Despite being told that there is no such thing as truth, students are told to accept theories that are younger than they are without question, writes Ronan Doheny
While University College Dublin’s marketing campaign to attract new students uses the slogan ‘Think Bigger’, my experiences in UCD and Trinity College Dublin have found the opposite encouraged.
In God and Man at Yale, William F. Buckley Jr. sought to expose what he viewed as an “extraordinary irresponsible educational attitude”. Sadly, in Irish colleges today there is also an extraordinary irresponsible educational attitude. This takes many forms, from the over-prioritisation of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects to attempts at watering down of academic freedom.
However, perhaps the most prevalent and pernicious is the unquestioning, imposition of postmodernism. Despite being told that there is no ‘truth’, students are taught to accept theories, that are often younger than they are, as the truth without question. Ireland’s colleges are churning out graduate automatons who possess marketable skills but have been fed a diet of postmodernist creeds that will damage society.
As Cardinal Robert Sarah succinctly writes in The Power of Silence, the postmodern “man enters a mentality that resembles a denial of reality”. With so much denial and deconstruction, how are societies supposed to operate? Postmodernism leads to inevitable nihilism where nothing is taken as granted or sacred.
Postmodernism
Firstly, it should be stated, postmodernism should be taught, as elements of postmodernism have contributed richly to fields such as history or archives. Having already completed a MPhil in modern Irish history in TCD, last month I completed a masters in archives in UCD.
There are many positive, important contributions made to archives due to postmodernism such as the encouragement of community archives or a holistic approach to archives.
Postmodernism creeped into archival theories in the 1980s thanks to thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. These theories were championed and expanded upon by leading archival theorists such as Terry Cook. However, postmodernism in archival science is portrayed as a part of a positive steady line of progression.
The enthusiastic embrace of postmodernism led to relativist definitions of what a record is. If everything can be a record and can have different value to everyone; the archivist is faced with an impossible task as they must constantly evolve their professional practices in order to keep up to date with the latest philosophical trends in society.
But as has been shown by other leading archivists, lofty postmodernist archival theories are all well and good until you get into the real world where common sense is often more valuable. Taken to its extreme postmodernism in the archives would deconstruct the archivist out of a job! As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, “you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away”.
The carefree, fervent embrace of postmodernism in historiography has its consequences”
Like in archives, postmodernism brought some good developments to the writing of history such as the questioning of orthodoxies and the promotion of social history. But again, postmodernism is presented almost universally as a constructive development.
Postmodernism brings with it a distrust of metanarratives, emphasis on relationships of power, de-simplification of memory, questioning of truth and questioning of bias in historians.
Perhaps Pontius Pilate was one of the first proponents of the questioning of truth with, veritas? Quid est veritas? All these advances in historiography were needed, to varying degrees, and, like in archives, made the study of history more holistic; encouraging histories of non-elites. The questioning of truth is needed but as in The Apostle of Common Sense G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
Disconnection
The carefree, fervent embrace of postmodernism in historiography has its consequences. For example, it is naive to think that the questioning of nation states has not contributed to communities feeling less connected, suffering a loss of identity.
The nationalist histories of the 19th Century were dangerous as they helped stir nationalism in nation-states; postmodernist histories of recent times are helping to deconstruct and disconnect those nation-states. In the struggle against hierarchies, the postmodernist scepticism of truth is hollowing communities and weakening trust in institutions. A lecturer once argued that politically driven history is bad history at times, which is true as it is can be one-sided and unnuanced. However, postmodernist history is also bad history at times, as it is motivated for ideological reasons.
These personal examples of graduate studies of history and archives are given as a microcosm experience of how postmodernism permeates Irish academia. This is not a case of Irish exceptionalism, it is a worldwide phenomenon.
However, this begs the question: so what if they’re teaching postmodernism irresponsibly? In God and Man at Yale, Dr Buckley referenced a speech where a president of Yale declared that “even more disastrous [than unenlightened insistence on traditional values] would be the failure of the university to train the student to form convictions reached by his own effort of reason”.
Critically, Irish colleges are not encouraging students to form personal convictions about academic theories; potentially more dangerous than the ideas themselves. The vast majority of students pass through college focusing on their future careers or socialising. This silent majority sit passively through lectures and regurgitate the necessary arguments to pass exams.
In the end he let himself be persuaded, because he would have made things impossible for himself by not going”
In time, they make up the majority of graduates in society and are inculcated with postmodernist ideas that will be evidenced in their later actions in life. Perhaps some personally objected but their entire class seemed to agree with the lecturer so they passively sat by.
In All Quiet On The Western Front, Paul Baumer recalls his form-master Kantorek bullying his pupils into joining the war: “In fact, one of our class was reluctant, and didn’t really want to go with us…but in the end he let himself be persuaded, because he would have made things impossible for himself by not going. Maybe others felt the same way as he did…Katczinsky says it is all to do with education – it softens the brain.”
In a world where we’re taught to believe that societal forces and hierarchies determine every action, what would it accomplish with one-person objecting? One wonders what Hans and Sophie Scholl would have made of this.
This postmodernist abyss of nothingness is not moulding good citizens. Social commentary on Ireland in recent decades has highlighted the pitfalls, at times justified, of blindly adhering to a set of dogmas. However, the embrace of postmodernism is every bit as dogmatic as the catechism and needs to be called out. It is incredibly naive to believe that graduates with deeply engrained theories of denial of basic truth and deconstruction won’t negatively affect society.
We must agree to at least have a debate on issues, we must ensure academic freedom is upheld”
During the first Covid-19 lockdown, I read God and Man at Yale. As I wrote this piece, I found that I shared the same Faith, middle name and am the same age as Dr Buckley when he wrote his vastly influential work.
Also during that lockdown, my family recently re-watched Fawlty Towers. In one scene Polly asks Basil: “What’s the point in being alive?”
To which Basil replies: “Beats me. We’re stuck with it I suppose.”
To this eternal “what’s the point in anything?” mindset encompassing our postmodernist colleges, I answer: “We’re stuck with it, get on with it.”
Actions must be taken to rectify this indoctrination of postmodernism, the extreme political polarisation seen today and to help rebuild communities. Some basic, key suggestions for how we rectify this are: we must agree to at least have a debate on issues, we must ensure academic freedom is upheld and we should encourage students to make up their own minds on academic theories.
These changes are urgently needed because if not the disintegrating Irish society will continue its postmodernist downward spiral where our communities hollow, believe in nothing, blindly obsessed with monotonous ‘progress’; each docile, indoctrinated automaton passively scrolling on their phone, caring only for their own privatised world.
Ronan Doheny is an archivist in Dublin, a Kilkenny native and historian of modern Irish and Church history.