How are postmodernist universities training the next generation of academics?

Recommendation and Summary

This journal article is probably not worth paying to access it from behind the paywall. It does provide an example of the written output of postmodern universities and contributes to answering the question of ‘How are the universities teaching future academics?’. The article does have some value if you are interested in learning about the types of values, thinking, and practices being taught in universities across the Anglosphere. You may view this situation with the universities as tragedy or comedy... or both. This critical review will be used more broadly to discuss the differences between academic disciplines within universities and the consequences as certain academic cultures spread into wider society.

"Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus"¹ represents literature academic Susan Carter’s views on the topic of training doctoral students in writing their thesis. For those not familiar with universities and academia, a thesis is a book that a student writes as part of obtaining their doctorate qualification. A doctoral thesis is meant to demonstrate that student is competent scholar who can make a significant and original contribution to an academic discipline or subject area. Obtaining a doctorate qualification is the unusual pathway to a career as a university academic (such as a lecturer or professor).

One of the article’s main points that different academic disciplines have different conventions and expectations for their student’s written work and this is similar to different literary genres. This is a reasonably simple, obvious, and straightforward idea. However, postmodernist academic culture often needs to complicate the simple and the straightforward. The "Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus" article is a fitting example of what this this academic culture is producing. It is not the worst example of an article from postmodernist academics, and some of what will be quoted in this critical review will be from prior works that were quoted in Susan Carter’s article. This is to focus on how postmodernist nonsense has spread through, and is established within, the Anglosphere’s universities.

Published in the Higher Education Research & Development journal, the article “Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus” provides insight into how future academics in the Anglosphere are being trained and indoctrinated into certain worldviews. According to www.scimagojr.com, this academic journal (Higher Education Research & Development) is currently ranked in the top 10% of Education journals² so is not regarded as some fringe, unknown journal among education academics. The article was published in 2011, meaning that by 2023 some of the doctoral students trained in that year have likely become lecturers, and some of those lecturers have likely taught trainee teachers, and some of those teachers will now be teaching school students. This is one way the type of academic culture expressed in this article has becoming established in wider society. Subheadings in the article included: “Why does generic doctoral support need more written about it?”, “The terms: genre (noun), generic (adjective)”, “Genre (‘see gender’) and literature”, “Genre of the thesis”, “Genre theory and doctoral pedagogy”, and “Gendering the thesis”. I will not cover the entire article in this review, instead I will focus on five quotes which I think reflect major aspects of an academic culture which is now contributing to dysfunction in wider society.

The first quote was used when the author acknowledged “...some culture shock to be expected with cross-discipline revelation”. Having completed a doctorate in the physical sciences myself, I am aware that the ‘hard’ sciences and engineering have different cultures when compared to other ‘soft’ academic disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences.

“We recognise that most science students come from a quantitative, positivist background, but social science classmates can consider positivism to be the work of the devil. . . . Used to accepting that a broken light bulb is a broken light bulb, scientists find it worrying to be told by postmodernists that the concept of brokenness is culturally relative and carries connotations of social, scientific and ontological superiority that may be inappropriately associated with, and not recognized by, the light bulb.” Judi Sture as quoted in "Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus"

Though I am not sure if that quote is a joke, it does illustrate the stark differences between academic cultures as well as the contempt for reality demonstrated by the postmodernists. The ‘hard’ science student/researcher is usually going to be identified as both a positivist and an essentialist (though scientists rarely use those terms), which means they believe in an objective, physical reality which can be measured and that “things have a set of characteristics that make them what they are”³. A scientist that rejected those basic philosophical beliefs (on which actual science depends), would effectively be going to work every day just to ‘make stuff up’. Traditionally, such a “scientist” would probably be despised and rightfully treated with suspicion of fraud by the other real scientists in the laboratory. In contrast, the social science student and many other students of postmodernist ‘soft’ subjects have been taught to reject the existence (and/or importance) of an objective reality. The postmodernist also tend to reject the concept that things have innate characteristics which exist independent of the language used to describe them. They instead favour subjective experience and assume that the way we describe things can change reality (that is if they even accept that reality exists). Many ‘soft’ subject students are taught through postmodernist ideologies to view knowledge and language as power struggles between groups rather than a quest for finding, recording, and communicating truth.

Over the last three decades, the academic disciplines of the ‘hard’ sciences were more resistant to the postmodern ideologies spreading through the universities of the Anglosphere. Many of these ‘hard’ disciplines were highly practical and empirical, maintaining an academic environment where ideas were usually tested against physical reality. In such an environment, ideas which are nonsense should find it difficult to survive and propagate. In many ‘hard’ subjects, scholars were expected to be disciplined by physical reality. In the ‘soft’ subjects, scholars appeared to be disciplined more by political correctness and the cultural norms of their fellow academics.

Unfortunately, even the ‘hard’ sciences in many universities are also now losing their grip on reality. This trend appeared to be accelerating during the COVID-19 crisis and my last years as an institutionalised academic. We had UN Sustainable Development Goals and various aspects of postmodernist, identity politics being inserted into the ‘hard’ sciences and engineering disciplines both locally and internationally. A society where more of its scientists, medics, technicians, and engineers are trained to reject objective reality is expected to become much more physically dysfunctional. Given the ‘soft’ academic subjects were captured (or at least infiltrated) by postmodern ideologies decades earlier, it makes sense that social and political dysfunction will often precede the physical dysfunctions of failing infrastructure, medical catastrophes, and other collapses of complex, technological systems. As societies and civilizations become more obviously broken, we also face the dangerous issue that many in authority will consider even discussing the brokenness to be inappropriate and problematic.

The second quote brings in the author’s views on gender and reflect her academic background in English Literature Studies…

“Categorisation into genre usefully signals expectation as to what kind of social practice is being critiqued, interrogated and refined. Literary genre categorisation demonstrates this. Revenge tragedy implies an imbalance of power that renders justice by law impossible. Feudal loyalties demand vengeance. It is a masculinist genre. Women, passive and peripheral, will have their name linked with frailty. Women are usually efficacious in comedies, however. Because these end in marriage, and because women bring to marriage the futurity of unborn children and the renewal of society, they are a little more causal in comedies. They come to represent the natural world with its own problematically essentialist and positivist truths. The marriages of comedy typically reinstate patriarchy, but women are enfolded within it rather than drowned off stage. Genre categorisation enables analysis that penetrates into the social efficacy of literature. Tragedies typically comment on male loyalties and homosocial responsibilities; comedies, on heterosexual power relations, intergenerational responsibilities.” Excerpt from "Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus"

Although not that relevant to teaching a doctoral student how to write a thesis, the above quote further demonstrates the contempt for reality promoted by the postmodernists. Women getting married and the resulting children bring about the “renewal of society”, is described in terms of these “essentialist and positivist truths” being problematic. Promoting contempt for the “natural world” as well as contempt for the various responsibilities of men and women is unlikely to help the survival of functional societies.

The article puts more emphasis on gender issues, with the following quote from a thesis where a doctoral student is expressing their motivations for their chosen topic of study...

“My interest in masculinities is partly because I am a man. That might seem self-explanatory, but in fact white men in Western society, historically, have not theorised themselves, but rather tended to assume that masculinity is a universal norm. . . . Secondly, I take a feminist perspective, in that I see discourses of masculinities as tending to be associated with power and tending in turn to act repressively towards femininities.” Mathew Bannister as quoted in "Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus"

Although short, the above quote makes claims which seam far-reaching, ignorant, and contradictory. With thousands of years worth of Western writings being easily searchable by computer, this doctoral student implies that there were no known writings where men analysed themselves or theorised on the topics of “masculinity”, or ‘what it is to be a man’ or ‘what society expects of a man’. I am sure that a vast amount of literature on those topics can be easily found from the times before the phrase “feminist perspective” was invented. Adam Smith wrote a whole book which was subtitled “An Analysis of the Principles by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of themselves”⁴. If it were true that Western society historically considered that “masculinity is a universal norm”, would not any historical works which theorised about individuals, society, or the human condition therefore also be theorising about “masculinity”. However, the claim that “masculinity is a universal norm” is somewhat undermined internally by the student’s other claim that such Western societies “act repressively” toward the feminine. I assume that having a culture act repressively towards the feminine, would first require that the culture recognised that feminine and masculine were different. Some target recognition would be required to apply such discriminatory repression. Acknowledging that feminine and masculine are considered as different would be incompatible with the ‘universal’ part of that “masculinity is a universal norm” statement. Logic and internal consistency are apparently not valued in postmodern thesis writing. However, I suspect running a ‘masculinity is problematic’ theme throughout your thesis would help you graduate from a postmodern university.

The fourth quote was selected because it indicates of some hypocritical and potentially racist attitudes that are present within parts of the postmodern university system.

“Often culture is not visible within a cultural group (an Indian family eating curry is just having dinner) but becomes visible at borders of encounter (an Indian family eating curry with a guest from elsewhere is providing a moment of cultural exchange). The same is true of discipline cultures.” Excerpt from "Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus"

On a shallow level this anecdote uses a common ethnic stereotype (or trope) about an “Indian family eating curry”. A somewhat cringeworthy choice of anecdote, though probably not a serious offence. The use of such an anecdote is hypocritical as postmodernist academics would go on to widely label such stereotyping as the sin of microaggression. On a deeper and more disturbing level, the anecdote indicates that the author is assuming that this Indian family has no clear sense of its own culture until it is observed by an outsider. Postmodernist ideologies often favour self-centred, subjective experiences and emotional interpretations over trying to find out the truth of the matter. In reality, the Indian family probably has a strong sense that the meal is part of their culture. In many cases, this is going to be more nuanced than the ethnic stereotype applied to the whole country by an ignorant foreigner. The specific curry recipe could be from a specific provincial culture and/or passed down as a family tradition. Given that the postmodernists often show contempt for both reality and family, it is unsurprising that they are ignorant as to how many families function. A version of the ‘this is the recipe that grandma would often cook’ conversation is likely happening in households across the world at their family dinners, without the need for an outsider’s observations to make their own culture ‘visible’ to themselves.

The fifth and final quote I selected is from the article’s conclusion. I have included this quote as an example of the general writing of both this article and type of written work produced by universities across the Anglosphere.

“My opening quotation by Frow suggests that genre is somehow at odds with theory: there ought to be ‘a kind of folk logic’ to classification systems, and theory is not famed for its folk logic. Yet theory and folk logic sometimes collude. I am not convinced that one necessarily needs theory in order to put social equity issues on the agenda, as when post-modernism justifies attention to the dynamics of race, gender and class as they affect ‘macro-level developments in higher education’ (Rhoades, 2001, p. 347). Yet theory gives an academic foundation to such issues, so that the scholarship of teaching and learning can accommodate more detailed engagement with what seems very logical from a practice perspective. Segal et al. (1998) accord that ‘rhetorical inquiry into professional language patterns can be a form of critical pedagogy’ (p. 78). Academic writing, of which doctoral writing is often an entry point, is not a simple process, easily supported by a guideline. I concur that writing and its support does not occur in ‘an unproblematic space that is the opposite or obverse of theory, but rather one that is replete with goals, values, assumptions, principles and rules, implicit and explicit, and sets of expectations about relationships and outcomes’ (Aitcheson, Kamler, & Lee, 2010, p. 6). For this reason, support from supervisors and departments can be complemented by generic insight.” extract from "Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus"

If you cannot make much sense of what that quote is trying to communicate, you are probably not alone. The quote does include many examples of ‘woke’ jargon such as “unproblematic space”, “social equity issues”, “dynamics of race, gender and class”, and “critical pedagogy”. Remember that the article is meant to be on the issue of whether it is better to teach thesis-writing skills to students from different subject areas together or teach the students separately with discipline-specific content. In my case, they tried to teach us all together. Thus, I was able to see how some of this postmodernist nonsense was developing.

As the postmodernists continue to transform our world into their “broken light bulb” civilisation, Dismantling Dystopia will continue to criticise the brokenness and analyse various options for replacement or repair.

Footnotes

1 Susan Carter, Doctorate as genre: Supporting thesis writing across campus, 2011, Higher Education Research & Development, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2011.554388

2 https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=3304&page=2&total_size=1437

3 Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 1995 version.

4 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1777, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67363/pg67363-images.html