Writings

This Is Not a Realist

Outside, the weather reflected the gloom on the faces of the customers Rachael and Zach had seen at the shop they’d visited that morning.  Their parents, intending to fill some of the ‘lazy spaces’ that made a mockery of their three-bedroom home in Mawson Lakes, had driven the children to the newly-opened IKEA^® store at Adelaide Airport.  They’d spent the morning and most of the afternoon there and at HarbourTown, had lunch at the IKEA^® restaurant, and had finally returned home with an Ektorp armchair, a Lo bunk bed and a Billy bookcase.

“Why isn’t anybody smiling?” Rachael had asked during the morning, but her question was lost amid the din of baby boomers in shop-till-you-drop heaven.  The man she was watching on TV at the moment wasn’t smiling, either.  He was bald, and seemed particularly interested in a picture of a pipe – the variety used for smoking tobacco – under which was written, in cursive: Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

“Magritte’s work, which he called La trahison des images, literally The Treachery of Images, is better known by those words which appear under the pipe.  The work fascinated the French thinker Michel Foucault, who in 1973 wrote a dissertation on the painting’s inherent paradox.  The dissertation is arguably as famous as Magritte’s work, whose popular title it shares.”

Rachael shrugged her shoulders.  Her Year 8 French gave her the ability to translate the cursive lettering – This Is Not a Pipe – but that hardly helped her at all, because the picture clearly was of a pipe.  The bald man on the TV continued.

“The paradox is worth considering for a minute (or a lifetime): the painting is clearly of a pipe, but, being a painting, is not actually a pipe.  However simple the concept may appear at first, the questions raised by the phrase ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’ are of vital importance to ideas of presentation and representation, of interpreting, seeing, experiencing.  Now that we know of this paradox, why will we look at the next picture of a pipe we see and think ‘pipe’, not ‘picture’?  And why does our brain even ‘think’ to link the picture of a pipe, even if the pipe is real, to the word ‘pipe’, and all that entails?  When, for example, is a pipe not a pipe (other than when it’s a picture)?”

What a ridiculous show, Rachael thought, and changed the channel.  She didn’t really know why anyone ever watched the ABC.  The news was on Channel 10, and they were showing footage of the Prime Minister in an ABC radio studio.

“I feel very, very strongly about the criticism that many people are making that we are dumbing down the English syllabus.  I mean when the…what I might call the traditional texts are treated no differently from pop cultural commentary, as appears to be the case in some syllabus, I share the views of many people about the so-called postmodernism.”

Mr Howard was being interviewed by a woman, who said “I think that’s a view supported by a lot of parents and grandparents out there.  We’ve got the Western Australian government, I think, talking about outcome-based education.”

“Well, I mean, that is gobbledegook,” Mr Howard replied.  “What does that mean?  We understand it’s necessary to be numerate and we also understand that there’s high quality literature and there’s rubbish, and we need a curriculum that encourages an understanding of the high quality literature and not the rubbish.” [*]

Rachael agreed with the Prime Minister: it was all gobbledegook.  She had no idea what anyone was talking about.  So much for relaxing in front of the TV!  Her parents really needed to get Foxtel.  She switched it off and went to read her new Girlfriend magazine.

The rest of the weekend passed without incident (though Rachael and Zach’s dad was having a lot of trouble putting together the Lo bunk bed from IKEA^®), and when Zach had finished eating tea on Monday evening, he asked whether he could watch the 7.30 Report that evening.

“Of course you can!” said Zach’s father, a little surprised.  “But honey,” his mother added, “could you watch it on the other TV?  The Great Outdoors is on at 7.30.”

“Why do you want to watch the 7.30 Report?” Zach’s father asked him.

“It’s sort of homework.  Ms Miller wants us to watch it.”

At half-past seven, Zach wandered into the family room (where the smaller, 38cm TV was).  His sister was watching the end of Home and Away.  Zach sat down and picked up the remote.  When the credits started rolling, he switched to Channel 2.

“Hey!” cried Rachael.  “I was going to watch The Great Outdoors!”

“Don’t have a fit, it’s on on the other telly.  I have to watch this for school.”

As Rachael was standing up, she saw something on the TV she recognised.  It was John Howard in a radio studio.  “I feel very, very strongly –”

“Hey, that was on the news the other night!”

“Just shush, will you?”  Zach threw a cushion at her.

When Howard had finished talking, the 7.30 Report guy appeared on the screen.  “And that was in response, at least ostensibly, to a question about the rolling privatisation of education in Australia.  The Prime Minister was really responding to a debate that had run in the Australian newspaper since the middle of April, when it published a story about a Sydney girls’ school which, among other things, asked its English students in an exam to interpret Shakespeare’s Othello from Marxist, feminist and racial perspectives.[†]  The Australian, led by its editor Chris Mitchell, has for years been doggedly fighting an ideological battle against what it sees as the dominance of the political Left in teaching high school English and university-level Humanities.  In 1996, Mitchell published a series of baseless stories in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail accusing historian Manning Clark of having spied for Russia during the Cold War.[‡]

“Postmodernism has a bad name in many quarters.  It, and its cousins deconstruction, post-structuralism, cultural studies and critical theory, are scorned in the popular media, and attract vehement, if sporadic, criticism from political leaders.”

The picture cut to a woman, who looked like she was giving a lecture.  Her name appeared on the bottom of the screen, but before Zach could find a pen, it had disappeared.  “This is because we fear it, because we don’t understand it.  Many people who do claim to understand it also fear it.  Perhaps they really do not understand its method or its madness, and/or they seek ‘postmodernity’ in isolation.  To see something in isolation, whether it be postmodernity, modernity, politics, economics or individuality, is to fail to see it as it really is.” [§]

“Heavy stuff,” said the 7.30 Report guy.  “But does the Prime Minister have a point?”

The same woman returned to the screen, but this time she was sitting down, much closer to the camera, like she was being interviewed.  “Regardless of whether or not Mr Howard has a point – and this depends on whether you believe the inherent aesthetic values of ‘classic’ texts are being undermined by teachers intent on equating them with those of pop-culture texts, and, further, whether you believe that asking students to ‘read’ various texts from various viewpoints is a bad thing – my point is that his outright dismissal of the technique identifies his almost complete ignorance of it.”

“So what exactly is ‘post-modernism’?”

“There are many debates over the answer to that question.  Even attempting to locate a settled definition is itself anathema to postmodernism.  But, very broadly, postmodernism can be said to call into question the assumptions that underlie modernity.  A postmodern thinker would question the modernist view that history is necessarily linear, and may endeavour to take a more circular approach to its study.  She would be doubtful of the existence of a singular, knowable ‘truth’, which is assumed by modernist thought.[**]  A postmodern thinker would question the primacy given to reason and logic by modernist thought, and perhaps give more credence to memory, intuition and common sense.”

“And how do you see the effects of postmodern thought?”

“They are many and varied!  While postmodernism was born vaguely out of Marxist interpretations of the world (which were engaged in the construction of a narrative, and were situated firmly within the Left-modernist tradition), quite often by ‘deconstructing’ established traditions without offering any cohesive alternative, postmodernism has a quite negative, conservative effect, by fragmenting and commoditising knowledge and authority.

“On the other hand, the deconstruction of ideas and processes to reveal their inherent biases is often the first step in the construction of an ethical society.  Postmodern techniques can be valuable tools in the intellectual crusade to wrest power from those who weild it arbitrarily, much as the (modernist) Marxist, feminist and civil rights movements did throughout much of the twentieth century.

“If we become specialists in postmodernist techniques at the expense of everything else, we will fail in our attempts to build a just society.  But specialisation is the problem there, not postmodernism per se.  (And let’s not forget that modern thought brought us to Auschwitz and Hiroshima, as well as to the moon.)  Postmodernism is capable of teaching us not to judge, and while often we need to exercise judgement, this process should be reflective.”

“But the Prime Minister wants to ‘encourage an understanding of the high-quality literature and not the rubbish’—”

“On the contrary”, the woman interrupted, “I would argue that students need desperately to know how to analyse, deconstruct even, not only ‘classic’ texts but also everyday ones.  Where’s the value in learning how to analyse classic texts, if students aren’t taught how to apply that analysis to advertising messages, pop songs and politician-speak?  Our ability to recognise bias, to define the particular narrative being told, to exercise responsible judgement, is all based on our ability to deconstruct the spin.  Post-structural analysis, for example, can give us the ability to examine government policy, by identifying where the policy-makers have chosen to define the problem they’re trying to solve.  The post-Marxist post-modern scholars did not preach a fuzzy relativism, so that we could think the SBS news coverage no better or worse than Channel 7’s, and the Taliban no better or worse than the Scottish Enlightenment.”

“Politician-speak?  They certainly have a way with words, don’t they?” the 7.30 Report guy asked his audience rhetorically.  “Often these days, we hear the Prime Minister calling himself a ‘realist’.”  Zach then saw John Howard say “I’m a realist” on four different occasions, before the picture cut to a middle-aged guy with grey hair in a truly tragic style.  This time Zach wrote his name down.

“The Prime Minister is certainly fond of telling us he’s a realist!” the man said with a laugh.  “While we need to allow for the possibility that he doesn’t know what this means either[††] (he did a straight law degree at Sydney Uni, and told his former adviser Gerard Henderson in 1995 that he wished he’d done some courses in politics[‡‡]), in declaring himself thus he effectively declares his support for the assumptions underlying realism: that humans are motivated by self-interest, that nation-states are not beholden to any higher authority (such as a ‘community’ of nations), and that nation-states are primarily motivated by their own security concerns.

“Howard does believe humans (and nation-states) are motivated by rational self-interest, and have security as their primary concern.  Watch the mess unfold in the Solomon Islands, as his response to the recent race riots has been to characterise it as a security issue and send in AFP and military personnel.  That he effectively declared support for the dubious instalment of former deputy PM Snyder Rini as Prime Minister despite the resounding defeat of Rini’s ally Allan Kemakeza in the April 2006 elections appears to have escaped him.

“But, Mr Howard is not just a realist.  His conception of Australia’s relationship with the USA is not just based in security concerns; for him, the two nations share a cultural ‘common thread’ that binds them together.[§§]  And he certainly hasn’t been ‘realist’ about the AWB scandal.  Indeed, in attempting to portray the matter as a problem for the UN and the wheat board, he denies the responsibility of his own government and betrays the central tenets of the ‘realism’ he purports to champion.

“Realism, mostly, is an expression of political pragmatism.  But Mr Howard is at best selectively pragmatic.  While he does place the maintenance of political power as his primary objective, his conduct between election periods is often ideological.  The 2005 industrial relations reforms (‘WorkChoices’) realised a personal goal of his that dates at least from the late 1970s.  They, and other mid-term policies such as his support for Bush’s unilateral invasion of Iraq, have been incredibly unpopular.  Despite his protestations to the contrary, Mr Howard is as blinkered by ideology as the worst of us.”

“So,” concluded the 7.30 Report guy, “are we motivated by self-interest?  Do ‘realists’ live in the ‘real world’?  Is John Howard a realist, as he claims?  When is a realist not a realist?  And what of post-modernism?  Is it a threat to quality education, or an essential tool for addressing power imbalances?”

The picture cut back to Kerry O’Brien.  “Michael Brissenden raises some fairly big questions there!  And now to the latest Australian war film to hit the big screen-”

Zach switched the TV off.  He’d tried to make notes, but wasn’t really sure what anyone had been talking about.  He groaned inwardly, thinking about the next day’s English class.  What if Ms Miller asked him something about the 7.30 Report?

His thoughts were interrupted by his father, who had sworn loudly from the garage, where he was still trying to put together the bunk bed.  Then he became aware of the rain that was still beating down outside.  He shivered, and went to join his mother and sister in front of The Great Outdoors.