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Academic Fictions

Something odd seems to be happening in academia: what I think of as "academics with attitude".

I’d always had the idea that the role of academics was to come to a subject without preconceptions, look at all the available sources and draw conclusions and insights from them backed by accurate quotes.
 
From my reading recently among articles about my own work, it’s clear that this idea is no longer current (if it ever was). It looks as though some academics within the humanities see themselves less like open-minded scholars and more like tabloid journalists: they take up a position and distort the evidence in any way they can, in order to support their case.
 
 Why is this happening? Is it that academics are under pressure to publish, and therefore to make a case more dramatically than the evidence can bear? Does the pressure to publish force them to find a "new" reading of a text, no matter how perverse that reading might be? Is it also what psychologists call "confirmation bias", where we only look for confirmation of what we already think, rather than testing our belief against evidence that goes the other way?
 
For five years, since the publication of The Secret River, pieces have appeared of the "academics with attitude" sort, in which my words have been distorted or - in many cases - simply fabricated, in order to claim than I think I'm writing history, and in fact better history than historians write.
 
 I replied at the time to the most celebrated of these attacks ( my response is elsewhere on this website - "History and Fiction") and hoped that would set the record straight.
 
It mattered to set it straight because of my respect and admiration for the work historians do.  In no way should their work be confused in anyone's mind with what a novel does.  It also mattered because discussion about this "controversy" was diverting public discussion from the novel itself, and the issues it was attempting to raise about Australia's colonial past and its dark legacy in the present.    
 
Recently I’ve become aware that the fabrications produced in those attacks have taken on the stature of truth and now have a life of their own, spawning a whole second generation of articles perpetuating them. For that reason, it seems important to defend myself more vigorously than I have up till now.
 
I’m aware that going into this detail brings with it the danger of seeming to protest too much. However, not protesting has encouraged the fabrications to gather authority, and damaged not only the books, but also my own reputation.
 
Some of the academics whose work I’m thinking of in the examples below are young men and women still on the lower rungs of the academic ladder, trying to make careers.   I have no wish to damage their prospects by identifying them. I hope, too,  that it mightn't be too late for them to re-visit the idea of academic integrity. Hence I haven’t always given chapter and verse, but I can assure you they exist.
 
There are quite a few conjurer’s tricks that academics can use.
 
The unsupported assertion
 
Inga Clendinnen (one of Australia’s most well-known historians) in her notorious essay "The History Question" (Quarterly Essay 23) mounted a dramatic attack on me. She says: "Then during her research for The Secret River

 Grenville…discovered she could write history after all.. The novel is a serious attempt to do history… Grenville sees her novel as a work of history sailing triumphantly beyond the constrictions of the formal discipline of history-writing."
 
 These are serious claims, and lead Clendinnen into serious accusations. Yet not one of them is footnoted. Not one of them is referenced in end-notes. No reader can go and check the truth of her accusation.
 
There's a good reason for that: there are no sources for what she says. If there were, she'd cite them. She is – to put it bluntly – just making it up.
 
Apparent paraphrases
 
Assertions like these are sometimes presented to look like paraphrases of things that were actually said.   A sentence that begins "Grenville describes" or "Grenville explains" strongly suggests that what follows is a faithful paraphrase. 
 
Yet what follows is frequently an almost unrecognisable departure from the original. In several examples from pieces about The Secret River, the word "history" has been used in the paraphrase where it never appeared in the original.   This powerfully implies that I’ve been talking about history when in fact I've never used the word. Nor have I intended the idea, except in so far as I’ve been talking about the past.
 
Once the paraphrase using the word "history" is in place, the writer can then go ahead and build a case on the grounds that I’ve claimed to write history.
 
What appears to be paraphrase is in fact a mask for fabrication, which then takes on the authority of fact. 
 
The "Interpretation" hidey-hole
 
Academics have responded to my protests about this by saying that their words were not a paraphrase but an "interpretation".
 
Interpretations, imaginative engagement with texts, and creative insights are  the basis for academic thinking and re-thinking about important issues.  That's as it should be.  But a reader has the right to know just when faithful paraphrase becomes interpretation; when it's the academic speculating, rather than the original source speaking.  Some academics are considerably less than scrupulous about making that distinction, taking advantage of the grey area between a text and its translation so that a reader takes away a false impression.
 
Others, more honourable, are prepared to clarify the writing in response to protests, and I appreciate this evidence of good faith.
 

Evasive Syntax
 
Some academics are marvellously modest about their insights. Rather than stating their case and supporting it with evidence or logical argument, they draw veils around themselves with such openers as : "It could be argued…" "It could be said that…" "This could be read as…"
 

Oddly enough, it’s usually the most contrived or contentious arguments that are introduced this way. It's a neat way of saying but not-quite-saying, from which the academic can draw back if challenged.

The useful rhetorical question

If a claim is too grotesque, far-fetched or libellous, it can always be presented as a question. The wonderful thing about a question is that, because it’s not a statement, it doesn’t have to come with all that awkward baggage of evidence or argument.

 
The slippery footnote
 
Footnotes were invented to keep academics honest, but they don't always do the job. A paraphrase might have an authoritative-looking footnote, but when you go to the source you sometimes look in vain for any resemblance between the original and the "paraphrase" or "interpretation". 

 A particularly effective technique is to footnote a sentence or paragraph that makes several different points. The rare reader curious enough to check the source will find that the footnote only applies to one part of the sentence – and never the contentious part. 

 Even footnotes can be paraphrases, it seems. One of the damning condemnations of me as a claimer of history footnotes an assertion with this source : "Kate Grenville: The Historian Within, The Age [date given]".
 
This piece was not written by me; it’s an article about my work in a daily newspaper.  I didn't give it that title. However, this footnote, with all the scholarly authority that a footnote confers, claims something that isn't true.  

The slippery quote marks
 
Placing something between quote marks is vouching for the fact that it's a verbatim quote from another source. Several times recently I’ve read words between quotes that purport to be from one of my books (with source given, sometimes even with a page number provided), but find when I go to the cited source that the words placed between quotes are simply not there. Sometimes they've been altered only by a significant word or two, but at other times they’re complete inventions.

Needless to say, the invention always works to support whatever point of view the academic is putting forward.

 Another bit of sleight-of-hand  is to put a word or phrase between quote marks but without citing a source. The implication is that this word or phrase is a quote – but, since there’s no source, no-one can check. Again, by an odd coincidence, words dressed up like this are always the ones that back up the academic’s argument.
 
 Whose voice are we hearing?
 
One of the first things students of English Literature learn is that the voice of the narrator of a piece of fiction shouldn't be taken as the voice of the author.  This is particularly important when the narrative is told from the point of view of one of the characters, or when it's in "third-person subjective" mode - third person voice, but from the point of view of one of the characters.
 
This elementary distinction seems not to be understood by some of the academics who write about  my work. In many of my books, the voice or point of view of the narration is that of the main character.  They have opinions, ideas,  and thoughts that are their own: their thoughts reveal what they think, not what the author thinks.
 
The gap between what a character thinks, and what is true,  is where irony happens. Rather than the blunt instrument of preaching, irony can be a more effective way of making a critique.  
 
And yet, in an academic article about my work, Dark Places is seen as "justifying and excusing" incest because the narrative is told through the voice of the self-justifying perpetrator.  Yes, we hear his rationalisations.  We understand what's in his mind.   To equate that with the author justifying incest is breathtakingly ( and offensively) obtuse. 
 
The distinction between "empathy" and "sympathy" is another that you'd assume academics would have grasped.   Empathising with a character means that you can see his or her point of view. Sympathising with a character means you agree with his or her point of view.
 
In a form of narrative that's a bit less simplistic than  "goodies versus baddies", an author might make use of the power of empathy to force a reader to think about issues in a nuanced way.  The tidy cartoons of "good" and "bad" are wonderfully reassuring, but they don't make any difference to anything.  Understanding why people do morally reprehensible things leads to greater awareness, and possibilities for positive movement are opened up. 
 
 
 
I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts

In the first version of his paper about The Secret River, ("Writing The Past", in Best Essays 2006) Mark McKenna, a historian, made assertions about me claiming to have written history. (His paper is mentioned by Clendinnen, who probably based her assertions on it, though she doesn't actually say so. )

 
McKenna begins his article by talking about the rise of the historical novel and the fact that "at the same time, scholarly history is becoming harder to publish". He says that  in the recent history wars, "History has been the great loser…historians have lost much of their earlier cultural authority."
 
In other words, he reads comments by me - as a representative historical novelist - with a case he wants to find backing for.   Like a barrister in court, he plucks from my words anything that might help his case, and studiously ignores anything that doesn't. (For detail of how he does this,  see "History and Fiction" on this website.)
 
Reviewing what he did in this essay, he might ask himself why historians "have lost much of their cultural authority".  Is this really the fault of novelists, or might the cause lie closer to home? 
 
Chinese Whispers
 
When articles by respected academics fudge the truth, it can't be wondered at that others follow.
 
A "Study Guide" about The Secret River states as a matter of fact that: "Grenville described The Secret River as looking down on the debate" (about the "history wars"), thereby opening myself to the claim that the novel "was superior to traditional historical documentation". In fact I described myself looking down at the history wars from a safely removed distance: a very different implication.  But this is the way Clendinnen and McKenna mis-quote that interview, and their mis-quotation has now become the received truth, along with the entirely false meaning they attach to it (more detail on this in "History and Fiction" on this website).  
 
The study guide goes on to say that "Grenville has been inclined to make claims for the novel's historical accuracy and for the veracity (truthfulness) of the events that take place in The Secret River." Again, in just the same way Mark McKenna did, this badly misrepresents my actual position (explained on this website and in a hundred interviews), which is that the novel is based on historical characters and events, but has departed from them for the sake of the needs of a novel. 
 
But the writer of the guide, which will reach school students across Australia, hasn't checked the source of any of these Chinese Whispers.  This Guide will ensure that these very wrong perceptions are perpetuated among a whole new generation of readers.
 
Quoting from unreliable sources
 
When I read an article and find myself surprised by something I appear to have said, and check the footnote, I invariably find that the source is a newspaper feature article.
 
Most people are familiar with the sense of dislocation on reading a piece in a newspaper that describes an event or idea they know about, and find it unrecognisable. Nevertheless, at the risk of stating the obvious, let me spell out the limitations of newspaper articles as a source for serious pieces of academic inquiry.
 
First, the context: newspaper articles, even the best of them, are by their nature superficial. Newspaper pieces - especially feature articles and interviews – are essentially written as a kind of info-tainment.   The journalist looks for a "hook" on which to hang the story, to make it attractive to readers who aren’t looking for anything too deep and serious. The "hook" may or may not have much to do with what the subject said or thought, but the piece will be shaped around it.
 
That shaping is done by the journalist, not the subject. Very few journalists will allow the subject even to read the piece before publication, much less vet it for accuracy.
 
From an interview that might have lasted thirty minutes or an hour, the journalist selects the very small proportion that will be used. He or she will be writing to a deadline, and to a word-length: the aim is to produce an interesting piece rather than a nuanced account of the subject's thoughts.
 
Some journalists take shorthand or use a tape-recorder, and in this case they at least have access to the verbatim words of their subject. But looking back through shorthand notes or re-running a taped interview takes time, and it's quicker to paraphrase. 
 
Many journalists don’t do shorthand and don't record the interview. They’re taking notes as the subject speaks – in other words paraphrasing on the run, with the odd phrase taken down verbatim.
 
So, whichever way the interview is done, the end result is that it's essentially a paraphrase of what the subject said. And, unless the subject has been paranoid enough to have their own recording of the interview, even the subject has no way of knowing exactly what they said.
 
Newspaper pieces are essentially a promotion tool for a writer, and we recognise the nature and limitations of the form. We’re all used to seeing unrecognisable versions of ourselves in the final piece. We understand the journalists' parameters.
 
However, when an academic takes that piece as a source, and cites it uncritically as if it had real authority, things go badly awry. The academic may directly quote it, in which case they’re quoting a paraphrase. Or – more often – they paraphrase it. That means that they’re presenting a paraphrase of a paraphrase. The original words the subject spoke have undergone at least two shaping processes, the first imposed by the journalist and the second by the academic.
 
An argument is only as good as its sources. If a source is unreliable, as a newspaper article is, then the argument is worthless. Academics, trained in rigorous thought, should know better, and should be challenged on the uncritical use of newspaper stories to support contentious claims.
 
Our old friend the partial quote
 
  Quotes often contain those three dots that signal that something's been left out.  What a useful little bit of punctuation they are, those dots. Behind them can hide an entire universe: they can easily reverse the meaning of the original, and no one is any the wiser unless they take the trouble to check the original source. This is tabloid journalism trickery, yet several academic articles about my work make enthusiastic and frequent use of it.   
 

In "History and Fiction" elsewhere on this website, I've gone into detail about a now-often repeated source (a radio interview) for the claim that I think I’ve not only written history, but better history than the historians. Suffice here to say that this accusation rests on one metaphor in the piece. The longer answer from which the famous "stepladder" quote is plucked makes exactly the opposite point – that I regard myself as doing something quite different from what historians do. Good work, dots!
 
Another academic has written that in writing my novel I was trying to do something more nuanced than history -  an outrageous claim, if I'd ever made it. 
 
Here’s the piece from which this writer has carefully sliced her quote, and inserted those ever-helpful dots:
 
"…it would have been simpler to answer all questions about The Secret River in the way Clendinnen describes Peter Carey doing when interviewed about The True History of the Kelly Gang: by saying flatly, unanswerably: "I made it up." But I was interested in trying to do something a little more nuanced than that: to acknowledge the complex relationship, backwards and forwards across an invisible line, between the world of fiction and the world inhabited by living people. In talking about the book in public, I was trying to describe my own journey around that line." (In History and Fiction” on this website.)
 
So it turns out, when you read what I actually said, that I’m not claiming that my novel is more nuanced than history. I’m saying that my comments about my book are more nuanced than Peter Carey's remarks about his.
 
I read academic pieces as little as possible, because I’m usually left astonished and appalled that some academics - supposedly trained in rigorous thinking and ethical guidelines - can fudge their sources so blatantly, often in peer-reviewed journals.
 
It appears that some academics live in a bubble of abstract thought in which constructing an ingenious argument is a satisfying game – and one that furthers careers. The problem is that, when that game leaks out beyond the academy, it does real damage in the real world. 
 
 "Publish or perish" is a brutal law of academic life, and protests like this one won't change anything. Just the same, the protest needs to go on record.


November 2009

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