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Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Bill the Butcher As Educator
There's a Chron of Higher Ed piece by one William Pannapacker about the Valve in the latest issue (July 29). Their server appears to be down, so no access [I got it in email, so correct me if I'm wrong about anything.] Oh, and also there will apparently be a Boston Globe squib about the Valve this coming Sunday, in the Ideas section. Back to the Chron piece ...
This is very positive:
Last March the ALSC launched the Valve, the name of which suggests a place for venting frustrations with the academic establishment. Its 14-member roster of contributors is headed by John Holbo, an assistant professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore. The expressed aims of the Valve are identical to those of the ALSC: to serve as a "healthy" place for the expression of the love of literature that dare not speak its name. [UPDATE: that's not quite it regarding our aims, actually.]
But no, this is a caricature [I hope of the ALSC as well], for the contributions to the Valve are usually much more complex than the black-and-white dualities of the so-called culture war. In fact, discussions on the Valve contain some of the most balanced, nuanced, and civil blogging on academic culture one is likely to find since the much lamented demise of the Invisible Adjunct last summer.
But this is a less positive:
So Theory's Empire, along with organizations such as the ALSC, seems to provoke prophetic visions among some readers: Perhaps it will pave the way for a new generation of academics, gathering strength in exile, who will sweep away the Theory establishment, which had grown complacent in the wake of its triumph.
Given this lively emotional back story, it is rather disappointing to report that the much-heralded, multiweek discussion of Theory's Empire on the Valve has turned out to be a dud instead of a blockbuster. I wanted to report that it was a signal event in the history of the blogosphere. Years from now we would look back on this as the moment when the void left by unread journals and joyless conferences would be filled by this new, youthful, unmediated forum for frank discussion of the real issues of the profession.
If so, this is a case in which the world begins with a whimper instead of a bang. As the über-blogger Brad DeLong complains, the discussion has been all too civil and theoretical, rather than heated and cultural. Some readers, like me, were hoping for an academic donnybrook directly from Gangs of New York with Stanley Fish making a cameo appearance as Bill the Butcher. But, as of this writing, it looks like the Valve declared a war and nobody came.
Here's my response. I'm sure others will want to make theirs. First, thanks for the generally favorable vote of confidence about the form and its academic potential. But now, about those criticisms. You can want to see Stanley Fish as Bill the Butcher blogger, and you can want frank, balanced, nuanced and civil blogging. You can welcome the substitution of complexity for the black-and-white of culture war, and you can lament the fact that someone redeclared culture war and no one came. But I fail to see how the Valve can be held responsible for not overcoming the severe mutual incompatibilities of these (independently understandable) objectives. You have to take your pick. We all recall that classic Bill the Butcher essay, "Is There A Fucking Knife In This Class?": "You see this knife? I'm gonna teach you to speak English with this fucking knife!" Well, that's just the question, isn't it? Perhaps Pannapacker has in mind some of Bill's other memorable lines: "I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. So because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth. You can build your filthy world without me." Well, spew or get off the pot. Can't have both.
This reminds me that I owe Michael Bérubé an apology for being the teensy tinsiest bit rude to him.
I owe a retraction, per his post here. In this post I accused him of perpetrating what I called the T-to-t fallacy: investing 'Theory' - i.e. something recent and intellectually distinctive - with ersatz necessity, by conflating it with 'theory' in the generic sense of 'thinking at all'. Michael says he wasn't. He was just making the point that Theory's defenders are not necessarily so intellectually intractable. And Theory is not necessarily so monolithically exclusive as critics sometimes make out. Fair enough. I shouldn't have been so quick with the knife, thereby incidentally confirming Michael's point. The higher point to be made here ... concerns the dearth of things worth seeing at this very point. So let's scramble up for a better view of their absence.
Sean writes:
In my fantasies, I yearn for TE to convince its readers of what I think are two major conclusions toward which it leads: (1) Though they’ve been frequently, if not characteristically exaggerated to the point of absurdity, some of the widely shared beliefs made commonplace by Theory are, at least in some versions, perfectly reasonable—and at a certain point in the history of the literary academy may plausibly have seemed badly needed. (2) Criticism of Theory is not inevitably motivated by anti-intellectualism or political or cultural conservatism or characterized by intemperate bluster.
But the comedy of it is that these 'major conclusions' only amount to: Theory is not necessarily bad or good. Pretty trivial. But not trivial enough that we can forego a 700+ page anthology, plus our humble little book event, on its behalf. So the discussion is inevitably deformed. To keep it from being even more deformed than it has to be, you've got to distinguish pointless points you've got to make from those you don't. My go-round with Michael is a case in point. Take Tim Burke as a benchmark of balance: "I tend to bristle on one hand at know-nothing denunciations of theory ... but also at circle-the-wagons defenses of it, or even those defenses which argue that the problem with theory was only its occasional excesses and over-zealous acolytes." Now Michael and I can sign on to that, but doing so would mask real, deep disagreement. So it might seem we should haul all that into the light, but actually that would just excavate a molehill. (It is not the case, as a famous philosopher once said, that "I gotta get inside this dude's pelt and crawl around for a few days.") Because what do we disagree about? The degree of asymptotic approach to know-nothing? The diameter of the circle of defensiveness? The decibel level of over-zealotry? All very real, but hashing it out could only mean compiling dueling compendia of minor grievances. In this way genuine substance declines at best into the peevishness John McGowan complains of in his first post. This I have learned and shall try to remember. It is why polemics about Theory tend to be dull, on both sides, and why we've had enough of them after 20 or so years. The way to advance the debate is to get people to accept 1 & 2 and get on with something civil and complex.
It is always a good time to quote Nietzsche's "Bill the Butcher as Educator":
They know, these solitaries, free in spirit, that they continually seem other than what they think: while they desire nothing but truth and honesty, they are encompassed by a net of misunderstandings; and however vehemently they may desire, they cannot prevent a cloud of false opinions, approximations, half-admissions, indulgent silence, erroneous interpretation from gathering about their actions. Because of this a cloud of melancholy gathers on their brows; for such as these it is more hateful than death itself to be forced to present a semblance to the world; and their perpetual bitter resentment of this constraint fills them with volcanic menace. From time to time they revenge themselves for their enforced concealment and compelled restraint. They emerge from their cave wearing a terrifying aspect; their words and deeds are then explosions and it is possible for them to perish by their own hand.
We've all had days like that. Thankfully, we haven't had days like that for days, since - by general acclaim - this Theory's Empire event has been such a model of agreeable conversation. Taking an even longer view, as Hannapacker does ... well, my long view is different. In my younger days I was a wild buck, brawling in the blogstreets. This taught me a great deal about the advantages and disadvantages of knifework for life. One day it dawned on me that my polemical pieces were generally less intelligent than my mild-mannered ones. Also, I got tired of writing arch, high-handed polemical pieces, then having to apologize when my targets showed up in comments, complaining that I had been unfair; which was perfectly fair of them.
I'm grateful to Pannapacker for writing a generally favorable piece about us. But it most definitely wasn't our intent to start a war. I think, in fact, it is one of the good features of Theory's Empire that it isn't really suited to be an instrument of culture war. This was what we wanted people to know about it.
While I'm on the subject of book events, a minor administrative matter. Our next book event subject, The Literary Wittgenstein, has been pushed back a few weeks (minor scheduling and logistical difficulties not worth rehearsing.) It's going to be smaller that Theory's Empire, which I think is probably a good thing. If you missed it, here's my NDPR review. Also, two papers in the volume - by Martin Stone and Sonya Sedivy - are specifically concerned with the sorts of issues we have been debating in the last few days: Stanley Fish type stuff. I don't talk about Stone and Sedivy much in my review, because I'm pushing this 'Wittgenstein as post-Romantic' storyline. I've come to realize that I thereby commited the fallacy of conflating quality of contributions with suitability for my story. The Stone paper, in particular, is one of the more interesting items in the volume, I now think. So give it a look if you can. (We hope to make it available as a downloadable PDF.)
Comments
John, for the first time since I’ve learned of the existence of Pannapacker’s article, I’m able to breathe again. You’re right: he criticizes us for not being polemical enough while praising us for not reigniting the culture wars. We don’t brook those two horns of that dilemma, and your post reminded me that it’s not an either-or proposition. Picture me wiping my forehead in crazed relief…
Yes, well, I’m really happy about the general dearth of internet fighting around here.
John, it may be a good idea to place the announcement about the LW event at the beginning of your post, or in another one. I, of course, am intensely interested in what you have to say about, well, an article that quoted me; others might not read through to the end…
I’ll move it up, Scott. That’s a good idea. Maybe I’ll just let this be the top post for a while, in case Chron readers drop by.
Rereading the Chron piece again, I find more to quibble with: “The perspective of the ALSC and the Valve is, perhaps, best articulated by the contents of a new book, published by Columbia University Press, called Theory’s Empire: An Anthology of Dissent, edited by Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral.”
The perspective of the Valve is best articulated by the Valve. It isn’t necessarily the perspective of TE. The perspective of the ALSC is a third thing.
Two thoughts:
1. You’ve captured perfectly Pannapacker’s confused (and confusing) view of the Valve: “It’s great they’re not engaging in a a flame war, but it’s really too bad they’re not engaging in a flame war.”
2. Your waiting a couple of days to respond with a detailed post puts the lie to the misperception of blogs as media through which writers toss off hasty, ill-considered, angry responses to others.
Thanks for your vote of confidence regarding point 1, gzombie. But I confess to posting in haste. Checking my email, I actually posted several hours BEFORE receiving the article. Well, that’s time zones for you.
I’m not sure there has to be a contradiction between respecting civil dialogue and, at the same time, desiring something more visceral. It’s an Apollonian/Dionysian distinction. One can have both, I think. I don’t think this is the same as calling for a “flame war.”
I thought the larger question--besides whether or not the Valve is civil or feisty--is why people are so reluctant to contribute to blogs. Why is the academy in the grip of such fear? You are “out there,” and I admire that. Now, where are all the people who want to dismiss the Valve as “conservative”?
Quibble--or eviscerate--away.
PS: Those riffs on Fish and Bill the Butcher were hillarious.
Some thoughts:
1. Pannapacker’s anecdote at the beginning about the theory books marked down to $1 to show the seemingly low demand for theory-oriented criticism is a little misleading. Literary theory still rules the roost, as far as academic prestige goes. Everyone hired at a tier one university in the past few years does some version of theory. That is a premise of Theory’s Empire (hence, “Empire").
A better anecdote might be to look at the bookshelves of academics and see which books have their spines convincingly bent. Grammatology, for instance, is likely to be present—but it is also likely to be pristine.
2. What Pannapacker wants from the Valve exactly is unclear to me.
He’s well aware of the dangers of intemperate expression on the internet (or indeed, anywhere). He says he was hoping the Valve conversation on TE would be more “heated and cultural.” But what does that mean exactly? Does that mean feminists and queers vs. straight white men? How would that be better?
It’s true our conversation wasn’t especially personal much of the time, in the sense of “This is how theory ruined my life” or “I am being exiled for not liking theory.” Admittedly, Tim Burke and Brad DeLong did get a bit more personal in their accounts of particular intellectual experiences with Theory. Perhaps we should have, I don’t know. But there are ways to blog that don’t involve personal narratives, rants, or invectives. Indeed, one thing I like about the Valve as a whole is its impersonality.
(Or maybe I’ve been reading too much T.S. Eliot)
3. The drift of our discussion followed the particular issues raised by the essays in Theory’s Empire. The sober tone of the discussion stems from the fact that we were using the Valve to read the book closely. It’s not so much out of professional fear—more like intellectual seriousness. If you take the serious essays in the volume seriously, you will likely end up in roughly the same rhetorical ball-park we have.
Has Pannapacker actually read the volume beyond the introduction? If so, he gives no indication of it in this piece. If you actually read Searle, for instance (I finally did, after Sean’s post on Fish and intentionality last week), you don’t come away infuriated and ready to launch more zingers into the vortex of the Culture War. You come away wanting to discuss language, sentences, and communication.
4. There is an interesting contradiction at the end of Pannapacker’s piece, where he measures the marginality and danger of blogging against “seismic” shift in the profession that it might potentially produce. This is what he says:
“Blogs are a useful tool for people on the margins of the profession. They help to break up the control of editorial boards and conference committees over the acceptable range of professional discourse. But it will be a long time before they are regarded as a legitimate venue for scholarly discussion; participation in them is not likely to help, and it could do a lot to harm one’s career, if that is what matters most.
It’s hard to deny that seismic changes are under way in the profession, and, more and more, I rely on the bloggers (instead of journals or conference presentations) to provide an early-warning system."
In short, he loves blogging, though he fears ostracization.
What’s interesting about this to is that it’s nothing other than blogging seems to emerge in his piece as the answer to the Theory conundrum. It’s not so much blogging vs. Theory (which makes no sense), but rather blogging vs. Instutionalized/Boring/Repetitive/Gated Academic Discourse.
If Pannapacker is really proposing that, it’s a big claim for academic blogging, is it not?
Ah, it’s all too easy to forget that the writer under discussion can show up to the discussion!
To quote from the original piece: “Some readers, like me, were hoping for an academic donnybrook directly from Gangs of New York with Stanley Fish making a cameo appearance as Bill the Butcher. But, as of this writing, it looks like the Valve declared a war and nobody came.”
I don’t think it’s inaccurate to interpret this as a longing for a flame war.
OED online:
* donnybrook, “A scene of uproar and disorder”
* flame, “To rant, argue, or harangue, esp. via an electronic medium”
Some readers, like me, were dreading yet another tired rehash of the same old heated arguments about T/theory. It looks like we were pleasantly surprised.
The point that John makes above about the perspective of the Valve is one that Pannapacker--had he read much of the site--should have been aware of.
Perhaps that stupid (and likely fabricated) article the Chronicle published recently might have something to do with why academics are reluctant--if they in fact are--to participate in blogs.
If there were misunderstanding or skewed expectations about the Theory’s Empire event, they may have emerged – as amardeep suggests – from the nature of blogging as much as from the nature of the Valve or the book under discussion. (That said, however, it seems a slightly coy to pick an “anthology of dissent” and then be shocked – shocked! – when people anticipate a bit more, um, dissension.)
But back to blogging (or “blogging vs. Instutionalized/Boring/Repetitive/Gated Academic Discourse”). Would anyone say that the confusion about the Valve’s event is partly built into the “ungatedness” of the blogging atmosphere?
To clarify, there seem to be persistent questions – endemic to blogs, but brought into focus by the Valve and the “event” – that boil down to various versions of, “What are we supposed to do here anyway? What is the nature of this discussion?”
-- Is a blogged academic conversation something like a book club (shared by all) or more like a seminar (led by a few)?
-- Are we, as readers and comment-writers, here to share “our ideas” or are we here to react to “your ideas”?
-- Is the focus on the discussion the book/ideas under consideration, or is the focus on your “papers” and the arguments they make?
-- Is a blog like a mini-conference or journal, with an extended Q&A/letter page? Or is it more like the post-panel discussion in the lobby or at the bar? (Or is it a fanzine?)
-- Is it “personal” or “professional”?
These are tendentious ways of phrasing things, I know. But such questions, perhaps, contributed to the confusion about what exactly one was supposed to “do” with Theory’s Empire. What kind of a reaction were we, as readers, to expect from you? And what reaction did you expect from us? Should we react to the book as a whole? Ruminate on the state of the field? Relate our experiences? Consider and criticize particular essays? Or focus primarily on the ideas of the Valve writers?
Of course, the gut-level answer to any and all of the above questions will probably be, “Why do we have to choose? Why can’t we have all of the above? What’s with all your ‘rules,’ man?” And that’s fine and good – and part of what makes blogging and the Valve such an invigorating venture. Do not change!
But consider that such open-mindedness and open-endedness may always lead to miscommunication and faulty expectations and diffusion of purpose. It may also, ultimately, impede the ability of blogging to challenge “gated academic discourse.” This is because gated discourse has one thing going for it, crucial for people who want to answer the above questions of professionalism and ownership: it has gates.
In my opinion, they can have them.
William Pannapacker writes, “I thought the larger question--besides whether or not the Valve is civil or feisty--is why people are so reluctant to contribute to blogs. Why is the academy in the grip of such fear?”
Who says people are reluctant? Or that people in the academy are more reluctant to do so than those in other professions? Consider this list of academic bloggers maintained at Crooked Timber?
[Oh, the heartbreak of premature comment posting!]
Who says people are reluctant? Or that people in the academy are more reluctant to blog than are people in other professions? Consider this list of academic bloggers maintained at Crooked Timber. That does not look like reluctance to me.
Peter Sattler asks how readers are supposed to engage with academic blogging. I think this creates a false dichotomy with bloggers on one side and readers on the other. “Start your own blog,” would be my suggestion.
It seems to me like there are two basic questions: first, why weren’t the Valveteers more nasty in their criticism of Theory, and second, “where are all the people who want to dismiss the Valve as “conservative”?”
The answer to the first seems pretty easy: been there, done that, not really interested in it any more. At least that’s what I’d take John Holbo to be saying, and it seems to be true of many of the other contributors, if I can judge from what they’ve written here.
The answer to the second is that it’s a self-selection effect. It is very difficult to comment in any “online community” where you disagree with the basic ideology. People who are concerned with their academic reputation have even more reason to wonder whether they will be able to do so without getting caught up in an embarassing flame war. And, for the fringe of people who are most reflexively dismissive, who might be less worried about appearing too harsh, they tend to depend on two factors that don’t apply here: first, on jargon for its obfuscatory effect (doesn’t work because there are too many people here who understand the jargon) and second, on an imagined bandwagon effect around cultural/political accusations (where no such bandwagon can be imagined here).
gzombie says: “Peter Sattler asks how readers are supposed to engage with academic blogging. I think this creates a false dichotomy with bloggers on one side and readers on the other. “Start your own blog,” would be my suggestion.”
Hi, gz,
The purpose of my bulleted hypothetical questions was not really to ask for advice to even to express confusion. Rather, I tried to suggest that such questions and confusions were built into the blogging system – and that this fact (1) explains some of the disagreement about the TE event and (2) has implications (good and bad) for the role of blogging as a challenge to “gated” academic discourse.
And from where I’m sitting, the advice to “start your own blog” does not answer these questions; it extends them. It does not transcend the reader/blogger dichotomy; it replicates it.
Best, Peter
A notice in the Chronicle is a serious matter, and the fact that it was a disappointing one is worth some reflection. We may disagree with Pannapacker’s angle, but we should also ask where and why our exchanges failed to excite.
One possibility may be--I’m not sure about this, though--that we spaced the posts too close together, and didn’t give enough time for commentary to develop for each one.
I can understand simultaneously being pleased at the mature level of conversation, while also being disappointed at the lack of bomb throwing.
On one hand, I enjoyed visiting this blog and reading the Theory’s Empire discussion because I enjoyed discussing Theory absent the usual culture war background. People were addressing actual Theory instead of accusing each other of political sin, and that elevated the level of discussion.
On the other hand, I don’t know how you can really discuss the Empire of Theory without addressing the real world practices that turn a mere set of academic arguments into something people can look at and honestly describe as an Empire. To do that, you’d need to look at the way Theory is taught to students, the widespread connection of the political and the academic, and all of the other culture war aspects that are so contentious. You’d need to pick out various common fallacies of reasoning, various unjustified bits of postmodern philosophy, you’d need to name names and make attacks on the actual essays and arguments that present the first barricade of imperial theory with which students attempting to study theory interact. That disussion would be a lot more angry, but would still be relevant.
Rich has got it exactly right, I think. One small bit of evidence in his favor. Matt from Long Sunday did show up briefly in comments to Adam’s post, made some lame demurrers, and promptly disappeared.
But, while a notice from the Chronicle is serious in a sociological sense, there was nothing serious about Pannapacker’s article at all. Not much worth noting about it except the patent contradiction.
I’m sure Mark is right about spacing. But one other thought. No one showed up to debate because in fact Theory no longer has intensely committed and impressive adherents. It’s just sclerotic orthodoxy now. The Empire is crumbling from within.
I suspect the answer to Pannapacker’s lament is pretty mundane. The Valve is still a young blog and it is difficult to attract a critical mass of commenters and important guest posters.
It sounds like Pannapacker wants The Valve to be something like the DailyKos of the literary academic world, where there are thousands of regular readers and guest appearances by noted luminaries.
Well, the short answer is that The Valve is not there yet. There are competing interests, academics are busy people, academic disputes do not inspire the same passion and following as political disputes, and so forth.
Nevertheless, I was generally impressed by the TE event. It wasn’t earth shattering, but there were lots of high quality posts, illuminating disucssion, interesting dissenting opinions from other blogs, etc.
Give it time. Publicity such as the Chron piece can only help.
A better anecdote might be to look at the bookshelves of academics and see which books have their spines convincingly bent. Grammatology, for instance, is likely to be present—but it is also likely to be pristine.
Amardeep, that’s not true and you know it. Of course, any book I don’t buy used--i.e. one I don’t purchase with an already broken back--retains its spinal integrity. (FYI, I don’t normally take pictures of my books. They’re from my response to the book collection meme.) That said, I worked at a used bookstore--located just off-campus but which didn’t, on principle, accept textbooks--my entire undergrad. career, and that may be why I thought the anecdote worked: what Pannapacker points to is the disconnect between the contemporary academic culture and the Theory-dominated culture of old. He sees our existence as a symptom of the same process that’s resulted in the appearance of so many works of High Theory in the bargain bin; I don’t think he’s wrong. If I had to cull my collection--a situation which will never, ever arise--my copy Discipline and Punish is more likely to miss the cut than, say, my copy of Kloppenberg’s Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism. That speaks to a trend; the same trend’s the reason I post and comment on the Valve, and I think that was Pannapacker’s point.
Scott,
It’s just that I never see any works of theory in a Bargain Bin, at either used or new bookstores. Increasingly I don’t even see much criticism—which might, however, prove the point. The “literary criticism” section at my local B&N in northern NJ is pretty much limited to Harold Bloom, Wayne Booth, and Stanley Fish. Some “theory” can be found in the Philosophy section, but it’s not an inspiring array.
Granted, I don’t spend as much time at Labyrinth Books as I used to (there one will in fact find significant amounts of theory in the BB there). Nor (lately) am I much in the big ‘Barnes-n-Noble-ized’ ivy league university bookstores, where one is likely to find both high theory and the not-so-high theory that one finds in the remainder bin (i.e., the site of abjection).
If you don’t like the metaphor of the pristine spine (if not Grammatology, certainly virtually any book by Deleuze), perhaps we could illustrate the (arguable) Decline of Theory, with reference to the general implosion of the academic book market. Wasn’t there a column by Lindsay Waters about this a few months ago? Most of us aren’t even reading the relevant books in our own fields anymore. [Which raises the question—what are academics reading these days, if not academic books?]
Incidentally, when I refer to the example of ‘academics’ in general, neither you nor your book collection count! You, my friend, are atypical in addition to being acephalous.
(I’m tempted to use a smiley face. I forebear)
I think Pannapacker is missing a huge, crucial point from the discussion and from the anthology. Many of the contributors to the anthology stress just how much they resent in the mating of Theory to identity politics the consequence massive overinflation of the presumed stakes of scholarly work in the humanities, the grandiose rhetoric, the equating of each and every academic debate with nothing less than the salvation or damnation of civilization.
I think the thing that connects most of us who contributed, and many academic bloggers, is a desire to pull back from that precipice, and a recognition that one of the paradoxical ways that scholars can achieve that pulling back is through engaging wider publics through blogging, where the tempest-in-a-teapot intensification of scholarly debates in the humanities is suddenly exposed as indefensibly absurd and exaggerated, where the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin character of many discussions is exposed.
Even the anti-Theorists often fall into the trap, at least the extreme ones. One of the things I liked about the pieces collected in TE was that most of them refuse to do so, refuse to make Derrida out to be some monster from beyond the stars who is trying to consume all life and leave the Earth a barren frozen wasteland.
Well, I think that a Holgo-Berube death match would have got you more PR. You could have divided up the proceeds after the show, the way the pros do.
I think that a few Holbo knee drops and head butts would quickly reduce Berube to a mass of quivering jelly, but of course it might go the other way too.
Does Paglia do blog consulting? She could tell you a thing or two about culture wrestling.
Now, John Emerson, you come right over here and I’ll box your ears for you. Why would Mr. Holbo resort to extra-Queensbury maneuvers like knee drops and head butts (which, by the way, I would parry in an instant) when he’s been so civil as to tender an apology—in this very post-- for the very slightest of verbal infractions?
The most valuable thing about the TE exchange, I think, is that we had a number of people (including people unmentioned by William Pannapacker, like that Public Intelligence guy who actually co-edited the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism) who were willing to say “I think you’re dead wrong about X, and, begging your pardon, here’s why,” along with people like Mark and Sean who were willing to reply, “your point about X misses the more important point about Y” and “I am not in fact wrong about X, and if you attend to W and Z, you’ll find it harder to make that claim about X.” So Pannapacker wanted to see Gangs of New York; so what? I’ve seen this scene (and this desire) before. When I debated Alan Sokal at Illinois in 1997 (the only time I’ve appeared before a thousand people, save for the evening in April 1982 when my band opened for the Ramones), dozens of people complained to me that they had wanted to see blood on the floor, and what a bummer it was than Sokal and I calmly discussed the difference between brute fact and social fact instead. (Though I have to admit that Sokal drew cheers when he walked from his podium to mine and head-butted me. He dealt a serious blow to the cause of social constructionism that day.)
Look, folks. Don’t be too impressed by a notice from the Chronicle. I hope it increases your traffic, but the important thing is that you lobbed a series of smart, circumspect, and judicious posts against “Theory” while taking your distance from the weakest essays in Theory’s Empire and pressing the claims of the strongest essays. As a result, Imperial Warlords like me and John McGowan had to come up with more careful and circumspect responses to your posts—especially when we found that we agreed with parts of them.
I think there are two reasons for this. One, as Timothy Burke suggests, most of the essays in TE don’t waste readers’ time pretending that Derrida will dissolve the entire planet in a bubbling vat of textuality. Two, as no one has suggested yet, the status of feminist criticism and theory has not been questioned here, not once. Ten-fifteen years ago, Theory-friendly people like me could simply wait for people like John Ellis or Peter Shaw or Norman Levitt to say batshit insane things about feminists (and we would not have to wait long), and presto, we could show that we, by contrast, were on the side of the angels. This time around, by contrast, we seem to be arguing about the value of specific T/theoretical propositions and about their institutional effects—and, begging John Holbo’s pardon, I happen to think that this is one of the things “theory” requires us to do.
I’ll try to say more about that last claim in a future Theory Tuesday. I’ll spare you the torture of a longer comment here.
Michael, I was suggesting that the apology was a mistake, from a PR point of view.
It’s like an Onion headline: “‘50 Cent’ and ‘The Game’ go face-to-face, chat about barbeque.”
I mean, some of us live in the real world, you know.
"Impressed?” Hell.
Sokal is alluded to approvingly in a recent article--with far more guano than Ellis, Shaw, or Levitt--by Heather MacDonald. I wonder if she knows that he used to teach for the Sandinistas and wrote (with Frederick Crews) a letter in October 2001 in the New York Review asking people to protest the war in Afghanistan.
Andre Breton denounced Erik Satie.
Why? PR.
What reason did he give? None at all.
Why should he have?
First, addressing William Pannapacker: very good of you to take your Bill the Butcher ribbing with good humor. Second, as to your suggestion that what you really meant was something more dionysian - but short of flamewar. Well, that’s not really how it came out. But nevermind. I sympathize. I’ve tried to do that myself in my philosophical dialogue. Tried very hard to do a sort of Plato/Nietzsche/Kierkegaard rhetorical thing. Rather proud of it. But one thing to note about such productions is that they are invariably high personal and, therefore, not to be conjured with if what you want is an event with participants on different sides who will talk to each other. Everyman a Dionysus and we’ll just have a stage of divas, at best; at worst, we’ll come out looking like everyman came in fourth in a knife fight in a phonebooth. The problem is that heavily polemical treatments of Theory, in general, always end up denying 1 or 2 [per Sean’s post], by hyperbolic implication. I’m so tired of being told that those who resist Theory ‘fear difficulty’, hate cans, are threatened by Judith Butler, just haven’t read Derrida carefully, wish to destroy the humanities, are neocon plotters, etc., that I’m willing to forego the polemical satisfactions of pillorying targets for the privilege of securing a space for philosophical discussion in which I do not have to be badly psychoanalyzed in the manner to which I have become accustomed.
As to Brad DeLong’s complaint that the thing was a bit bloodless: well, Brad is saying it would be fun to watch us cut loose. Which I don’t deny. But if Brad DeLong said it would be fun to watch you jump off the roof (again, very plausible): would you do it? To put it another way, Brad is joshing us for getting a bit pedantic. Well, scholars always do that sometimes, so they’d better get used to getting joshed about it.
And consider how Brad’s own post - and Tim Burke’s - succeeded in rising above our scholarly dust: by being very effective autobiography. Seeing Theory through the lens of personal experience is not only more appealing as drama, but a good way to get a shrewd grip on certain features of the subject. But if we had ALL gone and written pieces like that it would have come out absurdly self-centered: Theory as it happened to me.
Finally, I am actually in favor of making theory a bit more boring, because I think the application of philosophy to literary studies should because less a point of manners - i.e. obligatory, ornamental eclecticism. So it should be less flashy. (This is rather a large point, and liable to be misunderstood. Maybe I’ll talk about it later.)
Now, in response to Michael B’s comment: I didn’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t be making arguments about “specific T/theoretical propositions and about their institutional effects.” I quite agree that we must. I was just trying to say ... well, put it this way. I think of Theory as being, quite generally, a wrong philosophical turn. I look at this whole cluster of philosophical figures and ideas and styles and sensibilities and see little of interest or value. I want there to be something occupying this space: heavily philosophically-inflected approaches to literature and culture, but not Theory. (I hope there’s nothing awful about me saying it. Lots of people say that about analytic philosophy. That’s it’s generally bad. This is just one of those things that happens. Sometimes people disapprove of intellectual schools and styles.) Michael, I take it, would want to say it’s a very mixed bag. Good and bad. And lots of the systematically bad elements are contingent functions of unhealthy institutional factors like the star system and so forth. So we disagree. But the point is: we can’t usefully argue about it at this level. We can trade anecdotes that we are pleased to regard as telling emblems of the correctness of our respective points of view, but these coins will not be acceptable currency in an intellectual exchange, which will quickly decline into defensiveness and/or peevishness. And if a little polemic sneaks in, there’s no hope of getting anywhere. Theory is too nebulous a subject to afford either of us any sharp leverage, one way or the other. So we should both sign on to 1 & 2, even though doing so passes over our fairly extensive disagreements, and we should proceed to argue about something a little more specific. For example: to what degree were the excesses of the academic star system symptoms of the excesses of Theory? That is, to what degree was Theory to blame? To what degree did Theory end up taking the blame, unfairly, when the star system showed up wearing Theory’s clothes? That’s still very general, but once you’ve got people to admit 1 & 2 you can at least try.
And, even though 1 & 2 are pretty obvious, the temptation to deny one or the other for polemical effect is very strong. So the grounds for having a zone of discussion that is polemic-free are very strong. I can still write antic mock-Platonic dialogues to express my annoyance with Theory, if I want. (I do confess to feeling like that free spirit in “Bill the Butcher as Educator”, when I feel I’m being dismissed or misundersood for my anti-Theory ways.) Even so, I won’t invite Michael B or John McGowan or any other likely opposite number to be the real life straight man in one of my little dramatic occasions. (No, stand here ... so I can hit you in a way that’ll make you double-over funny in pain.) I want to keep that part of my intellectual life more ... Apollonian.
"I look at this whole cluster of philosophical figures and ideas and styles and sensibilities and see little of interest or value.” You should hear an implied ‘to me’ at the end of that. Not that it’s just a matter of taste, but I do recognize that it is a matter of serious dispute.
I am actually in favor of making theory a bit more boring, because I think the application of philosophy to literary studies should because less a point of manners - i.e. obligatory, ornamental eclecticism. So it should be less flashy.
Yes, please. This is another way to put what Pannapacker simply misunderstood. I’m betting most around these parts have no interest in being harbingers of the next big thing, having seen how badly big things work out.
I’m going to put in one more little plug for the issues I was hoping to see discussed, at least a little, then let it go.
If I understand correctly, the reason Theory is being called an Empire is because it allegedly walls itself off from critique behind various rhetorical and bureaucratic walls.
The first of these walls, in my humble opinion, is the self selection that occurs based on what students are willing to pursue studies of literary theory (even if only as a lark alongside their engineering degree). This selection does not take place in a vaccuum.
Lets take our happy little engineering freshman, and introduce him to critiquing binaries. He’s going to hear, basically*, that 1) you can infer information from a text about the beliefs of an author and of his culture, and 2) many of these beliefs will consist of two opposed concepts, one which gets more respect than the other, and 3) that the privileged one can be associated with the phallus, that we ought to transcend the binary, but we can’t, so instead we should attack it and privilege the underprivileged concept instead so as to break centuries of western thought out of its comfortable, shallow, beliefs.
Ok. Our engineering student can see that number 1 makes sense. And number 2 makes sense. He might feel that occasionally theorists speculate a little overmuch based on too few data points, but that’s perfectly within the realm of reasonable discussion. But number 3? He can see, first, that number 3 does not flow from numbers 1 and 2. Its an independant claim. And numbers 1 and 2 are claims about the real world which are testable and hypothetically provable. Number 3 is an aesthetic or political claim. But he’s going to hear that number 3 is part of doing theory “right.”
He’s going to see that as being nonsense, because there’s no reason that points 1 and 2 couldn’t be utilized by someone trying to, say, uphold a conservative social order by critiquing liberal authors. They are neutral tools, it’s point 3 that is political.
This student is unlikely to pursue theory further. He doesn’t expect to personally overthrow the entire english department at his university. He’s a freshman, too, so he probably hasn’t thought this through with complete logic, and just thinks that, in general, theory is all nonsense. Lets face it, most of us weren’t paragons of logic as freshmen.
He’s going to go back to his engineering degree, graduate, get a job, and when he hears Rush Limbaugh on the radio 15 years from now trashing on those crazy liberal academics, he’s going to remember his theory class and agree. He’ll swing more to the conservative side of the political spectrum, where, in spite of his youthful idealism, he’ll rationalize his desire to vote against those college professors from years ago by convincing himself that he really believes republican talking points. Pretty soon, he’ll be voting for them regularly, and when a low wattage son of a previous president inherits the executive branch, and wants to invade a foreign nation on tenuous evidence, he’ll support it.
And Iraq will get invaded BECAUSE OF YOU!!!
Ok, I figured that if I was going to go into the overblown culture war rhetoric, I might as well jump in head first. That way, if people laugh about it, maybe they won’t fight about it.
But the basic point stands, I hope. Freshman students have to make a big decision on very little data. They have to decide whether a particular field is worth the dedication of a significant portion of their life. And they can’t know all the details until after its too late to back out, so the decision is made on only a little evidence. If reasonable claims about the nature of writing are linked together with highly contentious philosophical claims or political claims, *and then sold as a unified whole such that one depends on the other,* those students are going to make the very reasonable decision to go study something else. And the Empire is protected from another wave of barbarians. Until next year’s entering freshmen, of course.
*standard disclaimer
I’m a law student, I do textual interpretation, but from a different ends driven perspective than you guys, and I don’t read the literature you do. I’m using this as an example, please read it with some charity if I don’t get things exactly right. Maybe none of the cool kids critique binaries this way anymore, I wouldn’t know.
Hi Sean,
I’m sorry you thought my objections were lame. But at least now you have some proof for a crumbling empire, right? Do bear in mind I only work in the kitchen, mopping floors (for the moment, anyway). Actually I’ve been meaning to more carefully digest and patiently respond to Holbo’s gargantuan and oddly-ending post, but seeing as I don’t have tenure yet, hell I don’t even have a PhD, and as it’s been a week of long days painting in the sun to pay the bills, and re-installing hard drives and such...I do, sincerely, wish that more folks from Long Sunday had taken me up on my recommendation that they visit here, for whatever that may be worth.
Just for the record, I personally don’t disagree with a lot of what has been said here. Holbo especially makes some interesting points, albeit from a different background (and maybe in the service of a different future) than the one toward which I feel most drawn. That said, this particular thread does strike me as a lot of back-patting and handshakes, and not much more. Which is only to suggest, just maybe, that a stance such as:
“I look at this whole cluster of philosophical figures and ideas and styles and sensibilities and see little of interest or value (to me).”
especially coming from a Nietzsche scholar (and dismissive, one assumes, of a rather whole lot of (Heidegger and Lacan-inflected) Nietzschian inheritance), and when further combined with jealous fury over an anthology (of theory) that dares exclude the Analytics (as if The Norton Anthology were ever the be-all and end-all of Theory!)...well, one has to wonder whether such a stance doesn’t contain the seeds of an answer to your question (which at this point seems to be namely: Why didn’t more people participate? Are they chicken? Are they lame? Are they dead? Were we not cruel, were we not polemical (!) enough? Come men, out with the swords!)
So anyway, in short, and speaking for myself I am neither particularly intimidated nor afraid of being called out on my “obfuscatory” “jargon”. The debate here has, in my view, largely and admirably avoided playing to the peanut gallery or riding the prematurely jubilatory bandwagon, but let’s be entirely honest––it hasn’t done so entirely. From the beginning, as Bérubé says, this was an event about a book responding as if on demand to one thing: The Norton, i.e. the official sanctioning of Theory as a constellation of critical approaches worthy of serious FURTHER consideration by students. How can a book reacting primarily to an introductory (!) anthology ever presume to vanquish Theory entirely (or replace one “empire” with another), you might ask? Well, perhaps it can’t. But if willing to be a bit self-critical and maybe also to take some heat for some of its “exactly wrong” mischaracterizations, etc. then maybe it can still raise some timely and interesting questions. But you must excuse us if we don’t spontaneously get up in arms to defend The Norton. If in the process such a discussion raises some important issues, and exposes some significant flaws in the way Theory seeks to legitimize itself as an institution, which I think it has, then all the better. But let’s be clear about the primary motives, and about the ways such a discussion, to the degree that it proposes or insinuates to be about MORE than just a reactive book (a book, it would seem, with some rather serious flaws), and instead about a whole swath of thought (namely, some crude mash-up of critical theory, literary theory, continental philosophy...)...has not escaped the bandwagon entirely, or just yet.
I agree with Patrick that some teaching of theory (in America especially, or with particular respect to Anglo translations and transplantations) is often rather shallowly enthralled by the exuberance of its own verbosity, and in unnecessary ways intimidating even. But need it be mentioned that this is a problem with some analytic philosophy classes as well, if in a slightly different manner? The cloistered reputation for Theory--whatever that is, Derrida but maybe not Zizek? We argue about this kind of stuff all the time--especially is a problem, though one that is hardly solved by making things more boring, I suspect (though I might agree this could be valuable). After all schools in France, from what I hear, are very boring!
Formatting the hard drives
Painting in the sun
Who could be mean to little me?
God bless us every one.
I think that you haven’t considered
(Though I personally don’t disagree)
That your jealous fury over a book
Would drive away people like me
Let’s be entirely honest
And let my “I” turn to “we”
We don’t need to get up in arms
Just for an anthology
Matt,
Your comments to Adam’s post began by referring to the subject as a “tired” and a “mind-numbingly circular debate.” You acknowledged that it would take a “fleshed-out argument” to justify that perspective, but declined to offer it (with, I think, the rather clear implication--"maybe later"--that your opponents were unworthy of being stooped to) or to take part further in the conversation because you were going to make dinner.
To this you added the suggestion that “Anyone serious about critizing Derrida . . . should reasonably be expected to extend more courtesy to his texts than the approach direct quotes would allow.”
Sorry, that’s lame. You sniped, but wouldn’t justify your perspective with an argument, and, rather than take part in the conversation that some of us tried to get started, you simply accused anyone critical of Derrida of bad faith in advance.
I’m really not sure I understand your point in this last post at all. But it seems to be that the whole discussion at the Valve and elsewhere was motivated by jealous fury, driven by a bandwagon effect, and entirely oriented to the Norton. This is a claim, as you note, about our “primary motives” (and a patently wrong one, just ask Jonathan). It manages, of course, to sneer without actually engaging any of the claims made by any of the various posters.
Whoops, cross-posted with Rich, who says it better.
For your enjoyment:
After Matt’s post, thought I’d go over to Long Sunday to see if there was any discussion of TE in those parts. In fact, Matt had a thread going whose comments include (scroll down) this choice bit from one RIPope:
It’s not like the Holbos or whatever of the world do much good. Their work stands in opposition to doing theory; it seeks not to change the world but to make sure it remains the same. It purposefully avoids the act, any hope of change (and calls anyone who actually tries to intervene a `totalitarian’).
With theory, you diagnose a truth. As soon as you’ve done it, the world changes.
So, you see Pannapacker, there were some itching for cultural bloodsport. They were just (always already) elsewhere.
First of all, Rich - what’s wrong with you?
Secondly - this, this right here, is exactly the mindnumbing circularity that keeps me away from the Valve. Calling each other out, absence yields a “see, they ran away, the babies...” Every fight about the good/bad faith of the fighters…
This, I think, is the problem with an “oppositional” blog - and let’s at least admit that that’s what the Valve (like the ALSC) is… Throws a veil over the important stuff - keeps us kung fuing in the anteroom of the truth…
This move - to call “us” (Matt/Long Sunday/whomever) out - and then when we fail to answer your claims and queries, accuse us of arrogance (or perhaps incompetence masked by a feigned arrogance...) is bad faith… Perhaps it’s bad faith for us to respond in kind - but you guys started it…
But why start this up again? See where we’re headed?
Why is it that Matt gets the worst treatment of all when he seems to be more diplomatic about this stuff than others? I believe him when he says that he buys some of what’s being sold over here… He certainly buys more than I do. But why the viciousness toward him? Strange… Especially Rich’s psycho angry poem…
There’s a lot of the sick stink of masculine agression over here on the Valve. Lockerroomism… Too much to bear, really…
OK, CR, if you can stand the stink, here’s a question: have you read Matt’s comments to Adam’s post, and, if so, do you think they showed any effort to engage in argument? Would it be wrong to say that in those posts he’s already dismissed the discussion as tired and circular? Why not?
Now, consider Matt’s post at Long Sunday about the TE event. Would it be wrong to say that in his reference to “genre” he’d already dismissed the subject of discussion as “a drinking game book where you sit around ranting about all those you hate”? And does he not therefore suggest that, whatever the incidental quality of our posts may have been, they were oriented by concern with an illegitimate non-subject?
How about Matt’s post above. Is there a point to it apart from the charge that motives in these parts are suspect?
Then, consider RIPope’s comments above. Not arrogant? Provoked by the Valve how exactly?
Is there a reply to those questions that isn’t moral one-upsmanship?
Oh, Sean. Do try reading the post.
I kind of like Rich’s poem, actually.
Fair enough, Matt. I did try to read it and admittedly found it difficult to follow. Tell me the point I misunderstood, and I’ll be glad to retract. Which of the claims I attributed to you is not accurate?
Passive-aggressivity doesn’t smell any better, CR.
The Valve is many different things. Referring to it as a univocal entity suggests that you don’t want any existing fact to get in the way of your indignation.
The “viciousness” you speak of was committed by a commenter here, first of all. Secondly, you’d have to be pretty exotic hothouse flower to see that as “vicious.” I thought it was pointless, myself, but it was certainly more honest and forthright than your comment above.
I’m glad that Matt has a sense of humor. The Tiny Tim reference was a bit much, but satiric rhyming doggerel sort of encourages a step too far.
CR, now, you look like a person for free verse. I present “What’s Wrong With You”:
What’s wrong with you?
This, this right here
Exactly the mindnumbing circularity
This is the problem
The veil of Maya
Thrown over our kung fu fighters
How dare you call us out?
Arrogance, no,
Incompetence, no,
BAD FAITH!
It is bad faith to respond
See where we’re headed?
The worst treatment,
the sick stink,
the viciousness
of your psycho angry poem
Too much to bear
Thanks Sean (and Rich), I appreciate it. At the risk of boring everyone at once, I’ll take you up Sean on that for a minute.
The first words of my post are sincere praise for “the quality of discussion” over here. I suggested the book was “not entirely unmarked by genre,” yes, and then I proceeded to heartily recommend that everyone and their grandmother come over, invest and partake.
I never meant to infer that my “opponents” as you say were “unworthy of being stooped to” (not that it matters, but I really did have to make dinner, just as right now I should be working), but I can see how that might be read as an act of bad faith and I apologize.
To be entirely frank however, and especially regarding Derrida, there are some debates that are by now indeed VERY TIRED, and it’s genuinely dismaying to see them rehashed, or cited as intellectual capital, however subtly or not so subtly disguised in form. Simply saying that one isn’t doing this doesn’t make it so.
Take the whole Fish or Eagleton thing, for example. They are not the ones to ask about Derrida, and they never have been. Nor do they speak for all the Intro to Lit. Theory professors in America, who are in my opinion to be applauded for helping not so much to equip students with useful tools as for pointing in certain historical directions where, provided they are genuinely curious, these tools might still be found (and as more or less than merely presciptive devises to stop thinking, of course). I would actually argue that their (the Fish’s and Eagleton’s) deliberate and slippery provocations are often (though not always) somewhat ill-judged on their part, granting more fodder for backlash against “theory” than original insight. But some people are popular spokesmen at heart, and now more than ever maybe some sparks are also needed. As in yes, there are some political stakes tied to this debate, and the burden of proof is absolutely on the Anti-Theorists to show how their beef amounts to more than a latent conservatism.
However as they are popular spokesmen for “theory” and vulnerable, so they are attacked. If the result of this in 10 or 25 years is that anyone daring to use Derrida in a class for undergrads, Girard or Marx, feminist theory or the Russian Formalists to help approach a certain work of literature is immediately laughed out of the room (it’s happening already, to some degree), that will be OUR significant loss. But that’s an extreme and almost paranoid view. Surely theory will continue to rise from the dead in interesting ways for some time to come:
http://pasaudela.blogspot.com/2005/03/essential-things.html
As for:
“Anyone serious about critizing Derrida . . . should reasonably be expected to extend more courtesy to his texts than the approach direct quotes would allow.”
I thought it was pretty clear, in that particular context, that I meant direct quotes would in a sense grant the ground of authority back to Abrams, or rather to the terms on which Derrida was dismissed, by the mere fact that they would risk posing or being taken as represe