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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
La Langue de Bois: Christopher Hitchens
No matter how incoherent or weird Christopher Hitchens’s politics have become, I don’t think he can be ignored on cultural and aesthetic questions; he is just too clever as a polemicist. This review of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism reaches maximum snideness in the second sentence, and happily remains there. (One has the feeling that Hitchens took this assignment mainly for the opportunity to Zing.)
The highlight for me is the end of the review, which hits close to home for me, in more than one way:
The French, as it happens, once evolved an expression for this sort of prose: la langue de bois, the wooden tongue, in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. ‘’The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism’’ is a pointer to the abysmal state of mind that prevails in so many of our universities. In another unconsciously funny entry, on the Kenyan Marxist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Nicholas Brown appears to praise his subject for a postcolonial essay entitled ‘’On the Abolition of the English Department.’’ Like the other contributors to this shabby volume, Brown ought to be more careful of what he endorses. The prospect of such an abolition, at least in the United States, becomes more appetizing by the minute.
The review isn’t especially substantial, and Hitchens isn’t always fair. But he is mostly funny. I’m enjoying it in a masochistic, “he’s not talking about me, is he?” kind of way. (Though of course, he is talking about me.)
Comments
Let’s see—even though everyone knows that Hitchens is a dishonest hack when it comes to politics, he’s trustworthy as an aesthetic polemicist because he’s—snide??? And you enjoy him trashing everything you do because, after all, he is talking about you? That is truly sad.
If the ideas that Hitchens were talking about were rescued from their boozy Hitchens-sludge and rinsed off, I would largely agree with them. Yes, Orwell and Chomsky were right about plain speech and politics, yes, theory-talk gains nothing by its studied ability to turn any forthright statement into mush. But those ideas are invalidated within an essay that displays a mental patient strangling his wife as an argument against theory. You can’t start from Hitchens and arrive anywhere.
Please, have more pride in yourself.
Yeah - the presumed gap between the politics and the cultural/aesthetic here sounds more than a little bit like the “sure, the Bradley people fund Horowitz, but when it comes to the ALSC that’s just disinterested pursuit of literary appreciation...” from this site’s early days…
I’ve written, hastily, about the Hitchens piece on my own site, if anyone’s interested....
Rather than throwing up your hands - “huh, he’s sold his soul to the neocons… but that doesn’t have anything to do with this review” - one might think that the proper approach to the topic is to look into the connection between the politics and the aesthetics…
I think he’s trustworthy because he has good judgment. My point is, his politics don’t matter. And anyone who has to make money from writing can be called a “hack.” It’s a cheap insult.
And I don’t read the reference to Althusser the way you do. Here is what Hitchens says:
Respectful mention is made of Althusser’s reputation-making books, ‘’Pour Marx’’ and ‘’Lire le ‘Capital.’ ‘’ Of the publication of these, as he wrote in his own memoir, ‘’The Future Lasts Forever,’’ their author wrote: ‘’I became obsessed with the terrifying thought that these texts would expose me completely to the public at large as I really was, namely a trickster and a deceiver and nothing more, a philosopher who knew nothing about the history of philosophy or about Marx.’’ By 1980, Althusser had been exposed as the utter fraud he later confessed himself to be, and furthermore confined in a mental institution for, among other things, the strangling of his wife. No mention of his memoir and no hint of his recantation appears in this ‘’Guide.’’
The reference to intellectual fraud outweighs the part about Althusser’s insanity/murder. It’s probably not relevant to our evaluation of Althusser’s theory, but Hitchens’s point is that the entry on Althusser is sanitized and overly reverential.
And Cultrev, remind me how his views on the Iraq War are relevant to his views on clotted academic prose?
And also: I’m not sure who he has in mind as the ‘real’ founder of cultural studies, but Matthew Arnold is a distinct possibility. Or Antonio Gramsci.
CR, I’m interested to hear more about these reputed connections between the politics and the aesthetics. Read your post, and I don’t see them there.
In the Althusser passage, you’d think Hitch could’ve shared with his readers exactly what this exposure as an utter fraud consisted of… That’s my point. Namecalling vs. analysis.
“remind me how his views on the Iraq War are relevant to his views on clotted academic prose?”
We could have an extremely long discussion about the relationship between this demand for “clear writing” and politics… We could reconstruct a genealogy of Hitchens 180 turn in the fall of 2001 and his admiration of Orwell’s unthinking pre-modernism…
I’m not sure this is something we want to do here on the Valve. Or let’s just say it’s been done, and done, and done, and done here on the Valve to no good end…
But let’s just start here: Hitchens political views are relevant to his judgment of these theorists precisely because many of those that he attacks are directly or indirectly responsible for the “politicization” of the English department in the USA.
“Bad writing” can in fact be bad writing. But some times “bad writing” means “politicizing the unpolitical...”
Amardeep, I hardly know where to start.
Let’s look at the Althusser smear in more detail. Hitchens brings up three “facts”, Althusser’s recantation, his mental breakdown, and his murder of his wife. According to Hitchens, these should have some bearing on Althusser’s worth as a literary theorist.
Now read the quoted “recantation”. Does it look like Althusser was really, flatly claiming that he was a trickster and his work was worthless? Or does it look like the anguished self-reflection of someone who had life-long bouts of mental illness?
If was Althusser’s work was worthless because he was mentally ill, let someone say so, with reference to the actual content of his work. Making a contentless claim that his work was worthless because he once deprecated himself in print and because more than a decade after writing his major work he went crazy and killed his wife isn’t a claim—it’s a smear. It is perfectly in keeping with the way that Hitchens uses smears in his political work.
The principle is that people show whether they are trustworthy or not by their previous behavior. Hitchens has shown repeatedly that he is not trustworthy. It is not worth the time to read his work, because you have to check everything to see whether he is lying by indirection or not. This, by the way, is why it’s possible to dismiss Cultural Revolution’s claim that this site is tainted by Bradley money: Holbo has a history that does not support this contention, and there isn’t any evidence that he has changed his behavior.
But you’re ready to give Hitchens a free pass because he’s “clever”. As your last paragraph reads, who cares if he’s fair, as long as he’s funny. Gah.
Sean,
The point of the post on my site was precisely the failure of Hitchens to make an substantive claims about the theorists in question. Copy-editing takes the place of thought, real confrontation. Substantive political confrontation with these figures would probably end badly for the Hitch…
Rather than engage with, say, Butler, about the contents of her works - Hitchens and his fellow-travelers (including, for instance, Jim Miller, who he names in his Times review) plug their ears, act woozy, and yell “I can’t understand what you’re saying! What?!?! Speak more clearly!” In Butler’s case, I think, it’s because they’re unconfortable talking about gender. Simple as that…
Catching up with the cross-site stuff here:
But Amardeep - he can have whatever “founder” of cultural studies he likes, matters not to me. But how, exactly, is Raymond Williams “an exploded figure”? As I said on my site, like the revelation that Althusser is an “utter fraud,” this is news to me…
Rich,
You write: Now read the quoted “recantation”. Does it look like Althusser was really, flatly claiming that he was a trickster and his work was worthless? Or does it look like the anguished self-reflection of someone who had life-long bouts of mental illness?
Now wait. As I understand it, that’s a line from The Future Lasts Forever, which is a memoir and an apology of sorts. I read some of it in graduate school, and as I recall it’s actually a startlingly lucid and readable account.
I can’t place that recantation sentence in context (the book is not in front of me), but I can say that to discredit it because of Althusser’s mental illness is—paradoxically, perhaps—unfair to Althusser. It suggests he can no longer evaluate his own ideas. You may be right that Hitchens may not be using it fairly, but it has nothing to do with when it was written, or Althusser’s mental state, which was evidently sound.
As for Hitchens’s unreliability and the allegation of deceitfulness, you’ll have to spell it out for us, I’m afraid. I don’t know what you’re referring to. (I concede I have seen some smears in some things he’s written.)
CR,
I think he does take Butler’s claims a little bit seriously. He cites the summary of her idea of performativity respectfully, and he alludes to Butler’s inventive interpretation of Nietzsche. You might be right that he doesn’t seem to realize that sections of the intro to Bodies that Matter about citationality clarify some bald statements in Gender Trouble, but that’s a small offense, is it not?
Three respectful paragraphs on Judith Butler in an anti-theory “hatchet-job” review. More than one might expect, is it not?
I’ve got no defense for Hitchens, CR. I agree with you and Rich that his judgment is doubtful and his manners egregious. But, you know, stopped clocks, they can be right twice a day. And calling James Miller a fellow traveller isn’t exactly an argument on substance either.
But seriously, I do want to have the discussion about the relation between politics and clear writing. Hitchens assumes there is a strong connection, and so do you, it seems. But why should we think there’s any link? It seems implausible on the face of it to me.
Sean,
No, I’m definitely not of that school that automatically asserts that “complex writing” = “good politics” and “simple writing” = “bad politics.” Far more complicated than that, for sure…
I aspire to clear writing - would love to write one of the “academic bestsellers” that they’re talking about over on Crooked Timber today. And I think that, yes, literary academia would do well to head in this direction as a whole.
But I’m tired of this “bad writing” slur. It’s almost always deployed as a euphemism for “bad politics.”
If people honestly wanted to have a discussion about how to take the preoccupations of literary studies and render them accessible to a general readership, I’m definitely up for that…
That’s not, for instance, the tenor of the discourse on the Valve about these questions. It’s not a matter of “keep doing what you’re doing, only more clearly...” - it’s “the project’s doomed from the start, because you’ve mucked it up with politics and inclusion and extra-literary concerns...”
When I talk about Jim Miller, I’m talking, mostly, about the Lingua Franca piece that Hitchens refers to…
Amardeep,
Yes - in the piece on my site, I call the approach to Butler the closest thing to substantive argument in the review. It’s almost respectful - but still gets it wrong, in my mind.
But that’s the closest he comes. All the rest is “fraud” and “exploded” and syntactical editing…
Hitchens is a talented polemicist when I agree with him and a besotted boor when I don’t. I don’t see anything unprincipled about this. I’ve been agreeing with him far less over the last four years or so.
I don’t agree with this essay. The Raymond Williams remark was gratuitous and mystifying. I’m curious if anyone knows what in the hell he was talking about, exactly. And, of course, because someone repudiates his influential work doesn’t mean that his interpretive word means more than anyone else’s. That’s not even worth calling a fallacy.
Cultrev should add a “some” before “discourse” there at least or admit to a bullshit generalization, thanks.
But some times “bad writing” means “politicizing the unpolitical...”
And occasionally “sometimes ‘bad writing’ means ‘politicizing the unpolitical...’” means “I can’t defend the sloppiness of Judith Bulter/Homi Bhabha/etc.’s thought or prose...” That’s not the case here, CR, as I’m sure you can; but these knee-jerk reactions--both from the Hitchens, Sokal, etc. camps and the Bulter, Bhabha, etc. camps--are pure rhetorical puffery.
I share an office with a Butler devotee--Butler and De Man attract weak minds to their systems like no one else these days--and I can’t criticize a word She’s said or written without being accused of attacking Her politics. This ridiculous wedding of politics to theory and politics to prose produces these irrational debates. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a particular strain of difficult prose is always attacked/defended, either. If I say Talcott Parson’s prose is unnecessarily thorny, nothing happens; if I say the same about Butler’s, all of the sudden I’m manifesting symptoms of latent homophobia or a desire to illegally carpet-bomb Cambodia. This isn’t the time or the place to attack the raging stupidities of academic psychoanalysis and the theories built upon it, but if ever such a time and place arises...my feelings about theories built on the false foundation of psychoanalytic thought will be evidence of my muddle-headed politics.
It bothers me to no end that I can’t engage in a serious academic debate about the merits of someone’s theories without my criticisms becoming symptoms of whatever I’m criticizing. If it’s post-colonialist thought, I’ve imperialistic tendencies; if it’s queer theory, I’m a latent homophobe...when, in fact, I’m only someone who thinks that theories with psychoanalytic premises are fundamentally, fatally flawed. Build up a post-colonial model not dependent on, say, Fanon or Bhabha and I’d be fine; build up a model of sexuality not based on Freud, Lacan or Butler, and I’d be fine…
P.S. John linked to a post of mine in which I discuss the necessary irrationalities that follow any criticism of any Beloved Theorist.
Althusser’s mental state was “evidently sound”? He wrote the book from the asylum in which he was incarcerated after he murdered his wife. Sure, he could write lucid sentences, but I don’t see any reason why we should accept that his judgement of his own work was unclouded by depression at that point. The principle remains: if Althusser’s work was wrong, it should be shown to be wrong by reference to its own qualities, not because Althusser rejected it from the asylum later. Hitchens writes: “By 1980, Althusser had been exposed as the utter fraud he later confessed himself to be [...]”—how was he exposed as an utter fraud before his confession? Hitchens doesn’t mention how, so the implication is that he was exposed as a fraud because he went crazy and became a killer. If you go crazy and kill someone, should we burn your Ph.D. thesis?
Next you want proof of Hitchens’ unreliability. You know, from your own admission, it’s not hard to notice if it’s the kind of thing that you care about. Here are three representative pieces, grabbed from Google at random, that show Hitchens in prime form:
<a href="http://www.dailyhowler.com/h022299_1.shtml">Hitchens contradicted by transcript</a>
Where does my former proposal to solve the adjunct labor crisis by sending humanities PhDs to Irag to become colonial administrators fit in? I say enjoy your symptom.
The problem’s with the weak minds, then. They’re bound to adhere to some theorists’ work, and Butler occupies a certain altitude, having found, as many would argue, a way out of quagmires in feminist thought such as essentialism and biological determinism.
Anyway, I think CultRev’s right to pay attention to Hitchens’ politics here. As Kenneth Burke wrote, “wherever you find a doctrine of ‘nonpolitical’ esthetics affirmed with fervor, look for its politics” (A Rhetoric of Motives, p. 28). Apply to Hitchens, the ALSC, you know, wherever.
Sean McCann: “But seriously, I do want to have the discussion about the relation between politics and clear writing. Hitchens assumes there is a strong connection, and so do you, it seems. But why should we think there’s any link? It seems implausible on the face of it to me.”
Hitchens is reflexively imitating Orwell, for the purposes of this discussion, ignore him. I don’t feel capable of summarizing Orwell and Chomsky on this topic. But isn’t it plausible that clear writing is a prerequisite for politics that wishes to reach outside the elite? If you want to be a Straussian or a leftist vanguardist, and write in code in order to help your fellows in the in-group better manipulate society, you can be as obscurantist as you like. If you want the non-elite to participate in your politics, your ideas must be expressed in a form that they can read. That means clarity and avoidance of jargon.
And that is one of the reasons why contemporary literary theory is completely unconnected to any of the political constituencies that it supposedly serves.
Jonathan,
How about we settle on “a lot of.”
Ceph,
No - if you want to make substantive critiques of Butler or Bhabha or whomever - you should be allowed of course… It’s not racist to critique Bhabha, or homophobic to disapprove of Butler. The problem is when we get stuck on the “bad writing” issue without delving into the substance below. That’s my problem with Hitchens - if he were otherwise advancing a good faith reading of, say, Althusser or Ngugi or whomever - then by all means. But his review just enters in the “sounds like bullshit, must be bullshit” or “said to be a fraud, therefore, you know...” lines…
Not full-blooded racism, the “bad writing” approach to theory. Just dismissive. And, I think, motivated in most cases by a dismissiveness about the claims made. In Hitchens’s case, before 9/11, this came through as a dismissiveness about “race-class-gender-ism,” whether advanced by the like of Judith Butler or Katha Pollitt… in favor of a romantic, but sustanceless, “contrarian” leftism… Easy to undercut, the earnestness of coming out on behalf of a group…
Where dismissiveness tips into racism/sexism/homophobia is a tough call…
I’m inclined to agree with you, Rich. But the great counterexample is Dewey. Beloved by many, understood by few. And then there’s Marx. Sometimes a great writer, but not always a pellucid stylist. Hard to imagine an intellectual who had more impact outside an elite.
Anyway, my point isn’t about elite vs. popular readership, and neither was CR’s if I understood him. The issue was left vs. right, and on that axis there’s simply no necessary, or even contingent connection between prose and politics.
Rich (whose html tags are being sabotaged by the Bradley Foundation, just like my own), Sean, and Cultrev have done a pretty good job on the drink-soaked ex-Trot. To write a good-faith critique of argufication, one has to take argument with some degree of ethical seriousness. We know from Holbo’s example that it’s possible. Hitchens
-takes clarifying disclaimers that the book makes about Butler and Althusser and calls them examples of “tautology.”
-parrots a right-wing commonplace about Althusser and takes the opportunity to indulge his own habitual sensationalism.
-assures us that Raymond Williams was exploded (also an rwc). I’m guessing that the explosion occurred in _Why Orwell Matters_. Williams hated Orwell’s condescending view of the masses, and that couldn’t have sat well with Hitchens.
-manages in his first paragraph to assemble several major culture-warrior canards about the academic humanities and add the nouveau roman too!
-throws around unfounded ad hominems: who “can state with confidence that the editors and contributors to this volume consider themselves to be subversives of the most audacious kind”? In my experience, the armchair revolutionaries who think this of themselves are in the minority.
-Erects an army of straw men, just as he has in dismissing the Iraq war’s opponents:
“‘The sometimes formidable challenge of Spivak’s work as a whole derives partly from the effortless and eclectic way that she draws on discourses as diverse as. . . .’ Hold it right there. Does the mercurial Prof. Gayatri Spivak really want to be depicted as ‘sometimes’ formidable?’"
*She*’s not being so described: “the challenge” of reading her work is.
“And isn’t ‘effortless’ a bit backhanded?"
No, sprezzatura is a virtue. “Effortless” need not mean “facile.”
“The three words ‘as a whole’ are a sheer waste of text."
Depends whether the preceding passage has been devoted to characterizing a specific example of her work.
Look, I love clear and well-argued writing by many people whose politics irk me: Kenner, Steiner, Borges, Davenport, Trilling. And I’m fond of Hitchens’ _Unacknowledged Legislation_. I like John Holbo. I’ve written fan letters to Sokal and Crews. I think the _Hopkins Guide_ contains a frustratingly arbitrary canon of critics. But this article, well, it’s relevant to H’s politics for reasons that Rich hints at: the only way to explain the hackneyed polemical thuggery is to conclude that Hitch decided to interpret everything he saw as a support of his thesis. It reminds me of the line, attributed to bell hooks, “I never start doing research on a subject until I know what my article is going to prove.”
CR,
if you don’t buy “that ‘complex writing’ = ‘good politics’ and ‘simple writing’ = ‘bad politics’” haven’t you already conceded Miller’s argument? Wasn’t his point to doubt the claim that complex writing is politically necessary? Haven’t you agreed that it isn’t?
CultRev writes:
But I’m tired of this “bad writing” slur. It’s almost always deployed as a euphemism for “bad politics.”
I don’t agree. ‘Bad writing’ is not a euphemism. Nor is it aimed at excluding political positions. ‘Bad writing’, from the pen of Denis Dutton (say), is a humoristic jab aimed at what is perceived to be bad philosophy. ‘Bad writing’ means weak, uncritical thought, pretentiously disguised as deep critical thought. Intellectual kitsch. I think this is in fact a fair critique of Judith Butler (& many others) though of course the case has to be made. Not in a comment box.
You can now argue that, to the contrary, Butler and Bhaba & co. are brilliant philosophers. Again, a comment box is not the place. But don’t let that excuse lead you to skip an absolutely necessary step and advance straight to the too-easy line that these folks are being martyred for their radical politics. It ain’t so, frankly.
Of course, conversatives are happy enough to pile on, opportunistically, when someone critiques Judith Butler as a weak thinker. So we have strands: 1) those who think Butler is a bad philosopher; 2) those who think she’s too lefty (and are happy for the opportunity to crow about her being a bad philosopher); 3) those who think she is a bad philosopher and too lefty (and therefore enjoy a political bonus that accrues from the bad philosophy line). 4) Finally, there are those who don’t mind the lefty politics, per se, but think, in the aggregate, it takes on an unhealthy, insular clubbishness in the academy. Those who are accused of ‘bad writing’ are guilty of cocooning themselves in opaque prose as a convenience, since this frees them from the obligation to address points of view they would rather presuppose are wrong. So part of the ‘bad writing’ accusation may be ‘bad politics’ . But the political accusation isn’t that the politics are too radical. Rather, that they are ineffective, i.e. faux-radical; or that they betray the university’s ideals of openness by being too narrow, dogmatic and illiberal in their exclusions of alternatives to themselves. They betray the need for a broad ecology of views and positions by imposing a narrow monoculture of Theory-derived stuff; which also implies a comparatively narrow range of ‘acceptable’ political positions. Anyway, that’s the concern.
I see, CultRev, that you grant that it must be OK to critique the likes of Butler and Bhaba, etc. Still, I’m going to turn the tables, best I can. You write:
The problem is when we get stuck on the “bad writing” issue without delving into the substance below.
I would say that a more serious problem is getting stuck on this point and failing to delve into the philosophical substance backing up accusations of ‘bad writing’. If the people targeted by the likes of Hitch were better at engaging with their serious critics - who are ready and willing to engage right back - journalistic snark pieces wouldn’t be the sole field of battle.
Who are these serious critics again?
Jonathan is such a joker. I am looking forward to discussing “Theory’s Empire” with him.
Round and round and round we go. I think I am going to IP ban myself from this place…
I accuse Wittgenstein of bad writing. I open up the Tractatus, and it takes me like two hours to read a page. And I still don’t have any idea what the hell he’s talking about. I accuse him of cocooning himself in opaquely structured prose as a convenience, since this freed and frees him from the obligation to address points of view he would rather presuppose are wrong - namely my point of view, that he’s a hack and a fraud. Total bullshit really.
Why Butler and Bhabha? Why are they the poster children of bad writing? Why couldn’t Wittgenstein simply say what he meant - or say it such that I can understand? Why couldn’t Joyce for that matter? Or Hegel - jesus is the Phenomenology badly written. And by that I mean annoyingly hard, unclear, even challenging. Requiring prior training even.
Good God. More rambling bile spewing by Snitchens. For someone who professes great devotion to Orwell and the plain style of writing, Hitchens is pompous old gasbag and just painful to read. His so-called “snark” appears to be about ten years past its sell by date. Does anybody actually think he had anything fresh or witty to say?
I really really dislike Butler, Althusser and the whole Theory crowd, but I dislike Hitchens even more. He is smug, tedious, nasty, a crank and a bully.
Cultrev:
Kant + Hegel = the orignal Butler and Bhabha.
Happy?
Am I getting a copy of that gratis? How’s that supposed to work?
"Bad writing” isn’t always shorthand for bad philosophy. Let’s say that you are a feminist activist who is interested in making feminism more successful in the world of real-life politics. You might pick up Butler and say “Well, here is someone who is clearly trying to say *something* about feminism, and it might be useful. She’s apparently well-known within her field, after all. But I can’t make out what she’s saying.” This is similar to JH’s “4) Finally, there are those who don’t mind the lefty politics, per se, but think, in the aggregate, it takes on an unhealthy, insular clubbishness in the academy”—but the problem isn’t the insularity, it’s the incomprehensibility.
And please, let’s not have a standard-issue tract in response about how literary theorists deal with difficult issues and need specialized language and how no one complains when quantum physicists write incomprehensibly in their professional journal articles. Educated nonprofessional readers can see through that, because it’s possible to detect obscurantism as a seperate entity from mere technical complexity.
OK Rich - you got me. No more boiler plate about complex topics requiring complex writing. I concede. The construction of gender identity and the relationship between the material world and the speech - simple stuff. The emergence - or non-emergence - of new forms in a world that’s thoroughly circumscribed, and further the question of whether those new forms are truly “new” or just a sort of sterile liberalization.... And perhaps, tacitly behind it all, what to make of the weird transition from the end of Foucault’s History of Sex part I to the beginning History of Sex part II - a leap from “sex...is the most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality” to “the general history of ‘techniques of the self.’” Cinchy. I mean, chicks is chicks, dicks is dicks. Anything else is just obscurantism for obscuratism’s sake. And smells a little faggy.
Let’s not have a standard-issue tract response about how the defenders of lit theory throw complexity back at you… Because I’d love to see your obscuratism diviner in action.
John - seriously - this is the problem with this site, whatever your other critics have said. It’s jiggered to encourage just this argument. And it does encourage just this argument. And this argument begins and ends with boilerplate. Instead of the more of the same that you’re going to incite with the Empire of Theory stuff, why not read Bodies that Matter? Seems like Butler’s name comes up a bit around these parts… I’d be up for it…
cultrev, no one is objecting to ‘difficulty’ or to being ‘challenged’ by new thoughts, obviously. This is a tedious way to deflect criticism of Theory because it is manifestly implausible. I study Wittgenstein, Dutton studies Kant. Obviously we don’t mind ‘difficult and challenging’. Reasonable, no? (You seem to think that our inconsistent attitude, allowing some difficulty but not others, amounts to a double-standard. But the proper conclusion is that our inconsistent attitude shows we don’t object to difficulty or a challenge, per se.)
Furthermore, the fact that it is possible to accuse people sloppily and weakly is not even a WEAK argument to the conclusion that the specific accusations against Theory & etc. are weak and sloppy. We have to look and see, no? If you don’t like the snarky tone of the Hitch piece, then it seems to me the better response is to encourage more attention to soberer, painstakingly built-up critiques of Theory, not to hint at reasons to ignore the soberer stuff by preemptively lumping it with the Hitch as dismissable since ill-motivated.
As to why Butler and Bhabha? Well, they don’t need to be first in line. But you start somewhere. Why NOT start here? (Actually, neither of these would be my choice.)
Sorry, cultrev and I crossposted. What’s wrong with “Theory’s Empire” as a way around the boilerplate problem? (Are you saying that this book is just boilerplate? Why?) I have no objection to discussing Butler’s book. But I don’t think it is any objection to me that I have picked a different, thoroughly respectable starting point.
And I apologize for being unable to secure you a review copy, gratis, Jonathan. I tried.
You mean everyone else got one but me? Lord have mercy. I know at least that I can read the Chomsky essay on the internet. Maybe I’ll just post about that (and the Anti-Chomsky Reader! Lots to say about that as well).
Actually, isn’t most of the stuff in the book reprinted? It looks like it at a glance.
Less friction, for most of you, this Theory’s Empire. Imagine that the discussion will head down the road of arguments about arguments about Butler and Bhabha. Why not cut out the middleman?
As to why Butler and Bhabha? Well, they don’t need to be first in line. But you start somewhere. Why NOT start here? (Actually, neither of these would be my choice.)
Frederic Jameson?
No, Jonathan. I tried to get multiple copies and failed. I got a review copy for myself by writing the editor, but I couldn’t get more than that. Sorry.
cultrev, the point is not to reduce friction - do you really think I am shy about engaging in philosophical argument? (Honestly? I fear the Theorists I criticize, so I am hiding behind this thick shield? Do you really think that?) No, the point is to increase comprehensiveness of coverage. The problem with the Hitchens piece is, in large part, it’s too short to do a proper job, quite apart from it’s other problems. You want to indict a whole academic sub-culture. You cannot substantiate your critical points in a small space. So you snark and paint with much too broad a brush. Well, here’s a 700+ page volume that attempts to do that job. Comprehensively, critically assessing the character and achievements and weaknesses of a large academic sub-culture: Theory and post-Theory in lit studies and associated areas. This is an attempt to overcome the problem that Hitchens’ piece suffers from.
If you think it is still illegitimate - of no possible profit - to discuss “Theory’s Empire” please line up your reasons for thinking so. I think your reasons can only amount to highly implausible ad hominem assumptions that the very project of critiquing Theory and post-Theory can only be undertaken for disreputable, illegitimate reasons.
I’m not entirely sure what cultrev’s talking about, but it does seem to me that most of the book is stuff that’s been around for a while. That in itself is not a reason not to discuss it, but you philosophers have a healthy pre-print culture I hear.
I think almost all the book’s contents have been published before. In it’s defense, it is not very expensive - $29.95 for 700+ pages. A bargain, as academic books go. Also, I find the pieces have been well selected for coverage and avoidance of redundancy. I’ve been meaning to assemble a list of all the pieces in it that are available in free form on the web. If anyone wants to do it for me, I wouldn’t mind being spared the chore. (Most of the contributors are lit studies folks, by the by, not philosophers.)
Just think it’d be more interesting to go against the grain rather than with it - that’s all. You know exactly what’s going to happen: you’ll read your articles, a few brave defenders of whatever theorist or school is under attack will show up, and the same arguments that were advanced against me above will reappear. Everyone will get bored and go to bed. Repeat the next day.
Meta-point: when I was a young, 17 or so, I used to go on to the religion “bulletin boards” or “chatrooms” on prodigy (remember prodigy?) to fuck with the Christians. I’d head out there - deny the divinity of Christ or something - and then watch the fireworks. But I always felt bad after doing that - like I’d wasted an evening. I HAD wasted an evening… Who the hell cares about messing with the minds of some megachurch attendee in Mobile?
Stupid fun, that. Pointless. A little bit embarrassing to think about now for sure…
I’m starting to get the same feeling about this site… You head here when you want to pick a fight - or have a fight picked with you. A few posts that work differently - but mostly bile. Obviously, I meet my match here unlike the Prodigy boards. But the feelings the same… fighting for fighting’s sake.
I’m not going to abandon Butler, and you’re not going to abandon your sense that she’s a fraud. I can see the value, and you can’t…
Ultimately, this is the reason I use a pseudonym - on my site and in my comments. Not the politics of my site, anything like that… It’s the fact that playing around on here is a little bit embarrassing, isn’t it. Lacks the rigor of the real deal. I think this is ultimately the problem with citing something like this, John, on your CV… To the uninitiated, it might be impressive. But if someone was to look at the circle of 10 or so people who comment, watch the same argument run around and around the track, they might look at you differently, wonder what sort of person you are, down deep. How serious you could possibly be…
My first – and in a sense only – theorist is Flaubert. Seriously. And it follows that I’m a little sensitive about repetition, repetitiveness, the rote. And this has long since become rote….
It’s no surprise that everyone who comments here is male, is it? Something irresistible about staying up late at night, gouging eyes, dislodging teeth.
This isn’t teaching. Or thinking. Or, really, writing, in any meaningful sense. If this is our future, how screwed are we? There must be something else we could do with the internet….
cultrev, what the hell?
Here’s how it looks from where I sit: I have proposed that we drop the stock, standard ad hominem speculations about how those who ‘resist theory’ have bad motives, fear difficulty, refuse to read, etc. etc and so can safely be dismissed out of hand. We’ve all heard that before and it’s just so much snarkly contemptsmanship, frankly. Rote. A yawn. Yes indeedy.
Looking to other side: I propose we likewise abjure journalistic short-format snark - again, it’s been done to death. No one says anything new in these short pieces. They are often unjustly assaultive through a combination of over-confidence and impatience. Contemptsmanship, in a word.
To do better than that, I propose a round-table review of a 700+ page academic anthology, focusing on the big picture and concentrating on philosophical arguments. Invite the authors to participate. Invite critics to respond.
And suddenly - at the moment I propose raising the intellectual tone - I’m the eye-gouger, tooth-dislodger around the place? I advocate mutual disarmament, uncharitable ad hominem argument-wise and that’s when I’m suddenly the bile-dripping equivalent of some megachurch in Mobile mind you messed with when you were 17?
If proposing to drop the rote, uncharitable knee-jerk shin-kicks on both sides is not teaching, or thinking, or writing in any meaningful sense, then what is your notion? What is it that “has the rigor of the real deal” if my saying ‘look, will you just consider the arguments rather than dismissing by assuming bad motives’ does not?
Yes, of course, it’s a game. It’s a fight. Fine. We all like to fight and win. Sub specie aeternitatis it all looks rather comic, I’m sure. Nice work, if you can get it. But disagreeing and arguing is part of academic life, surely. (Do you disagree?)
You’re an academic, right? (I guess I don’t know.) What do you think the point of ‘real’ academic debate is? How should it be conducted? I only proposed: having an argument without strongly presuming bad will on the other side.
Cultrev prefers to engage at the level of imagining that detractors of Butler find her work “a little faggy”. Really, JH, why bother?
At any rate, I still think that Amardeep has a lot of answer for, for starting this thread in the first place. As I wrote near the top, when you start out with Hitchens, you don’t end up anywhere. When you dote over someone because they are “clever” and “snarky”, and completely absent yourself from any kind of judgement on the basis of fairness or accuracy, then you might as well put up a sign saying that you want the kind of Internet disputatiousness that cultrev claims to dislike but engages in so often.
Once more, I think that if you really want The Valve to grow into the kind of blog that you seemed to imagine it being at the start, you’re going to have to edit. (I know that last time I mentioned this, you said something about carrying out your goals somewhere else, which I didn’t understand since I was thinking of the goals in the initial Valve post.) Obviously I don’t mean real editing in the sense of going over your co-authors’ posts, but I do mean some kind of suggestion that maybe they shouldn’t step on the toes of upcoming serious projects.
Yes, I’m an academic. Disagreeing and arguing like this isn’t part of ordinary academic life - defense of first principles, endless rootlevel attack and counterattack. Or if it is, it’s in the classroom, where you’re paid to handle it… Or post job-talk nastiness - I’ve had to handle that more than once this year. And the chair of an Ivy department tried to cut me open after my MLA talk this year, but I cut her back, right down the middle - didn’t know who she was.
You feel like a prize-fighter when someone asks you a rude question and your answer leaves them silent and redfaced. Hurt… Walk out of the room and go over it again and again with colleagues. Laugh about it… “Remember that asshole...”
But those moments aren’t the ones that I look back upon with pride or a sense of fulfillment. Embarassing really. They’re ugly episodes - and it’s in those moments that what people around here say about English professors is true: that’s the preening, the careerism, the style before substance thing. Perhaps in philosophy this is the status quo - but not in my department… (And perhaps that’s why women stay away from - or are held out of - philosophy. Are your seminars endless, the intro ones, endless streams of blog comments… Ridicule...)
Perhaps if more folks read analytical philosophy, someone could create a safety valve for your engine as well. We are hysterically unbalanced - you are ultimately issueless. We don’t know our place, you know your place all too well. And then you could do the endless counterattack thing.
OK - we’ll see what happens when you take up Theory’s Empire. I’ll betcha more of the same, in the comments anyway…
CR,
I think you’re being quite unfair. Rich has a point. You begin with Hitchens and you’re likely to get Hitchens-like results. But if you look back at your first two posts in this thread, I think you’ll see that you began this conversation with some mean imputations about the credibility and bona fides of the people who post around here, and you’ve gotten nastier still. You lob those kind of mortars and you can’t really be surprised if people respond in kind.
But, even assuming that some meanspiritdness is inevitable in comments threads, do you really think your ideas won’t get a fair hearing from anyone here? You seem to be saying both that people who disagree with you are beneath your contempt and that they’re the close minded ones. Foul.
Yes, in comments threads some meanspiritdness is probably inevitable. You’re not at all immune to it yourself. But you don’t really think your ideas are not going to get respectful consideration here, do you?
whoops, sorry about that repeat paragraph. meant to edit that out
Thanks for demonstrating the tongue and groove (but why is the title “La” and the URL “le”?)—curiously, it also subheads this week’s Economist ruminations on the French ‘non’:
Langue de bois
The circular debate over the constitution, as to whether it is liberal or not, is only partly due to the ambiguous nature of the text. It also exposes the third source of popular disaffection. “The revolt against the constitution”, says André Kaspi, a historian at the Sorbonne, “is also a revolt against the political elite, on the left and the right. And, since the elite has always said that, whenever anything goes wrong, it’s the fault of Brussels, the elite has contributed to this revolt.”
Popular disillusion with the political class runs deep. It was one reason that Mr Le Pen outdid the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, in the 2002 presidential election: besides his xenophobic message, he denounced the duplicity of the political establishment. The problem is symbolised by what the French call langue de bois: a failure of the political class to talk straight.
Partly because of the country’s leftist bias, there has for years been a tendency to reform by stealth. Rather than explain the need for France to adapt, politicians have carried out (albeit minimal) reforms while either concealing them, or by blaming outside forces, usually Brussels. Mr Jospin’s Socialist government, for instance, privatised more than any previous government, without ever using the word. Whenever a company such as France Télécom is prepared for sale, the government first sells a small stake and promises it will keep a majority holding—but the firm ends up privately owned all the same.
The trouble is that, at some point, the truth catches up with the politicians. One of those points is now.
____________________
and, btw, David Herman in ProspectUK appreciates Hitch going back to the Fathers; linked at B&W.
Nnyhav,
Thanks for the pointer.
And I have to admit, when I first posted this entry I titled it “Le Langue...” I noticed the mistake right away and fixed it (otherwise, believe me, fifteen people would have mentioned it). But by that point the URL for the post was already determined by Expression Engine. It makes sense, actually for the software to do that—it means the permalink won’t change in the event that someone had already linked to the post.