Problems

If there is one word I'd like to keep from the vast lexicon of pretentious art speak, it is "problematise." I haven't seen it so much lately, but it used to be fashionable. Performers in the Live Art area would frequently claim that their work intended to problematise their content - effectively taking accepted ideas and finding out what was wrong with them.

My current explorations into comedy have led me to conclude that comedians often problematise matters to get a laugh. Stewart Lee's good at this - better than he is at being funny, at any rate. When he talks about nostalgia, for example, he deconstructs the lazy attempts by comedians like Peter Kay to squeeze the chuckles out of supposed shared memories.

Science, in its methodological foundations, is very good at this. When Darwin took a break from marveling at life's diversity, he asked how the hell it came about. Posing problems presents a powerfully positive process for positing possible practical projects.

This is one of those rare bits of jargon that illuminate rather than mystify. And it seems that the critical project is a process of problematisation. When critics objected to Jim Davidson's assumption that a joke excused all manner of obnoxious language, they identified a battle-ground that has probably done more to expose the dangers of racist language than any number of amendments to Hate Speech legislation.

This rather tedious soul-searching does have a purpose. Over the past year, I have made various comments mocking Marxism, despite having tremendous sympathy with aspects of its attitude towards the oppression of capitalism. I have also expressed irritation at the way wonderful art is frequently obscured by the bullshit that serves for explanations.

Very slowly, I have realised that it isn't enough to complain. I have to have some solid foundation to my objections. I am championing the word "problematise" as a sort of credo. This is what I do. The reason I can bear Lee's rambling journeys around his ego is that they are frequently challenges to the simple assumptions that I live by.

But of course, this soul searching came up after a real life event. Following the election of the new Pope, my Facebook account had a rash of friends' updates - friends whom I value and share certain political and social values. Most of these had something negative to say about the Pope.

It's not that I have a great deal of time for any organisation that doesn't pay me, or have me in a leadership role. And I have a harder line on the Vatican's attitude to women than many of its critics: where they are content to call it "sexist," a term better used to describe the script of On The Buses, I regard a hierarchical structure that systematically excludes women as misogynistic.

But Pope Francis is going to problematise matters. It wasn't enough for him to break with tradition and wash the feet of some criminals on Maundy Thursday. He washed some women's feet. He washed some Muslim's feet.

It doesn't make up for two thousand years of oppression. But it is a start. It might even be a sign.

Another one of Stewart Lee's monologues praises Political Correctness. He notes that Political Correctness has, at the least, encouraged the Conservatives to be more creative in hiding their racism. He sees PC as being a basic attempt to get people to talk about each other in a respectful manner.

I guess Reginald Hunter hasn't heard this particular routine - his rather bizarre campaign to normalise the N-Word seems to laugh in the face of the most commonly accepted resistance to hate speech.

I guess my defence of the Pope is PC gone mad. It's living in Glasgow: anytime I hear anti-Catholic talk, I don't assume it is bold atheism making a claim for a rational morality. I assume it is a sectarian chant and that a bunch of Rangers' fans are about to come around the corner.

When Frankie Boyle launches into one of his rants about the Church, I always see a fourteen year old boy trying to convince a circle of six foot lads wearing blue and white scarves that he isn't a Tim.