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Monday, April 28, 2008
ALSC & The Valve
Does anyone with a longer history at The Valve (or anyone else, of course) have any comments on this piece from Inside Higher Ed on the current state of the ALSC--and of The Valve?
Exactly why the group has struggled is a matter of debate. For some of its founders and leaders, the problem lies in the fact that the association has largely abandoned one of its two original missions, continuing to serve as a forum for genuine literary criticism but generally ceasing to engage in the culture wars as it had early on, to “work for change in the profession, and to contest the influence of the destructive forces that had brought it to this low state,” as John Ellis, the group’s founding secretary/treasurer and a professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said in a letter last year to the association’s then-president, Morris Dickstein, a professor of English at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
Ellis and other critics saw signs of the triumph of what he called “quietists” over “activists” in many trends within the association: conference programs featuring sessions on “eco-feminism” and “A Case for Green Cultural Studies,” a one-sidedness in the association’s main journal, Literary Imagination, and the “mainstream” approach of the ALSC-sponsored Web site, the Valve, among other things.
Comments
Heh. As the one to leave the first comment at the Valve—and innumerable ones since then—I’ve seen the whole mini-kerfluffle from outside.
In short, the ALSC wanted to use the Valve as a vehicle for culture war, but Holbo cleverly took them at their word rather than at their intention. During the high Theory days, which survive now only as a feeble spat about what “argument” means, there were any number of people on the other side of the putative culture war who were equally eager to see the Valve fill its assigned role as focal point for their counterorganizing, and who were equally disappointed.
Yes: “Holbo cleverly took them at their word rather than at their intention.” To flesh that out a bit, take a look at the mission statement on ALSC home page:
“The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics offers a forum for all those interested in the distinctive nature, uses, and pleasures of literature, from ancient to modern, in all languages. Its aim is to encourage wide-ranging discussions between those committed to the reading and study of literary works, and to the reading and writing of poetry, fiction, translations, drama, non-fiction essays, criticism, and scholarship concerned with them. The Journal seeks to develop a healthy environment for academic literary study and for the literary culture that extends beyond the academy. The Journal welcomes literary scholars, both academic and independent; teachers of literature in colleges, universities, and secondary schools; poets, novelists, playwrights, actors, and directors; translators, journalists, critics, editors, and publishers; and all other serious students of literature, wherever they come from and however they define themselves.”
I don’t see anything in it that would exclude people interested in, say, ecofeminism. After all, the ALSC “welcomes literary scholars...however they define themselves.” Ditto for cultural studies, at least to the extent that cult studs are interested in the “uses” of literature. Pretty tough for an association to maintain an oppositional stance if it’s serious about being so inclusive.
Compare the mission statement above to this description, taken from the NAS website, which retains a bit of the old fire:
“The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC) welcomes those with a serious interest in literature...who seek to transcend today’s superficial ideologies that dictate who are the correct authors and what they can write.”
The former statement is the ALSC “word,” the latter the “intention.”
Oh, interesting. Though I was a bit confused by the use of “activists” and “quietists” in the quote above, since I associate ecofeminism with activism.
Even more interesting was the passage in the article that indicated the leadership of the ALSC valued diversity --- in this case, making the argument that a national organization should not have all of its leadership coming from the same field and university.
If geographic diversity is valued, why isn’t it also important to include a diversity of scholarly identities, viewpoints, literary fields, canons, and yes --- even theoretical and methodological perspectives?
I think their aims and interests are a bit incoherent at the moment. But that will just make following along that much more entertaining!
As the one to leave the first comment at the Valve ...
By six minutes. Now I’m in charge and you’re still a commenter. So, um, HA!
I guess that qualifies me as someone with a longer history with The Valve, and that puts me in an awkward position. I don’t want a mission statement to appear in a comment—but I’m not writing a mission statement until I finish the dissertation, so of necessity I’ll be circumspect.
I’ve read the dueling 30-page manifestos the conflicting parties sent to the ALSC listserv, and to be honest, I’m not sure what to make of them. As an entity, The Valve is an ALSC outlet, but it isn’t—nor has it ever been—a mouthpiece for any particular faction within the ALSC. Consider the people Kugelmass and I have brought on board the past few months and I think you can see that David Mazel’s inclusive interpretation of ALSC mandate is the one we’ll follow in the future.
I’ll post a more substantial piece in the coming weeks about what exactly it is that makes The Valve a bit of an oddity in contemporary academia. However, it won’t concern why ecofeminism is anathema so much as why the inclusion of voices like Rohan and Dan Green’s are essential to the health of the discipline.
But where’s the official blog of the MLA? In Mylapore? No, wait, S. Ve. Shekher “produced recently a unique television show, ... ‘S. Ve. Shekher meets S. Ve. Shekher’, wherein he is both the interviewer and interviewee.” And up top, wikinotes “It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with S. Ve. Sheker. (Discuss)" with latter redlink annotated “Talk:THIS PAGE (page does not exist)” ... no wonder I thought the P in PMLA was Post ...
I didn’t want to brag, but The Weblog is actually the official blog of the MLA. I guess I would be getting more traffic if I indicated that fact in some way.
“the inclusion of voices like Rohan and Dan Green’s are essential to the health of the discipline"
Can’t wait to find out why! I’m often unsure, myself. :-)
I’ve been reading The Valve for about a year and a half now, and I’ve crawled around quite a lot in its archives too. My initial reaction was “this is not what I expected for a blog affiliated with the ALSC”; Rich and David’s replies here clarify some of what I had picked up in a more diffuse way from that exercise. But that the site is too “mainstream” would not have been my explanation...sort of the opposite, actually. I also didn’t see it as a place where I would fit in very well--which may yet prove to be true, I suppose! And yet it has consistently seemed to me one of the most interesting academic / litblog places to go on the internet, partly because of its eclecticism (which is another way of saying its inclusiveness, I guess).
Don’t be misled by the tendentious use of the terms “activists” and “quietists.” There’s plenty of genuine conviction on both sides, but not in the deployment of these loaded terms. This is a conflict between some who believe that the cultural wars never died down, hence we should be out there waging the good fight, and those who think that the situation today is different from the early 90s, when the ALSC was founded, and that they best way to promote literary studies is to show how we think it ought to be done. The irony is that most people on both sides share deep-seated beliefs in the value of literature and the best ways to discuss and appreciate it. They reject criticism that is transparently politicized, over-theorized, and riddled with impenetrable jargon. Fortunately, there is much less of this today than there was fifteen years ago. This is not a conflict over core values but over tactics. Unfortunately, it has become deeply personal, and therefore bitter.
Rohan, both you and Sisyphus (with the activist / ecofeminist association) seem to be treating the phrase “too mainstream” as meaning “too far right”, as it generally does in the context of the academic humanities. In this case, since the phrase was used from the right, it means “too far left”.
The truth is more complicated. I remember former rumbles from a certain pseudonymous person about how presenting a group as having no politics was the worst politics of all, and I don’t mean that. Politically, it’s a thoroughly liberal blog. But that means that it’s tolerant of differing voices in a way that culture-war right or left blogs certainly are not. A certain former poster would occasionally try some right-wing talking points, and the response was underwhelming or hostile. Certain other former posters didn’t think that the place was moderated heavily enough. Mostly, I think that it fits what the ALSC is ostensibly supposed to be doing pretty well; it’s a place where people with a wide range of strongly held views about literature present and argue about them.
Rich, I didn’t really think about whether “mainstream” meant “too far right” or “too far left.” I just meant that I initially expected the blog to have more posts about Milton, Shakespeare, or Tennyson (just for example) than about science fiction, comic books, and Zizek. I guess what the critics referred to above meant by “mainstream,” then, must be “too much like what already passes for literary criticism elsewhere.”
Hi Morris, good to hear from you.
Hmmmm, you all might be wondering what I think about this ALSC political dust-up, seeing as I am personally the strongest Valve-ALSC link, having personally arranged the whole thing. Truth is, I actually didn’t know about this contested election business until I read about it on the Valve. I knew I had a few unread emails in the inbox. It’s been a busy month. One of them informed me that my ALSC ballot was returned as undeliverable, due to being mailed to my old address, which I had forgotten to update. (So now you know who I voted for.)
I would like to correct one thing. Rich writes about: “In short, the ALSC wanted to use the Valve as a vehicle for culture war, but Holbo cleverly took them at their word rather than at their intention.”
Alas, I don’t think the ALSC had any such intentions for me to cleverly subvert. I went to a conference where I delivered a short paper on film adaptation. (It had good Nietzsche jokes in it.) That went well. Then, since it was several hours before my flight, I went to the members’ meeting. Basically, there was a ‘what would be an interesting new direction that might get more people involved’ question, and I said ‘how bout a literary groupblog’. They asked how much it would cost. I said: next to nothing. ‘How many people might read it?’ Lots. That was pretty much that. I think we got started about 3 months later. (I doubt I could have convinced the MLA to start a blog in three months flat.) I was focusing on new publishing forms, rather than specific content aspirations. It has been suggested that I started the whole thing to be an anti-Theory blog, but actually not (if you can believe that). I think the ALSC folks who greenlighted it were mostly thinking in a ‘what new direction for the ALSC might be promising?’ way. Culture war didn’t figure in. I knew about the history, sort of, but thought the ALSC as a culture war engine was a dead letter at that point, more or less. At least it seemed obvious at the time that, if that was still a significant force in the organization there was no reason why I couldn’t belong as well. It didn’t seem a terribly likely source of strife. I am not entirely unsympathetic to certain anti-Theory critiques that the likes of John Ellis have advanced over the years. I think “Against Deconstruction” is a pretty good little book, although it has problems, too. I’m personal friends with Mark Bauerlein. But I’m not really much of a literary traditionalist, if that means being interested in fighting canon wars. I have expressed my incomprehension of the point of all that on a few occasions. Everything from Beowulf to Buffy is fine with me, thank you very much.
All right, I’ll modify the sentence to: “In short, the ALSC wanted to use the Valve as a vehicle for culture war, but Holbo naively took them at their word rather than at their intention.”
Not that there was any conspiracy, or that the particular people who asked you to start the Valve weren’t sincere. But the ALSC as a culture war engine is still not a dead letter, at least in some people’s minds, as evidenced by this leadership challenge. It’s not like those within the group who were still interested in culture war could approach you and say “Hey, do you want to be a right wing hack for us?” That doesn’t go over well, unless you’re a right wing hack. But there have been recurring noises that they tacitly expected something from the Valve that they were never going to get.
"It’s not like those within the group who were still interested in culture war could approach you and say “Hey, do you want to be a right wing hack for us?” That doesn’t go over well, unless you’re a right wing hack. But there have been recurring noises that they tacitly expected something from the Valve that they were never going to get.”
I don’t really think so. The people who ok’d it knew that I was a fairly prominent blogger at a leftish academic group blog - Crooked Timber. That I was a philosopher. That I had delivered a paper on film adaptation. I am not sure there was any reason to think I was a budding right-wing culture warrior. Maybe if they’d known about my anti-Theory schtick, yeah. But I don’t think they did.
Obviously there are people in the ALSC who think it ought to get back to its culture war roots, and probably they hoped any ALSC blog would be part of that. But I don’t think the people who ok’d it fall in that category.
Well, this is getting far afield from anything that I have direct experience of, obviously. But in more general terms, people are often recruited for a right wing think tank through a gradual process. They get brought in through some kind of common interest, then they socialize with the real right-wingers, and the desire to be socially agreeable makes them drift right quickly. You start out as an astrophysicist studying sunspots, say, and end up as a full-fledged global warming denialist.
Rich is making me smile. And in his defense, you were at an ALSC member’s meeting. That’s a rather self-selecting crew.
CR, Michael Wood is a member, isn’t he?
At the conference, Wood did say “the horror, the horror”, but I think he was discussing Conrad. (No, actually I don’t know that for sure. I missed the Conrad panel.)
I’m not a member of the ALSC (I’ve difficulty paying fees and attending conferences because I live in a Third World country) but I would have wanted to join it.
I spent much of my life listening to Americanized pop music, watching Hollywood films and U.S. television shows, and reading comic books and bestsellers. I didn’t take an undergrad in the humanities, and when I did take grad studies in lit, I spent much of it reading and writing about postmodernism, cultural studies, and critical theory. I don’t know why this would make me “leftish” as much of it involves capitalism, commercialism, and seeing the university as a “publish or perish” situation.
Almost a decade ago, I began to focus on what the “industry” calls “canonical literature,” and only because what was “canonical” for some was very new to me. I haven’t read enough yet, which is probably why I am always excited when there’s a talk about Milton, Shakespeare, or Tennyson, and even now I’ve never grown tired reading their works or teaching or writing about them. I suppose what some might consider old and mainstream is for me new and otherwise.
This might allow some to see me as “rightish” or “elitist” but I always assumed that such preferences would have made me “leftish” (mainly because most of these authors’ works are in the public domain) and non-elitist (since most profits are being made in commercial pop entertainment which hardly involves such works, unless some of them are modernized and turned into rock musicals or illustrated picture books).
Now, I’m bringing in what might be seen as traditional Third World literature, especially the literary epics of Asia. Hopefully, this will add new meaning to what is commonly seen as traditional or canonical literature.
So far, I’ve two concerns: the first is that there is simply too many canonical or traditional works to appreciate in various media (literature, music, art, and film) and I have a lot of catching up to do, and the second is that the atmosphere in which I work is dominated by identity politics, cultural studies, postmodern theories. I was hoping that there might be groups like the ALSC or similar to it that might allow people like me some sort of temporary refuge.
Ralfy, it sounds like you’re just the sort of person for whom the ALSC was created. It’s a pity geography keeps you from getting involved in it. But you might still find it worthwhle to join, to get the Newsletter (which, among other things, summarizes the panels at the conferences), the fine journal LITERARY IMAGINATION, which has a new young editor, Peter Campion, and so on. Neither the organization nor these publications was ever intended to be political, unless you see defending and promoting literature as a political act. If anything, the National Association of Scholars, with its clear political agenda, has been the anti-model, though there are undoubtedly some who are members of both. As John says, I’m sure no one ever thought of The Valve as political stalking horse for the ALSC. Even in the contested election, which Susan Wolfson has just won by a seven-to-one margin, both candidates were essentially literary, with stellar records of publication on just the kinds of canonical literature to which Ralfy is strongly attracted. If you want to know what the ALSC stands for, read THEORY’S EMPIRE and The Valve’s excellent forum about it,
Morris,
I have a great amount of respect for many of the members of the ALSC. I’m also deeply invested in the defense and promotion of literature, and I think it’s a worthy cause. (I myself have been accused a few times of being “just a close reader,” and of over-investing in the “canon”...So I know how annoying that can be...)
That said, I’m still a bit confused by some of the materials on the ALSC website, in particular the “Short History of the ALSC” by Norman Fruman. You say that “Neither the organization nor these publications was ever intended to be political,” but Fruman contextualizes the emergence of the organization in the battles over diversity and accredidation at CUNY, and further states that the new organization was born out of anxieties that Fruman shared with John Ellis about “the gloomy state of literary studies, as well as the growing menace political correctness posed to free speech and academic freedom.”
It seems to me that, whether one thinks that the founders were on the right or wrong side of these issues, diversity and “the growing menace of political correctness” are in fact political issues.
It’s definitely possible that the organization has moved past these issues, and the numbers in the recent election suggest that this may well be the case. But it does still seem to me, even just going by the materials on the organization’s website itself, it would be difficult to say that the ALSC was never intended to be political, unless the lines of what constitutes the political are drawn very narrowly indeed.
Or perhaps there’s a problem with Fruman’s piece. Perhaps he has the emphases all wrong, or maybe his history is totally unrepresentative of the origins of group as a whole. But then why is it still available on the ALSC website?
Undoubtedly, many of the founders of the ALSC had different motives or their own mixed motives. Ellis and Fruman, whose work I respect, represented one strand of the organization. Presidents of the ALSC such as John Hollander, Roger Shattuck, Eleanor Cook, Robert Alter, and Rosanna Warren represented other strands, which might be seen as more strictly literary, and certainly less polemical. One piece of evidence that the ALSC has indeed moved on, as literary studies have moved on, is that Ellis and Fruman have been among the protesters. I know from my own correspondence with Ellis is that he certainly doesn’t agree that the culture wars have died down in the last fifteen years since the ALSC was founded. I do. This is pretty much what the whole recent uproar is about. It does not mean that we no longer need to remain vigilant about the state of literary studies today. There’s plenty of bad shit out there. Then again, this is just my point of view. I can’t claim to speak for the ALSC.
I think that we should pause and consider what it means that a site where the most commented upon posts surround Zizek and Derrida is considered a “‘mainstream’ approach”.