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Sunday, July 29, 2007
The Syllabic Fallacy and the Question of Etiquette
Given the recent interest, here at the Valve and elsewhere, in the transformative nature of course syllabi themselves (prior to any question about presentation), I thought I would leave a note about how the omnipresence of the syllabus can lead to what I call the “syllabic fallacy” in academic debates.
The syllabic fallacy is the assumption that a given interlocutor must read more of someone, often Jacques Derrida or Slavoj Zizek, in order to understand both the thinker and the issues in play. In other words, the real debate must be deferred until the opponent is sufficiently educated.
The corollaries are as follows:
1. If the interlocutor has read enough, they have done so only superficially: a closer or more serious reading is called for.
2. If the works in question do contain flaws, they can be easily supplemented by another work by the same thinker; if the whole corpus contains a flaw, it can and should be supplemented by another associated text. So, for example, everybody knows that if you want to understand (especially criticize) Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, you have to read her Bodies That Matter, and if you want to properly appreciate Edmund Husserl, you should be aware of the helpful clarifications and revisions in Martin Heidegger’s work, and so on.
Why is this a fallacy? What does it have to do with the question of etiquette?
This method of argumentation is fallacious because of the enormous number of thinkers who have applied themselves to broad ethical, political, and philosophical questions. Academics, self-taught intellectuals, college students, and the rest are aware of far more of these thinkers than they will ever be able to read, particularly from A to Z. The idea that one’s opponent should read all of Derrida, but not all of Bertrand Russell, is mere personal bias. The idea that Derrida (or whomever) should be read more closely or seriously confuses receptivity with integrity.
What we do read is highly determinate, and not freely so: what we read is largely a function of the communities to which we belong. We tend to develop a highly tolerant, familial intimacy with certain writers who are important in those communities; a thinker who has forcibly rejected Jean-Paul Sartre (while avowing that every writer must go through an infatuation with Sartre) differs from a thinker who has disavowed/avowed Joyce Carol Oates. Familial intimacy is probably the most interesting form of literary influence—much more so than incidental acts of skimming and citation—but (just like with real families) it lacks the element of universality.
It may seem that explicit dismissals of a thinker (like our own John Holbo calling Zizek “bouncy") are somehow worse than implicit dismissals, or must be held to a much higher standard. Really, that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. If you didn’t like The White Peacock because it was awkwardly written, then there are other and better D. H. Lawrence books to read. On the other hand, if you didn’t like it because it was overladen with symbolism, reading Women in Love will be torture. The generalization about Lawrence’s style is a mistake; the generalization about his symbolism is valid.
In short, the syllabic fallacy combines appeals to community (similar to the rhetoric of believers and heathens) with appeals to authority, rather than settling for re-representing (as a favor to the other people in the conversation) the relevant arguments from this or that text. Of course it is frustrating when a thinker we love falls short of someone else’s criteria, but the drive to hand them a final syllabus that exactly mirrors our own contingent, epiphanic tangle—and then, once they’ve run our gauntlet, let them think and argue as they please—posits the syllabi that were handed to us as inexplicably necessary. The conversation is the thing, and no conversation can thrive unless it is allowed to begin.
Comments
Joseph, the source of this fallacy is another fallacy: the genetic fallacy.
Too often, you’ll hear someone say, “Lacan is no better than Scientology.” The reply, of course, is, “What Lacan are you talking about?” Then you learn that the first commenter has only read a bit of *Ecrits*.
The true thing to say is something like, “*Ecrits* is a flawed work for reasons X, Y, and Z.” To equate a thinker with a single text is wrong.
The canonical version is “X is so wrongheaded that it would be a mistake to read anything he’s written except for historical reasons.”
We all tacitly or explicitly apply that logic to hundreds of authors. Many grad schools tacitly or explicitly enforce that logic on grad students for whole categories of authors. It’ really inescapable, but like everything else, has to be done write.
In my case it’s Lacan and pretty much every other psychoanalysis-oriented author. Life’s too short.
Lacan is much better than Scientology. I think we can all agree that he reaches at least the level of Mormonism—although if one’s reading were limited to certain texts, one could easily form the impression that he’s no better than a Jehovah’s Witness.
Also, often, if you read more of a particular thinker’s works, you really do understand that thinker better. It’s been known to happen. I’m more worried about the kind of arguments—thankfully not often trotted out here—where the people who have read a lot of a particular thinker have thereby disqualified themselves from being able to assess intellectual worth. (Derrida is the most frequent thinker for whom this structure is deployed, for reasons that are not clear to me.) It may not be fair to hand out reading lists, but it seems even more insidious when ignorance is put forward as proof of one’s integrity, authority, etc.
Another variation: “I’ve read enough to know it’s nonsense.” Like reading a small amount can serve as a vaccine against a thinker’s more dangerous effects.
Part of the impulse for this fallacy comes from an awareness of the power of misreading. Since criticisms of difficult philosophy/theory so often take the form of arguments against straw men, it’s important to be able to recognize when the critic hasn’t done his or her homework and as a result misrepresents the position of the thinker he or she is attempting to criticize.
That said, I agree that the strategy of deferral you describe is a cop-out. “You need to read more x” is really of saying “I need to read more x, because I can’t exactly explain to you how you get x wrong.”
Is this really a fallacy? I’ve never seen anyone who did this ever stop—there are always more texts that must be read before the person disagreeing supposedly has the ability to disagree in an informed fashion. Therefore, I don’t think it’s a fallacy (which implies a failure of logic); it’s a rhetorical tactic.
The gauntlet can in fact never be run, because the only evidence that the person setting it up will allow is agreement. If you agree, you have read enough / deeply enough, if not, you have more to read.
The exact kind of agreement is distinctive as well. It can’t be total, fawning agreement; it would not do to seem a toady. Instead, one typically must develop minor disagreements with side issues. But you must agree with the “core project”; this is shorthand for agreement that the thinker is highly meaningful and worth studying.
I’ve been thinking about a related issue recently myself - in terms of the different expectations involved in cross-disciplinary discussions, both on and offline. I tend to assume that the “cost” of such discussions - a cost that I’m generally happy enough to pay - is that there will be a “Hic Rhodus! Hic Salta!” dimension to the conversation - that, effectively, engaging in the discussion means that you are to some degree restricted to the concepts that can be mobilised in the discussion by the people participating in it at the time, with the need to probe for common background referents, code switch, or whatever else is required to try to make sense to one another. I don’t assume that sending someone off to read my own pet theorists, for example, is fair game in a cross-disciplinary discussion - I assume that, for better or for worse, my interlocutors in the discussion are entitled to respond to the ways in which I represent the thinkers on which I rely.
I had been wondering, though, whether this was a really idiosyncratic view on my part - I’ve been in some oddly intense exchanges that boiled down to “how dare you comment on this issue without a thorough grounding in the works of x”. So at least some people feel that the breach of etiquette lies in the failure to self-censor - in the impulse to speak about issues without a deep engagement with particular traditions. Maybe I’m just unusually poorly read, and therefore trigger this reaction more than most people would… ;-P
But I’ve also been wondering how common it is to view conversations as, in a sense, bounded to a particular interactive event - such that participants could be understood as undertaking a commitment to represent the arguments from texts or traditions with which other participants might be unfamiliar. Or whether it might in fact be more common to take the stance that participants need a certain level of background in order to be qualified to participate in the discussion. I realise there will be limit cases, where interlocutors have so little common ground that conversation becomes untenable. Perhaps the issue is at what point different interlocutors draw those limits…
It could be that these issues are actually ambiguous and that you can’t really draw up a list of rules. Sometimes people really do say things that are wrongheaded and that would be fixed with further research. Sometimes they’re stubborn and aren’t going to be convinced by you just saying that “thinker X really says Y.” Sometimes certain books really are better than others by a certain author (for instance, The Indivisible Remainder is really really clear about what Zizek is up to in a way that virtually none of his other books are).
And in situations where one is in regular conversation with a similar group over the course of years, as is the case here for example, perhaps recommending books is totally appropriate.
I think that the problems we’re talking about here are much more difficult than has been acknowledged. We’re arguing about Lacan because we’re in a specific community with a generally agreed-upon core curriculum, and we’re deciding whether a specific author should be added to the list of works people should be responsible for. Without an already-agreed upon core, the argument would be senseless. In order to agree upon a corps, we have to exclude whole groups of authors unread and unthought-of, for reasons as thoughtless and shallow as those some use to exclude Lacan.
For example, almost the whole body of Latin literature has disappeared from view since 1850, when everybody knew Latin. Whole schools of Kantian thought have disappeared from view. Most of rationalism is ignored. Many thinkers are now represented by little snippets expressing a single idea that has been taken up into the consensus, or by canned versions taken from secondary works.
My own corpus is unique enough that I don’t even talk about much of it. For example, my own expertise, such as it is, (and to a degree, my affiliation) is in Chinese philosophy, but I never mention that. I’ve found that once you mention Chinese philosophy you’re met with a flurry of conflicting cliches involving Edward Said, Fu Manchu, David Carradine, Alan Watts, aromatherapy, the Dalai Lama, Mao Tse-Tung, on and on and on until you’re sorry you ever brought it up. (Professional philosophers looking at Chinese philosophy screw things up much differently, but almost as badly.)
As an argumentative move, I have to agree. Saying ‘but you didn’t read X’ cannot be a conversation stopper or defer debate in many cases.
There’s a problem arguing between disciplines. I suspect the person who said “I’ve read enough of Derrida to know it’s nonsense” will not have a productive debate with a Derridian--not because he hasn’t read enough Derrida but because he may not be able to read Derrida through the lens of what else he’s read.
Prior syllabi might cancel out later syllabi.
On the other hand, I’d like to advocate for the intellectual virtue of constantly doubting oneself but especially in cases like this. Because it is quite likely that you do need to read more. So maybe--if you do happen to win the argument without having read the syllabus--you might want to consider whether everything you’ve concluded is utter bull. I used to things along the lines of “I’ve read enough of X to know it’s nonsense” but have come to realize that this is why certain conversations might not be possible. Except for yesterday. I did say it yesterday. But I was tired.
Except, as someone above said, maybe life’s too short. That kind of dismissal can also free up some time so it does have its uses.
At the end of the day, this post represents the liberal “idolatry of process” at its worst—as though setting down certain groundrules going in can prevent unproductive conversations.
’The conversation is the thing, and no conversation can thrive unless it is allowed to begin.’
I call this the conversationalist fallacy. Which is about as much a logical fallacy as the syllabic one.
Can I ask why I would want to have a conversation on thinker X, who I know quite a bit about, with someone who doesn’t know that much about them and already has preconceived prejudices against them? That’s the second part of the conversationalist fallacy - just because someone is there to have the thing with (conversation) doesn’t mean one should.
John E.,
Your comment about the reason why, right now, we find it necessary to argue about Lacan in several different ways (whether to read him, how to read him, and so on) but find it unnecessary to even take one look at anything from Chinese philosophy to my own obscure favorite (Réné Daumal) really gets at the core of my post.
Rich, Luther, surlacarte, Adam (the early years), and ozma have all made comments that, quite honestly, restore my faith in blog comments, insofar as they are relevant to the post, supplementing it (and taking exception) in provocative ways.
NP, thank you for your comment—in my view, it’s time to call out those people who are always thundering, after the fashion of those safety warnings at the circus, that you aren’t sufficiently tall to go on this ride. They’re arrogant jerks. It’s always the case, because they are human just like you, that they’ve read Smith and Marx but not Keynes or Galbraith, or that they’ve read Foucault and Luhmann but not Levi-Strauss. And, invariably, those gaps will be explained (often ex post facto) by the marvelous discovery that so-and-so is inessential.
As for the parameters that ought to obtain in a conversation, in general I agree with you that the discussion should put down roots where the two disputants do overlap; possibly my response to Kotsko (see below) will clarify all this.
While I understand the economies of time, specialization, and desire that govern reading choices, I almost never want to hear the shoddy, dismissive postulates of those economies. Two examples that come to mind right now:
“That book is probably 99th on my list of the 98 books I want to read.” -on The Magic Mountain
“Anyway, he said that it was a totally pointless volume in the Alexandria Quartet, which is great, because now I don’t feel compelled to read it.” -on Lawrence Durrell’s Clea
Adam (the later years)--
At the end of the day, the belief that somebody who disagrees with you will, thanks to opening a new volume and supplying standard meanings for the words contained therein, magically come to agree with you is both vaguely creepy and totally grounded in process and groundrules—just a different sort of process (reading) and a different set of groundrules ("this is not an introductory conversation about Derrida...").
Of course it’s important to do your homework, to be as informed as possible, and to earnestly investigate thinkers you think need a drubbing. I agree with that totally. But there have been plenty of times when I actually have read the book of which I’m supposed to be ignorant, at which point that tactic shows its pathetic roots.
History is never on the side of the completist. Anybody who argues nowadays that you can’t just read The Prince without this or that obscure Machiavellian text, or that in order to understand Henry James reading the plays is simply a must, is probably writing a dissertation, and an annoying one at that. Zizek himself lists Tarrying With The Negative, The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Ticklish Subject, and (at the time prospectively) The Parallax View as his best books. If you happen to find The Indivisible Remainder a really helpful volume, that’s fantastic, but it doesn’t mean that somebody unacquainted with it has an empty head about Zizek.
APS,
Honestly, I have no idea why somebody (in the abstract) would want to have a discussion about Thinker X with a less expert interlocutor, but concretely and specifically it happens all the time. I’m not talking about conversations where two people have unequal knowledge about Derrida—I’m talking about conversations where one person barely has any idea who Derrida might be, also known as “every discussion I have when I leave the Humanities Instructional Building at Irvine and don’t go immediately to the on-campus housing apartment complex.”
In these conversations, since I spend my life reading literature and literary theory, I constantly have to translate some moment from Proust or Badiou or whomever into something usable in the conversation. Very frequently, the uninformed person to whom I’m speaking can then take what I’ve said and do something worthwhile with it.
So, when there really is a greater amount of common ground, and nobody is pleading for recommendations, my instinct is to gladly make use of the new avenues for conversation that open up. (Just for the record, I think Kotsko often did exactly this in the “Welcome to the dessert of the real” post, though whether he did it gladly or not I won’t presume to say.) If somebody’s not asking for a recommendation, and my response at a certain point in the conversation is to give them one, the conversation is going to shipwreck. And the only consolation I’ll get will be knowing that I’m far better read than they are.
It’s a certain point at which I want to yell: “My room is already full of books! There’s no need to send me back there before we’ve even finished our pints!”
Quick question - does Badiou come up a lot in your Proust conversations?
I think you may have a bit of confusion on your hands when you switch from two people interested in intellectual issues to one person who is doing a PhD and the girl he is hitting on in the bar. No?
APS,
Answer to quick question: no.
Answer to implied question “is Joe talking about hitting on girls at some bar, or is he talking about those ubiquitous pub nights that all grad departments have all the time:” the latter.
Core, corps, and corpus are all related etymologically, but not actually the same word. We regret the error.
’I’m not talking about conversations where two people have unequal knowledge about Derrida—I’m talking about conversations where one person barely has any idea who Derrida might be, also known as “every discussion I have when I leave the Humanities Instructional Building at Irvine and don’t go immediately to the on-campus housing apartment complex.”’
‘Answer to implied question “is Joe talking about hitting on girls at some bar, or is he talking about those ubiquitous pub nights that all grad departments have all the time:”’
Joseph,
Don’t get all implied question on me. You have some confusion here and it’s not about the girl at the bar or the pub. We also all know there is a serious difference between online discussions where folks like Rich and Craig are, and pub discussions.
I think you may have a bit of confusion on your hands when you switch from two people interested in intellectual issues to one person who is doing a PhD and the girl he is hitting on in the bar. No?
APS, sometimes the girl you are hitting on in the bar is doing a PhD, thank you very much. Or consider the case of a seminar on Derrida that has a couple historians, religious studies grads and a complit student, if you want a more academic instance of trying to have serious conversations with people who have entirely different reading lists and disciplinary assumptions.
’sometimes the girl you are hitting on in the bar is doing a PhD, thank you very much.’
You’re welcome. But in all seriousness, yeah, of course; over half where I graduated. One of the biggest differences from the US and the UK is the number of women doing PhD’s in a subject like philosophy or theology. I don’t like it (the UK lack).
But in this hypothetical situation that Kugelmas seemed to be presenting he is in a non-academic context. Not a seminar with lots of different academic contexts, but none at all.
I may say that there’s no end to how much you can be told to read. I wrote a piece on Leo Strauss and Carl Schmidt awhile back which was based on two books on the Strauss-Schmidt relationship, about 100 pages by Schmidt, and perhaps 1000 pages of Strauss read over the period of several decades. It was a highly unsympathetic, even unfair reading, and an external one (not grounded on professional political philosophy), but it was hardly an ignorant reading.
But my Long Sunday critic, a Schmitt expert, was just indignant that I had dared to write anything at all. As I remember, he didn’t bring forth any specific criticisms of what I said based on his knowledge of Schmidt; he was mostly just indignant at my effrontery.
As I remember, he didn’t bring forth any specific criticisms of what I said based on his knowledge of Schmidt; he was mostly just indignant at my effrontery.
Well, this seems like the real issue at the heart of this whole debate. If you’re going to tell people that they’ve misunderstood a book (or some argument therein) and ought to correct their misunderstanding by reading other books, you really should explain why in sufficient detail to convince them that there’s some significant chance that they’ll find the further reading illuminating. Otherwise it’s like seeing someone’s one-star rating of La Dolce Vita on Netflix with no additional explanation or commentary: you figure it’s possible that the person has an interesting reason for that evaluation, but without anything to go on, it’s more likely that paying any further attention to them is just a waste of your time.