PROFESSOR Elspeth Probyn shouldn't be so modest. In Wednesday's The Australian she denounced "Andrew Bolt's annual column in the Herald Sun on how useless academics are." Actually, professor, I have never claimed all academics are useless. In that column last month, I discussed only a few stand-outs -- ones who'd had work of dubious benefit financed by a $500 million-a-year system of Australian Research Council grants that seems unfocussed, wasteful and far too clubby. I wondered, for instance, how members of ARC committees could hand each other big grants, including one of $880,000 to study the "the classed, racialised and ethnicised dimensions of the bodily experience" in Japan.
| I'm still waiting for my check to study the effects of liquor on multiethnic hookers. Maybe I didn't use obscure enough terminology in my grant application? |
Did such grant-making help explain why the humanities in particular have become so insular and self-indulgent? Probyn, professor of gender studies at Sydney University and author of Sexy Body, tackled none of my arguments in her piece, simply wailing: "Would (Bolt) care that it hurts to be told that your 50-or 60-hour work week is pointless?"
| If your 50- or 60-hour work week consists of pounding sand with a claw hammer, yeah, it's pointless... |
Pointless? Now that I've checked Probyn's own faddish work — and who has paid her to do it — I can understand why she seemed to take my criticisms personally. Or why she sure should. In 2000, she received an $11,000 grant from the ARC to study The Making of Mod Oz: the roles of the food media in the construction of contemporary identity. In 2001, she won another $137,500 to ruminate over Practices and performances of alimentary identities: a comparative analysis of the food media and their audiences. And that same year she shared a $118,000 ARC grant to study Girl Cultures: the effect of media on young women's self-representations.
| Yep. That's what I'm doing wrong. Gotta reword that synopsis... |
That last study involved such things as quizzing girls on "their reaction to Sara-Maria Fedele (de facto star of the first Big Brother series) as a focal point for analysing both young women's interest in the Big Brother format and, more broadly, their responses to popular discourses of protection which circulate around their media consumption".
| "Opacity factor 99 percent and rising, captain!" |
I suspect, from their bloated titles, you'd understand her other studies even less, so I'll let Probyn describe what she's up to in one article, using her best English: "I argue that queer theory needs to extend its theoretical reach beyond an increasingly over-privileged and narrow use of sexuality."
| I think I'll see if I can't work some hetero theory into my application. Maybe that'll help. And I'll use that "increasingly over-privileged and narrow use of sexuality," too. Do you think I'll have to attribute it? Does she want a royalty? |
Which has her doodling: The mouth machine registers experiences and then articulates them — utters them. In eating we may munch into whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them. For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me.
'UNSOLICITED, it sets out a statement from a Dr Johannes Van Vugt, in San Francisco, who on October 11, 1999, National Coming Out Day in the US, began an ongoing 'Fast for Equal Rights for persons who are gay, lesbian and other sexual orientation minorities'. Wowsers! Lemme write this down: "The machine of desire registers experiences and then articulates them — utters them. In chasing hookers we explore whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them. [That'd be the spike heels, fishnet stockings, and Quik-Release™ Wonder Bras. Or should I explain that? Mebbe I should let the imagery speak for itself?] For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic [since I have no idea what rhizomatic means, if anything, I'll have to use it at least once] passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me."
'UNSOLICITED [or maybe solicited, since we're gonna get lotsa money to write about hookers], it sets out a statement from a Dr Johannes Van Vugt [I gotta find somebody with a "van" or a "von" in his name to cite], in Baltimore's Hustler Club, who on [insert date here], National Boudoir Acrobatics Day, began an ongoing 'Fast for Equal Rights for persons who are heterosexual but with marked proclivities toward trapezes, German shepherds and Jolly Green Giant Cream Corn'." |
And, no, it doesn't get any more readable -- or meaningful.
| I thought it was profound. |
Several questions zap into my thinking machine as I eat my dinner of connotations, leaving traces of their rhizomatic passage on my shirt. What exactly are Probyn's students learning that is of use to them? Or us? Why are we paying for her to write such dismal stuff, and so turgidly? And what does it say about the ARC that Probyn is just one of many academics who have received grants of $100,000 or much more to subject us to even more such arid theorising? But let me be as clear as I can so even Probyn understands: I am not criticising all academics in asking these questions. This time I've named only her. |