The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

Back in 2003 Miranda Devine accused me of stealing funds from cancer research. No, really.

It was one of those periodic, and predictable, attacks on those she saw as left-wing academics, mounted by the then-powerful demagogs on the right. My sin—along with several others—was to have had a bio on the M/C contributors page when Devine went looking for a soft target to illustrate her vacuous point, and the fact that my APA (Australian Postgraduate Award) was funded, and someone else’s wasn’t. She finishes the rant with the point:

But all research is not of equal value. There are presumably PhD students in Australia finding the cure for cancer or solving Fermat’s second last theorem or investigating the worth of superannuation, as Zaffar Subedar is doing. Maybe there should be an inverse proportionality formula applied. The more “fun” a topic, the less chance of funding.

Now this report was characterised by all the sloppy research that the divine Miranda is renowned for: she reveals no knowledge of the ranking procedures for APAs, or an understanding of the way higher education funding works. She even confuses the roles of the ARC and the NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council). But not to worry: we are used to this sort of thing from Devine and her ilk, and this, of course, is really old news.

But in the News Ltd press this weekend comes the report of New Zealand scientists producing a no-tear onion. Now, assuming funding works the same way in New Zealand as it does in Australia, the source of funding for bio-technology is the same as that for cancer research. I’m not going to indulge in the sorts of simplistic arguments that say that any research must be at the expense of another, or to try and rank the relative value of different type of research.

I’m merely wondering, where’s Miranda now? Hello! Hello, Miranda, you still out there?

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the CSAA conference in Adelaide, particularly so as there were so many senior academics there. I know that time spent at conferences such as CSAA is a big commitment for them, with relatively little payoff, but for those of us who are just starting out they have much to teach. I’m not talking about the content of their keynotes and papers, but about things that are perhaps more important – we can read their work in journals.

As promised, I return to Julie Bishop’s speech at the Australian Literature Roundtable dinner.

The speech as a whole is firmly based in the government’s rhetorical attacks on the academic left known as the “culture wars”. Usually based around a moral panic about the teaching of “postmodernism” in schools, the tactic parodies legitimate concerns about curriculum design and content, and forces opponents to either support what are some pretty dodgy practices, or to agree with people you wouldn’t want to be caught talking to. I’ve blogged about this theme before

Bishop returns to that time-dishonoured tactic of taking an extreme example (out of context, of course) and then holding it up as exemplary: in this case concerning the study of literature and the apparent relativism of postmodernism (for once she doesn’t use the “p” word, but we all know who she’s talking about)…

I’ll have more to say about this soon, but here’s a teaser:

Minister for Education Julie Bishop, in a speech at the Australian Literature Roundtable dinner on Monday night said:

It is a disturbing trend that in Queensland, for example, the number of students studying English or English Literature dropped from 93 per cent to 80 per cent of year 12 students over the past decade, while the number of students studying the softer option of English Communication rose from 2400 to 8500 students.

Ignoring for a moment that English Communication frequently turns up on the curriculum for High School preparation courses and for students from non-English speaking backgrounds, it is a strange statement from a government that has pushed the idea of vocational training over that of education for a decade.

Yes, maybe some people’s subject choices are disturbing; or maybe it is an indication that some young people recognise that learning about practical communication in real-world situations is going to be of more benefit in the job market than an appreciation of the nuances of Shakespeare (and I speak as one who does value the nuances of Shakespeare).