Philosophy.Com

critique as irritation

I see that the negative commentator over at public opinion was looking for some handouts (public funding) from the latest Costello budget so that he could criticize a neo-liberal mode of governance. A bit of irony perhaps? A gesture of critique?

Needless to say the pessimistic commentator didn't get a crumb from Treasurer Costello. Nor is it likely that critical public intellectuals or the humanities will be publicly funded as long as utilitarianism is a public philosophy in Australia. The numbers just don't crunch too well for the humanities, no matter how much you try and jig them. Technoscience gives you more bang for the buck in terms of increasing the wealth of the nation. How can you beat numbers? Do they not mirror reality at its joints?

Yet the negative commentator has raised an important issue---the role of critique in liberal democracy. He implies that it is important hence it should be funded. Of course many violently disagree with the positive role critique plays in the public sphere of liberal democracy. Consider the views of that well-known conservative Michael Duffy. Duffy wants to dampen down critique. He says that the broad and pervasive culture of irritation (does this mean complaint?) in Australia has its roots in the expansion of the humanities in the 1970s and 1980s. So the humanites should be done away with. The universities will be better off without them. Duffy, with his gesture to Lenin, is explicit:

"What is to be done? The expansion of the universities and public artz bodies, starting in the '50s, was a response to the Cold War. Even men of the world believed there was a need to show that our ideas were better than theirs. That the appar atus they established to achieve this should be largely taken over by the Left was an unforeseen outcome. The time has come to respond, not just because the Cold War is over but to stop the production of future generations of the irritated.

Let us close down the humanities faculties and all the artz organisations now. This will hurt legions of bureaucrats, teachers and curators, but not art. Nothing could be better for art than to realise Richard Flanagan's vision and turn our artists from being merely irritated to passionately outraged."

Ken Parish says that Duffy's article is "truly inspired." Ken teaches law at a regional university in the Northern Territory. Law is generally considered to be a part of the humanities. So Ken is doing himself out of a job for the sake of the nation. Can that be right? Is Ken being ironic?

On a more serious note check out Duffy's smoke and mirrors:---the way critique as a part of a liberal education has been reduced to 'irritation'. Critique, once seen integrally tied to democracy is now represented by Duffy as whingeing, moaning and feeling sorry for oneself.

What we see here is an expression of Australian conservatism's dumping the Enlightenment heritage. Critique was okay for getting rid of the Absolute monarchs and old those old customs, habits and traditions in order to increase the scope of human freedom. But critique has done its job. It is not to be allowed any more freedom. It has no role in the present. It needs to be dampened down, if not squashed.

So what is wrong with Duffy's view of critique? Most people do think it is being negative, criticising, harping and so something destructive. Hence it should be dampened down and replaced with looking on the brighter side of things; we shoudl be looking at the good things not the bad ones. There is a deep underground hostility to critique in Australia and Duffy has voiced the conservative understanding of why critique is bad.

The key problem with Duffy's squashing critique is that he overlooks the way it greases the wheels of a federal democracy. Shortly the Senate will be considering the Costello budget, and most political journalists say that the Senate will reject the neo-liberal reforms of health and education that move towards the consumer paying for these public services. Is this not the Senate engaging in political critique of the policies of the Howard administration?

Oh I know the response of the Howard Government. It is much the same as their old enemy Paul Keating. They are rehearshing their lines already. We have a mandate to govern. The Senate is blocking our legislation. They are unrepresentative. They should back down and pass the government's legislation. Is this not a political critique of the Senate in a federal democracy.

No? How about the criticism of the former Governor General, Sir William Deane, for being political by the Howard Government? For his strong support for reconcilation between white and black. How about the criticism of the High Court for its judicial activism by Ministers in the Howard Government and the Liberal movement? Is this not political critique?

These examples serve to make my point that Australian federalism, with its separation of political power between the judiciary executive and the legislature, depends upon critique to function. Each of these institutions subjects the other to critique, thereby reducing the despotism that each institution would gravitate to without critique. Critique is an essential part of the political process of checks and balances federal democracy; a cornerstone of political reason if you a partial to foundational metaphors.

This perspective enables us to understand the significance of Duffy's reduction of critique to irritation. He us saying that citizens should not engage in critique as part of the process of checks and balances. Since they moan and whinge they are not mature people who can think for themselves, have something to say and are capable of resisting established opinion of the day and the authority of existing political institutions. Citizenship is just as much a part of the political process as the legislature. So Duffy is bringing critique in the hands of citizens to a halt.

But Duffy's conservatism is doing more than bringing critique to a halt in the public sphere. He is telling us citizens to capitulate before reality: we underlyings should keep quite. The guardians are in control. They know what they are doing. They are guided by their inherited stands and values. They--as superior beings--- have things in hand and are doing a good job. So those who engage in critique undermine unity, cause devision and are subvert established political authority. Critique weakens that authority. It is wrong for that established political authority is in the right hands.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 14, 2003 03:42 PM | TrackBack