NP no facts only interpretations

[Doug Millison]

another excerpt:

"What could lead otherwise responsible academics to implement such
narrow-minded, accusatory, cocksure tactics when it comes to constructionist
ideas? How has constructionism licensed inquirers to abandon protocols of
debate, specifically, the civility that requires learned combatants to
listen to each other? Constructionist notions have become so patent and
revered that their articulation need no longer happen, except as reminders
to professors who stray from the party line (many utterances begin with "We
must remember that. . ."). Those who raise objections soon find themselves
trapped in debates shaped by us versus them forensics, enunciated in an
idiom of brazen philosophical avowals and insinuations about the character
of adversaries. Non-constructionists feel not so much refuted, as
ostracized. The humanities become a closed society, captive to a weak
epistemology with a mighty elocution. ...what has emerged from social
constructionism is not a philosophical school or a political position, but
an institutional product, specifically, an outpouring of research
publications, conference talks, and classroom presentations by subscribers.
For many who have entered the humanities as teachers and researchers, social
constructionism has been a liberating and serviceable implement of work, a
standpoint that has enhanced the productivity of professors. It has provided
academics with axioms and assurances necessary to their labors. Herein lies
the secret of constructionism's success: the critical method that follows
from constructionist premises has proven eminently conducive to the
exigencies of teaching, lecturing, and publishing. In a word, it is the
school of thought most congenial to current professional workplace
conditions of scholars in the humanities. ...A school of thought whose
practice accords neatly with the times and money, numbers and paperwork of
academic labor becomes a material resource, especially in a field trading
words and ideas. If the methods of research and argument that follow from a
set of terms and principles fit the schedules and competitions of
professional life, subscribing to them marks an intellectual belief and a
career decision. At first sight, this attribution of an intellectual
standpoint to institutional demands may appear reductive and tenuous. The
hypothesis denigrates the reasons academics believe in this or that system
and forecloses questions such as that of the genetic fallacy. But the goal
here is to explain the popularity of constructionism, not its truth. Social
constructionism as academic common sense needs to be analyzed. One prefers
an institutional explanation to an intellectual one because this school of
thought has settled into a critical dogma and adopted ad hominem tactics.
...This is the bare and banal advantage of social constructionism: it saves
time. Truth, facts, objectivity-those require too much reading, too many
library visits, too much time soliciting interlibrary loan materials,
scrolling through microfilm records, double-checking sources, and looking
beyond academic trends that come and go. A philosophy that discredits the
foundations of such time-consuming research is a professional blessing. It
is the belief-system of inquirers who need an alibi for not reading the
extra book, traveling to the other archives, or listening to the other point
of view. This is why constructionism is the prevailing creed in the
humanities today. It is the epistemology of scholarship in haste, of
professors under the gun. As soon as the humanities embraced a productivity
model of merit, empiricism and erudition became institutional dead ends, and
constructionism emerged as the method of the fittest. Scholars may have
initially embraced constructionism as a philosophical position, but the
evolution of constructionism into a brash institutional maneuvering
indicates that it now functions as a response to a changing labor
environment. How unfortunate that humanities faculty did not fight back
against the productivity standard as soon as it arose and insist that
scholars need time to read, time to reflect, time to test ideas in the
classroom and at conferences if they are to come up with anything lasting.
What a shame that they were able to concoct a mode of thought that
cooperated with the quantification system, a plan of survival that now
stands as the academic wisdom of the age."
http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2001/2/bauerlein.html


---
"David Morris":
[snip]