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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The Paranoid Style in American Academia
I’ve just read a book (I’m not going to name names); and now I need a name for a temperamental disorder. It is, Nietzsche might have said, a garrulity of paranoia.
Everyone always thinks they are right and that everyone else is wrong, especially where philosophy is concerned. But only some people are then compelled to write as though everyone else is therefore perversely - one is almost compelled to say: wilfully - missing what is perfectly obvious to the author (although the author is also proud of having noticed it, whatever it may be.) There is a relish to phrases that run: ‘this strenuous output and effort, much heralded, had the single effect of obliterating the one, slender insight the originator of this school might have had.’ Multiply that by at least 100 occasions. Things sound like they are going, by design, far worse than seems really psychologically plausible. Everyone but the author is not merely unproductive but uncannily, remorselessly, exclusively counter-productive in all their works and deeds. The exception that proves the rule will be a few long-dead figures whom the author clutches to his bosom, insists are unjustly neglected or radically misunderstood, whom he sets forth to champion against a world peopled otherwise exclusively, apparently, by blockheads. (There is some line from a McCarthy red-baiting speech about how there must be communists in Congress because, however stupid they might be, even a postulate of utterly random legislation would predict that eventually that body would do something that did not run actively counter to the interests of the American people!)
I realize I have sometimes written a bit in this vein myself. Large delight in narrating a spectacle of perverse wrongness. Well, sometimes people really are quite perversely in the wrong. (Just because you’re paranoid ... ) Surely you grant as much, dear reader. And, when people are well-known yet not generally acknowledge to be perversely in the wrong, it’s fun to point that out. Also, this sort of thing is always ok when it is used strictly in self-defense in a comments box. (Someone is being just obnoxious and you play it straight, which amounts to accusing them of being absolutely perverse in their wrongness.) I think if you only do it in self-defense it’s no worse than spraying the cat with water, to teach it not to jump up on the counter. You are teaching manners by doing something a little rude. As Nietzsche might say: you are trying to breed trolls with the right to leave comments by instilling in them one or two ‘thou shalt not‘s. But if you aren’t acting in strict, warranted self-defense it’s actually quite distasteful. And when it attains a book-length, dire, glowering, Schopenhauerian/McCarthyite aspect, it has gotten quite out of hand. Does anyone want to give examples? I mean: besides Arthur Schopenhauer, obviously. Mine is a living author and I do not want to give offense, before God and google, without shouldering the burden of demonstating that he really is writing in this silly way.
Memo to self: write less this way, on pain of being a crank. (Probably even in comments. Yes, even in comments. ‘jholbo’ has often been associated with some funny stuff.) As Wittgenstein writes on the subject of blogging and comment boxes: “It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all looking more or less alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is ...” (PI, §12). Und so weiter.
UPDATE: I just came across a remark by Nietzsche that seems apposite. “Heaping hot coals on another’s head is usually misunderstood and miscarries.” He goes on to give a brief explanation.
Comments
Oh, John, I’m never ever going to understand what you’re talking about…
Surely at least the update was clear.
I think you mean to say:
My update, a model of clarity, stands in pronounced contrast to the state of contemporary Updatedom, where the violations of the basic standards of Updateness are not only tolerated but have in fact become the sine qua non of professional advancement.
What you’re describing puts me in mind not so much of Keerkergore, as Carlyle. In fact, it’s one of the major flavours of Carlylese.
Where’s Bentham when you need him? Coinages for this condition:
paranoimasia captures wilful misconstrual, but not at length.
prolixinimity carries some sense of “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing near you.”
soliloquacity gives one the singularity of this mode of discourse.
This reminds me of a stray point from all the way back when we were having the Benn Michaels book event. Michaels makes a couple of direct references to Jay-Z’s Black Album, which is, I think, one of the best expositions of a certain academic/philosophical mindset ever to be made available on vinyl.
Jay-Z’s sensibility, over the course of the album, is as follows: “Damn! Why can’t you people just listen to me for once! Then I could retire! But now I’m going to have to explain everything to you all over again, because I’m the best, and you are all idiots.” He even uses the sound of himself resignedly sighing to punctuate “Encore.”
So, probably a very close cousin of the paranoia you describe: faux exhaustion and faux patience, of the now-I’m-going-to-say-it-again-very-slowly variety.
There’s another, related emotion: the disappointment that comes upon learning that others are not mistaken.
I just wrote a long post, only to have it deleted by the system because I forgot to input the email!! Exelmans!
My point had to do with how any and every written material can be, given time and scrutiny, considered offensive to one person or another. In that sense, everything written can be self-defense.
I do not agree, though, that comments should be made strictly in self defense because this perpetuates a confrontational cycle of attack/offense/defense which I feel is unfair to the people involved (not to mention, causes unnecessary stress).
I think it would be much better to approach commenting with the intent to help each other and raise awareness. I cite Arthur C. Danto’s art theory writings, where he says (paraphrased) that criticism in the avant garde is meant to more firmly establish its subject [in his case, the art world] in its area of competence.
That being said, I recognize from personal experience that it is difficult to withhold a hurt or defensive comment when a work offends me or seems to attack my ideas/sensibilities(whether or not the author intended it to offend or not). Maybe I might interpret your comment as an example of that “faux exhaustion-faux patience” and be offended by it and write a comment in self defense. Maybe you’ll see one of my comments as being written with malevolent intent because of the way it was worded (like judging my character based on my appearance, or thinking just because I don’t wag my verbal tail that I am being unfriendly).
The problem with the ‘help each other’ method is that it may lead to patronizing behavior, or ‘holier than thou’ perspectives where one person may “babytalk” the other because they automatically assume the other is not at their intellectual/behavioral/emotional level. I think this is the worst thing that can happen, even worse than overtly offensive talk, because it’s a cloaked dagger, an offensive standpoint veiled in the idea of “helping (leading to, for example, Imperialism and its attempt to “help civilize” the so-called “natives"). Why not just treat everyone with equal intellectual respect, whether or not they are able to appreciate it? At the very least, I think it inspires and promotes knowledge among people. I think there is no point to “babytalking” people the way parents do to their children (the high pitched riciculousness and jilted grammar), and the patronizing standpoint only makes the patronizers look like fools.
Why not just treat everyone with equal intellectual respect, whether or not they are able to appreciate it?
Well, this is the one pole (uniform tolerance), and the paranoid stance the other. The trouble with “equal intellectual respect” is that disagreements are often simply not “intellectual.” The frustration John seems to describe, above, is not with the fact that certain people hold certain ideas but that they are stubborn, perverse, not doing the work needed to learn better methods, writing awful prose, confusing means with ends. Can one talk them out of all that through respectful, formal argument? Easier to give up and sneer. (I’m not sure why it runs amok in some cases—maybe it gives the author the illusion of getting more interpretive work done.)
There does seem to be a collision between, on the one hand, the need to conduct all scholarly arguments on an “intellectual” level, and on the other the fact that belief-formation, argument, scholarly investigation, etc. are all practices and behaviors, as well as reflections of an intellectual process. It’s far more complicated to argue with behavior than with ideas, but you can’t always separate ideas from behavior. Yet you’re expected to pretend to do it. This tension may run relatively high in philosophy…
(And John: you could write the name of the book in ROT-13! & I like the Nietzsche.)
Someone said once at the end of his career that he had spent the whole time writing for paranoid idiots who argued about everything and needed everything explained. (Not quite what you’re talking about.)
Cranks have a really damaging effect, because they give a bad reputation to people who really are right when everyone else is wrong.
Egads! How could I have overlooked trolliloquy and variants?
The Nietzsche line you found is probably a response to Romans 12:19-21, which would invert its meaning. Where’d you find it?
Hmmm, thanks for asking. It’s from somewhere late in Human, All-Too Human. I’ll check the reference for you tomorrow but the passage isn’t exactly about revenge, like the Romans passage.
Good suggestions nnyhav.
Pica makes some good points. I think often it is a case of not really believing anyone you think is wrong would be converted by what you say, even though you regard it all as perfectly rational; and consoling yourself by hoping to injure them, which you think might be within the realm of possibility. So you have an oddly hybrid artifact: a thing built to be a valid argument, not to convince but only to wound. The author wouldn’t feel entitled just to insult his audience, yet it would be fair to say that the only result he seems to expect is to insult his targets.
This is the shortest and clearest post John has ever written in this genre.
The practices of academia would seem to cultivate this type of behavior: first of all, it requires a lot of alone time; second, the document that gains one admittance to the guild is (ideally) a lengthy study of what others have missed (i.e., an original contribution to knowledge), with documentation of the myriad ways they have missed it (i.e., “familiarity with the literature"). Rare is the one who will come out of such a process not, at some level, hating the world and everyone in it for being so stupid.
I think that we should take a tip from early modern Europe, and realize that hatred and contempt are OK. Too long have we repressed our blameless God-given troll nature in the mistaken belief that there is something “wrong” with vicious polemic. Hating the world is a reasonable position, and everyone in it is in fact stupid. Why should we feel guilt if we happen to be among the few to recognize these evident facts?
Sticks and stones, etc. It will all come out in the wash. Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. It’s not like we’re responsible for choosing targets for ICBMs, or setting the prime rate, or treating cancer, or anything real. The frivolity and irresponsibility of literature and academic life are a good thing. (Not that I know anything about academic life).
Here’s an old classic of critical swagger, from Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence:
It is sad to observe most modern critics observing Satan, because they never do observe him. The catalog of unseeing could hardly be more distinguished, from Eliot who speaks of “Milton’s curly haired Byronic hero” (one wants to reply, looking from side to side: “Who?") to the astonishing backsliding of Northrop Frye, who invokes, in urbane ridicule, a Wagnerian context (one wants to lament: “A true critic, and of God’s party without knowing it"). Fortunately, we have had Empson, with his apt rallying cry: “Back to Shelley!” Whereto I go.
And the book gives “one” the strong impression that his critical method is meant to authorize the swagger and the put-downs, whether or not he actually believes that it does. It’s really an open question whether he believes it or not. But I can’t imagine him hesitating for a second before writing that paragraph, or sending it off with the manuscript: it’s of a piece with the rest, identical in acuity and tone. Rare to see such a unified register.
Jesus, John. Are you still worked up about the whole “crank” thing?
Oddly, no. Now that you mention it. Didn’t cross my mind.
Clearly there was no way to work the Wittgenstein joke without choosing that word. (And, to be fair, that was a different sort of case. In that case I wasn’t being crank, but, when accused, became cranky.)
But I do concede that your reading is plausible, in light of our exchanges. You’ll just have to take my word for it, or not, that I didn’t have those exchanges in mind.
Pica, that is a good example. It really depends on whether he keeps it up. If you do it just once at the start, like stamping your feet to get the blood flowing, then it amounts to no more than what Empson, aptly naming this breed of rallying cry, terms ‘argufying’.
It keeps coming back! I’m not through with the book, but he began by thanking his critics— who are all idiots, incidentally— for helping to shape his thinking about the subject, in a marvelously understated put-down. Then there’s more talk about the relative strength of poets, then oh, by the way, these fools are deaf dumb and blind, then the argument continues. It’s all seamlessly interwoven.
I seem to recall that he grew up poor in the Bronx, so I keep reading these as simple playground reflexes, for good or ill. The thought of anyone beating up T.S. Eliot is just sad, but it’d be interesting to see him & Northrop Frye come to blows. You could have a “Fights About Milton” series, in fact: who would take Stanley Fish, I wonder?
But it’s so much fun to savage one’s enemies, make them bleed and twitch, imagine them wincing as yet another brutal and atavistic footnote slams home with all the force of a club with a nail through it. Oh yes.
Re: “ The frustration John seems to describe, above, is not with the fact that certain people hold certain ideas but that they are stubborn, perverse, not doing the work needed to learn better methods, writing awful prose, confusing means with ends. Can one talk them out of all that through respectful, formal argument? Easier to give up and sneer.”
Sounds elitist and snide. Anyone who is even remotely “intellectual” wouldn’t “give up.” Do you ever see professors “giving up and sneering”? Never! I think it’s better to teach “them” the so-called “better methods”. Personally, I refuse to assert that one “method” is “better” than another and browbeat/marginalize everyone else who doesn’t use this holy perfect “method”.
Besides, I’d be worried if you knew for sure that these “people” were not attempting to learn. Do you follow them home every evening and look in their windows to see if they go about consulting their English Grammar books every day at ___o’clock? I think your personal assumptions based on text is perversity in a much more verbose, insiduous form.
Gertrude Stein wrote technically “awful” prose. In fact, a publisher did “give up and sneer” by sending her a rejection letter written in her style (not Alice B. Toklas, but her repetitous “cubist” literature). I recall a 2-page long sentence in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Eva Hesse mastered run on sentences. Vanishing Point is a compilation of fragments.
Sneering elitist publisher --> Who was he?
Gertrude Stein --> World renowned
I’m not saying that just stringing random words together works, though, because breaking the rules requires prior knowledge of the rules and proper usage. Past that, I think overawareness might cause more difficulty in writing simple essays, because each word/concept may begin to bear an inordinate amount of meaning… Concepts are more important than craft, anyway. A good concept can be edited/repaired/polished. Quality artwork will shine despite its frame and lighting (though this may form the equivalent of a makeover for an artwork).
On this note, prejudices and assumptions have a huge impact on judgment. Say 10 friends you know tell you that someone you know is a “good person.” You become conditioned to give more weight to the positive aspects of said individual, because you automatically assume they will be acting with good intent. If the individual is labeled “bad” or “evil”, on the other hand, even common foibles may appear to be terrible reflections upon their character.
The point is, if you’re reading someone’s post assuming they are stupid and looking for the holes you’ll find them (the same writing put forth by a “renowned” name may not seem so bad).
Re: “But it’s so much fun to savage one’s enemies, make them bleed and twitch, imagine them wincing as yet another brutal and atavistic footnote slams home with all the force of a club with a nail through it.”
That is nauseating, sick and ridiculous. I can’t believe you would rather spend your verbal clout trying to hurt people rather than help them.
Don’t you all see that your prejudices are placing you in the “ignorant” group that this original article criticizes?
Oh, and an ironic aspect I assumed you’d notice but forgot to state in my past post: What I said in the first response was a self defense as delineated by the article.
This is all quite amusing, but this forum is a waste of my time. Have fun with your little argument-games.
The point is, if you’re reading someone’s post assuming they are stupid and looking for the holes you’ll find them (the same writing put forth by a “renowned” name may not seem so bad).
“Yes” on both points.