you see that’s why scepticism and sharp critical faculties come in handy in more than one direction. For instance there’s the lurking idea that a ‘standard narrative’ is suspect because it’s a ‘standard narrative’ – it can get you into deep water with amazing speed, that one. Sometimes that is the case, of course, but quite often the ‘standard narrative’ is just the boring old truth. Quite often – nearly always in fact – the obvious is none the less right for being obvious. Sad but true.

This has added to the impression that anyone who believes there are unanswered questions regarding the deaths is foolish, opportunist or both. But this impression is unfair.

Aw. That’s a shame. Are people laughing at you? That is unfair.

Despite the detailed nature of the 832-page report by the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, a good deal remains unclear. Lord Stevens admits himself that “there are some matters about which we may never find a definitive answer”.

Well…I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but that’s how these things are. Things happen with nobody watching, and the result is that there generally are some matters about which we may never find a definitive answer. That’s not an unusual situation, much less one so unusual that only a highly elaborate and inherently ridiculously implausible conspiracy can explain it. It’s just not. When someone drives a car at 90 mph into a concrete pillar, there will be some details of what happened that are just lost to history.

And there remains enough doubt for rational people to feel uncomfortable. According to a recent poll, a third of the British public believe what happened to Diana was not an accident. This cannot be written off as a fringe belief.

Oh well then. If a third of the British public believe it, then it must be true or at least reasonable. A third of the public can never be just, you know, silly.

The question of whether anyone had the motive to murder the couple remains unresolved.

[shouting] Well it would, wouldn’t it! [more quietly] It’s not the kind of thing that can be resolved, you chump. Before you talk about scepticism and critical faculties, maybe you ought to get some. Of course no one can say definitively that no one had ‘the motive to murder the couple.’ But just saying someone had ‘the motive’ is not the same thing as saying the couple were murdered. When a couple of absent-minded rich people get in the back of a Mercedes whose drunk driver races off at high speed and bumps into a pillar – that is a car crash. It has the fingerprints of the laws of physics all over it.

Many have dismissed the activities of Mohamed al-Fayed over the past decade…No doubt the bereaved father is still grieving. But that does not make him deluded. And we should remember that without his campaigning, this inquiry would probably never have been established.

And that would be regrettable because…?

Whatever. The question now becomes, who had the motive to put whatever substance it was into the coffee of the author of that leader? Thirty percent of the British public think it was no accident.

Robert Irwin says some amusing things in this interview with Scott McLemee about Irwin’s book on Said’s Orientalism. Scott asked what made a criticism of Orientalism seem worthwhile or necessary enough for a book.

I got irritated by the way some people in Eng Lit departments seemed to regard themselves as adversarial saints, robed in white and “speaking truth to power” because they read Conrad, Austen and Flaubert in strange ways. Whereas academics who read Masudi, Tabari and Ibn Khaldun were necessarily robed in black.

Yep. The adversarial sainthood thing is a big – a huge – part of why descriptions of postmodernism by fans of postmodernism tend to be so irritating. The reek of self-imputed adversarial sainthood is all over them. The very ‘notion that no one view, theory or understanding should be privileged over another (or that no discourse should be silenced)’ is a classic adversarial sainthood notion. The very notion that the word ‘privilege’ is relevant in an epistemic context is puglistic sainthood, as is the notion that saying a theory is wrong is ‘silencing’. That substitution of political attitudes for analysis and evaluation is pure sainthood stuff. Sympathy for the poor downtrodden abused rejected Wrong Bad Stupid ideas. Never mind the boring old proles, who cares if their unions are busted and their wages slashed and their jobs sent to the Mariana Islands, the pomo saints are still valiantly defending Wrong Bad Stupid ideas. Yay.

The annoying thing about Said was that he wanted a debate based on false factual premises. Of course, there are vested interests in scholarship, but, for God’s sake, if one is looking at vested interests in in Arabic and Islamic studies, most of the ‘vesting’ comes from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Brunei with the establishments of chairs and lectureships which are implicitly circumscribed in what kinds of research they can initiate and publish. Above all, it is a great waste of time attacking British, French, American US and Israeli scholars of Arab and Islamic culture. The people who should be attacked are Senators, MPs, Israeli generals, arms merchants, media hacks, etc. The academic dog fight is a fantastic diversion from the real horrors of what is happening in the Gaza Strip, the Left Bank and Lebanon. If one is serious about politics, the Orientalism debate is an intellectual substitute for engaging with real, non-academic issues.

Well…yeah, but how else are academics going to get to feel like adversarial saints? Have a heart, Professor Irwin.

The earliest reviewers were mostly people who knew a lot about the actual state of the field. The enthusiasts who came later did not know the field and were mostly too lazy to check Said’s assertions. The book, by “speaking truth to power,” appeals to the adversarial mentality so common among students and radical lecturers. Bashing Orientalism has seemed to be a natural intellectual accessory to opposing Israeli policies on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, American imperialism and British racism. It is much easier deliver patronizing lectures or essays about old-fashioned Orientalists than it is to actually do anything useful for Palestine…As to whom my book may be useful to, Bishop Joseph Butler in the 18th century made the following observation: “Things and their actions are what they are and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we wish to be deceived?”

Because that’s how we get to feel like adversarial saints.

I’ve been wondering what ‘postmodernism’ is exactly. I don’t mean what its claims are, I mean what it is itself. What kind of thing is it? What box does it go in? It’s not a discipline. It’s not a kind of philosophy, like pragmatism or utilitarianism. It’s not a kind of inquiry. What is it? I realize I don’t even know, and I’m not sure other people do either, including postmodernists themselves. Their descriptions of postmodernism tend to be notably vague around the edges. Evasive, a hostile witness might say. Like this one from the hilarious article on the reception of ‘Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism’ by Holmes et al. last summer, the one that quotes comments on a blog as its main examples of that reception.

The postmodernist thinking that has characterised a number of academic disciplines in the last two or so decades of the 20th century – and is still alive and well in some quarters – has played an important role in creating new ways of developing ideas in the arts, science and culture. The relativism on which it is founded, and the ‘liberation’ from sacred cows it seeks, have a place in healthcare and health science…[P]ostmodernism is a response to modernity – the period where science was trusted and represented progress – and essentially focuses on questioning the centrality of both science and established canons, disciplines and institutions to achieving progress. The nature of ‘truth’ is a recurring concern to postmodernists, who generally purport that there are no truths but multiple realities and that understandings of the human condition are dynamic and diverse. The notion that no, one view, theory or understanding should be privileged over another (or that no discourse should be silenced) is a tenet of postmodernist critique and analysis.

The words used kind of give away the fact that there is nothing very rigorous going on here. Postmodernist thinking, creating new ways of developing ideas, the ‘liberation’ it seeks, a response, essentially focuses, questioning the centrality, a recurring concern, generally purport, notion. Tenet, critique and analysis sound a little sterner, but after all those mushy terms they don’t convince. It all seems to speak of…just some people saying some things. So, what is that? What is postmodernism?

Well, whatever it is, let’s have a fantasy. Let’s imagine someone who seriously does question ‘the centrality of both science and established canons, disciplines and institutions to achieving progress.’ Okay? Got the someone? Let’s call it X. Let’s imagine depositing X stark naked in the middle of a trackless northern forest in the dead of winter (now, in fact), and then let us see how long X will want to sustain this questioning. Remember – it’s science that is being questioned. So that means no tool use: that means no making a fire, no building a shelter, no making clothes, no trapping animals, no fishing except with bare hands, no throwing sticks, no snow shoes, no rafts. It also means no existing knowledge – X can’t discriminate between poisonous berries and the other kind, can’t identify venomous snakes, doesn’t know how animals behave, can’t tell what the weather is doing, can’t navigate by the north star or the sun, doesn’t know that water can be full of bacteria. X would be dead in a matter of hours.

Now, X will say, indignantly, ‘But I’m not going to be trapped naked in the middle of a trackless forest in the dead of winter!’ Well no, X, you’re not, unless you’re very careless, but that is my point. You are dependent on science for your very existence at every turn, and you don’t even know it. If you suddenly found yourself in the trackless forest scenario, it would probably become clear to you very, very quickly how ‘central’ science is. In short, you’re a fool.