A bubble in the humanities?

Apparently studies of “feminist theology” are ipso facto bullshit. I have no idea what the problem there is – does he believe with the New Atheists that “theology” is pointless? Is he arguing that feminism is not a topic worthy of study? Or does some alchemy happen when you put the two together?

Setting that aside, what’s the argument?

None of this would matter if the market were basically self-correcting like the science market, or erratic but brutally self-correcting like the financial markets. When people do not write directly about the world, it is hard to compare what they say against the world. So the main corrective mechanism in the humanities is reputation built on publication and, since publication is often based on reputation, the danger of a bubble is extreme.

So, because, in this definition, the humanities involve mostly writing about what other people have written about, and thus not about “the real world”, bubbles are reasonably likely as the humanities have, theoretically, a less effective correcting mechanism. It’s a little funny that an argument which privileges “real world” facts as correctors doesn’t actually cite any real world facts to show that the relationship he alleges exists – have there been more or fewer “bubbles” in the fields more or less connected to the “real world”?

But, from a theoretical perspective, at least, Gerrans has articulated some reasonable causes for concern in any field of study which studies studies. These concerns would apply mutatis mutandis to Maximus the Confessor, GWF Hegel, and Lionel Trilling. So, is there a reason to think there’s a bubble happening now?

At this point, the argument simply becomes a matter of mentioning names and terms associated with “Theory”. Zizek, Deleuze, Agamben, Spivak. I have no brief for them – well, maybe Spivak, a little – but it certainly seems that if someone were to locate himself as the defender of truth and reason and “real world” argument, his argument would need to consist of more than sneering as he says people’s names.

Just to quote:

This is OK for those who profit in a bull market, but there are students who have shelled out good money to write a thesis on Deleuzian social work, feminist theology or (let’s be even-handed here) brain-imaging studies of criminal intent.

There’s no mention of feminism or theology anywhere else in the article. I guess a third option to explain Gerrans’ argument would be that any project which articulates its orientation as “feminist” is by that very fact worthless.

(h/t Darius Jedburgh)

Joe Don Baker sends you THE articles? That’s… awesome.

As for Gerrans: Sheesh.

I greatly appreciate what I interpret to be the laudably politely indirect efforts of CT authors to convince us that this edition of the THE is almost comprehensively not worth our time^1^ (skip straight to Laurie Taylor, do not pass Go, do not expend £2.20). Counterproductively, though, this has only caused me to spend more time than I otherwise would have reading this edition’s articles…

As a contribution to the overall effort, let me mention that Dan Stern’s article is equally… oh let’s be charitable and say equally unlaudable. Core quote: “In order to succeed, you are going to have to learn to relate your research to the outside world. Put on your lipstick, do your hair and go out and sell, baby, sell.” Hilarity (or is it wearyingly petulant sarcasm), and a Moral Message (or is it wearyingly choleric satire), ensue.

^1^I suppose I’m assuming some implied harsh judgment of the Gerrans article here, and insofar as the presumption is incorrect, apologies for misunderstanding.

But the main point was sound—far too many people tie the justification of their research completely implausibly to the idea they will illuminate something about very current affairs

Glad I added the disclaimer. Admittedly, I didn’t see very much in the article itself that spoke to justification of research by illumination of very current affairs (in particular I don’t get how barcode imaging is a “current affairs” topic). Going back through, it’s a little clearer to me now why “terrorism or globalisation or the influence of the internet” were chosen for the author’s three examples: I thought the idea was to mention three topics which are as patently obviously faddish and unworthy of study as brain imaging.

It was depressing to see Gerrans go on for paragraphs haranguing applied algebraic topologists for hypertrophied claims of results published in sensational newspaper articles, only to eventually admit that, well, nobody in the field pays much attention to sensational newspaper articles, and that any research in neuroscience could be equally sensationally hyped & misrepresented.

He fails to acknowledge that writers of newspaper articles, who solicit conjectures and untested hypotheses from the neuroscientists they interview and who frequently misrepresent or decontextualize the quotes they receive, are not identical with the neuroscientists themselves, whose professional work he is impugning as faddish (where’s the acknowledgment, for example, that the exact same barcode analysis techniques are now widely applied in robotics — is that somehow less faddish?)

He basically accuses anyone researching applications of persistent cohomology of dishonesty, only to first admit that it’s incorrect because the actual research he has in mind does not itself claim anything dishonest, and to later admit that it’s inconsequential because other researchers are reading the research, not the newspaper puffery.

Then we get: “None of this would matter if the [humanities] market were basically self-correcting like the science market.” Self-correcting what? He failed to ID anything problematic in the neurological/topological research itself, anything needing “correcting” in the sciences research. Is the whole point that researchers in the humanities should stop paying attention to sensationalist newspaper pieces?

As for the problems he’s identifying in the humanities: I can’t directly speak to that. I will note in passing that identifying the compensatory assistance that low-SES background students may receive as “handicap degrees to marginal students from poor backgrounds” doesn’t earn Gerrans any favors with me. I doubt the predominant reason that individuals are advocating for such assistance is in order to prop up their ailing “anti-knowledge” departments.

Am I just ignorantly missing a general meme? Is neuroscience-punching the humanities’ equivalent to liberal-hippie-punching in American media?

Salient,

where do you get the impression that the author is slandering (or even knows about) persistent (co)homology, barcodes, and the like? After several readings, I couldn’t convince myself that he was.

As someone at least vaguely in that field, I’d be be downright excited if he was. You know, first they ignore you, then they mock you, then they co-opt your ideas into a musical number on the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. As far as I can tell, no one in my little sub-field has been denounced in the popular media, so it’d be great to get this stuff rolling. If it helps, I recently submitted a paper that makes frequent use of the term “perversity.”

Well those assets had to be allocated somewhere after the economics bubble burst…

In actual fact, of course, the media industry is one of the UK’s biggest export earners (and has the substantial advantage over financial services that it doesn’t seem to require any “bailouts” above and beyond a modest TV licence fee), and lots of intelligent people in the media industry do actually regard Zizek (in particular) as having lots of useful things to say which help them continue to produce popular and profitable television programmes. I’ve always wondered why it seems to be taken as a given at the THES that Media Studies or Cultural Studies courses are useless in one of the world’s biggest producers of media and culture; I occasionally wonder if the Swiss equivalent of the THES makes hilarious jokes about Watchmaking courses (I actually know that the Welsh language middlebrow press does, equally stupidly, have a prejudice against Tourism courses).

walt, that’s pretty brilliant. I can only offer:

“Duality or Dualities?” and “Love on the Chain Gang: Forbidden Contact Between Social Strata.”

I’ll get my coat.

Actually it’s a very even-handed article, from a Two Cultures point of view. Keep the humanities people happy by bashing fMRI and Ramachandran and keep the scientists happy by bashing Theory and Zizek.

If only we could go back to the time before the bubble when bullshit was readily identifiable.

“Someone who takes a supervisor’s advice to base a career on writing about Slavoj Zizek is in the position of an investor deciding to invest in Bear Stearns on the advice of Lehman Brothers. ”

Nice!

As a quip, it’s decent. But does it describe a real state of affairs? It seems to me that there are very few humanties scholars out there who “base [their] career” on theory of any sort, let alone one specific theorist. In the past few years, the English department at my university, once a theory powerhouse, received funding for three hires in “theory” of some sort (as a way to regain some lost glory). One remains unfilled, and the other two went to people whose work on literature is theoretically inflected: in other words, ordinary literary scholars. This is how most people in the humanities use theory, anyway: as a tool that helps them talk about the things they really want to talk about (which are rarely terrorism or the internet).

In broad terms, the article mostly takes what Bourdieu told us about the dynamics of fields a generation ago and dresses it up in the current financial crisis. It’s clever, but not nearly as clever as it thinks it is.

I didn’t believe him though.

Why not? After all, no one would dispute that Fry and Greenberg and so-on have had serious influence on painting; why is it odd to think that the same applies to film and television?

Well, at least he’s making a falsifiable prediction that will come due in the near term. To say there is a “bubble” in some stock amounts to saying it is overvalued and there will soon be a correction. If there isn’t a correction soon, then it wasn’t overvalued, and there wasn’t a bubble.

where do you get the impression that the author is slandering (or even knows about) persistent (co)homology, barcodes, and the like? After several readings, I couldn’t convince myself that he was.

Yeah, your point (especially the parenthetical) is probably correct. If not that study, though — which, you’ll be happy to hear, was the controversial topic du jour around here a few months ago — it’s not clear what he was cracking about.

(For those interested in the research in question, which is quite wonderful, see here. Prepare your “model the cow as a perfect sphere” jokes in anticipation of Figure 2!)

You know, first they ignore you, then they mock you, then they co-opt your ideas into a musical number on the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. As far as I can tell, no one in my little sub-field has been denounced in the popular media, so it’d be great to get this stuff rolling.

Say, you’ve got a point…