Elections (fwd)

[WHITELEY DAVID]

Dear Richard, Ric and the rest of CANDRAMA,

I am one of the many not to have responded to Ric's (hi Ric!) penetrating
analysis of the Elections posting.  Not because I disagree, but because I
don't have anything to add.

Also, the criticisms up the ante considerably from the toadyish lobbying
of the original to the ideological criticism of the response.  While
agreeing with the criticisms, I don't know how best to go about promoting
their ideas beyond the ears of the already-converted.

However (and here's where I really start rambling)...

Having recently read an intro to Gramscian theory (with particular
emphasis on political (?) time and civil (ideological) time, I can't
resist trying to see if I've got a handle on the ideas by applying them
here in a little impromptu analysis...


The original posting seems to have purely political objectives:  change
short-term behaviour (election goals & post-election actions concerning
support for research) without changing the way people think/talk
(uncritical use of neo-conservative discourse); in other words, no intent
to influence the flow of ideological time (although I [believe I]
understand that we are talking about ideological changes in a materialist
sense). This reminds me of criticisms of Dickens and Hugo, who supposedly
championed the poor but embrace fundamental bourgeois values at the same
time (indeed, Hugo's pleading to replace severe punishment of the poor
with (bourgeois)  "education" (read socialization, read indoctrination)
seems to have accurately predicted the political changes which kept
capitalism largely intact in the West.

Ric's response, on the other hand, has more ambitious aims (perhaps "would
have", depending on how many readers feel their own discourse criticized
by his posting).  To criticize a way of speaking, thinking, acting and
EVALUATING actions is to (attempt to) provoke a change in "civil time" to
keep to the Gramscian analysis.

I suspect that one reason not more response was generated to the postings
had to do with how daunting this task is.  What objectives can be realized
in the space of an election campaign?  Just making research an issue while
hitting all the buzz words seems one inch short of impossible, so what
good trying to criticize those buzz words and the priorities behind them?
Put Gramiscianly, influencing political events is difficult enough, how
can one hope to influence civil life in the short span of political time?

I suppose the answer is to not aspire to do so.  But that doesn't mean not
doing anything.  Figuring that the election results and the platforms of
the parties are unlikely to be changed by a month of ideological criticism
OR of political posturing, one might reasonably decide to abandon
short-term political gain (a "mauvaise foi" alliance with an ideologically
unappetizing Science and Technology lobby) and instead use the debates
afforded by an election to try to make inroads, even slight ones, towards
a radically different way of evaluating the value of research and of the
arts.  With any luck, we might start to see some results in the next
millenium... ideological time.


Incidentally, I recall a poll around last referendum saying that very few
people considered that artists influenced their political opinions.  I
like to believe that this disavowal reflects the fact that arts, examining
and questioning our beliefs, operate mostly in civil time, following,
anticipating and leading changes in how we understand the world, but not
(very rarely) impacting on immediate political changes for which Jane Q.
Public will give them credit.

Sorry to make a long tirade in a mode of analysis I've just come across.
I'd be happy to hear criticism of this analysis, and I hope others will
continue the debate.



        "Here then was the paradox of the President's speech.  We
        normals--aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were
        indeed well and truly fooled (`Populus vult decepi, ergo
        decipiatur'). And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined
        with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained
        intact, undeceived."
        --Oliver Sacks, _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_, p.84

David Whiteley
m233701 at er.uqam.ca