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Comment by p4bl0 | Hacker News Reader

I know HN is not really a place to talk politics, but something in the article surprised me:

    > leftist academics who were already anti-intellectual

I'm French so maybe this is different in Europe and in the US (if it is, that would surprise me too), but since when "leftist" are anti-intellectual? It seems to me that it's quite the opposite. Let alone "leftist academics" who I can't even start to imagine being anti-intellectual.

To be clear, I really don't want to start a political discussion here. What I would like is just an anwser to: Is the part of the article I quoted something people find normal in the US or does it seems weird there too?

Thanks :-).

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He was probably referring to the already dying branch of leftist academics who engaged in "post-modernism" and "critical studies." They were not really anti-intellectual, but definitely viewed science and objectivity with a jaundiced eye. The irony is that after hitting its peak in the 80s it became something of a laughingstock within academia and is now usually trotted out as a sly punchline or mechanism for satire/farce within an academic paper (yes, there are still some True Believers clinging to the old ideals and using the joys of tenure to pump out paper after paper, but their numbers and influence are rapidly dwindling to non-existence.)

I think your "dying" is wishful thinking -- postmodernism's popularity came about at least partly because it offers genuine insight. I think that over time it will settle down into a mature discipline, rather than a fad.

And outside of academia, it's very hard to point at any cultural artifacts (films, literature, advertisements...) that aren't deeply influenced by postmodern.

And the artifacts of literature, film, etc... which did the influencing mostly derived from places outside the ivory tower.

I think even a university professor is smart enough to recognize that journal articles are a poor way of creating culture. ;)

The ivory tower has always been more interested in understanding than creation, postmodern or not.

(And an edit to add: there is definitely influence from the ideas generated academia, however. For a really obvious example, Neo is reading Simulacra and Simulation in The Matrix.)

> And an edit to add: there is definitely influence from the ideas generated academia, however. For a really obvious example, Neo is reading Simulacra and Simulation in The Matrix.

It's a prop. If you're going to argue influence, shouldn't you be pointing out how the contents of that book were somehow reflected in the movie?

Actually Neo is not reading it, it is a hollowed out book containing his collection of warez, whether that is a nod to postmodernism or a joke at its expense implying it is a hollow discipline I do not know, perhaps someone could ask the Wachowskis.

Postmodernism as a trope will linger on for quite a while, but it had very little real insight to offer in the first place and any claim of deep influence is a far larger act of wishful thinking than my claim that what vestiges we still see are anything more than a dead-cat bounce into self-parody.

The US has a deep divide in academia between folks who wish the study of philosophy and literature had ended in 1950 or so, and those who embraced what came after (perhaps a little too strongly).

(Alternatively you could maybe draw the line with the end of the Enlightenment, but not quite as starkly...)

For more information on this see C.P. Snow's over half-century-old lecture, "The Two Cultures." Within it he posits a great rift between the humanities and the sciences. The lecture is very much relevant to this discussion. As a side note, Edge.org posits itself as an abridging third culture in direct relation to antagonisms between the humanities and sciences. Also on this front is 3 Quarks Daily, which is a more or less excellent feed of multi-discplinary geekdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._P._Snow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

http://edge.org/

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/

Great info, but a clarification of my comment may be in order: I wasn't talking about the "sciences" vs "humanities" divide (which is huge), but a divide that goes deeply within humanities itself, which is much more of a left/right divide (hence the "leftist" wording in the original article).

Do you mind expanding on this? I am having trouble seeing an internal divide within the humanities between those that want a continuation of the study of lit and phil and those that would like to see it cease. The reasoning that normally goes into the defense of lit and phil seems to be essential to the reasoning that might go into the defense of any sub-field of the humanities. Do you mean to posit an alliance of lit and phil with leftist politics and everything else with rightist politics?

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the "1950" comment, is all -- making fun of one camp's deep backlash against post-modernism (among many other things).

Really? I've never met anyone in academia who wished the study of philosophy (or literature, for that matter) ended in 1950. There's definitely a division between the "Analytic Philosophy" and "Continental Philosophy" folks; and there are definitely warring schools of thought within English departments about what to read, and how-- but I've never seen a division aligned along chronological lines as you propose.

Could you offer an example of an academic who fits the "pre-1950" mode, so I can get a better idea of what you are driving at?

The author answers the question himself in this paragraph:

> Just think of any progressive education professor who inveighs against most academic work in K-12 schools, describes academic work that involves a little memorization and practice as drill and kill, wants the world to institute unschooling and the project method en masse, has nothing but the purest P.C. contempt for the Western canon, advocates for vocational education for all but those who are truly, personally enthusiastic about academics, wants academic education to be as collaborative as possible rather than requiring students to read books, which are irrelevant to the fast-changing daily lives of students, and channeling Foucault rails against the hegemony of science and other experts. Well, such a person I would describe as an anti-intellectual intellectual. The person might well write perfectly-crafted articles with scholarly apparatus, read classics in her field, and so forth. It’s just that her opinions are unfortunately hostile to students getting knowledge (in my opinion).

And that's one hell of a straw man.

I've spent a lot of time around progressive education folks, and I've never met anyone who met that description. There are some folks who display mild forms of one or two of those attributes, but he's combined so many disparate traits and described them in such over-the-top terms as to render the portrait unrecognizable.

"leftist" and "anti-intellectual" as used here are just fighting words (just for emotional effect). I wouldn't read too much into them.

Okay, thank you and crux_ for your anwsers.

That's not completely true; they are fighting words, but they're fighting words re-used from the Culture Wars, which still rage on. (Particularly in academia.)

I've never gotten the impression from any of my hard science professors that they take the Culture Wars seriously enough. I would think that camp of though to be utterly discredited after the Sokal affair and the various books that sprang from that happy incident. Perhaps you could enlighten us?

For an example of the Culture Wars, just scroll back on the front page to the "Dangerous Mr. Khan" article.

As far as the Sokal affair goes, it may or may not have done an excellent job of discrediting people, processes, institutions, writing styles, academic subculture ... but it did and could not touch any ideas.

In fact, you could even say that the Sokal hoax was an excellent validation/demonstration of many postmodern ideas, albeit at the expense of the same people teaching and regurgitating them.

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