YEBIGA,

All your classical/neoclassical authors are standard Humanities fare, while the figures in your populist rant are old hat. Your venting a spleen that's been fermenting for decades and made you drunk.
There continue to be myriad journals and publications on all the key figures of literature and ancient and modern philosophy, while Foucault and the others you allude to tend to be out of fashion. Every thinker stands on the shoulders of those who went before and all the great thinkers are endlessly re-examined. Zizek for instance stands on the shoulders of the whole romantic tradition, as well as Marx far more than Lacan. As do all the others you mention, including "delueze/guattari"--clearly you've dabbled at best only in their joint effort--who make much of that very point, that the Western tradition is essentially Greek. Indeed look at any compilation of Continental Philosophy and your hallowed list of names is repeated!
I've been studying Aristotle's virtues for some time, as well as more recent works by Charles Taylor, Alisdair Macintyre, John Milbank and numerous others. As for your contention that the Humanities collective has been amusing itself with diversions while the world gets sold up-river, well they're hardly in a position to lead the revolution!
What they try to do is lead an intellectual revolution (which must precede the real thing), to help people to break out of their hegemonic confinement. It's bad enough that they have to contend with the dupes of conservative propaganda (and humans are naturally disposed to prefer the devil they know), but being blamed for the neoliberal assault by twits like you is beyond the pale!
The fact that the humanities are on the nose and threatened with closure in the era of neoliberal ascendency is the best appraisal of intellectual integrity one could ask for--perhaps all their books should be burned too!
That the humanities continue to fly in the face of political/cultural orthodoxy is a measure of honesty and commitment to truth--as rigorous and unrelenting as any of the sciences, which "are" in the pocket of their masters!

The thing about being a Chook (Signaller), if you've spent some time in Transmission Tracking, you learn about identifiers. Keying (morse), Pressel Switch use, phrases, accents, intonations, word use, etc, etc.

poirot/YEBIGA You were too easy to spot. I picked you up on your first post & confirmed it on the second. Just too easy.

Aristocrat: There's nothing for you to add to the discussion.

The Theme is about Andrew Bolt's article titled 'We're paying for the teaching of Marxist politics'.

He is right. The Universities Humanities Department is Leftist/Green inclined, as shown by many of the posters here. When their bias is questioned they come out like wounded bulls charging everything in sight.

Not one of you Pseudo Intellectuals has shown me where any benefit is obtained from your study of the Humanities. Therefore why should the Australian People pay for you hobby? Why should we have to pay for a bunch of ratbag Green professional student demonstrators to study that hobby?

You people do not improve the quality of life for anybody. You do not contribute to the economic benefit of Australia. You produce, build, manufacture nothing. You suffer from Delusions of Grandeur (shown by Aristocrat on his first post) as you stare at your navels sipping Brandy & mumbling under you breath. (OGC)

I have at least contributed in a number of ways, small as they may be, to the Benefit of Australia. What have you done?

The following is an extract from Joseph Schumpeters' classic "capitalism socialism and democracy" it is a work lauded by faculties of business studies in universities around the world.

Common sense demands that any self respecting humanities course would include his analysis. Any humanities phd student unfamiliar with this work is simply disengaged and irrelevant.

" ... Let us again visualise the state of things which looms in the future if that trend be projected. Business...is controlled by a small number of bureaucratised corporations. Progress has slackened and become mechanised and planned. The rate of interest converges toward zero, not temporarily or under the pressure of governmental policy, but permanently owing to the dwindling of investment opportunities. Industrial property and management have become depersonalised - ownership having degenerated to stock and bond holding, the executives have acquired habits of mind similar to those of civil servants. Capitalism motivation and standards have all but wilted away..."

This was written back in the early 1950s

Now, call me naive, but humanities students armed with understanding the philosophies underpinning the current hegemony is empowered to confront and challenge the current hegemony with a language which is understandable. Why it is even conceivable humanities students could, imagine, influence capitalist theory.

Voltaire, Rosseau, Marat, Paine inspired great changes because they spoke of what concerned everyday people and they spoke about it an everyday language. Their ideas are as complex as any 20 th century or current symptomologist but they speak to the universal human condition and thus they inspire not only students and academics but everyday people from all walks of life.

of all subjects The humanities cannot indulge in jargon, incoherence or obscurantism - its subject is man. If Derrida cannot be understood by Chomsky than he has no place in a university. We read Zizek only because the cupboard is so bare but his Marxian Lacanian psychology is as efficacious as reading tea leaves.

Squeers and aristocrat your education is not only useless but it remains a hindrance. My prescription is a 2 year sabbatical away from academia and any literature post 1918.

Unable to post till now.

YEBIGA:
Schumpeter was a fan of capitalism and all its achievements past and to come, but among his predictions was the conviction that, “…a socialist form of society will inevitably emerge from an equally inevitable decomposition of capitalist society”, foreseeing “a conquest of private industry and trade by the state” (from the preface and penultimate chapter respectively of “Capitalsim, Socialism and Democracy”).
Your savant was clearly wrong--as was Marx (at least about the timing)--and great as his masterpiece is there’s many another that’s equally or more indispensable.
There is no “Bible” to consult.
What is studied within the Humanities is vast and diverse and includes Schumpeter where appropriate.
I also dislike needless obfuscation and enjoy clarity, but it is as much dependent on subject matter, and the mental clarity of the reader, as on the prose. If you know anything about deconstruction you’ll know there are good reasons for the verbosity. Besides, if you want convoluted prose, read Hegel, it’s not just the moderns. If you want searingly austere prose, read Kant’s critiques, which are utterly Spartan and all the more difficult for it. Like the other Romantics, Kant realised that we’re prone to read through ideological lenses, or to latch onto familiar language and secondary concepts; thus the almost total want of example or illustration in his critiques, which are meant to rely on a priori acts of mind, rather than on already created objects.
If prose from any author or era has any value it depends as much on style as content. “The medium is the message”.
As if simple clarity was more than simplicity itself!

“Squeers and aristocrat your education is not only useless but it remains a hindrance. My prescription is a 2 year sabbatical away from academia and any literature post 1918”.

What’s so offensive here is the blind presumption. Speaking for myself, I never went near a university till I was over 40, but I read voraciously since my teens, including many of the names you mention.

Get thee to a university!

Jayb,

"The thing about being a Chook (Signaller), if you've spent some time in Transmission Tracking, you learn about identifiers. Keying (morse), Pressel Switch use, phrases, accents, intonations, word use, etc, etc.

poirot/YEBIGA You were too easy to spot. I picked you up on your first post & confirmed it on the second. Just too easy."

Your braggadocio is kinda funny in that case.....because you're way off the mark.

As I mentioned, I'm rather flattered you think I'm YEBIGA.

However, YEBIGA may be somewhat underwhelmed at the thought of you believing he/she is Poirot.

Kant and Hegel may be difficult to read but not so difficult to understand. And the work is a genuine search for the truth of our human condition Thus when they are wrong there is still something to learn.

This is not the case with theorists like Foucault, or a Derrida. Here we search for oppression and victims - hidden in psychology, in texts, language, gender - the snares are everywhere. in other words we study here the effect. The cause, the oppressor, its motivations, its rationale is negated.

Society itself here becomes an alien force with evil intent. Things are simply done to us and not only can we not trust anyone, in truth even our own motives are suspect.

The humanities now indoctrinate its students into sectarianism of race, gender, religion, gay/straight, drug users, single mothers, unemployed, refugees, prisoners... An endless list of sects making any communal action impossible. Thus divided, the entire population becomes pliable to the oligarchical forces.

This is no small academic postulation. I have my friend been to university, so I have seen first hand the conceit which feeds this false compassion, the intellectual dishonesty, the unthinking fawning, the triumphant surrender into unreason.

The right wing think tanks have become the leading practitioners and students of the humanities. They don't get lost in obscurantism and have very clear objectives. To achieve them it is not beneath them to borrow equally from an Edmund Burke or Lacan. They are not afraid to learn from Geobbels or from Kahnerman. They work shop ideas without outside the prism of political correctness.

If I insult you, it is because I despair at any alternative method of getting thru to you, how utterly corrupted the humanities have become.