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.
A reading of Resistances of Psychoanalysis anyone?
Posted by: Matt | February 19, 2006 at 11:41 AM
jholbo writes: "I really don't see why Scott can't think Freud is nonsense and still partake of these other thinkers, should he deem it profitable."
My response is: there's no difference between Freud and the other thinkers mentioned when it comes to coming up with interpretations that (a) original authors and (b) their contemparaneous publics would reject. That is, Scott Eric Kaufmann cannot, it seems to me, at the same time reject Sedwick and then Freud, without also rejecting the other authors mentioned (Marx, Jung, Frankfurt School, etc.). And maybe Scott Eric Kaufmann has no problem with that! Totally happy to reject all those authors!
My point is: I assume that if someone rejects author 'x' for using procedure 'y', she will be equally willing to reject authors 'u' and 'v' for employing the same procedure 'y.' The game I am trying to play is simple: if you reject such-and-such postmodernist Theory-type reading, what other readings do you also have to confront if you are going to be intellectually consistent?
Posted by: John S. Ransom | February 19, 2006 at 12:38 PM
John, here's the crux of our disagreement: One that I don't agree with completely (that's not the point, surely) is C.B. Macpherson's argument in his book _Possessive Individualism_ that Locke's _Second Treatise_ is really an apology for rising capitalism.
This strikes me as a perfectly acceptable interpretation of Locke because it discusses what his Second Treatise entails. Locke may not have known he was apologizing for rising capitalism, but his argument encapsulates certain historical arguments, trends, &c. such that, unbeknownst to him, it entailed a defense of a structure whose birth he wasn't aware he was witnessing. That I can see, because entailment is something that can demonstrated, factually, in a text; but (and I feel odd even having to say this), Henry James isn't John Locke, didn't imagine himself to be doing what John Locke did, and therefore can't be held to the same degree of analytic rigor. On the one hand--and this is certainly the one Sedgwick writes with--some think this lack of logical entailment gives literary critics greater license to use the text as a springboard to, well, whatever. One the other, some think it means we have to be even more careful about the kinds of conclusions we draw from the texts we read. I think it's fairly obvious where I fall in this. When I see someone impose themselves upon a work the way Sedgwick does in "The Beast in the Closet," I don't find it very interesting for the simple reason that she's not talking about anything. She's not saying something about James; she's not saying something about the culture in which he lived; she's not saying something about the works he influenced; she's not saying something about the way literature works; &c. She's saying, well, she's saying something about her own highly idiosyncratic reading of a text, which is as "interesting" to me as the uninformed ramblings of your local street-corner impressario. She has a system; she sees it at work everyone; she imposes it on everything. How is that interesting? I could see, maybe, that the initial iteration could be of interest . . . but subsequent? It's lazy thought swaddled in convenient politics.
The rule uniting these two absurd thinkers, would it go something like this?: "Any interpretation that is unrecognizable to the original author and contemporaries is absurd and should be dismissed."
I didn't unite those to thinkers, John, you did. If you won't keep the conversation honest, it won't go anywhere. I'm not making any connection between the two of them; you seem to have wanted to trap your opposition, to say "You said they're both absurd, so what you're really saying is that they're absurd in the same way. Gotcha! I win. HAHAHAHA!" I neither said nor suggested nor implied that they were absurd in the same way. If you'd rather have a conversation with that person, well, I suggest you find him. (Obviously, then, your list of verboten thinkers is bunk, I mean, unless you insist that I hold a position no one actually holds, based as it is on the fundamental confusion I outlined above.)
josef k., have you read "The Beast in the Closet" or are you riffing on the description provided above? You indicated you initially hadn't read it; if you have since, then we can continue profitably. If you haven't, this will spiral into hopeless generalizations rather quicky.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 19, 2006 at 01:33 PM
hi all,
Alain's Joyce reference reminded me of an essay I just read which strikes me as at least partially relevant to this thread -
Reed Way Dasenbrock, "Philosophy After Joyce: Derrida and Davidson."
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v026/26.2dasenbrock.html
If anyone doesn't have e-journal access and wants to read the piece, let me know.
Also, I haven't read James or Sedgwick (though I plan to after this thread - anyone know if the Sedgwick is electronically available) but I want to riff a bit... (sorry Scott).
Josef wrote: "James got his kicks from writing in a particular way that was itself already fisting (...) there is a hidden scene of fisting operating already here, and perhaps this fact can help explain the fact that fisting later will emerge into the status it enjoys to day, as a named and recognized sexual practice conducted on real, physical bodies."
That strikes me as problematic, in that there seems to be an implication that James' writing was not just actually already itself fisting, but that it was actually more fisting than other things we might posit a link with (such that we've discovered a secret rather than written a bridge). That's what allows the speculation that this tells us something not just unique but better than other accounts not just of James but of fisting. As a friend of mine once put it, there seems to a presumption that this type of analysis relates to its objects and to other accounts in a vertical relation, a hierarchy (a better and important explanatory power), rather than horizontal (one among many things one could say about a topic).
Best,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | February 19, 2006 at 02:46 PM
Nate, it's not available online, but it's regularly anthologized both in theory anthologies (it's in the Longman, I believe) and in collections on James (including The Norton Critical Edition of The Tales of Henry James). It's also, of course, in Epistemology of the Closet. Actually, since it's a UC Press book, it'll be available through the California Digital Library's escholarship initiative...which seems to be down right now. I'll try back in a couple of hours. If I can access it, I'll post a link that non-CDL subscribers can use.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 19, 2006 at 03:34 PM
Scott Eric Kaufman asks me for my papers. I am disinclined to show them. In what follows, I will try and explain why.
The major subject we are discussing here is the subject of interpretation. We are not, as I understand it, really discussing the particularities of the work of Sedgwick per se except insofar as somehow this work "Sedgewick" is related to this subject "interpretation". If you want to discuss the work Sedgwick, we can do this too, but I would not accept a restriction of that discussion to include only the text 'The Beast in the Closet' alone.
This is where I agree with you: imposition equals lazy thought swaddled in convenient politics. This is where perhaps I disagree with you: on where the imposition is. This statement:
"josef k., have you read "The Beast in the Closet" or are you riffing on the description provided above? You indicated you initially hadn't read it; if you have since, then we can continue profitably. If you haven't, this will spiral into hopeless generalizations rather quicky."
Is an imposition, lazy thought swaddled with convenient politics, for the reason that you are not responding to what I have actually said, but are rather reaching for an elsewhere realm, so as to establish your authority over me in the context of this conversation. In this elsewhere realm, you have perhaps read something I have not, and therefore you know more than me, are more than me, and thus the words you would say would mean more than my words, even if they are the same words.
This way of thinking is, I would suppose, legitimate, insofar as one desires to subjugate their thinking to the master category of the State-as-such. This is to say: the state of affairs. Because there are always more facts that can potentially be unearthed, and therefore will always be an elsewhere to this model. And therefore basically, what this system of interpretation will amount to, is a head-to-head combat staged on the terrain of a relatively better or relatively worse mastery of the facts, that is, the existing facts. Who has more, and better ones. And this is the conventional model of historical interpretation in general, and also, more or less, the model advanced by a thinker like Chomsky. Clearly, it can be executed more less or well and in the service of a variety of different causes. Also clearly, it will always to a certain extent be a polemical model. A telling fact. A fact convinces. One deploys facts tactically, and deploys the ones one wants, the ones that help.
Now, that said, speaking as a matter of fact, this is an incredible chain of statements to me.
"When I see someone impose themselves upon a work the way Sedgwick does in "The Beast in the Closet," I don't find it very interesting...she's not talking about anything...She's not saying something about James; she's not saying something about the culture in which he lived; she's not saying something about the works he influenced; she's not saying something about the way literature works; &c."
Thus we can take it as read that if one is not talking about either James, the culture in which he lived, the works he influenced, or the way literature works, one is not talking about anything. Of course, what is here being taken to mean James, the culture in which he lived, etc, is not being defined - for obvious reasons, to a certain degree, but not being defined nonetheless. In any case, the mystery sign here, of course, is the &c, and I think this signifies is the sign of queer sexuality beneath which Sedgwick writes. What does this sign amount to? Scott tells us: "She's saying, well, she's saying something about her own highly idiosyncratic reading of a text, which is as "interesting" to me as the uninformed ramblings of your local street-corner impressario.
Utterance against ennunciator, the fact is that the presence of the impressario on a given street will always ultimately be one which says *something* that is interesting so long as one is disposed to think about it. Why are they there? What drove them there? Why are the saying the perhaps contrived and ridiculous things that they are saying? Attempting to find answers to these questions always ultimately might be a worthy enterpise.
Similarly, Sedgwick, a queer writer, is attempting to analyze the relation of the queer, the marginal, the not-represented or not-talked to the mainstream. Scott writes: "She has a system; she sees it at work everyone; she imposes it on everything" but actually this statement misses what I would take to be the point entirely.
Sedgwick cannot at once and the same time have a system, see a system, and impose a sytem, on everything. Either she has it and she sees it, in which case she is an idealist philosopher, or she has it and imposes it, in which case she is a master of the archive. But she cannot see it and impose it, at once and the same time. Either it is out there, in which case it could not be imposed, or else it is not, in which case it could not be seen.
Posted by: josef k. | February 19, 2006 at 04:27 PM
josef, I suppose my desire to know whether you've read the essay you discussed above is another example of the Discourse Police out to silence you, no? Wait, I can answer my own question:
Is an imposition, lazy thought swaddled with convenient politics, for the reason that you are not responding to what I have actually said, but are rather reaching for an elsewhere realm, so as to establish your authority over me in the context of this conversation.
Yes, you think it is. Let me put this another way, and maybe this time it'll register: either you were discussing Sedgwick's essay in your earlier comment or you were riffing, generally, based on an excerpt of an excerpt. When you say "thus Sedgwick says," I'm inclined to think you've read the article; however, what you've written doesn't jive with my understanding of Sedgwick's argument, which revolves not, primarily, around "fisting-as-ecriture" but on James and homosexual panic. I didn't realize that, in talking about the article, you were actually professing an "anti-desire" to talk about the article, and furthermore, that my desire to discuss the article you-were-but-didn't-want-to-be-talking-about would cast the whole conversation under the shadow of the Discourse Police.
Not that you even address what I do say that well. For instance, you say: "Thus we can take it as read that if one is not talking about either James, the culture in which he lived, the works he influenced, or the way literature works, one is not talking about anything."
Funny, I thought et cetera, however abbreviated, meant "and others." I could've listed all the others, but instead wrote "&c." to, if you're to be believed, means I meant "no more." Or, as you "think," it's "the sign of queer sexuality beneath which Sedgwick writes." Why, exactly, do you think that? What would compel you to interpret what clearly meant "and other legitimate readings" as both "no more" and "the sign of queer sexuality"? You'll note, of course, that I didn't speak to Sedgwick's larger argument, to the idea of homosexual panic which, while oftentimes outrageously defended, isn't itself an outrageous argument. Since Sedgwick others have made similar arguments more substantial, predicated on evidence within the text instead of Sedgwick's flights of interpretative fancy.
Now, had you contended that there's a necessary relation between the two; that without Sedgwick's inspiration people wouldn't have started combing through the archives for evidence to support her claims, that's an argument I can buy. But that doesn't mean I'm going to defend, or consider convincing, or responsible, her own argument. (That said, the idea that Sedgwick pioneered the study of homosexual panic in American literature isn't altogether true: Leslie Fiedler had her beat by three decades.)
But I should stop, since I'm not sure how you'll misread what I've written, but I'm sure it'll be in ways which are almost as tiresome as they are self-congratulatory.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 19, 2006 at 06:06 PM
I'll post this again, since I doubt it has been deemed offensive but for some reason it wasn't published the first time round. Maybe I didn't hit 'post' properly.
John Ransom writes: "That's why I often feel -- though I grant I should not dwell on it too much as it just doesn't help -- that critics of postmodernism only think so far as they need to in order to come up with their ridicule. Past that point, what's the purpose of thinking?"
At the risk of dwelling on it: if the shoe fits the other foot, wear it. "Critics of critics of postmodernism only think so far as they need to in order to come up with their ridicule. Past that point, what's the purpose of thinking?" I'm thinking Jodi and Craig, in this thread, could slip into this footwear snugly.
I am also compelled to take note of Charles' reductio ad absurdum on his own position. It is, in a way, elegant. (This is self-flattery, since I myself have made the same argument, only I ran it in reverse, which is the correct direction.) Since it would obviously be perfectly appropriate to write an Anglo Philosophy's Empire volume, so long as it were stocked with intelligent pieces and not ignorant, polemical screeds, the question about Theory's Empire is ... whether it is, in fact, stocked with enough intelligent pieces.
See above: the desire for some convenient pretext for dismissing this volume out of hand is unhealthy. There just plain isn't anything wrong with the very idea of a book called Theory's Empire because 1) there is such a thing as 'theory', however vague; 2) it's ok to criticize intellectual movements/schools of thought/academic subcultures, etc.
But the basic point made in the post is a good one. There is a strong, although far from invariable, tendency among theory detractors to get too high up on their rationalist high-horses, and then start posing for pictures. In a general sort of way, it's clear enough what provokes this: theory is, broadly, a counter-Enlightenment intellectual formation. So folks who don't like it start burnishing their Enlightenment credentials, which isn't always the wisest thing for them to do, all things considered. This is true of Theory's Empire. (I wish I'd written something more strongly critical in this vein, during out little event. In my defense, I invited someone else to do it, but they didn't show.) Theory's Empire is seriously heavy on the philosophic rationalism. There's a lot of thumping the table in this vein and it gets a bit rich. By contrast, there's relatively little pining for 'the taste on the tongue' of literature itself; Helen Vendler-type stuff. Or Susan Suntag "Against Interpretation". Which I actually think is perfectly respectable, as positions in the debate go. It's not nearly so philosophically incoherent as it is typically made out to be (by John Ransom, above). But it's almost totally unrepresented in Theory's Empire. Likewise, there's no New Criterion-style conservative politicking in Theory's Empire. That familiar genre of theory-bashing is totally unrepresented. (So Craig's posit that it is all crypto-politicking is way, way off. So far off it's not even wrong, actually. What does he think? Noam Chomsky is against this stuff because he thinks this way he'll be able to restore Jim Crow? No. Chomsky's a rationalist. Maybe too much so.) Above and beyond the rationalistic philosophy, Theory's Empire contains some pretty good history pieces. Well, anyway.
Your point can even be amplified. It's not just turning back the clock to 1901, by implication. If you don't like your critics saying a lot of wild and crazy, irrationalist stuff - or if you don't like them being vastly politically dogmatic - so much for Carlyle and Arnold and a lot of other classics. But in another sense, I think the point cuts both ways. You can end up defending theory by emphasizing the degree to which it isn't all that different than Leavis, or Arnold, or Carlyle, etc. And then you have the sort of funny problem situation in which critics of theory can't explain why theory is worse than Carlyle - whom they regard as fine and classic - but theory proponents may find they are at a loss to explain what it is that makes 'theory' better than Carlyle, who is supposed to be an appalling, authoritarian ranter. (And a conservative, to boot.) I've expounded this point at length elsewhere. Quite possibly this comment is too compressed. But anyway: you're right. But the point needs handling with care. (Which I think you do see.)
Posted by: jholbo | February 19, 2006 at 06:33 PM
"Is there not a single critic of Theory who's read Derrida correctly? Show me one."
What does that even mean? Memorized his arguments? Understood the process?
I'll take that one! Well, for starters it would mean not getting him just exactly wrong". For seconds it would mean not saying things about him that are just blatantly untrue. Care for thirds? There's plenty to go around, if one wants to rehash culture wars from the last three decades with only slightly improved and cleverer "dissenting" nuance...
Posted by: Dionysian Rabbi | February 19, 2006 at 09:12 PM
So, uh, your answer to my question is that you think other people, who aren't me, have got it wrong?
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 02:31 AM
Also, answering the question "what does something mean" with "it would not mean X, Y and Z" may impress all that which isn't Buddha, but it's not much of an argument in itself.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 02:41 AM
Scott: How foolish of me! I slipped right into your silly trap! You had baited it with such sweet nothings, and perhaps a few blustering faulty arguments about Foucault, but nevertheless right in I went! But wait, could it truly be that you've never heard of a negation in the service of an ideal? Or of setting and sticking to a standard, even?
But on to the question (assuming it was more than a demeure). What might it mean to read correctly in this context? And in addition to being more correct about Derrida and his arguments than Mark Bauerlein, Abrams and company? Why, only that: being correct about Derrida and his arguments, of course!
Derrida's literary range was not "narrow," nor was his style ponderously serious. Nor did he "conceive of a text in an extraordinarily limited fashion." But these sorts of falsehoods pepper anti-Theory writing like scattershot on Cheney's hunting friend. Indeed, as Adam Kotsko says, "they are exemplary of the register in which [Abrams’] misreading operates." These are indulgent writing exercises. Indeed, it would seem they can hardly be resisted. Why is this?
(Surely it has very little, if not quite clearly nothing to do with Derrida's arguments themselves.)
On the other hand, once this basic commitment to reading correctly has been met, then things might be permitted to get interesting.
Oh, but let's stop this fooling ourselves, shall we? Of course the theory cultist just feels it in her bones when someone isn't burning straw; it's undoubtedly a "mystical" if not "metaphorical" experience!
Posted by: Dionysian Rabbi | February 20, 2006 at 11:23 AM
Relatedly: here's a fun quiz.
Posted by: Dionysian Rabbi | February 20, 2006 at 12:24 PM
Reb, I love how selectively you quote from Mark's post there. Following your example of a "basic commitment to reading correctly," I can say that Mark thinks Derrida "literature-friendly," someone who "highlighted the indeterminate, the playful, and the rhetorical" and "produced more enjoyment and flexibility in reading." What "was so attractive about Derrida was that he made interpretation into an adventure." Unfortunately, the codification of his thought by small-minded English professors created a situation like the one Mark described, in which a deconstructive critic lectured about "proper deconstructive method, [which] he laid it out in mechanical steps: 1) identify the operative polarities in the text; 2) show where they are and where they are not; 3) explain why where they are not is just as important as where they are; 4) invert the values attached to each pole; 5) but don’t just make it a dialectical reversal, thereby reinscribing the same structure . . ."
And you want to lecture me about some "basic commitment to reading correctly"? Do you find Mark's argument about the adoption of deconstructive thought by English professors inaccurate? Do you find his contention that Derrida was "more dexterous," but somewhat predictable, entirely without merit? You may take issue with that last statement, certainly, but if you consider his a careful and rigorous scholar, it's an arguable claim.
Why, only that: being correct about Derrida and his arguments, of course!
Funny, the Bauerlein quotation says little about Derrida's argument. Point of fact: all Mark says about Derrida's argument is that it "highlighted the indeterminate, the playful, and the rhetorical." That's it. The rest of it is either Mark's opinion about the quality of Derrida's prose--analogously, some people find Nabokov plodding and pretentious, whereas others find it playful--and his legacy in English departments. You can argue about the latter, but you can't say Mark's wrong about the former. It's his opinion, not a claim about Derrida's thought. So if you wanted to sound like a fanboy about Mark's take on Derrida's prosody, Reb, you've succeeded. Not much intellectual content in that victory, but hey, you need all you can get.
As for the Abrams, that was written in the early Seventies, at a time when Derrida's work wasn't well understood in the States. It occured in a conversation with practioners of the Yale School, not Derrida himself, and while Abrams did, in fact, claim that Derrida reduced writing to text--and here's where Adam, with the benefit of hindsight, was a little disingenuous, something I could've, but didn't, mention at the time--Abrams speaks, very specifically, to Derrida's argument about marks, signs and signifiers, in which he does reduce words on a page to their constituent marks, only to build them back up into signifiers/signifieds in the play of differance. Unless, that is, you think De Man got Derrida wrong too. If you click on the link above there, you'll note that Hillis didn't think Abrams' argument incorrect, but his fears of its implications unjustified. (Which is why Hillis tries to normalize the instability Abrams' fears deconstruction created by claiming it's always been there, deconstruction merely revealed it.) But as someone who already knows this about both Derrida and Abrams--after all, how you judge something incorrect if you don't know it to be so?--I can only assume your invocation fo these arguments somehow ironic in ways those of us who lack your "basic commitment to reading" simply can't fathom. What else but bow can I do before such careful readers?
That said, if these pathetic playground antics are what's going to pass for intellectual engagement around these parts now, you'll have this place all to yourself in no time.
L'Chaim!
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 01:08 PM
Reb, I love how selectively you quote from Mark's post there. Following your example of a "basic commitment to reading correctly," I can say that Mark thinks Derrida "literature-friendly," someone who "highlighted the indeterminate, the playful, and the rhetorical" and "produced more enjoyment and flexibility in reading." What "was so attractive about Derrida was that he made interpretation into an adventure." Unfortunately, the codification of his thought by small-minded English professors created a situation like the one Mark described, in which a deconstructive critic lectured about "proper deconstructive method, [which] he laid it out in mechanical steps: 1) identify the operative polarities in the text; 2) show where they are and where they are not; 3) explain why where they are not is just as important as where they are; 4) invert the values attached to each pole; 5) but don’t just make it a dialectical reversal, thereby reinscribing the same structure . . ."
And you want to lecture me about some "basic commitment to reading correctly"? Do you find Mark's argument about the adoption of deconstructive thought by English professors inaccurate? Do you find his contention that Derrida was "more dexterous," but somewhat predictable, entirely without merit? You may take issue with that last statement, certainly, but if you consider his a careful and rigorous scholar, it's an arguable claim.
Why, only that: being correct about Derrida and his arguments, of course!
Funny, the Bauerlein quotation says little about Derrida's argument. Point of fact: all Mark says about Derrida's argument is that it "highlighted the indeterminate, the playful, and the rhetorical." That's it. The rest of it is either Mark's opinion about the quality of Derrida's prose--analogously, some people find Nabokov plodding and pretentious, whereas others find it playful--and his legacy in English departments. You can argue about the latter, but you can't say Mark's wrong about the former. It's his opinion, not a claim about Derrida's thought. So if you wanted to sound like a fanboy about Mark's take on Derrida's prosody, Reb, you've succeeded. Not much intellectual content in that victory, but hey, you need all you can get.
As for the Abrams, that was written in the early Seventies, at a time when Derrida's work wasn't well understood in the States. It occured in a conversation with practioners of the Yale School, not Derrida himself, and while Abrams did, in fact, claim that Derrida reduced writing to text--and here's where Adam, with the benefit of hindsight, was a little disingenuous, something I could've, but didn't, mention at the time--Abrams speaks, very specifically, to Derrida's argument about marks, signs and signifiers, in which he does reduce words on a page to their constituent marks, only to build them back up into signifiers/signifieds in the play of differance. Unless, that is, you think De Man got Derrida wrong too. If you click on the link above there, you'll note that Hillis didn't think Abrams' argument incorrect, but his fears of its implications unjustified. (Which is why Hillis tries to normalize the instability Abrams' fears deconstruction created by claiming it's always been there, deconstruction merely revealed it.) But as someone who already knows this about both Derrida and Abrams--after all, how you judge something incorrect if you don't know it to be so?--I can only assume your invocation fo these arguments somehow ironic in ways those of us who lack your "basic commitment to reading" simply can't fathom. What else but bow can I do before such careful readers?
That said, if these pathetic playground antics are what's going to pass for intellectual engagement around these parts now, you'll have this place all to yourself in no time.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 01:27 PM
Scott Eric Kaufmann writes:
John, here's the crux of our disagreement: [here Kaufmann quotes me] "One [interpretation] that I don't agree with completely (that's not the point, surely) is C.B. Macpherson's argument in his book _Possessive Individualism_ that Locke's _Second Treatise_ is really an apology for rising capitalism."
Scott continues:
This strikes me as a perfectly acceptable interpretation of Locke because it discusses what his Second Treatise entails. Locke may not have known he was apologizing for rising capitalism, but his argument encapsulates certain historical arguments, trends, &c. such that, unbeknownst to him, it entailed a defense of a structure whose birth he wasn't aware he was witnessing.
[end Kaufmann excerpt]
Yes, but why can't Seligman say the same thing? In an earlier post, Scott said: "The problem with Sedgwick's claim isn't that it's an interpretation, but that it's an imposition." And in another post, Scott wrote of Sedwick that her fisting comment was "certainly metaphorical, but her desired referent is wholly out of touch with what James or anyone of his period would have read into it."
What the quotations above show is that Scott lacks (or has not yet provided) a criterion of judgment that will allow him to reject one interpretation (Sedgwick's) while granting the plausibility of another (Macpherson's). Sedwick's reading is an 'imposition'; so is Macpherson's. Sedwick's reading would be unrecognizable to James and his contemporaries; ditto for Locke and his contemporaries regarding Macpherson's. Scott gets very angry and dismissive, accusing me of being dishonest, so perhaps the discussion (between us anyway) must end. But I don't think we've managed yet to figure out how to handle the absurdity spectrum. Ciao ciao.
Posted by: John S. Ransom | February 20, 2006 at 01:30 PM
Scott, I have to say, it continues to amaze me how someone who is able to write as wittily, urbanely and intelligently as you can on your own webite, nonetheless seems always for some reason to leave their brain behind at the door of the law whenever they find themselves writing to me.
This said, in your post, you raise some good points. Unfortunately, they are all of them, already, my points. Your apparent failure to recognize this leads me to entertain the alarming notion that you don't really understand exactly the point of principle that is at stake in this dialogue.
Here is the pattern: faced with an distressing and peculiar desire that you don't really understand, you move to have this desire stricken from the record. So that Sedgwick, for instance, becomes - in language smacking of hetrosexual privilege - someone simply with an some kind of peculiar, idiosyncratic way of reading, attempting to 'impose' this way on you, and I become simply tiresome and self-congratulatory.
Why, fundamentally? Because you consider neither Sedgewick, nor myself to be operating within the strictures of your Laws of Legitimate Readings. As you have clearly indicated, these laws are apparently known to yourself and potentially could be set-down in their totality. You write: "I could've listed all the others, but instead wrote "&c." to, if you're to be believed, means I meant "no more."
My contention is this: you could not exhaustively list every possible legitimate reading of a text except by setting yourself up in a privileged position of crypto-legislative authority first. And you seem inclined to do this. Hence, in your universe, a text can be misread, and I would take this to mean, not legitimately.
The reason, then, why I would suppose that the way that you are using your sign "&c" suggests a meaning for it far closer to "no more" and "the sign of queer sexuality beneath which Sedgwick writes" than "and others" is that there can only really be an real principle of otherness in the formulation "and others" if that formulation is understand in terms of "and all others" - which is to say, understand in reference to the absolute Other in all its otherness, and subject to no other limits or restrictions. But in your usage, you have clearly indicated that there are restrictions of legitimacy that you would consider it to be necessary to uphold. Thus your &c does not mean "and others" at all. Rather, it means "and more of the similar" along the same lines.
Furthermore, you have generously supplied us all with your provisional list of possible legitimate subjects of interest to be talked about. No doubt, I would expect you to lengthen this list in the future. But I am just responding to it, to the letter, you write it, Scott - I cannot read your mind.
Along these lines, the discourse police metaphor - which you seem inclined to deploy sarcastically, actually is not so ridiculous. To be clear: I feel this figure does you a disservice Scott. You are, after all, a man who claims to be influenced by Foucault.
Let us ask ourselves a question - Is discourse policed? And if so, then how. These questions seem to me to be important when thinking about discourse in general, when engaging in discourse in general. Surely you would not uphold the view that discourse is itself elsewhere, and they we, all of us, exist here on Long Sunday in some kind of an idealized abstract realm of cool, pure and neutral thought.
Finally, you keep trying to tell me what Sedgwick was really talking about in the Beast in the Closet. You tell me she was really arguing about homosexual panic, and then you curiously appear to try to analyze her putative worth according to the Great Man scale of value - Sedgwick as an inspiration, Sedgwick as a pioneer. Then you say tell that someone has already "beat her" - as if this means that now we must consider her in terms of some kind of a defeated loser.
I would suggest that the more interesting question than the consensually agreed-upon merits of the in any case, fictional manifest content of what Sedgewick was arguing about is the question of why and how she was arguing about it. This second question is not reducible to the in any case potentially infinite dimensions of this first question, it demands that other, ethico-political factors be taken into account. And you touch on this point directly. You say: "...that doesn't mean I'm going to defend, or consider convincing, or responsible, her own argument."
To which I respond, fair enough. But insofar as you seem to be considering the argument Segwick attempts in "Beast in the Closet" from a purportedly neutral and purely technical position of unproblematic gender identity, I would suggest to you that you are considering her work from a position in which your particular identity and desire is privileged as normal, and others are denigrated as deviant. I would suggest that you that I find this reading insensitive, and that perhaps I might have valid reasons for doing so, which are not simply reducible to me, myself, being in my own particular, contingent and pathological identity and desires, tiresome, self-congratulatory and wrong.
Posted by: josef k. | February 20, 2006 at 02:06 PM
I repeat: John, you're making a basic category error. You treat a philosophical treatise as if it were a literary text and vice versa, then claim they're equivalent for the purposes of your argument. Furthermore, you claim that I'm saying something which I'm patently not: that Sedgwick and Freud are absurd in the same way. They're not. I'm not angry, either, but annoyed that someone as smart as you otherwise seem to be can't see past some very basic flaws in his thinking. To repeat: literary work = philosophical work? No. Sedgwick's absurdity = Freud's absurdity? No.
I'm not contradicting myself here in the least; I'm simply mouthing the fairly obvious argument that literary texts don't entail the way the philosophical texts do. If you want to argue that they do, we can have that conversation; if you want to insist on neglecting that in order to make the same inaccurate claims about my position again, then I don't see the point of participating in this conversation. After all, if you're not going to address a damn thing I say, what do you need me here for?
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 02:27 PM
Yep, there's a differance between opinion and argument all right. Unfortunate how they do so flow into each other, more times than not.
What "was so attractive about Derrida was that he made interpretation into an adventure." Unfortunately, the codification of his thought by small-minded English professors
hmm...speaking of said trivialization (of course it took place, and especially in English departments, to some degree). But what about the codification of JD as relatively harmless little child advernturer? Maybe Mark is genuinely praising there, and yet it does carry the distinct whiff of reluctant compromise. Given his other writings, hardly reassuring, let's just say.
As for the Abrams, that was written in the early Seventies, at a time when Derrida's work wasn't well understood in the States.
Indeed, and now it's been usefully republished and repackaged with even broader ambitions at a time when there is no such excuse (not that there ever was).
Unless, that is, you think De Man got Derrida wrong too.
In some respects, sure. So did Hillis Miller, and many others, many of whom admitted such on more than one occasion. One could argue productively against these wrongnesses, provided one's interest wasn't just in dismissing the invigorating and highly nuanced work of both philosophers themselves, either by furthering the picking-away already well advanced or in one brave polemic sweep.
Do you find his contention that Derrida was "more dexterous," but somewhat predictable, entirely without merit? You may take issue with that last statement, certainly, but if you consider his a careful and rigorous scholar, it's an arguable claim.
No, not entirely. It's hardly an original comment. It's also just not particularly helpful in this context of ongoing hostility that seems to subsist primarily as highly selective, if not entirely independent of close attention to the texts at hand. As in there where one may also find some arguable claims, and hell, some of them even made by a philosopher, albeit one who dared (scandalous for certain institutionalized quarters of America unused to such pretension) to have a extraordinarily coherent and rich philosophy not only of langauge, but also of literature.
Posted by: Dionysian Rabbi | February 20, 2006 at 02:47 PM
josef, thank you for the kind words, but I must respectfully disagree...alright, no, I'll give you the kind words. As the for the rest:
...faced with an distressing and peculiar desire that you don't really understand, you move to have this desire stricken from the record.
It's not a desire I want stricken from the record. In fact, it has nothing to do with the content of Sedgwick's reading. Had that passage from James appeared in a David Wojnarowicz book, I'd be more than happy to admit that fisting isn't merely a plausible reading, it's a probable one. Why? Because the context in which that statement would've been made (the height of the AIDS scare) doesn't preclude the possibility that Wojnarowicz meant or unwittingly tapped into a larger discursive structure in which fisting could function as a referent. What I'm not saying, then, is that an author means what he or she intended to. I'm saying that the only thing an author cannot mean are things which didn't exist, even in embryonis or emergent forms, in the discursive environment in which he lived. Call it "anti-Chariots-of-the-Gods historicism." Mayan sculptures may look suspiciously like space shuttles when turned sideways, but that possibility didn't exist, in any form, in their environment and thus the similarites must be chalked up to coicidence. Unless the influence moves forward, that is, space shuttles were designed to look like sideways Mayan paintings.
Now, if Sedgwick had demonstrated that fisting operated in fin de siecle Anglo-American culture, then it would've been possible that James unwittingly tapped into an extant element of his discursive environment. Given what we know of James' character, it's still improbable that James had intended to signal "fisting-as-ecriture" there. The absurdity, then, is reading back into James practices which he couldn't (and Sedgwick makes no attempt to demonstrate otherwise) have known about and therefore couldn't have signalled, intentionally or no. Thus the imposition of which I speak has nothing to do with heterosexual privilege and everything to do with historical possibility. People can mean more than they think they do, but they can't mean more than sum total of possible meanings available to them in a particular historical moment. Or they become Artaud.
My contention is this: you could not exhaustively list every possible legitimate reading of a text except by setting yourself up in a privileged position of crypto-legislative authority first. And you seem inclined to do this. Hence, in your universe, a text can be misread, and I would take this to mean, not legitimately.
I could exhaustively list all the potential readings, had I all the time in the universe and the desire. What I can do, as an historicist, is establish guidelines for potential readings, as I've indicated above. People can't mean what no one could've meant. A quick example: the word "television" appears in Finnegans Wake. No legitimate reading of it would take Joyce's "television" to mean what we mean by "television" because such things didn't exist then. They weren't even on the horizon in the early days of radio. He certainly didn't mean for his word to be freighed with all the associations ours has because he couldn't have imagined what they'd have been. He wanted it freighted with associations available to his audience. To claim otherwise is entirely anachronistic.
Now, you say, I've pinned a text down in time. I'm not letting it resonate. I've put my foot to the neck of the free play of signification. Perhaps. But as a scholar, I can do no more than that and still speak to anyone other than myself. Texts certainly mean more to individuals, and they can read them idiosyncratically, as Sedgwick did; the problem, for me, rests not in the idiosyncratic reading itself but its institutional effect. What begins as one person's theory about queer subjectivity, formulated through a reading of a literary work, becomes routinized, a paradigmatic account of queer subjectivity...even though it was based not on a large scale study but on an individual's encounter with a work of literature. What I think illegitimate about that isn't the content of the discovery, but the numerous causative disconnects. Think about it like this:
Scholar X posits Theory of Human Development Y based on Literary Work Z.
The first problem is basing a Theory of Human Development Y on Literary Work Z. (It worked for Freud, but even he acknowledged that psychoanalysis was a stopgap until the scientific community caught up.) However, not only is Theory of Human Development Y based on Literary Work Z, it's based on a particularly ingenious reading of Literary Work Y by Scholar X. Its existence depends on Scholar X's brilliance. And it's not testable. Not repeatable. But Theory of Human Development Y gets institutionalized as a science--though that word would never be used--despite its humble origins as Scholar X's brilliant reading of Literary Work Z. My problem, then, isn't solely with the absurdity of the reading but with its institutionalization. Were it merely an idiosyncratic reading, that'd be fine; instead, it's become a theory of the development of contemporary queer subjectivity.
Now, to reiterate that I'm not policing content, I should say that I have no objection to the bounded aspect of her argument: i.e. her discussion of homosexual panic in fin de siecle American culture, which as I mentioned earlier, I find convincing at times. The times I don't, however, are 1) when she extends the applicability of her reading beyond what it can reasonably said to apply to, 2) when she does so without declaring, even implicitly, that the applicability is a function of cultural continuity, that we are the heirs of the culture she describes despite all the patently meaning differences (or even attempt to account for those differences) and 3) that scholars universalize her account, esp. in British and American studies, such that what should, at most, be an account of the development of queer subjectivity in fin de siecle American culture becomes an account of the development of queer subjectivity period. It's that move to universalize the particular--which we see Sedgwick do both backwards, via fisting, and forwards, via queer subjectivity formation--which drives me absolutely batty.
But in your usage, you have clearly indicated that there are restrictions of legitimacy that you would consider it to be necessary to uphold. Thus your &c does not mean "and others" at all. Rather, it means "and more of the similar" along the same lines.
I hope the above clarified this objection.
You tell me she was really arguing about homosexual panic, and then you curiously appear to try to analyze her putative worth according to the Great Man scale of value - Sedgwick as an inspiration, Sedgwick as a pioneer. Then you say tell that someone has already "beat her" - as if this means that now we must consider her in terms of some kind of a defeated loser.
Now what's interesting about this, given what I 've written above, is that Sedgwick's only claim to authority, given her disciplinary and institutional affiliations, is according to "the Great Man scale of value." She has no other means of acquiring influence, at least not in literary studies, because the influence of her theories is predicated on the brilliance of her readings. The more brilliant her readings, i.e. the Greater the "Man," the greater her influence. There's no other way to be influential in literary studies; you acquire disciples or your ideas die with you. Now, the reason I pointed to Fiedler is because, as impressive as Sedgwick's reading are--and if I could find it, I'd point to Amardeep's work on Sedgwick, which is highly sympathetic and which caused me to reevaluate her--Fiedler anticipated much of what she would say about homosexual/homosocial relationships in American literature. In fact, in Love and Death in the American Novel, he argues that the paradigmatic relationship in American culture is homosocial (Ishmael/Queeqeg; Huck/Jim; &c.). Now the reason that I directly compare the two isn't merely because Fiedler got there first; it's also because Sedgwick's revolutionary rhetoric grates on my nerves, especially when, as it appeared, she either didn't want to credit or hadn't read (and somehow wasn't called out for not having read) one of a seminal accounts of the development of American literature. She proudly proclaimed to have reinvented the wheel and no one stopped her. The global implications of that bother me, but even the local ones bother me.
I would suggest to you that you are considering her work from a position in which your particular identity and desire is privileged as normal, and others are denigrated as deviant.
As should be clear by now, I do no such thing. In fact, engaging the work of someone like Henry James requires critics drop their heteronormative assumptions, since they'll only get in the way of accurately accounting for what occurs in his work. One of the reasons to engage in self-critique, as a literary scholar, is to be able to approach a work on its own terms. You acknowledge the limitations of your perspective so as to better understand another's. A lack of self-consciousness or -awareness will result in terrible work. Again, that's why I spent space above discussing the legitimacy of content vs. the illegitimacy of the methodology. I don't consider any reading resulting from a methodologically sound analysis illegitimate.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 04:42 PM
The tv technology most certainly existed in the mid-20s, though to what extent Joyce was aware of it when composing WIP is something I imagine that the industry has investigated pretty thoroughly.
Posted by: Jonathan | February 20, 2006 at 05:31 PM
But he'd have been talking about mechanical televisions, not "what we mean by 'television' because such things didn't exist then. They weren't even on the horizon in the early days of radio." Little spinning circles in gigantic boxes may be called a television. Then again, maybe that was a poor example, since "our eyes demand their turn" could be stretched to make it seem as if Joyce (or his cultural moment) had an inkling of the explosion first of radio, then of television, and probably also the internet, and hypertext, &c. You could make those arguments, but I'd imagine you'd find them as unconvincing and glory-hounding as I.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | February 20, 2006 at 06:26 PM
Hi Josef,
You wrote to Scott "in your universe, a text can be misread, and I would take this to mean, not legitimately."
Am I correct in assuming, then, that you think that it is not possible to misread a text? And that it's not possible to read a text in an illegitimate way?
Best wishes,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | February 20, 2006 at 07:34 PM
Dionysian Rabbi: "One could argue productively against these wrongnesses, provided one's interest wasn't just in dismissing the invigorating and highly nuanced work of both philosophers themselves, either by furthering the picking-away already well advanced or in one brave polemic sweep."
Doesn't this amount to insulating Derrida from fundamental critique? You aren't allowed to make specific criticisms (picking away) or general ones (brave polemical sweeps)? Unless your ultimate goal is to show that somehow Derrida's position is substantially vindicated after all? (Is that it?) What's a critic to do, if they don't find Derrida invigorating, or if they wish to point out a lack of nuance at certain points?
Posted by: jholbo | February 20, 2006 at 07:36 PM
John H: Of course that's not what I am saying. Not at all. Certainly a critic may pick away; all the better, you might say, if she's directly cognizant of the corpus at hand, if she's not merely using foggy mirrors, and if she's immediately up front about her prospective and perioperative limits. Critics who, on the other hand, pick away with the intention not to heal but to reduce to nothing, from a lazily ignorant or uncharitable position, and with an interest primarily in dismissing, are often not productive. Which is not to say the polemics can't be meticulous, or entertaining.
Scott: There's no other way to be influential in literary studies; you acquire disciples or your ideas die with you
And if immediate influence within a particular enclave or sophist culture of the American university is neither the greatest, nor the most interesting potential measure of success? Even less so acquiring a discipleship?
(Scott seems now to be critiquing something rather obvious that--whether it comes from S-wick or anyone else--nobody in particular seems very interested in defending as such (that is, badly universalizing, un-self-critical "Theory" or fashionista writing, or the worst excesses of a certain relatively recent academic culture now running on tenure, &etc.) A universalizing tendency, often enough indulged in to a fault, that's being latched onto in order to level a blow against a whole host of intellectual movements. Movements that, even taken together, and despite their occasional bravado, still in no way represent the dominant disposition much less power epicenter of American English departments, by any honest measure. (American philosophy departments are of course an entirely other matter.) But just count the self-avowed university Marxists, if you will. Even add the feminists and the queer theorists and the Derridians; and you'd still be left only with a significant minority. American English departments remain, on the whole, very conservative (as in moderate and traditional) places.
This is unfortunate, perhaps, because when "Theory" is "done" right (to use the commonly pejorative idiom), or with any sensitivity, the resultant readings are anything but mere sophistry, or a sacrifice of careful attention to the text on "it's own terms." And not just because they concern themselves with asking probing questions about such things as the text's "own terms."
Of course the (indeed, often painfully) close literary readings of certain French philosophers do not immediately translate into a "pure" and reckless relativism, or fallibility. It's quite an enormous leap to make, from the possibility of a patient, textually-focused, demonstrable, and earned skepticism (or even strictly deconstructive "method," which can in fact be quite beautiful and illuminating if properly, philosophically applied within certain self-acknowledged limits) to the knee-jerk imposition of an obscuring, dogmatic, trivializing and falsely universalizing formula qua formula, especially on the cheap or smacking of second-hand contagion. It seems an associative leap that Scott insists on making, and always without qualification, as if it were the most self-evident inevitability known to students everywhere. A rather broadly tarring brush, if you will.
If one doesn't wish to a priori blame one's students for being always less-than-independently intelligent, why not pause before one leaps? Why not seek to more strictly qualify one's remarks, as pertaining to certain common fallacies somewhat endemic to certain academic cultures, merely? In any case, to begin critiquing one must first have a corpus to hand, as warming up on small fish remains as usual of limited scientific value.
Posted by: DRabbi | February 20, 2006 at 09:29 PM