the trouble with theory: some elucidations

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© 2009 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2009 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

Wittgenstein lift this beyond the ‘popular jeremiad’ genre of books by conservativecommentators on postmodernism, multiculturalism, political correctness, and ahost of other targets. That said, in many respects the book is lacking. Perhaps asubsequent volume could address some of the weaknesses in the current book whileretaining the idea of putting Wittgenstein into productive critical conversation withpostmodern and poststructuralist theorists. Such a project, while not new, wouldbe worthy of continuing thought and further development.

References

Frow, J. (2008) Whatever it Means, it isn’t This, The Australian Literary Review, 6 August.Kitching, G. (2008a) The Trouble with Theory (Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin).Kitching, G. (2008b) Paralysed by Postmodernism, The Australian Literary Review, 6 August.Kitching, G. (2008c) Reply to Reviews, The Australian Literary Review, 3 September.10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00518-522.xxxx233255XXXXXXSymposiumSymposium

The Trouble with Theory: Some elucidationsGavin KitchingSchool of Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales

I’d like to begin by thanking Educational Philosophy and Theory for devoting around-table review to my book, and by thanking David Aspin particularly forbringing the contributors together and for arranging for me to have this opportunityto reply to their thoughts and criticisms.

Background: Institutional

I think it may be best to do so by elucidating some of the background to the book,both my personal intellectual background (which seems unknown to most of thecontributors) and the institutional background out of which the book sprang. Ithink it important to do the latter in particular to ‘rescue’ my colleagues in theSchool of Politics at UNSW from some unfortunate assumptions/imputations thatrun through Aspin’s and Marshall’s contribution to the round-table as well as JohnFrow’s ALR review.

Let me begin by saying then that the School of Politics at the University ofNew South Wales is not full, and has never been full, of ideological enthusiasts forpostmodernism or poststructuralism. It contains a number of specialists in interna-tional relations who have some sympathy for the recent ‘constructivist’ turn in their field,and it had one member (now departed) who had some interest in, and sympathyfor, poststructuralist political theory. However, one of the most interesting featuresof the ‘final’ sample of 27 Honours theses selected for analysis in my study is thatthe vast majority of them were not supervised by that colleague (contrary to myinitial expectations) and indeed that the majority (about 60%) were supervised bycolleagues whom I know to be indifferent to, or agnostic about, poststructuralism.

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In short then the ‘theory’ being used in these theses is as much a product ofstudent initiative as of teacher influence. In fact the major problem of these theses,it seemed to me, was not that their authors were uncritically swallowing, or beingdominated by, their teachers’ intellectual obsessions, but that supervisors didnot feel confident, or competent, to rein in student theoretical and philosophicalenthusiasms. And it was this conclusion that led Chapter 11 of TwT (the ‘tips’chapter) to be structured as it is—addressed to supervisors. Most of my colleaguesare, like me, educational liberals. They want to help their student charges do thebest work they can within the perspectives those charges themselves choose. Theproblem however in this case, (the ‘poststructuralist’ case) is that many of themfeel unsure or uncertain how to do that. As a result (at least in my view) they let‘theoreticist’ students get away with practices and procedures that they would ‘pullup’ instantly in areas/fields where they feel more confident.

That was/is the situation in my own department. I do not know how typical thatsituation is, which is one of the reasons I would like to see my study followed upby others done at postgraduate level and in other disciplines. I have heard enoughacademic gossip to think that things may be somewhat different in departments orschools of English Literature, Cultural Studies, Sociology or even History, where(one is told) poststructuralist theory has a far stronger following among teachersand academics than in Politics. But perhaps this just results in Honours andgraduate students doing better theoretical work in those departments and notmaking the kind of schoolgirl philosophical howlers anatomised in TwT. Perhaps,perhaps not, but why not at least try to find out?

Background: Personal

I am not a philosopher. My undergraduate degree was in Politics and Economics,and my Oxford doctorate was in African Politics. But as a graduate student Ibecame intensely interested in the Althusserian ‘turn’ in Marxian theory, a turnwhich deeply influenced (in a rather odd way) my first major book, Class andEconomic Change in Kenya.1 I left the UK for Australia in 1991, but for at least adecade before that a significant number of British ex-Althusserians had becomeenthusiasts for Foucauldian and other variants of poststructuralism. I took someinterest in this movement, which led me to read—yes—a lot of Foucault, Laclauand Mouffe, Deleuze and Guattari. But I found myself as unconvinced by theirfundamental philosophical protocols as I had been by Althusser’s, and for the samereason—the growing influence of Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians (especiallyStanley Cavell) on my thought. (In 1994, I wrote a major critique of AlthusserianMarxism from a Wittgensteinian perspective under the title Marxism and Science,Analysis of an Obsession.)2

Background: Intellectual and Political

This is not the place for a lengthy disquisition on my intellectual or political views,but, suffice it to say that I share with the poststructuralists, and even more with

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someone like Bourdieu, the conviction that the best understanding that we canhave of human beings is a praxilogical one—i.e. one which conceptualises humanbeings as active creatures and knowing as just one of the activities in which theyengage. In the Marxist tradition, this is the view found in Part One of The GermanIdeology and The Theses on Feuerbach, and in the early Lukács, Korsch andHorkheimer. But I am also convinced that the conception of language at playamong the poststructuralists continually compromises, and indeed undermines, the‘praxilogical’ insights they are trying to develop.

To put the matter simply, I think someone like Deleuze has a praxilogicalconception of epistemology entangled with an ‘Augustinian’ conception of languagewhich is its functional antithesis. And what typically happens is that even goodstudents swallow the latter much more quickly and completely than the former(although they often pay lip service to the former) and then, like Deleuze himself,utterly compromise the former with the latter. Hence all my critical stuff aboutnouns, ‘naming’ etc. and their consequences in TwT.

The later philosophy of Wittgenstein is in my view by far and away the bestinstantiation and development of the epistemology of The Theses on Feuerbach to befound anywhere in Western philosophy—a view which has led me, in conjunctionwith some Wittgensteinian friends and colleagues, to write extensively on the phil-osophical relationship between Marx and Wittgenstein.3 Against this backgroundit can be readily understood how delighted, and amused, I was by Jim Mackenzie’svery a propos remarks on Edward Thompson’s critique of Althusser, and howpuzzled I was by some of James Marshall’s thoughts on Marx!

Students and ‘Ridicule’

I also want to say something about my use of student material, and especially aboutthe allegation that I may have ridiculed, or set out to ridicule, either the studentsor their work. I think it would very hard to find any evidence or examples in thebook of my doing this, either in substance or tone. Indeed, if there were, thebook would have failed of its central purpose. Because I conceived TwT as aimedprimarily at students, not at their teachers or at academics generally. I wanted, andhoped, that students (both undergraduate and graduate) would recognise some oftheir own practices in the quoted material and, through that recognition, bestimulated to ask probing, reflective questions about those practices. But even themost brave and open-minded student is not going to do this if the invitation is lacedwith ridicule or contempt. And actually I have had a lot of feedback from students(including several invitations to speak to student audiences) which suggests thatmany at least do not see TwT as either ridiculing or contemptuous.

Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’

My determination to write for a student audience also explains some other featuresof the book—its brevity, its eschewing of scholarly clutter for its own sake, and,above all, its almost exclusive use of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

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I chose to do this, not because I am unfamiliar with developments in analyticalphilosophy since Wittgenstein (although I certainly cannot claim any deepknowledge of that) but because I thought, as Jim Mackenzie rightly says, thatWittgenstein’s critique of his own Tractatus is all that is needed to provide a readilyaccessible understanding of what is wrong with poststructuralist conceptionsof language. Basically the central allegation of TwT is that, in important ways,Foucault, Deleuze and even (in a very odd way) Derrida have not advancedsignificantly beyond the Tractatus.

But I also chose to centralise the PI in TwT because it was produced in a periodof Wittgenstein’s life when he was most closely engaged in teaching. Thus thetext itself embodies a lot of student ‘feedback’ from his classes, most notably inthe voice, or voices, of the ‘interlocutor’. All this makes the PI itself a wonderfulteaching text, even today. Its genuinely dialogical/conversational character, itsbrilliant use of simple examples and analogies, its bewitching combination ofreadily understood prose with complex and hard ideas—all this still works wonderswith good students. And, for that reason I felt confident that the PI could work itspedagogical magic as well in a short, snappy text as it does in the classroom, aconfidence that seems to have been justified by many responses to the book.

In fact I have been very pleased, but also saddened, by several emails receivedsince the book’s publication which thank me and TwT for ‘introducing’ Witt-genstein, but also express puzzlement that the writer had not heard of him before.How did we get to the point where someone who used to be regarded as one ofthe greatest, if not the greatest, Western philosopher of the 20th century, hasbecome effectively unknown (even as a name) to a lot of educated young people?

Conclusions

My word counter tells me that I have already exceed my allotted 1500 words, soI will stop. I hope however that this reply has given the contributors to theround-table, as well as other reviewers and potential reviewers of TwT, a muchbetter idea of where I, and it, are coming from, and has established that it is notthe intellectually or philosophically gauche ‘rant’ that it might appear at first sight(to some people!). It is as it is because of the audience at which it is aimed(a puzzled and pained student audience) and it seems to have been quite successful—more successful than I had hoped certainly—in reaching that audience.

And to my non-student colleagues, I will finish by saying—in the spirit of my‘excluded middle’ remarks in the ‘Enlightenment’ chapter of TwT—that either thereis an educational problem here or there is not. That is, we either have a situationin which (whether because of weaknesses in the original ideas, or because of majorproblems in their transmission) students heads are being messed up, or we do not.If it is agreed that, for whatever reasons, we do have a widespread educationalproblem (and my book alone certainly does not establish that) then it is our dutyas educators and intellectuals to try and solve it. Depending on your analysisthis either means abandoning the original ideas for better ones (my solution) orradically improving the transmission mechanisms. But if the problem is widespread

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and chronic it is surely not an option for anybody to simply let it continue. Andit is most certainly not an option to do so on the grounds that it is somehowprofessionally embarrassing or compromising to even raise the matter.

Notes

1. (1980) Class and Economic Change in Kenya (London & New Haven, CT, Yale UniversityPress).

2. (1994) Marxism and Science, Analysis of an Obsession (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press).

3. Kitching, G. and Pleasants, N. (eds) (2002) Marx and Wittgenstein: Knowledge, morality andpolitics (London, Routledge).

the trouble with theory: some elucidations

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