Dear Nigel,
It’s not the attempt to ground Design Research, as such, that leads to the
feminization of universities. The attempt to formalise a process which is
intrinsically amorphous will always lead to feminising outcomes. The
Idiot’s Guide to Life would be one such feminizing project if it were
conducted non-ironically.
The Socratic Method is not a feminizing method. Socrates spends much of his
time requiring his listeners to explicate the forms of meaning behind their
assertions of specific knowledge (what is truth, for example). When they
get tangled up, Socrates is illustrating the failure of the students to
show mastery of their own discourse. If you attend to Plato’s later,
so-called critical dialogues, in particular Parmenides and Theaetetus, you
will for once, witness a truly masterful account of knowledge. So, yes, you
can become wise to the shapeless shape of masculine inquiry.
The Sophistic Method, learning how to make the weaker argument the
stronger, so one might beat opponents, in political stoushes, is a feminine
process. You learn distinct things so you can muck with your opponent.
Playing the victim is a case in point with currency. How to defeat an
assertive man? Pretend you are a wounded female child. Show him cute wet
childish eyes and he will fall apart. Do this is court and the man will go
to jail for life.
If we use the binary set that Jordan Peterson uses, then we can separate
these two approaches according to the masculine principle of order
(Apollo?) and the feminine principle of chaos (Dionysus?). But wait. Surely
this in an inversion of the model I have just espoused? The Sophists are
offering a formal rhetorical structure (order) while Socrates is offering
the ill-defined, chaotic and amorphous confusion of endless questioning
(ever more chaos)?
Ah ha. The tricks, the tricks. We need to look more closely. The shapeless
shape of knowledge, won out of chaos, but never made fully explicit, is the
Dionysian masculine principle (Right Brain). The formalised and rational
account of the world is but chaos covered over by resolved but inadequate
knowledge (Left Brain). It is feminised Apollonian chaos. As such, it is
very useful but always in need of radical questioning. Do my presumptions
explain or cover over what still needs explaining?
Do we need and use both approaches? Of course we do. Do we need more of the
Dionysian at this present moment in history? My answer is obviously, yes.
Do we need to be less confident of our feminised Apollonian givens? My
answer is obviously, yes.
University learning, for me, presumes a command of the feminine Apollonian
knowledge available in the culture. Beyond that presumption, university
learning requires an active engagement with the masculine process of
deriving order out of chaos. Universities are, in essence, masculine
institutions.
(This extended account of Order and Chaos is not offered by Peterson – I am
merely using his binary set as a culturally available set for my own
purposes. He might or he might not agree that my distinctions are useful to
his arguments about order and chaos. I wouldn’t know.)
Two thirds of my university teaching (20 years out of 30) took place in the
area of Communication Studies. Attempts in this area to ground their
community of concern with the status of a Discipline, with the
certification of a distinctive “way of thinking about things”
(Communication Thinking?) and with a formalised individual Research
Methodology, have also failed.
This same kind of failure has also taken place in areas such as Cultural
Studies, Womens Studies, and Gender Studies. The root causes of these
failures are the same. I do not treat these failures as trivial, but I do
consider that they were inevitable.
Just as an aside, it is quite comical that Communication Studies has mostly
spent its intellectual wealth in proving it is not Cultural Studies. The
secret aim was always to piggyback on Cultural Studies which might have
seemed to have secured its status as a discipline simply by virtue of
attracting lots of students. There must be a discipline here somewhere
because we earn buckets and buckets of money. So, if Cultural Studies has
won the day and got triple gold (actual discipline, individual ways of
thinking, distinct and original research methods) then Communication
Studies, which is a direct off spring, must also now be ok. Make me a
chair, crown me princeling.
So, yes, I have laboured in fields of concern that I presumed were always
doomed to fail in their larger and grand projects of institutional
ratification and elevation and just acceptance. In my labour I did not set
out to bring things down, to subvert the endeavours of others. Indeed, much
of my research in Design has been offered as a way of clarifying issues. I
have had minimal success in raising the intellectual expectations of the
field. Mostly I have been marginalised and tolerated as a funny fellow.
What are the root causes of the failure of these fields of concern?
keith
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 4:19 AM Nigel Cross <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> So, after 20 years of assisting researchers and research students in the
> discussion of 'PhD studies and related research in design', what might be
> some conclusions on the current state of the art?
> According to Keith Russell, the whole "project" of building an academic
> discipline in design has failed, and it may even have contributed to the
> (pernicious, destructive) "feminisation" of universities.
> According to Terry Love, the "God-awful standard" of PhDs in "Art and
> Design" (whatever that might be) still persists, because those PhDs simply
> don't match up to the more holy standard of PhDs in Engineering Design
> (which is the type that Terry has).
> I'm puzzled by the negativity of their assessments, but I'm not really
> qualified to comment any further here, because, as Terry pointed out to me
> recently, I have contributed only 33 posts to the list, whereas the "active
> members" have each contributed "more than 50 times that". To have made more
> than 1650 posts each over 20 years, I think he must be referring to the
> small number of such contributors who have so consistently assisted the
> discussion and therefore have been so influential in achieving the current
> state of the art as Keith and Terry perceive it.
>
> Nigel Cross
> Emeritus Professor of Design Studies, The Open University, UK.
>
>
>
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