tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/criticism-11285/articlesCriticism – The Conversation2024-02-29T19:07:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2228882024-02-29T19:07:10Z2024-02-29T19:07:10ZFriday essay: amnesia, time loops, a divided world – how TV messes with our heads in seriously interesting ways<p>With the success of Netflix and its imitators, the long-form drama of the fictional screen serial has moved decisively from broadcast television to on-demand streaming. The dizzying range of shows filling the streaming services are now curated by an algorithm that is a mixture of your own personal preferences and those of people whose preferences you share.</p>
<p>The kinds of shows available on streaming services have largely followed genres we can recognise from classic television and cinema: murder mysteries, romantic comedies, legal procedurals, situation comedies, science fiction epics, and so on. </p>
<p>Yet some shows involve a decisive break from our reality, displaying situations we could not conceive of in our world. </p>
<p>We regard a show as realist if it stays within the parameters of daily life, obeying the rules of rationality. (Crime shows, which often deal with quite baroque situations of violence, nevertheless generally remain situated in a shared reality).</p>
<p>These other shows, involving worlds and people being <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/collections/vignettes/products/netflicks-conceptual-television-in-the-streaming-era">split by a conceptual premise</a> – amnesia, time loop, a divided world – reveal that television is not always, as is sometimes imagined, escapist. At least it is not escapist in the conventional sense of offering anodyne fantasies that keep the complexities of life at arm’s length.</p>
<p>In these shows, televisual drama functions as a form of serious thought, introducing and acting out experiments that directly address fundamental contradictions within – or limits to – the realism of our world.</p>
<h2>Split selves</h2>
<p>In the show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4643084/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_Counterp">Counterpart</a> (2017–19), for instance, a physicist in 1980s East Berlin conducts an experiment that accidentally duplicates the universe. He wanders through a tunnel formed in his basement laboratory and finds, to his amazement, his own self walking towards him from the other side. </p>
<p>The action of the story takes place several decades after this radical event. The matter has been kept a closely guarded secret to the populations of both worlds – “Earth Alpha” and “Earth Prime” – but a clandestine crossing point has been maintained.</p>
<p>In the show, the two worlds relate to another like superpowers in a cold war, with agents from both sides trying to steal secrets and sabotage the aims of the other. The uncanny moments occur when an agent meets themselves. They look identical but their characters are different, sometimes subtly, but occasionally diametrically opposite.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://tv.apple.com/au/show/severance/umc.cmc.1srk2goyh2q2zdxcx605w8vtx?mttn3pid=Google%20AdWords&mttnagencyid=a5e&mttncc=AU&mttnsiteid=143238&mttnsubad=OAU2019927_1-593076090890-c&mttnsubkw=135370895994__LnxkyDhH_&mttnsubplmnt=_adext_">Severance</a> (2022– ) there is another version of this “split world” premise. In this case, a corporation has developed a cybernetic procedure to deal with the problem of what we call, in contemporary HR parlance, work-life balance. The solution involves having a chip inserted into your brain, which functions as a switch. At home you remain yourself, in touch with all your memories and involved in the shared reality of everyday life.</p>
<p>But, when you travel to work, you enter a specially modified elevator. Arriving at your floor, all memory of your former life is erased. A second you, devoted only to the tasks of your employment, now takes over. At the end of the day, as you descend back down the lift, all memory of work disappears and your former memories – those connected to the world outside work – are restored.</p>
<p>In this way, the show replicates the conditions of Counterpart, but without needing to double the universe. Simply introducing a distinction in which two versions of the self remain mutually unaware of each other is enough.</p>
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<p>A split in the self corresponds to a split world. In the case of Severance, the workers are made aware of their situation, but are only able to accept this with a certain infantile resignation. They refer to themselves as “innies” and to their invisible outside persona – the one who has instituted their existence – as “outies”. </p>
<p>This pattern bears a close resemblance to another, and more venerable premise: the amnesia plot. This plot, where a character suddenly loses all memory of their former life, was already a feature of Hollywood cinema in the silent era and was the premise for famous films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). In the streaming era, the amnesia plot can be seen in celebrated shows like Homecoming (2018–20) and I May Destroy You (2020).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">The great movie scenes: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
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<h2>Memory and repetition</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Homecoming/0JP2LF83DMAYFDREZ20GAG2DAR/">Homecoming</a>, returning war veterans are offered treatment at the Homecoming Transitional Support Centre, which promises to help them adjust to daily life. However, unbeknown to them, they are being administered an experimental medicine designed to remove their traumatic war memories. The object of this program, which is being funded by the military, is not to return the men to daily life but to return them to the front as soon as possible.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://binge.com.au/shows/show-i-may-destroy-you!7651">I May Destroy You</a>, the amnesia is more specific and closer to common experience. A young woman is slipped a sedative at a bar and is sexually assaulted. But, because she can remember nothing of the evening, the police are unable to take the matter very far. The woman is a writer and is struggling to produce her second novel. </p>
<p>Outwardly, she shrugs off her assault and insists that her main priority is finishing her novel, having all but spent the advance she has been given. Yet it soon becomes clear that so long as she cannot remember (the traumatic event), she can neither create nor live her life. In both Homecoming and I May Destroy You, seemingly such different shows, amnesia creates — or makes visible — a split in the central characters that becomes the defining impasse of the plot.</p>
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<p>The amnesia plot is also related to another distinctive premise we see in film and television: the time loop. In this plot, made famous by the film Groundhog Day (1993), a character finds themselves endlessly repeating the same day. Even if, in desperation, they take their own lives, they simply reawaken in the very same morning that they always do. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pleasure-and-pain-of-cinephilia-what-happened-when-i-watched-groundhog-day-every-day-for-a-year-198668">The pleasure and pain of cinephilia: what happened when I watched Groundhog Day every day for a year</a>
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<p>In the time loop plot, amnesia is experienced not by the central character, but by everybody else. In effect, everyone forgets everything that happened the day before … except the protagonist. This plot outlines a relationship that exists between memory and repetition – a relationship in which only memory can arrest repetition.</p>
<p>The time loop premise has been prominent in recent films, such as the romantic comedy Palm Springs (2020) and science fiction thrillers like Source Code (2011), Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Doctor Strange (2016). Within streamed serials, the most prominent example is probably <a href="https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80211627">Russian Doll</a> (2019–22), in which a woman living in bohemian New York is forced to endlessly repeat a single day. What becomes clear in this show, as indeed was the case in Groundhog Day, is that the repetition is trying to teach the hero something.</p>
<p>In both, Russian Doll and Groundhog Day, the heroes are approaching middle age, but are strangely infantile in their self-absorption and failure to understand their implication in the world. They treat life and the concerns of those around them with cynical indifference. The time loop challenges their cynicism by forcing them to experience, again and again, the grain of a single day.</p>
<p>A variation on the time loop plot can be seen in the show <a href="https://binge.com.au/shows/show-the-rehearsal!16797">The Rehearsal</a> (2022). The premise of this show is that a man named Nathan (played by the show’s creator, Nathan Fielder) has created a service designed to help people deal with an encounter they anticipate will be difficult. </p>
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<p>The service allows them to “rehearse” the event in advance, so that when the real situation arrives they will be prepared. While filmed in the style of a documentary, and seemingly realist in its texture, the show quickly reaches outlandish proportions. </p>
<p>In the first episode, a man has to come clean with a friend to whom he has lied about his level of education, (saying he had an MA when in fact he only had a BA). Because this encounter will take place in a pub, Nathan builds a life-sized replica of this pub in a warehouse and hires a team of extras to play the staff and patrons.</p>
<p>He also hires an actress to covertly study the friend in question, so that the client can rehearse his confession with someone who will mimic her reactions and mannerisms. In this case, repetition is not brought about by a break in reality, but held (however ridiculously) in the frame of reality through the concept of “rehearsal”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nathan-fielders-new-comedy-the-rehearsal-will-be-familiar-to-anyone-with-autism-188071">Nathan Fielder's new comedy The Rehearsal will be familiar to anyone with autism</a>
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<h2>Knowing thyself</h2>
<p>Is this kind of conceptual television something that arises with streaming? Or, does conceptual television simply continue a function that was previously undertaken by classic cinema and classic television, or indeed even older art forms such as prose, poetry, drama and the visual arts? Certainly, each of the premises canvased here precedes the digital age. </p>
<p>The split world premise can be traced, for instance, to the theme of the double (doppelgänger), made famous in 19th-century novels like Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The amnesia plot was a staple of Hollywood cinema. The time loop plot has been in place since at least the 1990s.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jekyll-and-hyde-a-tale-of-doubles-disguises-and-our-warring-desires-187173">Jekyll and Hyde: a tale of doubles, disguises, and our warring desires</a>
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<p>Even so, the digital age has seen these plots gain new and sharper inflexions. The split world premise now has a direct correlate in the split that exists between online and offline living. </p>
<p>Amnesia, insofar as it is premised on the loss of memory, now closely echoes the image of memory we know of in computer systems, which can be stored, deleted, transferred and corrupted. The amnesia plot in Homecoming, for instance, is premised on the idea that the experimental drug can locate, select and delete traumatic memories, as if they were independent files.</p>
<p>Repetition is also distinctive of the grammar of the digital age. Looping and sampling is now central to popular music. Even in a more common genre like dystopia we can see the digital age inflecting these plots through the process of gamification. The logic of the game underpins hit dystopian shows like Squid Game (2021) or the zombie drama The Last of Us (2023), which is adapted from a popular videogame of the same name.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-freaky-slime-mould-from-hbos-the-last-of-us-isnt-a-fungus-at-all-but-it-is-a-brainless-predator-200271">This freaky slime mould from HBO's The Last of Us isn't a fungus at all – but it is a brainless predator</a>
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<p>Another continuity contemporary streamed content shares with television in the broadcast era is its pedagogical orientation. Broadcast television instructs its viewers in the rules of living. This is most obvious in the lifestyle programming (gardening, renovation, cooking, dancing, travel) that remains a staple of current television.</p>
<p>A little surprisingly, however, the conceptual shows discussed here also involve an element of education. The heroes have all reached a point of arrest or crisis because there is something that they need to learn but cannot. </p>
<p>In the 18th and 19th century, the novel incorporated education as an important element in its structure. Jane Austen’s Emma must learn that life is not a game to be watched, but one she must actually play. The mild scorn and amusement she held for those around her are substituted finally for an acceptance of her social role, which in her world was to marry.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-jane-austens-emma-at-200-51022">Friday essay: Jane Austen's Emma at 200</a>
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<p>The novel of personal development (the <em>bildungsroman</em>, or coming-of-age novel) finds its continuation in cinema and television. However, what seems to have changed in recent times is that faith has been lost in the possibility of incremental education. Education now comes up against a traumatic impasse or irremediable split. </p>
<p>In conceptual television, this gets mobilised in the premise itself – a split in the world, radical memory loss, entrapment in blind repetition. More hopefully, however, these extreme situations reveal themselves to be new solutions to the ancient injunction to know thyself. </p>
<p>The doubled world offers the hero the chance to meet their other self. The amnesiac finds their excluded memory is the key to their integration, that they must own their trauma. The time loop patiently schools its student in the niceties of living, reiterating their day for them until they get it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Hughes-d'Aeth is the Chair of the UWA Publishing Board and a co-editor of the 'Vignettes' series in which the book Netflicks: Conceptual Television in the Streaming appears.</span></em></p>From Russian Doll to Severance, a spate of conceptual TV series are rehearsing thought experiments challenging our assumptions about the world.Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173472024-01-04T13:45:06Z2024-01-04T13:45:06ZSchool board members could soon be blocked from blocking people − and deleting their comments − on social media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566311/original/file-20231218-15-v903xy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6877%2C4213&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A California couple sued two school board members who blocked them on Facebook after they made critical remarks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/laptop-and-colour-speech-bubbles-royalty-free-image/1403128248?adppopup=true">OsakaWayne Studios via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If a school board member has a social media account, would it be wrong for them to block someone and delete their comments? That’s a question the Supreme Court has decided to take up after public officials, including two school board members, blocked constituents from seeing their accounts or removed critical comments. </p>
<p>At stake is what constitutes state action – or action taken in an official governmental capacity – on social media. Under the First Amendment, officials engaging in state action <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/state-action-doctrine-and-free-speech">cannot restrict individuals’ freedom of speech and expression</a>. </p>
<p>A ruling in the case, likely to come in spring or early summer 2024, could have broad implications for American society, where nearly three-fourths of the population <a href="https://backlinko.com/social-media-users">use social media in their daily lives</a>. The ruling could also establish whether social media accounts of public officials should be treated as personal or governmental. </p>
<p>In a joint oral argument, the Supreme Court heard <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/10/justices-consider-liability-for-officials-who-block-critics-on-social-media/">two separate cases on the matter</a>, including the one involving school board members, in late October 2023. Interestingly, lower courts reached opposite outcomes, prompting the question of whether a post on a personal social media page can be considered state action.</p>
<h2>The school board case</h2>
<p>Beginning around 2014, two school board candidates in the Poway Unified School District in San Diego created Facebook and Twitter, now X, pages as part of their campaigns for office. They continued to use them after they were elected to communicate with residents and seek their input. </p>
<p>In 2017, the school board members blocked a couple with children in the district from commenting on their pages. Christopher and Kimberly Garnier <a href="https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2022/07/27/21-55118.pdf">repeatedly posted criticism</a> on those pages over such issues as the board members’ handling of race relations in the district and alleged financial wrongdoing by the then-superintendent. The Garniers responded to being blocked by filing a lawsuit. </p>
<p>In the resulting case, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2023/22-324">O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier</a>, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed that the two school board members violated the Garniers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and expression. The court rejected the board members’ claims that their accounts were private because they were not controlled by their boards and their posts were not directly related to their official duties.</p>
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<p>The 9th Circuit judges made three points in ruling that the board members violated the First Amendment. First, the pages identified the board members as government officials and displayed their titles prominently. Second, the social media accounts provided information about school activities. And third, the board members solicited constituent input about school matters on the social media pages in question. </p>
<p>However, the court concluded that the board members were not liable for monetary damages. This is because at the time the school board members blocked the Garniers, no court had yet established whether the First Amendment applies to public officials’ speech in the context of social media. It was – and remains – a new frontier in the law.</p>
<h2>Critical comments over COVID-19</h2>
<p>Conversely, in a similar case in Port Huron, Michigan, the 6th Circuit made the opposite ruling.</p>
<p>Years before he was appointed city manager in 2014, a man named James Freed created a personal Facebook page that he eventually made public when he reached the limit of “friends” allowed on Facebook. Once in office, he used the page for both personal and professional reasons, posting updates about his family as well as policies he was working to implement. During the pandemic, constituent Kevin Lindke posted on Freed’s page, <a href="https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/22a0138p-06.pdf">criticizing his handling of the public health crisis</a>. Freed deleted Lindke’s comments and blocked him from the page. Lindke sued.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2023/22-611">Lindke v. Freed</a>, the 6th Circuit affirmed that Freed did not violate the First Amendment in deleting and blocking Lindke’s comments. And like the 9th Circuit in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2023/22-324">O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier</a>, the court concluded that people’s First Amendment rights to comment on public officials’ social media pages had not yet been established.</p>
<p>The 6th Circuit ruled that Freed posted on his social media page as a private citizen, rather than as a governmental official. The court determined this for three reasons. First, no state law required him to run a social media page. Second, state funds and resources were not used to run the page. And third, the page belonged to Freed as an individual, rather than to the office of city manager – unlike the <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS">@POTUS</a> page on X, for example. Therefore, the court concluded that the postings did not constitute state action subject to the First Amendment.</p>
<p>In April 2023, the Supreme Court agreed to intervene in both cases.</p>
<h2>The future of the cases</h2>
<p>Both cases not only have consequences for citizens’ First Amendment rights but also for <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/27/23929468/supreme-court-social-media-twitter-free-speech-content-moderation">social media companies and users</a>. The Court may decide whether social media platforms such as Facebook and X can be liable for allowing a public official to block private citizens from commenting on their accounts.</p>
<p>These cases might also establish rules and standards about how public officials can control their social media accounts and the role of the courts in these disputes.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-611/275406/20230815175747110_22-611bsacUnitedStates.pdf">brief supporting the city manager in Lindke v. Freed</a>, the U.S. Department of Justice basically argued that if the government neither owns nor controls the personal social media accounts of public officials, their behavior on the platforms “will rarely be found to be state action.”</p>
<p>The DOJ added that preventing public officials from blocking some messages might make them less willing to speak out about important issues. They warned that this could reduce, rather than enhance, free speech and discourse on matters of public interest, whether in schools or other agencies. </p>
<p>On the other hand, organizations such as the ACLU argue that allowing public officials to restrict comments on social media would be detrimental to democracy by limiting free speech.</p>
<p>“The upshot of the government officials’ argument is that they should have a constitutional blank check to silence or retaliate against their constituents for expressing disfavored viewpoints on social media,” the ACLU <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/oconnor-ratcliff-v-garnier-and-lindke-v-freed">wrote about the two cases</a>. “This would give officials a way to short-circuit our most fundamental First Amendment protections.”</p>
<p>Depending on how the court rules, social media may be headed into a new era of who can access and comment on the accounts of public officials.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217347/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles J. Russo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A law scholar examines a pair of Supreme Court cases that pit the public’s free speech rights against politicians’ rights.Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2163402023-10-30T12:32:05Z2023-10-30T12:32:05ZJewish response to Hamas war criticism comes from deep sense of trauma, active grief and fear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556372/original/file-20231027-19-uknyr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C0%2C3260%2C2198&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A house in a kibbutz In Be'eri, Israel, was the scene of part of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/baby-rocking-chair-is-left-in-a-house-that-was-destroyed-in-news-photo/1723823463">Amir Levy/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the wake of the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-rockets-airstrikes-tel-aviv-11fb98655c256d54ecb5329284fc37d2">Hamas terror attacks</a> on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-surprise-rocket-attack-hamas-israel/story?id=103816006">Israeli military response</a>, Jewish people in Israel and around the world have, at times, been posting on social media or otherwise saying publicly that people who <a href="https://time.com/6323730/hamas-attack-left-response/">criticize Israel’s response</a> <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/israel-hamas-war-leads-to-heated-debate-and-protests-on-college-campuses">are, or might be, antisemitic</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pgpEt8MAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Dov Waxman</a>, director of the <a href="https://www.international.ucla.edu/israel/home">Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies</a> at the University of California, Los Angeles, to explain why many Jews might feel that way.</em></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person holds a sign reading 'If you are silent when terrorists murder Israelis, stay silent when Israel defends itself.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A demonstrator holds a sign at a rally in support of Israel in Los Angeles on Oct. 10, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-gather-during-a-rally-in-support-of-israel-news-photo/1717388473">Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Why do some people appear to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism?</strong></p>
<p>There is a perception that many Jews have – including many Jews on the left who are themselves outspoken critics of Israel – that some of the responses, particularly on social media and on some college campuses, to what’s been taking place in Israel and Gaza have been callous and one-sided at best, and in some instances shockingly amoral. Some responses have celebrated Hamas’ attack, and others have solely blamed Israel for it. Still others have been silent about that attack and have only denounced Israel’s military response.</p>
<p>There’s a widespread feeling among Jews that these kind of reactions to the horrific atrocities perpetrated against Israeli civilians don’t reflect a commitment to universal values or human rights. Rather, they exonerate Hamas and treat the mass murder of Israeli civilians as somehow acceptable or legitimate. Some suspect that there’s a double-standard at play when people furiously condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians, but say nothing, or even excuse it, when Israeli civilians are killed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd of people stand together, with one woman turning her face downward while holding an Israeli flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People attend an Israel Solidarity Rally at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, Fla., on Oct. 10, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-the-israel-solidarity-rally-organized-by-the-news-photo/1717558812">Marco Bello/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong>What are Jewish people feeling and experiencing right now?</strong></p>
<p>Many people who aren’t Jewish are responding as if what’s been taking place is just another episode of Israeli-Palestinian violence. </p>
<p>But it’s different for many Jews. My own Facebook feed is pretty much just pictures of Israelis who have been killed or are currently held captive in Gaza. Many Jews have friends and family in Israel, so it’s very personal for them.</p>
<p>Many Jews are still grieving, shocked and traumatized by what happened on Oct. 7. But other people, in the U.S. and around the world, have already moved on from Oct. 7, and they are much more concerned about the war that Israel is now waging against Hamas and the devastating <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/15/1198908600/the-emotional-impact-of-the-israel-gaza-conflict-on-jewish-and-palestinian-ameri">impact it is having on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip</a>.</p>
<p>Jews are often looking for what people have to say about the massacres of Israeli civilians. Most want to hear an unequivocal condemnation of what Hamas did. Any attempt to contextualize it is seen as somehow rationalizing or minimizing Hamas’ attack, or a failure to recognize that Hamas is not simply seeking a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hamas">the destruction of Israel</a>. </p>
<p>And, on top of all this, Jews are becoming increasingly worried and fearful about being harassed or violently attacked by people blaming them for Israel’s actions, or just taking out their anger on them. There’s been a massive spike in antisemitic incidents in the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up-about-400-since-israel-hamas-war-began-report-says-2023-10-25/">United States</a> and in <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/global-antisemitic-incidents-wake-hamas-war-israel">many countries</a> since Oct. 7.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd of people stand, with one person holding a sign saying 'Bring our family back' with photos of people below the words." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supporters of Israel demonstrate at a ‘Stand with Israel’ rally in New York City on Oct. 10, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-a-stand-with-israel-vigil-and-rally-in-new-news-photo/1717510651">Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>What are the emotions behind this reaction?</strong></p>
<p>For many Jews, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack.html">specific nature of Hamas’ attack</a> – the mass slaughter and the way in which Hamas gunmen went systematically from house to house murdering families, and, in some cases, brutally butchering people – evokes deep, traumatic memories of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>What took place on Oct. 7 was the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/was-hamass-attack-on-saturday-the-bloodiest-day-for-jews-since-the-holocaust/">largest single-day killing of Jews</a> since the Holocaust. </p>
<p>What many Jews see in Oct. 7, therefore, is not just a continuation of a long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. What happened on Oct. 7, in the minds of many, is qualitatively different. </p>
<p>The fact that many other people don’t seem to recognize or acknowledge that, or respond as many Jews would hope, is why some Jews feel that there’s antisemitism lurking beneath the surface – that Israeli Jews and Zionists in general have been so dehumanized and demonized that it’s become somehow acceptable for them to be killed, even if they’re civilians, including children and babies. </p>
<p><strong>Is criticism of Israel actually antisemitic, or antisemitic under certain circumstances that people should learn to recognize or understand?</strong></p>
<p>For a long time now, Israeli officials and some right-wing, pro-Israel organizations and activists have had the knee-jerk response that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic, and they strive to delegitimize critics of Israel by labeling them antisemites. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, legitimate criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and peaceful activism in support of the Palestinians, is too often called antisemitic. </p>
<p>I think that most Jews regard criticism of Israel as legitimate, though many feel that it is sometimes excessive. Many, if not most, Jews actually criticize Israel. Nobody seriously insists that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. The real question is, what kinds of criticism of Israel are acceptable and what might be considered antisemitic? When does criticism of Israel cross the line into antisemitism?</p>
<p>Much of the mainstream American Jewish community, including many major organizations, draws the line between <a href="https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism">criticizing the actions and policies of Israeli governments</a> – toward the Palestinians, for example – and criticizing Zionism or Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. They regard the latter as delegitimizing Israel, and they see that as antisemitic.</p>
<p>In my view, it’s not necessarily antisemitic to criticize Zionism or oppose Jewish statehood, but it’s certainly true that some opposition to Zionism and Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is motivated by antisemitism.</p>
<p>In general, criticism of Israel or of Zionism is not, in and of itself, antisemitic, even if they are very harsh and unfair criticisms. However, such criticism is antisemitic when it draws on antisemitic tropes, antisemitic stereotypes or antisemitic ideas.</p>
<p>People can often draw on those things inadvertently – they don’t necessarily know what an antisemitic trope or stereotype is. So, for example, there is an old antisemitic trope called the <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/blood-libel-false-incendiary-claim-against-jews">blood libel</a> that dates back to the 11th century, claiming that Jews seek to kill Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes. So when people say that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children, what some Jews are hearing is that Jews are once again being accused of wanting to kill children.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People wearing black clothes stand in front of a sign reading 'Jews for a free Palestine.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American Jews in Chicago attend a service of remembrance for Israelis and Palestinians killed in fighting between Israel and Hamas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-chicago-area-jewish-community-gather-at-a-news-photo/1732500854">Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>After 9/11, some people criticized the U.S., not because it didn’t have the right to respond, but they criticized the nature of that response, whether it was appropriate, proportional and aimed at the right targets. Isn’t that what people are doing now regarding Israel’s response?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, and just as we accept that it’s legitimate for people to criticize the U.S., it’s also legitimate for people to criticize Israel, or for that matter, any country.</p>
<p>But there is a difference in that nobody really challenges the existence of the United States, or says there should not be a United States of America. So when people criticize the U.S. or events in American history, they’re doing that in the context of an implicit assumption that the U.S. has a right to exist and will continue to exist. </p>
<p>Whereas in the case of Israel, its existence and legitimacy are still challenged. There are still many people who would rather there not be a state of Israel, at least not a Jewish state. So criticisms of Israel can take on a different character in that context.</p>
<p>In the case of Israel, there’s another important difference. Because of Jewish history, especially the Holocaust, there is an abiding sense of vulnerability that many Jews feel. And therefore there’s a worry about Israel’s existence and future, and ultimately the security of Jews, that I don’t think applies to the United States and Americans. Americans don’t have that existential fear.</p>
<p>This all boils down to a deeply traumatized group of people whose trauma was reactivated on Oct. 7 and in the harrowing days since. There’s this intergenerational, unhealed trauma from the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust, with Jews having been vilified, demonized and attacked for so long. That’s their collective memory. And it’s been powerfully evoked, even if not always consciously, over the past few weeks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dov Waxman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many people who aren’t Jewish are responding as if what’s been taking place is just another episode of Israeli-Palestinian violence. But it’s different for many Jews.Dov Waxman, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906342023-01-10T17:29:49Z2023-01-10T17:29:49ZThe humanities should teach about how to make a better world, not just criticize the existing one<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503543/original/file-20230109-25-t9jq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C619%2C5048%2C2660&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Learning to transform, not only criticize, circumstances is an important part of humanities education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This coming spring, a new group of students will think about choosing university majors when they apply to campuses across North America. </p>
<p>In all likelihood, fewer of those students will choose humanities subjects — traditionally understood to include <a href="https://action.nationalhumanitiescenter.org/what-are-humanities/#">history, literature, philosophy, languages and the arts</a> — <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-the-number-of-college-graduates-in-the-humanities-drops-for-the-eighth-consecutive-year/">as their major, than in past years</a>. </p>
<p>This is because of an ongoing <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-humanities-face-a-crisisof-confidence/567565/">“crisis” in the humanities</a>, whereby the meaning, purpose, credibility and benefits of humanities majors are questioned.</p>
<p>Enrolment levels have dropped. Students have a harder time seeing the <a href="https://4humanities.org/2012/10/confronting-the-criticisms/">“relevance” of the humanities</a> and so they choose science, engineering or business in greater numbers. Research also suggests when students do choose a humanities major, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/02/college-major-regrets/">they often regret it</a>. This is bad news for both <a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-should-be-preparing-for-the-end-of-american-democracy-176930">democratic societies</a> and leaders of university humanities faculties. </p>
<p>My pitch to reverse this trend: let’s teach students to be makers, builders and creators, the architects of the future, and not just demolition crews.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Students seen walking across a campus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503523/original/file-20230108-16875-vr61py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The meaning, purpose, credibility and benefits of humanities study are being questioned.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Steven Senne)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Elephant in the Zoom’</h2>
<p>Journalist Ryan Grim provides some insight into the problem in his June 2022 article <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/">“Elephant in the Zoom,”</a> which explores how “meltdowns have brought progressive advocacy groups to a standstill at a critical moment in world history.” </p>
<p>Grim examines the experiences of people working in non-profit organizations both after Donald Trump’s 2016 election, and following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police.</p>
<p>He found that workers in progressive organizations were skilled in analyzing and pointing out problems, but the skills required for <a href="https://hbr.org/1960/11/management-of-differences">constructively managing differences</a> were absent. </p>
<p>He suggests that for many managers, members of an older generation, the focus should have been on the work of non-profits, but for workers — presumably at least some who would be younger — the focus was on their own work environments. </p>
<p>Members of organizations like <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/sierra-club-resignation-internal-report/">the Sierra Club</a> created major disruptions in those institutions. </p>
<p>Many projects stalled as organizations were left with the task of simply <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/12/audubon-society-claims-intimidation-threats-436215">managing intense internal conflict</a>.</p>
<h2>Intense internal conflict</h2>
<p>Grim’s portrait is a typical caricature of humanities graduates – they learn how to spend more time in meetings fighting with one another than changing the world. </p>
<p>The fights Grim chronicled were often about whether an institution saw, in sufficient detail and with sufficient urgency, how their own internal dynamics were corrupted by <a href="https://ed.ted.com/best_of_web/j7Tzdz8r">systemic racism</a> or sexism or other systems of power and privilege. </p>
<p>These are valuable insights. But now we have <a href="https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-note-on-call-out-culture">“call-out culture</a>,” which is more concerned with criticizing someone for lacking an appropriate level of moral purity than with changing systems or making people’s lives better. </p>
<p>In other words, “call-out” culture replaces the hard work of socio-political change with the easy work of shaming one person. As a primary way of engaging the world, there are limits to what “calling-out” systems and people can achieve, and the relationships and <a href="https://delibdemjournal.org/article/id/1024/#!">alliances required for democratic life</a> risk being destroyed by such an approach. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Graduates seen in a line in caps and gowns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C252%2C3004%2C1565&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503522/original/file-20230108-10033-jxjaif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Relationships and alliances are required for democratic life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mel Evans)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Examining what we do</h2>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/#">“Critical Theory”</a> emerged from the western Marxist tradition and aims to find and critique underlying assumptions in social life so <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-are-people-so-upset-about-it">that the power structures</a> maintaining domination can be challenged and transformed. </p>
<p>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that today “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/#">any philosophical approach with similar practical aims</a> could be called a ‘critical theory,’ including feminism, critical race theory and some forms of post-colonial criticism.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4106182">Critical theory</a> has long been <a href="https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/12/a-case-for-the-humanities-at-stanford-part-i-demystifying-critical-theory/">a preoccupation of humanities work</a>. </p>
<p>Some might say critical theory has been the dominant way of doing humanities work particularly <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4106182">in North America since at least the 1970s</a>, and its ascendancy has coincided with declining humanities enrolment. </p>
<p>At its best, critical theory is a toolbox for examining what we do and why we do it, especially by considering the ways in which existing systems of power limit (or condition) how we can act. While the aim of critical theory is to transform our world, too often the assumption is that if we see the hidden ways power operates we will be transformed by that insight. </p>
<p>Where is the humanities toolbox for creating or making a better world? </p>
<p>I used the word “examining” to describe the work of critical theory because it offers more a way of seeing than a way of doing — and implies that seeing is all we need for change.</p>
<h2>Imagining a better world</h2>
<p>The humanities aren’t just instruments of criticism. They also hold the keys to how we might imagine a better world, particularly through their emphasis on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-students-to-study-stem-instead-of-humanities-for-the-post-coronavirus-world-145813">public good and the skills necessary for</a> constructively managing difference. </p>
<p>Here’s what I’ll be teaching this year in general first year Arts courses and upper year communication courses, and I hope there are others like me out there: I will introduce students to imaginative builders like activist <a href="https://www.hullhousemuseum.org/">Jane Addams</a> who sought social and political change through engaging neighbours. We’ll read about writer and entrepreneur <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/can-chloe-valdary-sell-skeptics-dei/617875/">Chloe Valdary’s work on enchantment, anti-racism and equity</a> and communication consultant <a href="https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-how-the-left-can-suck#details">Anat Shenker-Osorio’s work galvanizing current progressive movements</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Winning Messages: Podcast from Anat Shenker-Osorio.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These figures care most about generating meaningful change, not just through criticism but by embodying, managing and creating new ways of tackling challenges.</p>
<p>I’ll work with students on how to cultivate an imagination for the public good, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/09/the-persuaders-winning-hearts-and-minds-in-divided-age-by-anand-giridharadas-review-why-it-pays-to-talk-in-a-polarised-world">how to co-ordinate action even in the presence of disagreement</a> and how to persuade, or change minds, with respect and care. </p>
<p>Doing this work puts power and privilege at the centre of conversations in order to transform circumstances, not just criticize them.</p>
<h2>Grief and new practices</h2>
<p>Much critical theorizing, in its commitment to <a href="https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-highway-of-despair-critical-theory-after-hegel/">emancipation from oppression, has grappled with despair</a>. We ought to be realistic about both the despair and grief people face. </p>
<p>There is grief because of harms to the disenfranchised, the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429446054-7/mourning-trump-america-existential-account-political-grief-sheldon-solomon">collapse of old systems</a> and the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/mourning-trump-and-the-america-we-could-have-been">failures of western societies</a> to imagine and realize alternatives.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-ways-to-build-resilience-and-hope-into-young-peoples-learning-about-climate-change-177718">6 ways to build resilience and hope into young people's learning about climate change</a>
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<p>But healing from this grief requires more than critical theory can offer. It requires a way to build new systems, to embody new practices and to foster new forms of co-operation so that we make a better future instead of repeating a grim past. </p>
<h2>Fostering change</h2>
<p>Carrying the burden of fostering change is no small task. At times that burden has fallen disproportionately on those that are most vulnerable to power, but that’s precisely why we need the humanities now more than ever.</p>
<p>Critics, and criticism, are necessary for making the world a better place, but we need people committed to building better democratic societies, not just destroying what isn’t working. This means we need humanities majors who are creators, builders, visionary architects, planners and inventors.</p>
<p>Maybe students would see more value in the humanities if those skills were taught too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Danisch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To address declining humanities enrolments, these programs should ensure they offer more than critical theory for identifying and analyzing problems.Robert Danisch, Professor, Department of Communication Arts, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1967922022-12-23T16:42:06Z2022-12-23T16:42:06ZCalling Deion Sanders a sellout ignores the growing role of clout-chasing in college sports<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501978/original/file-20221219-14-jjx1kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=140%2C39%2C5055%2C3383&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jackson State Tigers coach Deion Sanders greets right tackle Deontae Graham during the Cricket Celebration Bowl on Dec. 17, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jackson-state-tigers-coach-deion-sanders-greets-right-news-photo/1245687709?phrase=deion sanders&adppopup=true"> Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most college football coaches, the move from a mid-major conference to a Power Five conference would be met with widespread praise.</p>
<p>Not so for Deion Sanders.</p>
<p>When the Pro Football Hall of Famer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/sports/ncaafootball/deion-sanders-colorado-jackson-state.html">announced he would be leaving Jackson State University</a>, where he has coached the football team since 2020, to become head coach at the University of Colorado Boulder, many ardent fans and supporters reacted with dismay and disbelief – particularly his fans and supporters from the Black community.</p>
<p>Jackson State is one of <a href="http://www.thehundred-seven.org/hbculist.html">107 historically Black colleges and universities</a>, or HBCUs. Some HBCU alumni and supporters <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6X9YNUMECA">saw Sanders as betraying the cause of rejuvenating HBCU sports</a> and returning them to a time when football greats such as <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RiceJe00.htm">Jerry Rice</a>, <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/P/PaytWa00.htm">Walter Payton</a> and <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/McNaSt00.htm">Steve McNair</a> attended HBCUs as a stepping stone to professional stardom. </p>
<p>Debates about whether he was a “<a href="https://eurweb.com/2022/deion-sanders-labelled-a-sellout/">sellout</a>,” a “traitor” and a “hypocrite” quickly surfaced on social media and in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/deion-sanders-sell-experts-say-s-complicated-rcna60552">major media outlets</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1599059649889640448"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4gfj6hYAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar who specializes in Black culture</a>, I was struck by the ways in which this Sanders story was tied to a concept I write about called <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/18433">clout-chasing</a>. It’s a process in which cultural capital is harnessed on social media to attract media attention, likes, followers and fame. You’ll often see young people looking to launch careers as content creators described as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/12/clout-definition-meme-influencers-social-capital-youtube/603895/">clout chasers</a>.</p>
<p>Institutions, however, can also chase clout. And I saw Jackson State doing just that when it hired Deion Sanders.</p>
<h2>Black Schools Matter</h2>
<p>Over the past decade – after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, the spread of national anthem protests and the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – HBCUs have received more attention and investment as places for the revitalization and advancement of the Black community.</p>
<p>In 2019, Black billionaire Robert Smith promised to pay the student loan debt of that year’s <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/03/22/morehouse-grads-thrive-after-student-debt-wiped-out.html#:%7E:text=It's%20something%20400%20Morehouse%20graduates,at%20their%20commencement%20in%202019">entire graduating class at Morehouse College</a>. In the summer of 2021, the Department of Education awarded <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/17/fact-sheet-the-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administrations-historic-investments-and-support-for-historically-black-colleges-and-universities/">more than US$500 million</a> in grants to HBCUs. Finally, President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan and other forms of pandemic relief have provided <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/17/fact-sheet-the-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administrations-historic-investments-and-support-for-historically-black-colleges-and-universities/">nearly $3.7 billion in relief funding to HBCUs</a>.</p>
<p>HBCU athletic departments have also received increased visibility. Though HBCU programs have always been overshadowed by schools in conferences like the Big Ten and SEC – what are known as <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10053822-ranking-the-college-football-power-5-conferences">Power Five conferences</a> – HBCU sports have started to receive more national television coverage. Top recruits <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/hbcus-appealing-high-profile-athletes/story?id=76210979">have started taking official visits to HBCUs</a> as they weigh which school to commit to. </p>
<p>In the summer of 2020, after star basketball recruit Makur Maker spurned offers from the University of Kentucky and UCLA to attend Howard University, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/sports/ncaabasketball/black-lives-matter-hbcus-college-athletes.html">The New York Times proclaimed</a> that a movement of top Black athletes attending HBCUs was underway.</p>
<h2>A star with staying power</h2>
<p>Like many, I grew up watching Deion Sanders play professional football and baseball. I idolized him. He wore gold chains, danced his way to the end zone, wore expensive suits and – most importantly – he was a celebrity who fully embraced Black popular culture. He was also one of the first athletes to understand that he was a brand off the field. </p>
<p>His appeal transcended race, gender and class, putting him in a rarefied group that includes Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and LeBron James.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two football players anticipate a pass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502572/original/file-20221222-24-m5ztgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Over the course of 14 seasons, defensive back Deion Sanders was elected to eight Pro Bowls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dion-sanders-of-the-dallas-cowboys-guards-j-j-birden-of-the-news-photo/466184829?phrase=deion%20sanders&adppopup=true">Focus on Sport/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Even after his <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SandDe00.htm">playing career</a> ended in 2005, Sanders’ star never dimmed. He had <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/07/deion-sanders-oprah-winfrey-reality-show">his own reality show</a> produced by Oprah, has served as a regular analyst on the NFL Network, and has acted as a pitchman for companies like Nike, Under Armour, American Airlines and Aflac.</p>
<p>Sanders has also seamlessly adapted to the social media era, regularly posting videos on Instagram to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/deionsanders/?hl=en">an audience of 3 million followers</a>. </p>
<p>Simply put, he is still one of the most famous people in the world. Like his younger counterparts with huge online followings – digital natives like <a href="https://www.instagram.com/obj/?hl=en">Odell Beckham Jr.</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/melo/?hl=en">LaMelo Ball</a> – Sanders possesses an immense amount of <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/ghhs/2020/00000001/00000002/art00003?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf&casa_token=G0nsPOIRXqcAAAAA:6Ze57p_2E_kNntxCNSQc-b2DzuWpJ_KtqTy2MG3po7wCLDq0n28IhvClUFvj-Afz1xhgwuKNKa0">digital clout</a>. </p>
<h2>Coach Prime joins the HBCU ranks</h2>
<p>I was hardly surprised when Sanders made a quick splash in Jackson. </p>
<p>Fueled by the talents of his son, quarterback <a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/player/_/id/4432762/shedeur-sanders">Shedeur Sanders</a>, and former top high school recruit <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10059142-5-star-cb-travis-hunter-to-transfer-from-jsu-comments-on-deion-sanders-colorado">Travis Hunter</a>, Jackson State quickly attracted national attention as a HBCU powerhouse.</p>
<p>After a COVID-shortened 2020 season, Sanders, whose players affectionately call him <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10058741-coach-prime-trailer-drops-for-deion-sanders-jsu-football-docuseries-by-prime-video">Coach Prime</a>, led the school to two consecutive appearances at the Celebration Bowl, an annual game in which the champions of the two prominent HBCU conferences face off.</p>
<p>While boosting Jackson State’s profile, Sanders also presented himself as someone scholars like Brandon J. Manning have termed a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZxJClMVBYU">race man</a>,” or a loyal member of the Black race who dedicates their life to directly contributing to the betterment of Black people. </p>
<p>Under the pretense of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxI848ELSEE">looking out for the future of HBCU athletics</a>, <a href="https://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=34896671">Sanders said</a> he would be better positioned than anybody to protect the legacy of HBCUs. Black student athletes, he argued, should choose to go to Jackson State because their association with him would not only give them clout, but also the kind of attention and encouragement that they could expect to receive from a Power Five program. </p>
<p>Yet it was always going to be close to impossible to keep Sanders at Jackson State if he consistently won. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.yardbarker.com/college_football/articles/paul_finebaum_says_nick_saban_would_lose_sleep_over_deion_sanders_as_auburns_next_coach/s1_13132_37910995">Many suspected</a> that Sanders eventually wanted to compete against top-tier programs like the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. In fact, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz1YfvAw5Ow">during an October 2022 interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes</a>,” Sanders talked openly about listening to offers from bigger schools. </p>
<p>Despite these realities, many Black folk wanted to believe Sanders would be in it for the long haul. Now they’re dismayed, believing the momentum Sanders gave to HBCU athletics could come to a screeching halt.</p>
<h2>God changes his mind</h2>
<p>But unlike some prominent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkqKkW2SxeE">Black cultural critics who derided Sanders’ decision</a>, I don’t think he’s a sellout. </p>
<p>Jackson State was arguably chasing some clout of its own when it hired Deion in the first place. At the time, Sanders was a coach with no experience beyond the high school level. He did, however, have plenty of experience performing – and winning – in the brightest of spotlights. Jackson State probably knew that taking a flier on an untested celebrity coach would be worth it: It would attract attention and, with it, money.</p>
<p>On the flip side, I also believe Sanders knew that he could build his coaching clout further at Jackson State by appealing to what sociologist Saida Grundy calls <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520340398/respectable">the Black respectability politics</a> and Christian values of HBCU campuses. You could see this <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/jackson-state/2020/09/22/deion-sanders-says-why-he-took-jackson-state-job-good-morning-america/5863325002/">when he said</a> that God told him “to even the playing field” for those who attend Black schools.</p>
<p>It was a symbiotic arrangement all along: Sanders leveraged his clout to grow the program that embraced him, but he was also hoping to attract the attention of an even bigger program. </p>
<p>I believe Sanders ultimately did more good than harm in terms of raising the profile of HBCU athletics. Furthermore, one person was never going to catapult HBCUs to the prominence of Power Five programs. </p>
<p>Sanders is part of a bigger group of former professional players and coaches leading HBCU programs. Former NFL head coach Hue Jackson <a href="https://www.thenewsstar.com/story/sports/college/gsu/2022/02/15/hue-jackson-contract-grambling-state-football/6800931001/">now heads the football program</a> at Grambling State University; NFL Pro Bowler Eddie George <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/2021/04/11/eddie-george-coach-tennessee-state-university-football-tsu-derrick-mason/7183662002/">currently mans the sidelines</a> at Tennessee State University; and Pro Football Hall of Famer <a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/35330809/hall-famer-ed-reed-head-coach-bethune-cookman">Ed Reed</a> was recently named the head coach at Bethune-Cookman. </p>
<p>If Sanders was a sellout, it was only in one sense: Jackson State football games routinely sold out during his tenure, <a href="https://theanalyst.com/na/2022/10/jackson-state-keeps-producing-jaw-dropping-attendance-under-coach-prime/">shattering attendance records for the program</a>.</p>
<p><em>This article has been edited to remove the mention of Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, who no longer serves as the head women’s basketball coach at Texas Southern University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jabari M. Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Sanders deftly played the game of Black respectability politics during his short tenure, Jackson State had motives of its own when it hired the former NFL star.Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821422022-06-20T17:41:45Z2022-06-20T17:41:45ZPeer review: Can this critical step in the publication of science research be kinder?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469531/original/file-20220617-14-piidla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C107%2C6201%2C4691&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It can be painful for researchers to read harshly worded criticism of their work from peer reviewers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Democracy has been called the least worst system of government. Peer review is the least worst system for assessing the merit of scientific work. </p>
<p>Peer review is the written evaluation of a paper by other experts in the field. Though this sounds like assessment by equals, the power imbalance created by the roles of reviewer and reviewed distorts the relationship and affects the tone of the review. Reviews can be patronizing, demanding and unkind. </p>
<p>It is painful to read harshly worded criticism of work that has taken a team hundreds or thousands of hours and been submitted hopefully and in good faith. From our experience, we know that reviews can be accurate, robust and make every scientific point while using language and tone that is helpful and supportive.</p>
<h2>Supportive review</h2>
<p>We are a team of editors of an open-access Canadian kidney journal, the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/home/cjk"><em>Canadian Journal of Kidney Health and Disease</em></a>. When we founded our journal in 2014, supportive review was the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186%2F2054-3581-1-1">first of our guiding principles</a>. Since then, we have written supportively as editors, selected reviewers who write supportively and participated in training <a href="https://kidney.ca/Krescent/Home">the next generation of Canadian kidney scientists</a> to conduct reviews that are complete, rigorous and kind. </p>
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<p>Supported by a larger group of like-minded people from multiple disciplines, we recently published <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F20543581221080327">an editorial</a> outlining these principles. A dozen other kidney journals expressed their support for the idea, with <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41581-022-00569-w"><em>Nature Reviews Nephrology</em></a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/gfac183"><em>NDT</em></a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00467-022-05535-z"><em>Pediatric Nephrology</em></a> publishing co-ordinated editorials recommitting to principles of constructive criticism.</p>
<h2>The long process of research</h2>
<p>Scientific papers condense a large amount of work into a structured format, usually no longer than four to eight times the length of this article. The work of a paper starts with an idea that may be developed by the team for a year or more before it crystallizes into an application for funding, which may go through rounds of revisions. </p>
<p>Once funded, people and budgets are assigned to the project and the work proceeds. The work can involve the time of multiple team members for months and even years.</p>
<p>When the work is complete, they write a paper, detailing what they did, how and why, what they found and what they think it means. This paper itself is often the product of hundreds of hours of work, with multiple authors contributing their specific expertise and working on the messaging of the whole.</p>
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<p>The journal receives the manuscript and assigns an editor, who assigns peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are other scientists working on similar topics. They must be totally unconnected with the people writing the paper. With notable exceptions, most journals employ single-masked peer review: the reviewer sees the authorship of the paper but the authors of the paper will not see who wrote the review.</p>
<p>Peer reviewers are not paid or rewarded for their review of the manuscript — they take it on as part of the work of academic life. Essentially, it is an unrewarded activity performed by people who are themselves authors. It varies by discipline, but in biomedicine, they may spend three to six hours on a review.</p>
<h2>Harsh reviews</h2>
<p>How does this altruistic activity, undertaken by a reviewer who is very familiar with the author role, lead to such pain and frustration for other authors? </p>
<p>We think that scientists sometimes confuse harshness with intellectual rigour and that a reviewer’s experience of harshness in reviews of their own work, amplified by the power imbalance between reviewer and reviewed, leads to perpetuation of harsh and unhelpful review. Other reviewers and editors avoid these pitfalls entirely.</p>
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<p>“It looks to me like one of your first attempts at scientific publishing, and I can understand that you are also writing in a non-native language” <a href="https://twitter.com/IngridAnell/status/1506915328705630214?s=20&t=2SF4MYOmeNiFo2XW6kNREg">wrote one anonymous reviewer</a> to a mid-career woman scientist with 13 first-author peer-reviewed publications. “I just want to give up today,” she wrote. </p>
<p>But she won’t. Scientists are prepared to receive this kind of feedback and be hurt over and over in the name of science. As editors, we believe there is a better way — that feedback should be rigorous, but will be more readily incorporated if kindly given, to the advancement of science.</p>
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<p>These are not new ideas. In 2006, Prof. Mohan Dutta suggested <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327027hc2002_11">10 commandments for reviewers</a>, all of which focus on the collaborative nature of relationship between reviewer and reviewed. Advice for reviewers often includes a recommendation to write constructively, though sometimes this is phrased as something like “write constructively, and then turn to criticism,” as if those are mutually exclusive. </p>
<p>We can take this principal further and — thanks to our community of reviewers in kidney medicine — we and other kidney journals make a commitment to kindness in review. Dutta’s 10th commandment is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Every branch of science would be improved by implementing this idea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182142/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Clase has received consultation, advisory board membership or research funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health, Sanofi, Pfizer, Leo Pharma, Astellas, Janssen, Amgen, Boehringer-Ingelheim and Baxter. In 2018 she co-chaired a KDIGO potassium controversies conference sponsored at arm's length by Fresenius Medical Care, AstraZeneca, Vifor Fresenius Medical Care, Relypsa, Bayer HealthCare and Boehringer Ingelheim. Catherine is a member of the Cloth Mask Knowledge Exchange, a research and knowledge translation group that includes industry stakeholders. Industry stakeholders contribute to the Cloth Mask Knowledge Exchange by contributing to grant funding, and through in-kind contributions of time and expertise. Industry stakeholders make masks and distribute polypropylene and other fabrics. She is a member of McMaster's Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials, and editor-in-chief of clothmasks.org. Catherine Clase receives funding from CIHR, and is a member of the Green Party, the American Society of Nephrology, the Canadian Society of Nephrology, the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists and ASTM International.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josee Bouchard receives funding from CIHR, Kidney Foundation of Canada and CDTRP. She is affiliated with the Hopital Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Université de Montréal. She is a member of the Canadian Society of Nephrology and American Society of Nephrology.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manish M Sood receives funding from CIHR, the Kidney Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Medical Association and the Heart and stroke foundation. He is supported by the Jindal Research Chair. He has received speaker fees from Astrazeneca. He is affiliated with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, uOttawa and the Ottawa Hospital.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Holden receives research funding from CIHR, the South Eastern Ontario Medical Organization, and the Translational Institute of Medicine at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. She has received investigator initiated research funding from OPKO Renal. She has received consultation or advisory board funding from Sanofi, Bayer and Oksuka. She is a member of the Canadian Society of Nephrology.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sunny Hartwig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Peer review of research sounds like it should be a conversation between equals. Instead, it can be patronizing, demanding and simply unkind. A group of journal editors thinks this should change.Catherine Clase, Professor of Medicine, Epidemiologist, Physician, McMaster UniversityJosee Bouchard, Nephrologist, Professor of Medicine, Université de MontréalManish M Sood, Physician, Professor of Medicine, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaRachel Holden, Professor of Medicine, Queen's University, OntarioSunny Hartwig, Associate Professor, University of Prince Edward IslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1509562020-12-04T07:02:20Z2020-12-04T07:02:20ZIntrusions on civil rights in the digital space on the rise during the pandemic<p><em>The article is part of the “Nine months of the pandemic in Indonesia” series.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has not only severely impacted public health in Indonesia but also people’s human rights. </p>
<p>The pandemic has justified governments around the world restricting certain rights. These include the imposition of quarantine or isolation, which limits freedom of movement, and intrusions on privacy in the name of “contact tracing”.</p>
<p>In March, United Nations (UN) human rights experts <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25722">urged</a> that a declaration of emergency based on the COVID-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis for targeting specific individuals, groups or minority groups. </p>
<p>While not referring to particular countries, the experts said: “[An emergency declaration] should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health nor should it be used to silence the work of human rights defenders.”</p>
<p>An Amnesty International investigation revealed in June that contact-tracing apps rolled out by Bahrain, Kuwait and Norway were among <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/bahrain-kuwait-norway-contact-tracing-apps-danger-for-privacy/">the most invasive</a>. Such apps put the privacy and security of hundreds of thousands of people at risk.</p>
<p>Almost all countries face uncertainties in dealing with this outbreak and have therefore resorted to harsh measures. </p>
<p>Even countries that already have high standards of crisis management seem to have felt forced to adopt policies that tend to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.19184/jseahr.v4i1.18244">repressive</a>. <a href="https://analysis.covid19healthsystem.org/index.php/2020/05/29/what-is-the-role-of-the-military-in-covid-19-response/">Canada and Sweden</a> have used military-controlled crisis management. In Brazil, the government has been accused of <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/06/09/brazil-accused-of-manipulating-coronavirus-toll.html">manipulating the death toll figures</a>.</p>
<p>In Indonesia, only a few weeks after announcing the country’s first COVID-19 cases in early March, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo considered imposing <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/30/jokowi-refuses-to-impose-lockdown-on-jakarta.html">civil emergency measures</a>, drawing immediate criticism.</p>
<p>At the end of March, Jokowi declared <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/31/jokowi-declares-covid-19-health-emergency-imposes-large-scale-social-restrictions.html">a public health emergency</a>. The next month he declared the outbreak a “<a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/14/jokowi-declares-covid-19-national-disaster-gives-task-force-broader-authority.html">non-natural national disaster</a>” in a presidential decree.</p>
<p>Nine months into the pandemic, Indonesia has seen serious threats to civil liberties. These involve not only privacy but also freedom of expression and of the press in the digital realm, directed at people and institutions critical of the government’s handling of the crisis.</p>
<h2>Digital attacks</h2>
<p>We have seen infringements of human rights carried out through digital attacks. The various forms include hacking, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-doxxing-and-why-is-it-so-scary-95848">doxxing</a>, prosecution and spying. </p>
<p>For example, in April, outspoken government critic Ravio Patra was <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/06/04/i-was-kidnapped-govt-critic-ravio-patra-files-pretrial-motion-against-police.html">detained</a> and accused of inciting riots through a WhatsApp message following an alleged hacking of his account.</p>
<p>In May, Gadjah Mada University cancelled a planned online discussion about the constitutional mechanism for removing a president from office after students received <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/05/31/ugm-students-receive-death-threats-over-discussion-on-removing-presidents-from-office.html">death threats</a> and faced other forms of intimidation.</p>
<p>In August, Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia and vocal critic of the government’s pandemic management, reported that his <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/08/20/epidemiologist-pandu-rionos-twitter-account-hacked.html">Twitter account was hijacked</a>. Prior to the hacking, he had criticised COVID-19 drug research conducted by Airlangga University in co-operation with the Indonesian Army and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).</p>
<p>Indonesia still lacks a specific law on personal data protection. Other regulations include <a href="https://elsam.or.id/urgensi-regulasi-perlindungan-data-pribadi-di-indonesia/">special provisions</a> on personal data protection, but the mechanism is limited and the accountability doubtful. </p>
<p>This means personal data in Indonesia are vulnerable to digital attacks. </p>
<p>As internet use increased during the pandemic, attacks took many other forms. These included junk messages, “zoombombing”, and third-party applications that claim to be able to track people infected with COVID-19 but contain data-stealing malware. </p>
<p>These digital attacks are easy to launch because of the limited digital security infrastructure throughout the world.</p>
<p>According to International Telecommunication Union data, more than 90% of countries pay little attention to the importance of cybersecurity. </p>
<p>Indonesia is one of these countries. The <a href="https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-d/opb/str/D-STR-GCI.01-2018-PDF-E.pdf">2018 Global Cybersecurity Index report</a> ranks Indonesia 41st out of 175 countries, far from safe.</p>
<p>Digital attacks have also targeted media companies with cybersecurity vulnerabilities. </p>
<p>In August, news websites <a href="https://www.tempo.co/">tempo.co</a> and <a href="https://tirto.id/">tirto.id</a> <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/08/25/tempo-co-tirto-id-report-cyberattacks-to-jakarta-police.html">reported</a> cyberattacks. </p>
<p>Tirto.id reported the attacker deleted at least seven articles, including some that scrutinised the drug research involving the army and the intelligence agency. Tempo.co had its website defaced and made inaccessible.</p>
<p>These attacks show not only the media’s security weaknesses but also the direct threat to democracy and press freedom.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-populist-leaders-a-liability-during-covid-19-135431">Are populist leaders a liability during COVID-19?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Authoritarian tendencies</h2>
<p>States often use emergency or conflict situations as a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism">political justification</a> to undermine human rights protection. </p>
<p>Without comprehensive personal data protection law and clear regulation limiting lawful surveillance action, threats and attacks against human rights in Indonesia will continue.</p>
<p>Surveillance of activists who voiced criticism of government policies increased during the pandemic. </p>
<p>To make matters worse, cybersecurity policymaking often focuses on cyber conflicts (such as the <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/11/19/the-rise-of-kadrun-and-togog-why-political-polarization-in-indonesia-is-far-from-over.html"><em>cebong</em> vs <em>kampret</em> Twitter spats</a> and social media bullying) and pays less attention to the other elements of cybersecurity.</p>
<p>Another sign of the increasing tendency to take an authoritarian approach in digital policy is a bill on cyberdefence and security proposed by the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>The bill has been <a href="https://tirto.id/elsam-kritisi-isi-pasal-dalam-ruu-pertahanan-dan-keamanan-siber-ehAf">criticised</a> for giving excessive authority to the National Cyber and Encryption Agency (BSSN), which was established in 2017. </p>
<p>In the bill, some of the authority given to BSSN is to block internet contents deemed dangerous – without adequate definition – and to monitor internet and data traffic. </p>
<p>With more focus on security issues, rather than the protection of human rights, when passed into law the regulation would enable further encroachment of civil rights – especially during an emergency like the pandemic we are in today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Herlambang P Wiratraman tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>Nine months into the pandemic, Indonesia has seen serious threats to civil liberties, involving not only privacy but also freedom of expression and of the press in the digital realm.Herlambang P Wiratraman, Lecturer of Constitutional Law, Universitas AirlanggaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279922019-11-28T02:05:23Z2019-11-28T02:05:23ZVale Clive James – a marvellous low voice whose gracious good humour let others shine<p>Australian writer and broadcaster Clive James has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/nov/27/clive-james-wisecracking-literary-phenomenon-robert-mccrum">died</a> at 80 years of age after a long illness. </p>
<p>Along with Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries and Robert Hughes, he was known as part of an elite group of “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/brilliant-creatures-germaine-clive-barry-and-bob/">brilliant creatures</a>” that emerged out of Australia at a cultural moment of change in the mid 20th century.</p>
<p>He will be remembered for his dry wit, distinctive voice and his unlikely yet hugely appealing screen presence. </p>
<h2>Kogarah kid</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs/9781447275480">Pan Macmillan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was much to admire about the proud kid from Kogarah in Sydney’s south, not least the breadth and energy of his writing. His collections about growing up, <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs/9781447275480">Unreliable Memoirs</a>, began in that small and apparently unremarkable spot of suburbia, continuing on into future volumes to cover young adulthood, university, the big trip to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blighty">Blighty</a>, and beyond.</p>
<p>There was always something so distinct about James’ Australianness. Although he’d been away much longer than he’d been at home, his connection to the culture of his birthplace remained. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51184704">interview</a> with the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1980, James explained the appeal: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australians have made me laugh all my life. I don’t mean the crude jokes. It’s a blend of two things, that marvellous low voice you keep hearing and the language. It’s a combination of strength and sexiness. It’s a good combination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The marvellous low voice of Australia serves as an excellent euphemism for defiance and dignity. James embodied it when as young Vivian James, as he was born in 1939, renamed himself Clive and began to question, observe and ultimately argue for a different way to see the world. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hBLKchukaL8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The difficulty of leaving Australia was more the fear of returning and finding the country you left had left you behind, said James in 1983.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A hugely prolific writer who continued to publish books, essays, columns, <a href="https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-204/feature-peter-kirkpatrick-2/">poems</a> and opinions until the end (including a forthcoming anthology The Fire of Joy to be released next year), one of his greatest strengths was finding the beauty in television.</p>
<h2>Watching with love and nuance</h2>
<p>As the television critic for The Observer from 1972 to 1982, he took what many then (and still now) consider to be the lowest form of public entertainment and gave it a good seeing to. </p>
<p>Following the academic and commentator Raymond Williams, who James <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Clive-James-Television-ebook/dp/B06WW83B54">called</a> “the most responsible of television critics”, he reviewed everything from drama to talent and talk shows, always with his steady “low voice” that never quite let on what he loved and loathed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margarita Pracatan tweeted a heartfelt tribute to James, with whom she shared the screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Margarita Pracatan/Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his 1972 review of the BBC’s broadcast of Miss World called Liberating Miss World, James noted that the pageant participants “find host [Michael Aspel] wonderful because they’ve been told to” – leaving just enough ambiguity to make us wonder who the real butt of the competition was. He continued to play with the concept of power and influence as part of his television work throughout his life.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Clive James on Television vowed not to do too much deep cultural analysis - but sometimes French adverts with topless women demanded wry interrogation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon James left the page to take on the screen directly, and his own show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224848/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Clive James on Television</a> set a stage for critic-turned-presenter that produced a wonderful legacy. As Black Mirror and Screen Wipe writer Charlie Brooker <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/thank-god-for-clive-james">wrote</a> “Thank God for Clive James”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He has a way of gliding through sentences, effortlessly ironing a series of complex points into a single easily-navigable line, illuminating here and cogitating there, before leading you face-first into an unexpected punchline that makes your brain yelp with delight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The power of a commentator like James putting his money where his mouth (or pen) was inspired many. It’s a style that has also given us wonders like <a href="https://sarahmillican.co.uk/">Sarah Millican</a> and Working Dog’s <a href="https://10play.com.au/have-you-been-paying-attention">Have You Been Paying Attention</a>. </p>
<h2>No showpony</h2>
<p>James’ ease with superstar guests allowed them room to shine, while also asking questions just far enough off the press release to resonate with the viewer at home.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TkxC2bGNlzI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">When Clive sat down with Billy Connolly and David Attenborough hilarity ensued as the comedian confessed his love of the hairy-nosed wombat.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What made James appealing on screen was his apparent unsuitedness to it. He didn’t have the devastating visual appeal of some of the greats – in fact he was perhaps as far away as possible from the Arnold Schwarzenegger style “condom full of walnuts” that screen seems to adore. Of course though, words were all he needed.</p>
<p>Behind a desk, championing the otherwise overlooked or unchallenged, he drew our attention to the absurdity of apparently small scale story telling with a genuine energy and charm. It was just enough to make your ears prick up, but subtle enough to let the viewer also come to their own conclusions. </p>
<p>Before today’s internet age, when culture from almost every corner of the globe is available to us for us to consume and critique, he championed the Japanese game show Endurance. In doing so, he taught us about the comic tension between content as guilty pleasure or the beginning of the end. He seemed to say: You, dear remote control holder, can decide. More “low voice” to draw us in.</p>
<p>The wonderful performer who closed the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144708/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Clive James Show</a> each week, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita_Pracatan">Margarita Pracatan</a>, left a final note for James on <a href="https://twitter.com/PracatanBaby/status/1199728323179495425">Twitter today</a>, “Thank you, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CliveJames?src=hashtag_click">#CliveJames</a> from the bottom of my heart. You live forever with us”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today.</span></figcaption>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Clive James will be remembered for his dry wit, distinctive voice and his unlikely yet hugely appealing screen presence.Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1266002019-11-14T03:20:27Z2019-11-14T03:20:27ZAlison Croggon and the arts critic as an endangered species<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301669/original/file-20191113-77326-1cd595y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C12%2C4233%2C2826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The work of a first-rate critic can be as important to our appreciation and understanding of a work of art (or performance) as the immediate experience itself.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Platform Papers 61: Criticism, Performance and the Need for Conversation, by Alison Croggon (Currency Press)</em></p>
<p>“Pay no attention to what the critics say”, quipped the composer Jean Sibelius in 1937, because “there has never been a statue set up in honour of a critic.”</p>
<p>Well, as music critic Alex Ross <a href="https://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/03/statues_of_crit.html">has observed</a>, that’s not quite true, even if Ross does go on to conclude that the small number of statues to critics that do exist around the globe are merely “the exceptions that prove the rule”.</p>
<p>And yet, the work of a first-rate critic can be as important to the appreciation and understanding of a work of art (or performance) as our immediate experience of it.</p>
<p>Good critical writing can (among other things) prompt us to reflect on the quality (or otherwise!) of that experience, provide us with an historical context, and help draw our attention to the kinds of formal, social, political, and aesthetic content it might have. </p>
<p>A new platform paper by Melbourne-based novelist, poet and theatre critic Alison Croggon (<a href="http://www.currency.com.au/books/history-and-criticism/platform-papers-61-criticism-performance-and-the-need-for-conversation/">Criticism, Performance, and the need for public conversation</a> argues, indeed, that were critics to disappear from our public life altogether we would surely miss them.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301433/original/file-20191113-77326-kueowh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>She suggests that this is now a real possibility. </p>
<p>Croggon traces this threat to critics’ existence principally to the rise of online publishing and the recent decline in the business model of the print media.</p>
<p>While she observes that critics briefly found a vibrant new home for their writing on individual blogs, the more recent incorporation of such online content into consolidated internet platforms has led, she believes, to individual voices becoming submerged beneath a sea of <a href="https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/SEO.html">SEO-optimised</a> opining.</p>
<p>Such uncurated content, she argues, cannot replace what criticism used to do because it is no longer underpinned (or expected to be) by the sorts of expertise the professional critic of old once had.</p>
<p>Here, as elsewhere on the internet, commonly accepted distinctions between the value and function of expert and amateur commentary has all but dissolved into a commentary free-for-all. </p>
<p>In tracing why this might have happened, Croggon suggests that the “first effect of the digital revolution was the destablisation of hierarchies of taste”. It is possible, however, to trace this destablisation back much further. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301435/original/file-20191113-77331-p351lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Teddy Tahu Rhodes performs during the final dress rehearsal of Il Viaggio a Reims in Sydney last month.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Himbrechts/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>Has postmodernism had a role?</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-postmodernism-20791">“postmodernist</a>” notion arose in academic circles over at least the past half-century, for instance, which asserted that any value judgement we might make about an art object or performance is ultimately no more than the covert assertion of our own position of power or privilege. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-postmodernism-20791">Explainer: what is postmodernism?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It follows that there is therefore no innate value to be found in a particular aesthetic experience or object. What we take to be a good or bad work of art is really only the externalised expression of our own prejudices and tastes. </p>
<p>The internet has supercharged the impact of such an idea on our public discourse.</p>
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<span class="caption">Patrick Jhanur and Amber McMahon in Banging Denmark at the Sydney Theatre Company.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rene Vaile, STC</span></span>
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<p>Search engines now quietly direct us to content that is favoured precisely because it confirms or, conforms to, what it knows to be our preexisting biases and interests, not because that content might be more authoritative or, indeed, true.</p>
<p>Good arts criticism, however, involves wielding expertise (such as a deep technical and historical awareness of the context and content of the art work under examination) in order that any judgements made by the critic are ultimately grounded in evidence and reason. </p>
<p>Merely expressing an opinion about a work of art is not the same as good arts criticism, but this is not the kind of distinction that a search engine can or will make for us.</p>
<p>The resultant failure of arts criticism to attract or maintain a large readership, and thus the financial backing of our major public and commercial media outlets, suggests to Croggon that “the biggest problem theatre criticism in Australia faces is simple economics”. </p>
<p>But I think that mistakes a symptom with its root cause, the concomitant devaluation of the “worth” of expert opinion in our public life more broadly. </p>
<p>We have instead allowed the marketplace itself to become be the primary determinant of the marketplace of ideas. </p>
<h2>Limited in scope</h2>
<p>Croggon’s essay does not explore this broader social context. It is limited both in scope (for instance, despite its title, it focuses almost entirely on theatre criticism) and in the breadth and depth of its analysis.</p>
<p>It also does not acknowledge the emergence of new platforms that do offer arts critics some protection from the ravages of unbridled marketplace logic.</p>
<p>One such platform is this one (although The Conversation’s academic contributors are not paid). Another is the arts pages of the <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-arts">Australian Book Review</a> (to which I also occasionally contribute). The latter is supported by a grant from a cultural fund operated by <a href="https://www.copyright.com.au/culturalfund/">The Copyright Agency</a> and private philanthropy, which together enables it to publish a significant amount of suitably remunerated, long-form arts criticism. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Croggon’s suggestion that we may need to consider more direct state subsidy of arts criticism, as we do of the arts themselves, is a worthy one.</p>
<p>She notes that in 2012, the ABC, recognising that it had a role to play in fostering diversity of authoritative critical voices, developed a platform called ABC Arts Online. <a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-budget-cuts-will-hit-media-innovation-34433">Cuts to ABC funding</a>, however, led to the cessation of this initiative in 2015. Two years later, the entire online archive of reviews was removed from public access. </p>
<p>Croggon is right to draw our attention to this lamentable state of affairs. And she is also right, more broadly, to encourage reflection and debate on the value and function of arts criticism in Australian public life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Tregear has had a Platform Paper published by Currency House in 2014 (PP38 'Enlightenment or Entitlement: Rethinking Tertiary Music Education'). He serves on the Advisory Board of Australian Book Review (ABR).</span></em></p>Arts criticism in Australia is under threat, writes Melbourne-based novelist, poet and theatre critic Alison Croggon. One solution may be state subsidy of arts criticism.Peter Tregear, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095712019-01-10T18:25:00Z2019-01-10T18:25:00ZThe art of distraction: Sebastian Smee’s Quarterly Essay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253151/original/file-20190110-32142-1kwm4p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In his Quarterly Essay, Smee laments the erosion of 'inner life' thanks to digital technology. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Quarterly Essay, Net Loss, by Sebastian Smee</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Guilty as charged. Yes, I spend too much time on social media. Yes, I have become more easily distracted. Yes, I have given up too much personal information to various apps and websites over the years. And yes, I have read a number of articles that articulate precisely how foolish, or at least, misguided this behaviour is. </p>
<p>And so when I opened up Sebastian Smee’s Quarterly Essay, Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age, I was primed to feed my own anxiety as I read his confessions: first, about how much time he spends on his phone, checking messages, listening to podcasts, watching videos, keeping an eye on Twitter and the news; and second, how conscious he is that he has given over various degrees of information about himself to the various interfaces and apps that relentlessly market this information on to other agencies in order to market other products back to the reduced versions of our selves we willingly project online. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/addicted-to-social-media-try-an-e-fasting-plan-56804">Addicted to social media? Try an e-fasting plan</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Quarterly Essay</span></span>
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<p>If these were Smee’s confessions, I could easily make them my own too. Indeed, this is one of the ironies of contemporary digital life: the more Facebook, for example, extends its global reach, the more people can become instantly aware of discussions on Facebook about Facebook’s use and sale of the data it accumulates through our global conversations about why and how we use it, and its affects on our sense of self.</p>
<p>Smee is concerned with the fate of the “inner life” in contemporary culture: how we can any longer preserve the illusion that we each have a private inner core of being or selfhood that is untouched by the dispersal and dissemination of our public selves across a wide range of media. Has not that “inner life”, he asks, become weakened and thinned out, as a result of our perpetual, seemingly uncontrollable engagement with the algorithms and formulae of digital life and the surveillance cultures and technologies of late capitalism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once nurtured in secret, protected by norms of discretion or a presumption of mystery, this ‘inner’ self today feels harshly illuminated and remorselessly externalised, and at the same time flattened, constricted and quantified. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Smee argues that we have become complicit in this process of our own commodification and “reduction”. We are, he writes,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>betrayed … by ourselves — by our willingness, what can often seem our eagerness, to make ourselves smaller</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He claims, sometimes directly, sometimes more cautiously, that human nature is changing: “Today, being human means being distracted. It is our new default setting”. </p>
<p>This kind of claim is not new, of course. Anxiety about the contemporary age and its difference from the past dates back at least to medieval culture. More recently (but over a century ago), Virginia Woolf famously suggested that human nature changed “on or about December 1910”. Indeed, Smee’s machinic metaphor — “our new default setting” — demonstrates the extent to which industrialisation naturalised the idea of humanity as something that can be programmed. This metaphor would have been impossible, say, in the renaissance.</p>
<p>Nor is distraction a new phenomenon. In Fanny Burney’s <em>Evelina</em> (1778), a well-educated young girl, brought up in the country, is astonished to find how little attention is paid to the music and singing at the opera and other London entertainments: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was an exceeding good concert, but too much talking to hear it well. Indeed I am quite astonished to find how little music is attended to in silence; for, though every body seems to admire, hardly any body listens. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Smee is not particularly interested in history, though. He offers many instances of what he sees as the problem: the way social media and our digital selves offer us only diminished, impoverished versions of ourselves that threaten to displace our inner lives. These lives are “tangled knots of narrative, with feelings and hurts and elaborate, fantastical dreams, which can be as enduring as mountains or as fleeting as clouds”, he writes. </p>
<p>To help us register what he thinks we are losing, Smee takes us through a range of examples from literature and art. Chekhov looms largest in his intellectual landscape, as a writer who most eloquently dramatizes the schism between the inside and the outside of the self, between a “true core” and a “sham exterior”. Cézanne, too, offers a vision of the self and “life” that is “fluid and multifaceted, like a rippling mosaic”. Smee insists that these rich and intense visions of human life are increasingly lost to us.</p>
<p>Yet his essay is itself a powerful demonstration of the inner life at work. It is not structured by argumentative sequence, empirical data or any theoretical work on contemporary digital culture; if anything, Smee defers judgments, sets problems aside, asks questions and refuses to push further.</p>
<p>Net Loss is a classic essay in Montaigne’s sense: experimenting and testing ideas (the French word <em>essai</em> comes from Latin <em>exagium</em>, “weighing”: itself appropriate to Smee’s astrological identity as a Libra, another account of the self he toys with then sets aside). </p>
<p>At one point he is tempted to read another story by Chekhov as “a prescient commentary” on the envy-inducing affects of Facebook. “I won’t go there,” he says. “But I will say two things that strike me about it now”. </p>
<p>For all his fear about loss, or losing the inner life by giving too much of it away through panic at our own mortality, Smee’s own choices, questions, worries, recollections, selections from books still structure his essay, which juxtaposes memories, quotations and descriptions of works of art, music, cinema and literature. The essay is a mosaic of cultural allusion that is meaningful precisely because it is held together by the narrative self that analyses and makes these connections. It is an example of distraction as an art form.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Trigg has received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Smee insists that the rich and intense visions of artists such as Cézanne or Chekhov are increasingly lost to us.Stephanie Trigg, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English Literature, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/971142018-05-23T14:37:55Z2018-05-23T14:37:55ZWas Philip Roth a misogynist?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220139/original/file-20180523-117628-26oipr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=367%2C0%2C1549%2C991&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Oolk5DDZk">Associated Press/YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the late American author Philip Roth was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2011, he did so amidst a storm of debate. In a way, it felt only fitting for a writer who has been viewed as controversial ever since his first book, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/20/reviews/roth-goodbye.html?_r=2">Goodbye, Columbus</a> led to him being lambasted by a crowd at New York’s Yeshiva University in 1962 (the crowd were angry about his depictions of Jewish identity).</p>
<p>Ten years later, he had drawn <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/philip-roth-reconsidered/">the public ire</a> of Irving Howe, a leading intellectual that many considered the “voice” of the Jewish-American literary establishment. Roth was so wounded by this attack that he incorporated Howe into a character in his 1981 novel <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-zuck.html?mcubz=1">Zuckerman Unbound</a> – he got his own back in his own way. </p>
<p>In short, Roth wasn’t the type to shy away from a good argument, and the discussions around his Man Booker award reignited one of the most familiar ones.</p>
<p>Carmen Callil, one of the award’s judges, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booker-resignation-idINTRE74I60A20110519">resigned</a> from the panel in protest when she learned that Roth was to be awarded the prize. Although she insisted that this was purely an issue of literary merit, her connections with the publishing house Virago, who had published a tell-all memoir by Roth’s ex-wife, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/21/philip-roth-protest-feminism-virago">led some to speculate</a> that her resignation may have been motivated by questions over Roth’s portrayal of women. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220155/original/file-20180523-51115-1h69svg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vintage</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>These questions began to reach academic circles as early as 1976, when literary scholar Mary Allen <a href="https://archive.org/details/necessaryblankne00alle">argued</a> that Roth had an “enormous rage and disappointment with womankind”. This was echoed over 30 years later when Vivian Gornick (herself one of the first critics to attack Roth’s misogyny) <a href="http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/vivian-gornick-men-my-life-interview">wrote</a> that “for Philip Roth, women are monstrous”. This criticism stemmed from Roth’s depictions of volatile marriages and an emphasis on visceral male sexuality in his fiction, most notably in 1969’s infamous novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/sep/07/portnoys-complaint-shocking-49">Portnoy’s Complaint</a>. The book reviewer George Stade offered a <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-zuck.html?mcubz=1">common critique</a> in his argument that Roth’s women were either “vicious and alluring” or “virtuous and boring”.</p>
<p>As with his earlier use of Irving Howe, Roth also drags his feminist critics into his fiction. A scene in his 1990 novel <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-deception.html">Deception</a> sees him imagine himself in a courtroom, defending himself from charges of misogyny. This is an argument that Roth was inviting his readers to take part in. Many have taken up the challenge.</p>
<p>By the time that Deception was published, this debate had escalated to the point of a critical commonplace. As Callil’s and Gornick’s interjections prove, this has had a lasting legacy. A 2012 special edition of <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/25663">Philip Roth Studies</a> which explored the topic of “Roth and Women” was introduced with the claim that “sexism or flat-out accusations of misogyny is often presented as a fait accompli when dealing with Roth”. It’s such a commonplace that it becomes hard to ignore as a fan of Roth, and impossible to ignore as a student of his work.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/philip-roth-literati-poll.html">2013 poll</a> for New York Magazine, a selection of leading writers were asked for their opinions on his legacy. When asked: “Is Roth a misogynist?” and given a list of potential responses, 53% of respondents opted for “Well…”. This uncertain response sums up the critical and popular perspective on Roth. While the older view of Roth-as-misogynist still holds some sway, <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/philip-roth-draper-lil-wayne-a-feminist-case-for-embracing-sexist-art">several</a> <a href="https://www.popmatters.com/a-feminist-reads-philip-roth-rachel-stroup-2495386161.html">recent</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2013/09/21/philip_roth_inspired_my_very_feminist_sex_life/">think-pieces</a> have been published by self-identified feminists defending Roth’s work in creative ways. With the success of TV programmes such as Girls, that take <a href="https://www.mhpbooks.com/lena-dunham-girls-and-philip-roth/">explicitly Rothian</a> themes about sex and gender in new directions, the debate could well be moving on to new ground.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that Roth is in the clear. Few scholars would defend scenes such as the one we find in 1974’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/02/archives/my-life-as-a-man-by-philip-roth-now-vee-may-perhaps-have-begun.html">My Life as a Man</a>, in which an instance of domestic abuse is described in a manner so laconic that it comes across as indefensibly vicious to many modern readers – including myself. Perhaps the work being done by scholars, biographers, and cultural critics over recent years offers a middle ground that can change the question from “Is Roth a misogynist?” to “Do Roth’s discussions of gender have anything to tell us in 2018?”</p>
<p>I think they do, but I’m hardly objective. As a scholar of Roth, the urge to defend his work is instinctive for me; the sense of loss I’ve felt following news of his death has surprised me. But news of Roth’s death has already provoked <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/philip-roth-s-legacy-words-of-praise-from-obama-to-bloom-1.6113299">discussions</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/5/23/17383836/philip-roth-obituary-died-85-american-pastoral-portnoys-complaint-nathan-zuckerman">about</a> his lasting influence that have been ongoing since his retirement back in 2012, and will go on for the foreseeable future; these debates are not new. </p>
<p>These issues of legacy will be determined by how basic questions about Roth’s work will be discussed over the coming weeks, months and years. I hope they will continue the trend towards seeing Roth’s depictions of women as a complex and problematic, but deeply fascinating, topic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Witcombe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>His recent death will lead to some old debates about his work returning – but are they still valid?Mike Witcombe, Lecturer in English Literature, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774672017-05-12T01:39:16Z2017-05-12T01:39:16ZEvery critic counts: why Fairfax must keep its arts journalists<p>Anyone who has crossed a suspension bridge will have contemplated the intricately woven wires that hold it up. Each individual strand is slender, the weight it carries on its own not critical. Yet cut enough of them and the bridge collapses. It is their combined application that makes them effective.</p>
<p>So it is with culture. What bounds its diverse expressions and gives them meaning are the different conversational strands holding it up. There are four main ones: cultural policy, creative arts practice, cultural research, and media arts commentary.</p>
<p>They are interdependent. Journalists talk to artists, and artists read newspapers. Policymakers employ researchers, and researchers follow journalists. Everyone talks to everyone, and over time an understanding evolves that endows books, films, music, computer games and so on with inner life. That turns “culture in Australia”, into “Australian culture”.</p>
<p>It is profoundly consequential when one of these strands looks like breaking, as it does now with the planned staff reduction at Fairfax Media. To save A$30 million, Fairfax intends shedding 125 jobs, which reportedly include <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/08/australian-artists-writers-and-actors-call-on-fairfax-media-not-to-cut-arts-coverage">many dedicated arts writers</a> and two deputy arts editors, and reducing pay for freelance contributors. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://dailyreview.com.au/theatre-companies-appeal-fairfax-save-arts-coverage/59579/">open letter</a>, Australia’s major theatre companies have called on CEO Greg Hywood to reverse this drastic cut. Many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/08/australian-artists-writers-and-actors-call-on-fairfax-media-not-to-cut-arts-coverage">others in the cultural sector,</a> including three Booker Prize winning novelists, film critic Margaret Pomeranz and Sydney festival director Wesley Enoch) have protested the planned cuts. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"862056552680767488"}"></div></p>
<p>Fairfax’s plan is a course of action that would affect the stability of the entire cultural enterprise. It is not – and should not be presented as – a dry economic decision driven by changing market realities. It is a choice with serious social implications that should be carefully considered before it is made.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168854/original/file-20170511-21596-ypgf4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands gather each year to celebrate Australia’s film sector: Tropfest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Madfish_tropfest_2009.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The media’s coverage of the arts is too important. Since <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A25471">Harry Kippax</a> wrote his first theatre reviews for Nation under the pseudonym Brek in the 1950s, expanding media commentary has been both a consequence of public attention on Australian culture, and the cause of it.</p>
<p>It framed, and in many ways defined, the Whitlam moment, turning a political watershed into a cultural transformation. Going into the 1980s, this media commentary was the banisher of the cultural cringe, alerting the public to the scope, depth, inventiveness, intelligence, and excellence of creative arts practices in this country.</p>
<p>In the 1990s and 2000s, it was the first to reflect the trends, acknowledge the tensions, and describe the signal events that characterised our national artistic life. It offered opinions that had the inestimable effect of prompting opinions in others. It shaped and led the debate about the culture we collectively share.</p>
<p>In my work as a theatre historian, I have examined thousands of Australian media articles on the arts. The journalist Ben Hecht once described reading newspapers as trying to tell the time by looking at the minute hand of a clock. Thank God for that minute hand because without it, it would be impossible to tell the story of Australian culture in its whacky profusion, imaginative courage and irrepressible energy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168848/original/file-20170511-21606-zz8hvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Malthouse Theatre in Southbank is one of the major institutions that has protested against arts cuts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malthouse_Theatre_and_Square.jpg">Donaldytong, Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It would be impossible to follow the thread of critical voices like Kippax, Geoffrey Hutton, Katharine Brisbane, Peter Ward, James Waites, and Alison Croggan. It would be impossible to know where we are now, and where we have been.</p>
<p>As a theatre director, I rely on arts journalism not only to expose my work to the public, but to validate it. I’ve had some full-on barnies with critics, but I would be lost without the professional knowledge they provide. </p>
<p>It’s not about information, it’s about conversation – about what’s valuable and create-able within the cultural space that defines Australia, and from which audiences expect a great deal.</p>
<p>Opening my last show two weeks ago, I sat in the auditorium staring at the head of a journalist I’ve known for as long as I’ve known my wife (nearly 30 years). He’s a fantastic writer: knowledgeable, thoughtful, fluent. I do not always agree with his opinions, but then his job is not to supply opinions with which I agree.</p>
<p>His job is to make judgements about arts and culture. To judge what to cover, and why. To judge what to say, and how. To judge when to judge and when to extend tolerance to something that could turn into something better if allowed to run its course.</p>
<p>It’s the judgement, not just the column inches, that Fairfax Media will be casting aside. It will be a loss that affects everybody involved in the enterprise of Australian culture, from arts ministers to street buskers.</p>
<p>It will be a witless and self-defeating outcome at a time rich in competition for this shameful label.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fairfax’s plans to reduce arts coverage as part of 125 jobs to go put Australia’s cultural enterprise in jeopardy.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/556352016-03-09T00:32:41Z2016-03-09T00:32:41ZExplainer: the exciting new genre of the audio-visual film essay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114373/original/image-20160308-22120-1d57ivx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from Mirrors of Bergman, a profoundly moving audio-visual essay.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vimeo.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During March, the renowned film scholar Adrian Martin and the film critic Cristina Álvarez López are conducting a series of public workshops and lectures on a new and exciting phenomenon of digital film culture: the audio-visual essay.</p>
<p>Barely ten years old, the audio-visual genre has generated thousands of international works. The growing number of forums for it, such as <a href="https://vimeo.com/groups/audiovisualcy">AUDIOVISUALCY</a>, which contains more than 1,000 essays, demonstrate the scale and diversity of this new genre.</p>
<p>Audio-visual essayists intensively re-edit and recombine images and sounds from preexisting film, TV and digital works. </p>
<p>Coinciding with the rise of YouTube since 2005, the format was first embraced most enthusiastically by film fans, who could pay homage to their favourite works by capturing the thematic preoccupations of a director or the peculiarity of an actor’s performance.</p>
<p>Such analyses and homages might privilege particular scenes, gestures or looks – that kiss between Kim Novak and James Stewart in Hitchcock’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/">Vertigo</a> (1958) or the cigarette that Humphrey Bogart lights, again and again, in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037382/">To Have and To Have Not</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033870/">The Maltese Falcon</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/">The Big Sleep</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114371/original/image-20160308-22126-1pbchde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Humphrey Bogart and that cigarette.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr</span></span>
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<p>But the new creative and critical potential of the audio-visual essay was also gradually appreciated by film critics, cinema scholars and educators.</p>
<p>Many universities now offer courses on audio-visual practice. Several online film-studies journals, along with the educational blog <a href="http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com.au">Film Studies for Free</a>, publish curated sections dedicated to audio-visual criticism.</p>
<p>Since critical and theoretical writing on cinema developed in the early 20th century, there have been three elements to the standard film studies “toolkit”: plot summary; vivid, descriptions of film style; and static, single-shot illustrations extracted from the film. </p>
<p>Single-frame illustration technique was perfected in the 1970s as a methodology of “frame by frame” analysis. It put together sequences of consecutive frames to “get closer” to nuances of facial expression, degrees of movement or interplay of light and shadow. </p>
<p>The emergence of VHS tapes and, later, of DVD allowed greater access to film material, as well as – in the case of DVD – information in the form of commentaries, featurettes, cuts and out-takes.</p>
<p>But it was only with the development of non-linear, video-editing programs (allowing you to dismantle the original footage, even separating image and sound) that it became possible not only to demonstrate and comment on certain features of the film, but to transform it. </p>
<p>Thus digital technology allowed scholars and critics to engage with screen material in a way that was impossible for the most of the 20th century – by directly working on the film’s moving image and sound.</p>
<p>This has led to the development of an innovative performative practice that generates new types of insight, particularly in relation to the way a film evokes feeling and emotion.</p>
<p>Some audio-visual essays relate to a film-maker’s themes or elements of style, such as visual motifs, recurrent settings, or a specificity of framing.</p>
<p>Adrian Martin and Cristina López’s essay <a href="https://vimeo.com/73447335">Melville Variations</a> astutely identifies a number of props used by the French director of the “noir” era Jean-Pierre Melville, including guns, phones, fedora hats, white gloves, and black and white tiles. It assembles them into a visual montage accompanied by a soundtrack of the signature tune of Le Samourai by François de Roubaux. </p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/73447335" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Other audio-visual essays are more theoretically oriented, often combining visual excerpts with textual commentaries. Catherine Grant’s work shows how feminist issues, <a href="https://vimeo.com/47245082">queer</a> issues or interest in <a href="https://vimeo.com/119051190">the body</a> and affect can be explored through video-graphic work. </p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/82092389" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Another audio-visual essayist, working under the name of KOGONADA, demonstrates how film history can be illuminated by illustrating the differences between Italian approaches to film-making after WWII and Hollywood cinema of the classical era.</p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/68514760" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>A third group of audio-visual essays tries to do something entirely different – taking the original footage as a point of departure for a deeply reflective, poetic and creative transformation. </p>
<p>What happens if we trace how Ingmar Bergman treats the motif of female characters looking into mirrors in various films and superimpose on these excerpts a reading of Sylvia Plath’s poem The Mirror? KOGONADA’s Mirrors of Bergman is a profoundly moving work that pays homage simultaneously to both Bergman and Plath.</p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/119452347" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>The proliferation of audio-visual essays has prompted various interest groups to pose some anxious questions. </p>
<p>How are we supposed to understand authorship under these new conditions? What is the relative impact of the original author versus the producer of the audio-visual essay? </p>
<p>What about respect for the original work and its integrity or cohesion, which essayists feel increasingly free to cut and splice, dismantle and recombine? </p>
<p>There are also complex questions about fair use or fair dealing for non-commercial, scholarly and critical purposes and contexts.</p>
<p>The audio-visual essay has also been met with confronting questions within the academy. Is it really a form of film criticism and theorising or is it just a testimony to the fan’s imaginative play – not much different from mash-ups or remixes? </p>
<p>There is still considerable resistance to the genre from a large group of scholars who believe that film analysis should remain what it has been for decades: writing that is grounded in methodologies and infused with theoretical concepts, and only invoking the film material as “evidence”. </p>
<p>Another camp believes that the most productive use of the audio-visual essay format for scholarly purposes is one that combines it with more traditional textual explanation, reflection or commentary. </p>
<p>While these debates will no doubt rage for a while yet, we can be sure of one thing: the rise of the audio-visual essay is now unstoppable.</p>
<p>Its rich and varied artefacts are testimony to the fertility of the encounter between passion for cinema, digital technologies and the tradition of film scholarship within screen studies. </p>
<p><br>
<em>Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López will be giving a public lecture, <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/film-tv/news/">Hitting the Target: Hou Hsiao-hsien Style</a>, at Monash University on March 15, 5pm to 7pm.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55635/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Vassilieva is receiving ARC funding for a project exploring cinema and the brain.</span></em></p>Digital technology has transformed the work of cinema scholars, spawning a rich and poetic critical form.Julia Vassilieva, ARC DECRA Research Fellow in Film and Screen Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/542212016-02-05T21:36:56Z2016-02-05T21:36:56ZWhen writing biography, should any part of a life be off-limits?<p>Several years ago, Oxford professor and Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate decided to write a biography of the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Initially it seemed he had the support of Hughes’ widow, Carol Hughes – who had inherited copyright of her deceased husband’s writings, along with those of his more famous first wife, Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. </p>
<p>Jonathan Bate embarked on his biography with great seriousness. Yet somewhere along the way, Carol Hughes became worried he was going to chronicle her late husband’s personal life, in addition to his poetic one. The result? In order to avoid a lawsuit, Bate was forced to give up all hope of being allowed to quote more than a token number of words from Hughes’ – or Plath’s – diaries, letters, manuscripts or jottings. He ended up contorting his original vision into a pretzel.</p>
<p>Bate recently published “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ted-Hughes-The-Unauthorised-Life/dp/0008118221">Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life</a>.” Now Janet Malcolm, the venerable journalist and essayist of the <em>New Yorker</em>, denounces Professor Bate in <em>The New York Review of Books</em> for daring to write openly about Hughes’ private and public life.</p>
<p>Malcolm’s review is full of insult and a kind of Victorian outrage in defense of Hughes’ second wife Carol, a nurse whom Hughes married in 1970. It’s meant to wound not just Bate, but all those who attempt to write about the private lives of major figures. </p>
<p>In fact, Malcolm adds to a rich tradition of censorship by those who have deemed themselves the arbiters of what can and can’t be written in biographies – even those of the dead.</p>
<h2>Tastelessness or truth?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/11/ted-hughes-very-sadistic-man/">Malcolm’s review</a> is titled “A Very Sadistic Man” – a reference to the accusations of a distinctly sadistic, often violent and rapacious approach to adulterous sex that some of Hughes’ mistresses have detailed in recent years. Malcolm argues that Bate, by including these previously published anecdotes, has blown Hughes up “into a kind of extra-large sex maniac.” </p>
<p>Beyond Bate’s “tastelessness,” there is, she writes, “Bate’s cluelessness about what you can and cannot do if you want to be regarded as an honest and serious writer.” </p>
<p>Malcolm excoriates his “squalid findings about Hughes’ sex life,” and his “priggish theories about his [Hughes’] psychology.” </p>
<p>Moreover, she declares that it is “excruciating for spouses and offspring to read what they know to be untrue and not to be able to do anything about it except issue complaints that fall upon uninterested ears.” After having read only 16 pages of the 662-page biography, Carol Hughes put the book down and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/14/ted-hughess-widow-criticises-offensive-biography">released a statement</a> through her lawyer, saying she found the tome “offensive” – and demanded that Professor Bate apologize.</p>
<p>Malcolm claims that biographers should simply not be permitted to address the private lives of their subjects. </p>
<p>“If anything is our own business,” she declares, it is privacy – “our pathetic native self. Biographers in their pride, think otherwise. Readers, in their curiosity, encourage them in their impertinence. Surely Hughes’ family, if not his shade, deserves better.”</p>
<h2>The beautiful and the base</h2>
<p>Impertinence? Biography has been here before. For thousands of years, the genre – like great fiction – has been contested.</p>
<p>And dating back to Suetonius and Plutarch, there have been almost endless examples of its antithesis: anti-biography, and attempts at censorship.</p>
<p>The Roman historian Suetonius was, it is believed, exiled from Rome for daring to research and write his “De Vita Caesarum,” or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Twelve-Caesars-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140455167">Twelve Caesars</a>. British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh was executed, in part for having annoyed King James I by his impudence in his “<a href="http://clements.umich.edu/exhibits/online/bannedbooks/entry3.html">History of the World</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110487/original/image-20160205-18277-1sgx8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lady Bird Johnson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Lady_bird_1990.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lady Bird Johnson <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/arts/an-lbj-feud-finally-ends-johnson-s-library-and-robert-caro-make-up.html?pagewanted=all">took exception</a> to Robert Caro’s series on LBJ, refusing to speak to him for decades after Caro portrayed Johnson as something of a sexual and political monster in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/21/books/up-from-texas.html?pagewanted=all">first volume</a>. As a result, Caro was not allowed to speak at the presidential library, a federal archive – and the papers he wished to see were withheld until 2003.</p>
<p>We should not be surprised, however, that Malcolm has chosen to attack Hughes’ posthumous biographer – for Malcolm’s review of Bate’s book reprises her infamous attack on biography while Ted Hughes was alive.</p>
<p>Twenty-two years ago, Malcolm wrote a series of <em>New Yorker</em> articles that became a book – “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Silent_Woman.html?id=AYf6htmLiaEC">The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes</a>.” </p>
<p>There, she openly challenged biographers and readers of biography with the argument that private life should henceforth be off-limits. </p>
<p>“The biographer at work,” she wrote in 1993, “is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away.”</p>
<p>She refused to accept that there was more to biography than a pretense “of scholarship.” In her view, biography was simply about scandal, with biographers no more than peeping toms “listening to backstairs gossip and reading other people’s mail.”</p>
<p>Those of us who knew anything of the history of biography were appalled, even then, that Malcolm would so disregard the words of the great 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson, the father of modern biography. </p>
<p>Johnson had decried the stilted approaches to life writing of his own time by mocking whitewashed accounts that failed to get behind the public facade. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=MeyfRrhyQc8C">As he put it</a>, “more knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character, by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative.”</p>
<p>The greatness of biography, according to Johnson, was in tackling “the beautiful <em>and</em> the base,” and in embracing “vice <em>and</em> virtue,” rather than relying on the “sober sages of the schools.” </p>
<p>His most famous put-down of the puritanical approach to biography was to his own biographer, James Boswell. If a man wants to indulge in a spotless eulogy or “Panegyrick,” he told Boswell, “he may keep vices out of sight, but if he professes to write <em>A Life</em> he must represent it really as it was.”</p>
<h2>Is the journalist’s goal to protect or reveal?</h2>
<p>Why, then, has Malcolm been crusading against serious biography which embraces both the beautiful and the base for more than 20 years? </p>
<p>Malcolm claimed she had spent years interviewing and corresponding with serious biographers for her Plath project, “The Silent Woman.” Why, as a professional journalist, was she content not to interview Hughes himself, or even speak to those men and women who actually <em>knew</em> the real Ted Hughes? What kind of a journalist is that?</p>
<p>In her new review, Malcolm pours scorn on Professor Bate, but she fails to reveal that in her earlier book, she’d defended Ted Hughes against the many biographers attempting to reveal the truth about him, and about the tragic story of Plath’s suicide. </p>
<p>In Malcolm’s view, Hughes had every right to use libel, property and copyright laws to protect his reputation as a husband and a poet by threatening legal action against anyone who snooped – or threatened to spill the beans – about his louche, often manic private behavior.</p>
<p>Though the law of libel ceased its protection of Hughes upon Hughes’ death 18 years ago, Professor Bate’s book has aroused Malcolm to new fury. Now she is determined to defend the second Mrs. Hughes; no snooping, revelation or even literary criticism of her late husband without her inherited copyright authority – and certainly no revelations of what Hughes was doing on the night of Sylvia Plath’s suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110505/original/image-20160205-18289-1xsrhw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/summonedbyfells/12592779424">Freddie Phillips/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As in her “Silent Woman” articles and book, Malcolm once again declines to question this utter misuse of copyright. (The world’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne">first copyright act</a> was originally passed in 1710 to protect income, not reputation, for a maximum of 14 years – and especially not to protect posthumous reputation.)</p>
<p>With continuous, almost annual lawsuits and moves <a href="http://www.arl.org/focus-areas/copyright-ip/2486-copyright-timeline#.VrUA2Euvv8s">to amend copyright law</a>, the battle between “authorized” and “unauthorized” biographies will thus go on, more than half a century since Plath’s death, and almost two decades since Ted Hughes’. Any “unauthorized” biographer of either Plath, Hughes or both must continue to write with his or her arm tied behind the back, unable to quote more than a few authentic words without Carol Hughes’ express permission. </p>
<p>Samuel Johnson would be appalled. And it would be a sad day for biography if Malcolm’s injunction were to be followed, given the major contributions to critical interpretation, history and memory that the genre has become in the many centuries since Suetonius.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Hamilton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After Jonathan Bate, in his recent biography of Ted Hughes, wrote about Hughes’ salacious sex life, a number of critics – including Janet Malcolm – were quick to pounce.Nigel Hamilton, History and Biography, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/358262015-01-06T10:45:36Z2015-01-06T10:45:36ZTolkien and the machine<p>My grandfather was a carpenter, and I don’t think he ever developed much of a sense of trust in machines. I remember him laboring away at our home one summer, transforming our screened-in porch into a dining room. He could drive a nail through a 2x4 with a single blow, a skill I still haven’t mastered. He simply loved making things, and he was good at it. But he referred to the family car simply as “the machine,” and he regarded what lay under its hood with suspicion. He believed that such machines enabled us to travel too far too fast, preventing us from getting to know our own backyards. He feared that the machine age was depriving us of the joy of craftsmanship.</p>
<p>Though he never knew it, I think my grandfather’s attitude toward machines closely paralleled that of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit author JRR Tolkien. Tolkien’s views on the matter are apparent throughout his work, and before the final installment of the Hobbit trilogy fades from cinemas, the time is ripe to revisit Tolkien’s critique. No one is suggesting that we should toss our machines onto the scrap heap of history, but the devices my grandfather and Tolkien decried are now so integral to the world we inhabit that we may have difficulty seeing them, let alone assessing their impact on our lives.</p>
<h2>Tolkien’s dark side of machines</h2>
<p>To Tolkien, the machine is something far more menacing than a mere mechanical device. Fundamentally, it represents the lust for power – in particular, for power over others. The evil lord Sauron wants the one ring more than anything and is willing to stop at nothing to get it precisely because it will enable him to exert absolute control. The ring is machine par excellence, the device that will enable its possessor to establish absolute tyranny over every other living creature. It is not a means of liberation but a tool of coercion, domination, and enslavement. As the British historian Lord Acton would have warned, the power of the ring not only corrupts but corrupts absolutely.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68127/original/image-20150102-8198-qdw3x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tolkien’s ring can be thought of as machine par excellence, the device that will enable its possessor to establish absolute tyranny over every other living creature.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/3/3a/Sauron.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120620000759">LOTR Wikia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The machine’s corrupting power is visible not only in warfare and military conquest, but also in everyday life. For the machine takes something human – the power to produce, which is both creative and life-giving – and transforms it into something dull and enervating. Hobbits like to make things and delight in what they produce – furniture, utensils, carts, simple crops, bread, cheeses, and perhaps above all, ale. But they produce such things for two simple reasons: because they are necessary and because they are a source of pleasure. Labor-saving devices among the hobbits are of the simplest variety, and they make use of their leisure for enjoyment, not to acquire still more.</p>
<p>Men, by contrast, can be duped into supposing that the power to produce is the power to dominate. And domination is possible not only by wielding weapons of war but also by so automating everyday life in the name of saving labor that we become alienated from the very work that defines our lives. Instead of making what we need to live and enjoy life, we simply purchase it; the more wealth we acquire, the more we can afford to purchase. Soon the craftsman at his bench is replaced by a factory full of assembly line laborers. Before long, the laborers are replaced by robots. The joy that comes from making is replaced by a dull ache to consume more.</p>
<h2>The orcs take it one menacing step further</h2>
<p>The dire implications of the machine are captured in Tolkien’s orcs, as portrayed in Peter Jackson’s cinematic trilogies. These creatures do not come to exist naturally, but are bred by an evil power out of the slime of the earth. They are deformed and ugly creatures, whose hands are sometimes replaced with weapons. They seem to hate everyone (perhaps even themselves), and they take pleasure only in destroying and defiling. Tolkien suggests that they make no beautiful things, perhaps because they cannot recognize beauty. They care only about efficiency and conquest, to which they are driven by evil masters who rule through fear. </p>
<p>The metaphorical orc-ish machine is buried deep within the earth, a hot, constricted place filled by the sounds of clanging and grinding. Here, living things such as trees represent nothing more than raw materials, to be sliced up to produce the implements of domination and destruction. The scene resembles caricatures of Andrew Carnegie’s 19th century Pittsburgh steel plants and Henry Ford’s 20th century River Rouge automobile assembly plant, where men have been turned into mere means of production, mindlessly performing the same repetitive task, hour after hour and day after day. It is a place devoid of love and hope, animated only by a lust to enslave.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68102/original/image-20141231-8213-10moc6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The world of the orcs could be thought of as a caricature of Henry Ford’s assembly line, where men mindlessly performed the same repetitive task.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_assembly_line_-_1913.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The orcs use technology to enslave others, yet they are also little more than a pseudo-living technology of enslavement. Though sufficiently powerful to threaten goodness, they lead utterly miserable existences. They seem inhuman in part because their humanoid physiognomy deviates so disastrously from our own. But even more, they are utterly lacking in respect for the freedom and dignity of other creatures, something that even wayward dwarfs, elves, hobbits, and human beings are at least capable of recovering. Were the orcs’ conquest ever to be completed, they would have nothing left to live for, nothing good or beautiful to which to aspire. </p>
<h2>Have faith: Tolkien gives us hope</h2>
<p>Tolkien’s dim view of the machine is awesome in its simplicity. If a means of organizing human life can respect human freedom and dignity, it can be a force for good. A factory is not necessarily a forge of enslavement. But as soon as it starts putting efficiency and productivity ahead of humanity, it begins to resemble the worst chapters of the industrial revolution, as Blake and Dickens damningly portrayed. Human ingenuity becomes nothing more than a tool for inflicting hurt and destruction – exactly what the orcs embody. The machine represents coercion, and it is impossible to virtuously coerce a human being, even for good ends. </p>
<p>But Tolkien’s perspective on the machine is not a fatalistic one. The lust for power is not the sole contender for the human heart. Other longings, such as those for beauty, justice, and fellowship are also at work, and if we listen to them we can reap many of the fruits of technology without selling our souls. Like my grandfather, who tended his grapes on a backyard trellis that he crafted by hand, Tolkien seems to have loved the world, and to have believed that human beings are capable of making it a better, more enjoyable place. To do so, however, we must recognize the machine for what it is – a mere tool with the potential to enslave, against which we must be ever on guard.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>My grandfather was a carpenter, and I don’t think he ever developed much of a sense of trust in machines. I remember him laboring away at our home one summer, transforming our screened-in porch into a…Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/290372014-07-10T20:10:10Z2014-07-10T20:10:10ZIn defence of book reviewers in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53515/original/77hg6dtm-1404967480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Let's not underestimate the intellectual goodwill that sustains our literary culture. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antoine Robiez</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Book reviewers and the editors of periodicals that commission them are used to sour assessments of their worth, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/here-they-are-the-rules-for-book-reviewing-28732">Professor John Dale’s article</a> on The Conversation yesterday is in a class of its own. </p>
<p>What a clichéd, ungenerous and discreditable overview of book reviewing in this country, with its sentimental and predictable coda about mythic Manhattan standards. </p>
<p>Professors should do their homework – like critics. Reviewing, Dale states, is not financially rewarding. But that depends on how good you are, where you publish, and what you consider a reasonable supplementary income. Even “insightful reviews”, Dale asserts, earn A$120. Where has he been, and what does he read? Many newspapers and magazines pay more than that. </p>
<p>At <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/">Australian Book Review</a> (ABR), which I edit, our minimum payment is A$300, and often we pay far more than that. </p>
<p>Scholars, Dale claims, won’t work for low pay. In my experience, scholars are much more generous than that. (The Conversation – which, as a non-profit, does not pay authors for their contributions – surely attests to such generosity.) I have been consistently impressed by the readiness of busy academics to take on serious, lengthy reviews. </p>
<p>Nor, I believe, are they in the habit of limiting the task to a single day. We’re not all Barry Jones.</p>
<p>Dale goes on to suggest that editors resort “to the same old names” (the tiredest of arguments in the book of authorial disgruntlement). Again, look more closely. ABR – by no means alone in this respect – publishes 250 writers each year, in ten issues. Editors are all <em>always</em> looking for bright young critics. </p>
<p>John Dale seems to think people review books for base reasons: to earn a buck or (risibly) “to see their name in the book pages”. What an insult to the countless fine critics in this country who produce artful, learned, responsible critiques. What an underestimation of the intellectual goodwill that sustains our literary culture. </p>
<p>Frank Kermode, a masterly British critic, <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=w1y7xkIuFfwC">put it neatly</a>: “So I educate myself in public, which I take to be the reviewer’s privilege”.</p>
<p>Dale’s article is full of arresting assertions. “Book reviewing is about the reader,” he confidently asserts. Which reader? Most of the critics I know feel a greater sense of obligation to the work itself, free of commercial or promotional considerations. “We all know what a good review is,” Dale goes on tantalisingly, suggesting that “for the writer a good review is <em>anything positive</em> written by someone who understands the intentions of your work” (my emphasis). </p>
<p>Are authors really so needful, so undiscriminating? Shrewd authors, in my experience, look for original and illuminating engagements with their books: not approbation.</p>
<p>Worryingly, Dale claims that because many reviews are “contradictory” a large number of our writers are manic depressives. It is hard to know what he means by “contradictory”. Is he against nuance, ambiguity, variety of opinion?</p>
<p>Of course not all criticism is first-rate – the same applies to our literature and our politics and our soccer. As Dale suggests, we have all experienced “a sloppy or inaccurate review”. I’m always tempted to say, “Move on, get over it – stop reading the stuff if you are so woundable”. </p>
<p>I may be perverse, but (as an author) I find bad reviews vivifying, emboldening. It is a contest, after all – a contest of ideas and aesthetics and sensibilities – and we shouldn’t be precious about it.</p>
<p>Like so many others, John Dale looks to New Yorker luminaries for inspiration. “Certainly there is no antipodean James Wood.” Well, no. A special set of circumstances produced James Wood. </p>
<p>But we have critics such as <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A21881">Kerryn Goldsworthy</a>, <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A70104">James Ley</a>, <a href="http://wheelercentre.com/events/presenter/geordie-williamson/">Geordie Williamson</a>, <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A10606">Morag Fraser</a>, <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A12400">Lisa Gorton</a>, <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/OLD?id=A%23Me&idtype=oldid">Peter Craven</a>, <a href="http://www.uts.edu.au/staff/delia.falconer">Delia Falconer</a>, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/frontline-literary-critic-james-bradley-to-take-pascall-prize/story-e6frg8n6-1226360649929">James Bradley</a>, <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A30396">Robert Dessaix</a>, <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/author/2167-andrewfuhrmann">Andrew Fuhrmann</a> – and any number of other outstanding practitioners of their craft. </p>
<p>They do not deserve to be derided in such an idle and pusillanimous fashion.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>See also:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/here-they-are-the-rules-for-book-reviewing-28732">Here they are: the rules for book reviewing</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anonymous-book-reviews-dont-foster-our-literary-culture-28507">Anonymous book reviews don’t foster our literary culture</a> <br></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Rose has been the Editor of Australian Book Review since 2001. He writes reviews for ABR and a number of other publications.</span></em></p>Book reviewers and the editors of periodicals that commission them are used to sour assessments of their worth, but Professor John Dale’s article on The Conversation yesterday is in a class of its own…Peter Rose, Editor, Australian Book Review, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/285072014-07-01T05:08:42Z2014-07-01T05:08:42ZAnonymous book reviews don’t foster our literary culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52709/original/nfbf8rhp-1404187460.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What is lost and gained when book reviewers remain faceless?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, laughingsquid.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/">Saturday Paper</a> publishes anonymous book reviews and, occasionally, reviews by identified critics. That anonymity was a <a href="http://wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/5fa678685532/">much-discussed feature</a> when the paper launched in March, and the debate continues. Certainly, in running such reviews, the paper sacrifices a critical point of difference between mainstream media and the online world of trolls and fandom avatars.</p>
<h2>Debating criticism</h2>
<p>The debate here and overseas about our critical culture, whether in print or online, is interesting and vigorous. </p>
<p>Yet attribution is not a topic raised much, because most serious critics and their media outlets don’t truck with anonymity. The critics own their words. They put a face to what they say. </p>
<p>And this is, apparently, what The Saturday Paper also values. Its editorial <a href="http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/about">policy</a> reads in part that, “it offers the biggest names and best writing …” </p>
<p>Just not in its Books section.</p>
<h2>Faceless bad reviews</h2>
<p>Two principally negative reviews in the Saturday Paper of works by <a href="http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2014/apr/30/tree-palace/1396616400">Craig Sherborne</a> on April 5 and <a href="http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2014/05/31/captives/1400853600">Angela Meyer</a> on May 31 draw attention to the dangers of anonymous criticism. The reviews are attributed to “MM” and “DL”. </p>
<p>Sherborne is an established writer with four books out, and a history of publishing articles and essays in The Monthly and elsewhere. </p>
<p>Angela Meyer is a young, first-time author publishing with a small independent press. Her collection <a href="http://literaryminded.com.au/about/">Captives</a> has received few reviews, and only one in the mainstream press – the Saturday Paper. </p>
<p>Why pan an emerging writer and a small press? There is no contribution being made here to the culture of criticism generally, or to the emerging writer. This is criticism at its laziest. As British critic <a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/critical-thinking-ruth-franklin-interview/#.U7IMzKiC2kJ">Ruth Franklin</a> writes, it’s harder to critique a work you love than one you don’t like. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the panning of Meyer’s book drew negative comments on the article. Melbourne writer <a href="http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2014/05/31/captives/1400853600">Miles Allinson</a> posted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m not sure why The Saturday Paper decided to devote a quarter of their entire review space to such a mean spirited review of such a humble little book. At best, it seems a misjudgement, in terms of both its target and its execution. At worst, (especially because it’s anonymous) it just seems vindictive. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52707/original/k9prfymw-1404187088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Horia Varlan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Saturday’s anonymous reviews don’t often strike a vindictive note, or strong notes at all. Possibly, anonymity and the associated lack of seriousness given to the enterprise by the paper encourages blandness. This is disappointing. </p>
<p>James Ley, editor of the Sydney Review of Books, speaking after his recent <a href="http://www.pascallprize.org.au/">Pascal Prize</a> award for best Australian critical writing, argues for a different effect:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[criticism’s] imperative is to talk about not only literature but all forms of art and creativity in ways that are not necessarily didactic or polemical but which treats them as if they matter and in doing so reminds us why they do.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Restrictions of a small scene?</h2>
<p>Some reviewers say that the smallness of the Australian arts community hinders free and bold speech. Critics and reviewers, in this view, are constrained by the possibility of encountering the subject in a future context. </p>
<p>It’s happened to me: I reviewed a novel more or less positively but with some criticisms, and then soon after found myself at <a href="http://www.varuna.com.au/">Varuna The Writer’s House</a> for a week’s residency with the author. It was a little daunting for us both on the first evening, but the writer was magnanimous and we remain on friendly terms. </p>
<p>If the reason for lack of attribution is to encourage brave criticism then the focus on the author is misplaced. Precious few column inches are given to book criticism in print and online media: it is this that makes the community small, not the size of the Australian population. </p>
<p>More column inches, a critical culture that is engaged and supported by its publishers and editors, and a diversity of reviewers, judges, commissioning editors and readers are what is needed.</p>
<h2>The blunt instrument of the angry review</h2>
<p>Critics themselves debate the “gloves-off” approach to criticism. American critic and nonfiction writer (and fave of the Sydney Writers’ Festival) <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/a-critics-manifesto.html">Daniel Mendelsohn</a> counters <a href="http://www.salon.com/topic/books/">Salon.com</a> Books editor <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/08/17/the_case_for_positive_book_reviews/">Laura Miller’s</a> argument that book culture needs protection and encouragement. His conclusion is blunt: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even the worst of the disparagements wielded by the reviewers in question paled in comparison to the groundless vituperation and ad hominem abuse you regularly encounter in Amazon.com reviews or the “comments” sections of literary publications.“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, DL and MM’s reviews are not so "flamboyantly negative”, to quote Daniel Mendelsohn again, that they warrant anonymity in any context. </p>
<p>DL accuses Meyer of having poor syntax, yet writes, “Captives is also riddled with verisimilitude”. Riddled with the appearance of truth? And, “Meyer hasn’t bothered to go under the meniscus of character and place”. Better to look through the lens, than crouch beneath it. This review is “undergraduate” writing, in the sense that the writer is experimenting with literary effects but through lack of skill and practice blunders occasionally. </p>
<p>A further ethical defence of anonymity might be that it is more important to speak honestly and to bring the truth to bear on a subject, than that the writer be identified. The half-dozen Saturday Paper’s anonymous reviews I have read all share superficiality of critique, partly due to the short length but probably more as a result of the context. </p>
<p>They are also strangely similar in syntax, metaphor and non-specialist knowledge of the subject. Could MM, DL, FS, AF <em>et al</em> be the same person – or just two or three people? Who knows, they might all be Erik Jensen, The Saturday Paper’s Editor, banging out the copy himself. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Messer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Saturday Paper publishes anonymous book reviews and, occasionally, reviews by identified critics. That anonymity was a much-discussed feature when the paper launched in March, and the debate continues…Jane Messer, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.