October 15, 2003
new world dawning
Last night I wandered through the almost empty streets of Adelaide. It was a glorious warm night. But there were so few people out having fun. Those I saw were were wearily making their way home from work. Where was the fun crowd? Spring was in the air. It was a balmy night.
I was on on my way to the philosophy jammm to hear Peter Poiana from the Department of French Studies at the University of Adelaide give a talk on Marcel Proust's monumental Remembrance of Things Past.
When I came home from the jammm I had planned to do lots of online research, write a big post on this literary work, and explore the idea being in search for lost time. But then I chanced upon this experimental online visual work tokidoki.it courtesy of notes from somewhere bizarre. It is very, very classy graphic design and illustration that is full of games. Try this game. The website is made in Italy by a media designer at vianet.it who loves Japanese culture.
Italian design and Japanese imagery. Now that's globalization for you.
The juxtaposition of Proust and tokidoki.it got me thinking. I realized that last night I had stepped back to the beginning of the 20th century when France was the centre of the avant-garde, literature ruled, the novel was king and print culture was the centre of our world.
Today it is a visual culture that rules. We are surrounded by images in our visually saturated culture to the extent that our daily life is lived with an ever shifting visualscape. Few people read poetry, the novel is pretty much dead and who goes to the theatre regularly? And experimental work will increasingly be online. tokidoki.it is more visually interesting than a lot of work being produced for the walls and floors of art galleries.
It is a huge shift from a print to a visual culture. It is a fault line that demarcates the 21st century from the 20th.
That shift is not really reflected in Australian weblogs. Visual semiotics and design literacy are fairly low key whilst critical commentary on our visual culture, as a place where meanings are created and contested, being almost non-existent. The webloggers have yet to take the visual turn that everyday life has already gone through.
Then I chanced upon some remarks made by Brendon Nelson----our trendy Minister of Education. He wants Parliament to grant him the power to to cut funding to controversial tertiary courses and PhD research topics, such as subjectivity, textuality, ethics and pleasure.
Subjectivity, textuality, ethics and pleasure, you ask. What does that mean? Try this:
Our groovey Minister does not like us acquiring visual 'literacy', or learning how to critique those advertising images that manipulate our unconscious emotions to leave us worse off. He says that we are far better off putting the taxpayers money into more lawyers, teaching and veterinarians.
Notice the big silence about Proust.
Now Minister Nelson spends a lot of energy circulating pictures of himself hanging out with kids who are full of spontaneity and joyousness. These show that Brendan Nelson has lots of street credibility. It's called spin and it's message is designed to silently slip into our subjectivity so that we feel warm and cuddly towards Minister Nelson. The minister is playing the same game as the advertising industry.
The Minister's dismissal of PhD research into subjectivity, textuality, ethics and pleasure indicates that he is living in yesterday's world. He reads yesterday's papers, is surrounded by yesterday's people and has yesterday's ideas.
Subjectivity, textuality, ethics and pleasure. We need lots more research and courses on that in relation to our visual culture.
Update
A brief account of the Proust talk at the Philosophy Jammm mentioned above can be found here. Scroll down.
Nice spin.
You could argue that what we really need are courses so that people could critique those misleading blog posts that leave us worse off.
I must admit I remain to be convinced that our groovey Minister is so far off the mark.
He isn't actually arguing that universities shouldn't be allowed to study such mysteries as the sexuality of Jesus or Nicole Kidman's divorce. He's just arguing that the taxpayer shouldn't have to fund such esotorica.
Now let's consider the ALP's response.
Opposition education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin warned yesterday that the proposal was an "astounding attack on academic freedom".
"Dr Nelson is giving himself carte blanche to cut public funding to university courses according to his whim," Ms Macklin said. "What is or is not in the nation's interest is entirely up to him."
Now, as I understand it, we elect a government so that they can determine what actually is in the nation's interest. Dr Nelson is the minister in charge of the education portfolio, so he is strictly speaking the fellow who SHOULD be in charge of determining what is in the nation's interest.
Like I say, a nice post, and nice spin.
Posted by: Scott on October 16, 2003 03:47 AMScott,
I'm amazed.
Forget the party politics. It's fog.
You say that you are a libertarian and that you are deeply concerned about interference in the individual liberty by the state.
More freedom rather than less freedom is better for you.
Here you have a classic issue of freedom versus state interfernce and you side with state interference!
So you stand in opposition to freedom---institutional and individual---and are willing to concentrate all power in one man.
My my.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on October 16, 2003 09:58 AMNelson is a hypocrite who was quite happy to lead his own union and didn't pay for his own education. Just another politician feeding at the trough urging us all to sacrfrice our own interests when he would never do the same.
Posted by: dj on October 16, 2003 03:06 PMIts about money not freedom.
Ok, let me spell it out for you in simple English.
Neither the Minister, nor my good self, are objecting to the Universities offering these courses per se, what we are objecting to is the taxpayer paying for it.
Having the minister controlling what taxpayers pay for is not at all inconsistant, because he's spending my money. He's at least accountable to me and the other taxpayers through the election mechanism. If you leave it to the Vice-Chancellors, then there's no accountability at all.
It would be a different matter if these university courses were privately funded. Do you see the difference?
Posted by: Scott on October 17, 2003 02:19 AMScott,
There should be accountability about public money.
You have an old fashioned idea of the university. The whole thrust of the Neslon reforms is towards deregulation, the market deciding whats going to happen, and consumers paying for their courses.
That means the consumer is king.
Your expositon of accountability overlooks the freedom of the university as an institution in civil society; and the university responding to the market demand of free consumers wanting courses on surfing as part of the tourism industry.
As I keep saying there is a basic contradiction between the push towards market freedom and the top-down micro control by the Minister.
You may not acknowledge but the university Vice-chancellors sure as hell do. It has had the effect of shifting them from initially supporting Nelson to being offside.
This discloses the heavy hand of conservatism sitting inside the clothing of market liberalism.
Why? Because the conservatives smell democracy and they do not like democracy. Hell, students cannot study what thet want.They have to do what the Government decides is right and proper.
Such conservatives see higher education as if it were primary school! They are not even aware that the prestigious universities are laughing their heads at the level of understanding being shown by Howard and his authoritarian headkickers.
It's a joke. The episode confirms to them what they had already suspected: that Australia is third world country when it comes to higher education.
My take is that if the University wants to be a free institution in our civil society then it should pay its own way. Then the Vice Chancellors can have all the freedom that they want.
As you say, students can not just study what they want, because they aren't paying for it. Students that DO pay their full fees are getting preferental treatment. I doubt fee-paying students would find an objection from the minister if they wish to study surfing.
Posted by: Scott on October 18, 2003 01:38 AMScott,
the self-regulating market is not civil society.
Big difference.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on October 19, 2003 09:14 AM