'interpretation'

I would like to bounce off of Matt's heads-up about Bérubé, titled "Serious students need fear not (at least not yet)" below. Bérubé, for those who don't know, has written a critical, though certainly not 'trashing', review of Theory's Empire, the recently published anthology that wears its hostility to Theory, aka postmodernism, etc., on its sleeve. The discussion in the comments section to that post is interesting, and I urge everyone to take a look if inclined.

The question that discussion raises for me reminds me of an intellectual test that can be performed when thinking about the criticisms that 'postmodernism' and 'theory' tends to attract.

To apply this test, I chose a highly favorable review of Theory's Empire by Michael Potemra, National Review, July 4, 2005.

Here's the relevant excerpt for the purposes of my test:

"What really damages deconstructionist criticism," writes Morris Dickstein in one of the essays, is "its remoteness from texts, its use of them as interchangeable occasions for a theoretical trajectory which always returns to the same points of origin, the same indeterminacy and happy multiplicity.... Skeptical of interpretation, the critic remains faithful to the sound of his voice, the invitation some texts offer to his resourceful cleverness." Many academic maladies--politicization, sexualization, identity politics--are diagnosed by the contributors, who sometimes bring to light hilarious examples of scholarly nonsense. For example, in his essay on "queer theory," Lee Siegel recounts what theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick made of a certain passage in the writings of Henry James. Aged 62, visiting California and looking forward to returning home full of material to reflect on and write about, James wrote in a notebook: "My long dusty adventure over, I shall be able to [plunge] my hand, my arm, in, deep and far, and up to the shoulder--into the heavy bag of remembrance--of suggestion--of imagination--of art." Sedgwick explains this passage as demonstrating "how in James a greater self-knowledge and a greater acceptance and specificity of homosexual desire transform this half-conscious enforcing rhetoric of anality, numbness, and silence, into a much richer, pregnant address to James's male muse, an invocation to fisting-as-ecriture." One need not be committed a priori to the idea that James was a heterosexual to recognize that this is worthless pap.

" . . . fisting-as-ecriture" -- one must admit that it invites ridicule. And yet you have to wonder what approach to literature the author is endorsing, and to what extent other approaches are being excluded. How far does the author (and those who agree with him) want to go? What do they actually suggest a student of these matters (such as intepretation) do?

Let's ask 'how far' first. That is, if we dismiss this particular act of interpretation (the one about James above), we've only started the discussion. Let's say we set up a continuum

                                                   ABSURDNESS SCALE

|--not-so-absurd interpretation-----------------------------utterly absurd interpretation--|

The farther you go to the right, the more absurd an interpretation; the more to the left, the less absurd. Let's put fisting-ecriture way over on the right-hand side, at least for a moment! Here's my question: how far to the left do critics of interpretation want us to go on the scale? For example, do the authors of the anthology and those who agree with them want to go as far as Gadamer? But doesn't Gadamer talk about the need for (not his term) creative reconstructions of a community's interaction with a horizon of tradition-derived possibilities? "And ain't that an interpretation?" But surely Gadamer must be put somewhere to the left-of-center (that is, less absurd).

Take another bumper sticker postmodern view (this really should be a bumper sticker) "I believe in the social construction of reality." As if other people don't believe in the social construction of reality. The real question isn't "is there or isn't there any influence on the real world we live in by our social interactions." Clearly, the answer is: yes, there is. The question is: how much? What's the floor of the human contribution to the construction of its own reality? Someone might think there's less than a lot, others more than a little. So: if someone quotes a thinker who takes the notion of the social construction of reality a bit too far -- so as, for instance, to claim that one has only to think that a train isn't coming towards you in order to escape injury, when in fact a train is coming towards you -- we will want to know what the conclusion from that instance is supposed to be.

But now I'm finally getting to the test I mentioned earlier. Here it is: "When someone criticizes a postmodern theorist for some putatively outlandish view, try to think of another thinker from the very canon that the critic wishes would reestablish its sway over the academy who says pretty much the same thing. If you can think of someone like that, it's a sure sign that the critic of postmodernism is not going up against the real thing, and can be safely dismissed."

And so the challenge is: who from the tradition that we all love and would want to have in a "classics of western thinking" course says something anywhere near as strange as the "enchantee-fisting" comment proudly waved by Mr. Potrema above?

Freud. Now it's no mistake I've chosen someone from the 'interpretive' trend in Western thought. But this is exactly my point: I would like to know what these critics are actually thinking -- or if they are thinking at all about the theoretical stances they are implicitly, by default, embracing,  under the cover of accusing postmodernists of being bullies.

And it's also no mistake whatsoever that I've chosen a thinker who is more likely to be friendly to the kind of analysis Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick engages in above, the author of the image of the 'fisting-ecriture' that sounds 'silly'. What does Freud say that's so incredibly silly? Such that if critics of postmodernism want to dismiss Sedgwick, they are also goddarn it logically committed to dismissing Freud, Gadamer, Mannheim, Weber, Marx, and the list goes on, but here let's just stick to Freud.

We all know what Freud says that's silly -- it is one of the most successful silly theories of all time. So successful did this silly theory become, that it became true.

It would be easy to point to the well known Oedipus complex as the example of Freud's utter weirdness and intepretive license. Interpretive 'license' hardly captures it. The guy basically imposed a way of thinking about -- interpreting -- ourselves that lives on to this day. What a giant. Can anyone imagine a "classics of western civilization" course that didn't include Civilization and its discontents? I can't. And yet it and other equally essential writings are based on an interpretive freedom that is breathtaking.

Why are people sick? Unresolved issues from a son-mother-dad love triangle that no one knew they belonged to! Do you want to talk about insane? Do you want to talk about the incoherent ravings of a socio-pathic lunatic? Read Freud!

But that's too easy and so lets refer to another moment, from Freud's breakthrough work, The Interpretation of Dreams. The word 'interpretation' is right in there. The year is 1901. That's what I want to know: do critics of postmodernism want to go back to before 1901? The same way Rehnquist wanted to get back to pre-New Deal legal thought? Here's Freud. It's way too much text, but on the other hand, it's very 'literary.'

One evening a friend of mine called to see me; one of those colleagues whose fate I had regarded as a warning. As he had long been a candidate for promotion to the professorate (which in our society makes the doctor a demigod to his patients), and as he was less resigned than I, he was accustomed from time to time to remind the authorities of his claims in the hope of advancing his interests. It was after one of these visits that he called on me. He said that this time he had driven the exalted gentleman into a corner, and had asked him frankly whether considerations of religious denomination were not really responsible for the postponement of his appointment. The answer was: His Excellency had to admit that in the present state of public opinion he was not in a position, etc. "Now at least I know where I stand," my friend concluded his narrative, which told me nothing new, but which was calculated to confirm me in my resignation. For the same denominational considerations would apply to my own case.

On the morning after my friend's visit I had the following dream, which was notable also on account of its form. It consisted of two thoughts and two images, so that a thought and an image emerged alternately. But here I shall record only the first half of the dream, since the second half has no relation to the purpose for which I cite the dream.

I. My friend R is my uncle- I have a great affection for him.

II. I see before me his face, somewhat altered. It seems to be elongated; a yellow beard, which surrounds it, is seen with peculiar distinctness.

Then follow the other two portions of the dream, again a thought and an image, which I omit.

The interpretation of this dream was arrived at in the following manner:

When I recollected the dream in the course of the morning, I laughed outright and said, "The dream is nonsense." But I could not get it out of my mind, and I was pursued by it all day, until at last, in the evening, I reproached myself in these words: "If in the course of a dream-interpretation one of your patients could find nothing better to say than 'That is nonsense,' you would reprove him, and you would suspect that behind the dream there was hidden some disagreeable affair, the exposure of which he wanted to spare himself. Apply the same thing to your own case; your opinion that the dream is nonsense probably signifies merely an inner resistance to its interpretation. Don't let yourself be put off." I then proceeded with the interpretation.

R is my uncle. What can that mean? I had only one uncle, my uncle Joseph. * His story, to be sure, was a sad one. Once, more than thirty years ago, hoping to make money, he allowed himself to be involved in transactions of a kind which the law punishes severely, and paid the penalty. My father, whose hair turned grey with grief within a few days, used always to say that uncle Joseph had never been a bad man, but, after all, he was a simpleton. If, then, my friend R is my uncle Joseph, that is equivalent to saying: "R is a simpleton." Hardly credible, and very disagreeable! But there is the face that I saw in the dream, with its elongated features and its yellow beard. My uncle actually had such a face- long, and framed in a handsome yellow beard. My friend R was extremely swarthy, but when black-haired people begin to grow grey they pay for the glory of their youth. Their black beards undergo an unpleasant change of colour, hair by hair; first they turn a reddish brown, then a yellowish brown, and then definitely grey. My friend R's beard is now in this stage; so, for that matter, is my own, a fact which I note with regret. The face that I see in my dream is at once that of my friend R and that of my uncle. It is like one of those composite photographs of Galton's; in order to emphasize family resemblances Galton had several faces photographed on the same plate. No doubt is now possible; it is really my opinion that my friend R is a simpleton- like my uncle Joseph.

* It is astonishing to see how my memory here restricts itself- in the waking state!- for the purposes of analysis. I have known five of my uncles and I loved and honoured one of them. But at the moment when I overcame my resistance to the interpretation of the dream, I said to myself: "I have only one uncle, the one who is intended in the dream."

I have still no idea for what purpose I have worked out this relationship. It is certainly one to which I must unreservedly object. Yet it is not very profound, for my uncle was a criminal, and my friend R is not, except in so far as he was once fined for knocking down an apprentice with his bicycle. Can I be thinking of this offence? That would make the comparison ridiculous. Here I recollect another conversation, which I had some days ago with another colleague, N; as a matter of fact, on the same subject. I met N in the street; he, too, has been nominated for a professorship, and having heard that I had been similarly honoured he congratulated me. I refused his congratulations, saying: "You are the last man to jest about the matter, for you know from your own experience what the nomination is worth." Thereupon he said, though probably not in earnest; "You can't be sure of that. There is a special objection in my case. Don't you know that a woman once brought a criminal accusation against me? I need hardly assure you that the matter was put right. It was a mean attempt at blackmail, and it was all I could do to save the plaintiff from punishment. But it may be that the affair is remembered against me at the Ministry. You, on the other hand, are above reproach." Here, then, I have the criminal, and at the same time the interpretation and tendency of my dream. My uncle Joseph represents both of my colleagues who have not been appointed to the professorship- the one as a simpleton, the other as a criminal. Now, too, I know for what purpose I need this representation. If denominational considerations are a determining factor in the postponement of my two friends' appointment, then my own appointment is likewise in jeopardy. But if I can refer the rejection of my two friends to other causes, which do not apply to my own case, my hopes are unaffected. This is the procedure followed by my dream: it makes the one friend R, a simpleton, and the other, N, a criminal. But since I am neither one nor the other, there is nothing in common between us. I have a right to enjoy my appointment to the title of professor, and have avoided the distressing application to my own case of the information which the official gave to my friend R.

I must pursue the interpretation of this dream still farther; for I have a feeling that it is not yet satisfactorily elucidated. I still feel disquieted by the ease with which I have degraded two respected colleagues in order to clear my own way to the professorship. My dissatisfaction with this procedure has, of course, been mitigated since I have learned to estimate the testimony of dreams at its true value. I should contradict anyone who suggested that I really considered R a simpleton, or that I did not believe N's account of the blackmailing incident. And of course I do not believe that Irma has been made seriously ill by an injection of a preparation of propyl administered by Otto. Here, as before, what the dream expresses is only my wish that things might be so. The statement in which my wish is realized sounds less absurd in the second dream than in the first; it is here made with a skilful use of actual points of support in establishing something like a plausible slander, one of which one could say that "there is something in it." For at that time my friend R had to contend with the adverse vote of a university professor of his own department, and my friend N had himself, all unsuspectingly, provided me with material for the calumny. Nevertheless, I repeat, it still seems to me that the dream requires further elucidation.

I remember now that the dream contained yet another portion which has hitherto been ignored by the interpretation. After it occurred to me that my friend R was my uncle, I felt in the dream a great affection for him. To whom is this feeling directed? For my uncle Joseph, of course, I have never had any feelings of affection. R has for many years been a dearly loved friend, but if I were to go to him and express my affection for him in terms approaching the degree of affection which I felt in the dream, he would undoubtedly be surprised. My affection, if it was for him, seems false and exaggerated, as does my judgment of his intellectual qualities, which I expressed by merging his personality in that of my uncle; but exaggerated in the opposite direction. Now, however, a new state of affairs dawns upon me. The affection in the dream does not belong to the latent content, to the thoughts behind the dream; it stands in opposition to this content; it is calculated to conceal the knowledge conveyed by the interpretation. Probably this is precisely its function. I remember with what reluctance I undertook the interpretation, how long I tried to postpone it, and how I declared the dream to be sheer nonsense. I know from my psycho-analytic practice how such a condemnation is to be interpreted. It has no informative value, but merely expresses an affect. If my little daughter does not like an apple which is offered her, she asserts that the apple is bitter, without even tasting it. If my patients behave thus, I know that we are dealing with an idea which they are trying to repress. The same thing applies to my dream. I do not want to interpret it because there is something in the interpretation to which I object. After the interpretation of the dream is completed, I discover what it was to which I objected; it was the assertion that R is a simpleton. I can refer the affection which I feel for R not to the latent dream-thoughts, but rather to this unwillingness of mine. If my dream, as compared with its latent content, is disguised at this point, and actually misrepresents things by producing their opposites, then the manifest affection in the dream serves the purpose of the misrepresentation: in other words, the distortion is here shown to be intentional- it is a means of disguise. My dream-thoughts of R are derogatory, and so that I may not become aware of this the very opposite of defamation- a tender affection for him- enters into the dream.

I apologize again for the length, but I hope those who read this see my point: Freud engages in just as much 'literary' license concerning his dream as Sedgwick does of James.