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Are we who you say we are?
(Another shameless cross-posting from I Cite.)
Lots of different kinds of remarks don't travel; they don't circulate seamlessly from one context to another. Instead, their travels are stained with a kind of remnant or remainder. It may well be that this stain or remainder is central to their use; awareness of the stain, an irrational nugget, marks one as an appropriate user of the term. Often, becoming aware is difficult, painful; perhaps that it why it marks membership and appropriate use.
Several years ago my father gave Paul a 'personal groomer' for Christmas (read nosehair clipper, sideburn trimmer, multi-purpose hair removal apparatus for men). Because this was so traumatic, I frequently mentioned it, making fun of the gift. Yet, I was furious when I heard Paul and his sister joking about the groomer. They were making fun of my father, my family, and, by extension, me.
In the culture wars, the Right loves to trash feminists and feminism. They hate feminists in the academy, women's studies, the teaching of feminist theory. So, they bash feminism. Feminists respond in 2 ways: one, by circling the wagons and bashing the Right; two, by pointing out that there are multiple, differentiated feminisms. In fact, more important to most feminists than the stupidities of the Right are our own internal debates and disagreements. These are the discussions that matter (to us). I team teach with a gender constructivist who thinks that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. As a Lacanian, I view this slightly differently: sexual difference is real and the multiple expressions of gender are responses to this fundamental gap or antagonism.
In fact, I don't think that one can find a noncontroversial definition of feminism that would enable the term to function as a coherent object to criticize or attack. A bumper sticker version is something like feminism is the view that women are people, too. Anti-humanist or radical environmental feminists would challenge this definition because of the primacy of the human; they would argue that this very primacy is what feminism has to challenge. The same holds with respect to a claim like feminists think that human rights are women's rights. Many of us reject the discourse of rights and see feminism as providing a vital standpoint from which to reject rights talk.
The same holds when one talks about political theory. In American political science, theorists are a separate subfield and generally treated as separate by the rest of the disciple. We are sometimes considered a field among ourselves, perhaps because we read Aristotle and Hobbes while the others think that politics can be a science and try to find formal models that do something besides stating the obvious. Yet, political theorists disagree among ourselves. A big division is between those who do a kind of analytic political theory--or who are still oriented toward Rawls--and those who do continental. Yet, among continental theorists there are also huge debates and disagreements. The Habermasians don't read Deleuze or Zizek (not to mention Ranciere, Laclau, Agamben, or Badiou). And, while I'm on a journal with a bunch of Deleuzians, they are generally non-sympathetic to Zizek (they think he is not immanent enough and that the notion of the lack is both dangerous and wrong).
Can it mean anything, then, to reject or criticize political theory as a whole? If one is a formal modeller, yes. One is saying that only with formal methods can anything significant be said about politics. But, this is not a critique. It is simply a rejection. I don't critique formal modelling in my work. I simply reject it. I find it uninteresting and irrelevant. (I'll add that I do think there is an important role for a lot of empirical political science although I don't do that.)
Ray Davies makes an interesting point in a thread over at faucets and pipes:
Words aren’t solid tokens which can be extracted from one game and used in a different game while meaning the same thing. Precise definitions are important when rationally arguing against a supposedly rational argument, but can be toxic to community formation, as I’ve personally seen in attempts to establish the boundaries of “science fiction” or “poetry”. A social term is, finally, defined socially, and, in healthily varied communities, allows for unpredictable outliers.
I agree. Terms are markers of discursive communities.
So, can one criticize an entire discursive community by invoking one of their terms? Yes, if one is rejecting the community per se. Here one would be making an institutional argument, that is, an argument about the group existing as a group. But one would not be addressing any of the discursive content through which the group is constituted. Why--because it is precisely the contestation over the content that designates membership in the group. (This is why I never take a stand on alien abduction or 9/11 truth; that would constitute me as a member of the group/discursive community I'm trying to understand.)
The slight of hand comes in with the shift involved in using terms with currency within the group in a different setting, for a different purpose, while denying that difference in setting and purpose. So, feminists tell the Right in the culture wars that they don't know what they are talking about since feminists disagree. Political theorists tell political scientists that most of them don't know what they are talking about since political theorists disagree. Deleuzians tell Zizekians that Zizek gets Deleuze wrong and Zizekians tell Deleuzians that they don't know what they are talking about since they don't read more than one or two things by Zizek. Finally, Zizek readers argue with each other about how to read and interpret. These are real disagreements and debates. The critic who comes in, using a term with currency within a community to dismiss that community erases the disagreements and debates constitutive of that community. Differently put, the critic fails to acknowledge the way communities form along antagonisms.
Are broad disagreements and debates possible? That is, can there be
a discussion on a large scale that isn't nonsensical? Perhaps. In the
same thread, John Emerson introduces a valuable typology in determining
groups or discursive communities:
1. A group of people who talk mostly to each other. 2. Generally agreed-upon and
practiced criteria for how discourse should be conducted. 3. A set of canonical books or other writings honored by the community.
It seems to me that #2 is central to answering the question. Without agreed-upon and practiced criteria, a discussion isn't possible. #1 changes: national meetings, journals, small meetings, the folks one asks to read drafts, that sort of thing. #3 is usually introduced to trump in a debate (so, a common criticism involves challenging a person's archive; for example, to discuss Zizek coherently, one should read more than On Belief; or, I am sometimes urged to read Baudrillard; finally, a major way that debates in academic feminism unfolded in the eighties was in terms of archive--white feminists were criticized for ignoring the work of feminists of color).
Of course, #2 may also be the most difficult. People accuse one another of not conducting themselves according to agreed upon criteria--of bad faith, disingenuousness, and deceit. And, when faced with this accusation, some respond by pointing out that the very accusation was raised in bad faith. And then the very possibility of debate become impossible, yet again.
By Jodi | February 4, 2007 in Weblogs | Permalink
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Tracked on Feb 7, 2007 10:22:36 PM
Comments
Slight of hand? I am smitten. Or was that Freudian? Clearly not for the feint of heart. Yes, you've done a clever thing with slippage and unintentionality. But don't make the correction. It's better as is. Why? Because it doubles back on your earlier question: can one criticize an entire discursive community by invoking one of their terms?
More to the point, can one criticize an entire discursive community by misrepresenting one of their terms? This is an interesting question. So I hope you let it stand.
And thanks for the previous 7 paragraphs. They're succinct, clear. I like that.
Posted by: dp | Feb 4, 2007 1:36:41 PM
how embarrassing. Freud would say it's Freudian. I think it's ignorance. Or an overcite. but, I'll let it stand--I like your comment.
Posted by: Jodi | Feb 4, 2007 2:01:26 PM
the critic fails to acknowledge the way communities form along antagonisms.
I don't buy this. In the name of complexity, you're oversimplifying the terms of the debate. Take your (not at all loaded) example of the conservative critique of academic feminism: the flattening of different strains of feminist thought is not the result of an intellectual difference, but of an ideological difference which precludes the asking of the very the questions academic feminists ask. John's critique, however, is an intellectual one. He is not averse to differentiating between Lacanian and Foucauldian thought, nor is he attempting to flatten the distinctions between them. He's asking a very simple question, one which you seem to be avoiding:
Do these people who claim to "do theory" -- who write on "theory blogs" -- have anything in common? After all, they claim to be "doing" the same thing. Are we confronting the narcissism of small differences here? Does the Lacanian and Foucauldian share, if not a structure of thought, then an approach to philosophical history, or a citational ethos, or a set of assumptions about the way language works? In other words, while you're absolutely correct -- important differences exist -- is it not possible that people who congregate under the same banner do so for an identifiable reason?
To consider that question an affront misses the point. A community can be incredibly diverse, certainly. But to ask why a particular community is a community is a valid question. Say I ask "Why do Deleuzians talk to Zizekians but not to Parsonians?" Pointing at the place where certain conversations (oftentimes about the same subject) stop is an illegitimate question? Inferring back from that point, attempting to discover what makes the conversation between Deleuzians and Zizekians possible is an illegitimate enterprise?
All of which is only to say, for some reason, you neglect to confront the key question here:
That is, can there be a discussion on a large scale that isn't nonsensical? Perhaps.
Despite what follows, that "perhaps" is telling: you claim that John's attention to "theory" as a discursive community is illegitimate on its face, then claim that within these communities, the "very possibility of debate becomes impossible, yet again." You decline to answer your own hypothetical question, mourning a foreclosure without considering the claims you made earlier -- namely, that certain groups are constituted by their internal debates. Who are these "people" in the final paragraph? Are they the critics attempting to understand the contours of a particular community, or are they the members of the community attempting to understand the internal limitations of their own discourse? If the latter, your "perhaps" is a rhetorical concession -- an effective set-up for your gnomic final sentence, but no more. If the former, your discursive theory incorporates John right into the community you claim he rejects -- a possibility, but I doubt the gesture you intended.
In other words, this post seems like little more than an attempt by the trees to declare where the forest ends. Which is fine. Always happens. However, the trees need a little humility, need to recognize that those outside the forest may have some insight into where it ends -- may, in fact, have a perspective the trees can't even imagine.
Not fun thoughts, I know, but there's no escaping them. History will happen to us all, one day.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 4, 2007 4:25:44 PM
The final paragraph is meant to open back up to the possibility of discussion between opponents of Theory and so-called advocates of Theory; more bluntly, I was wondering if there could ever be an actual discussion between denizens of faucets and pipes and denizens of the Weblog and Long Sunday that was an actual discussion that wouldn't degenerate into a flame war. So, I wasn't thinking of anything 'internal' at that point at all. Differently put, I was taking John Emerson's #2 quite seriously as a potential marker of a discursive community. The question is serious--when these criteria don't exist at all, there is no discussion.
It seems to me that the critic who wants to use a banner to reject a community in toto should state the 'identifiable reason' that designates the community and why he rejects it.
There are critics of feminism who claim that their reasons are serious and intellectual rather than ideological. Some in the academy, for example, reject women's studies because it lacks discernible methods. Some reject feminism because they think that universalism already encompasses feminism's claims (this was Habermas's position until the early 90s).
Posted by: Jodi | Feb 4, 2007 4:48:25 PM
And I am aware, obviously, of the irony inherent in my humility comment. Who is John, after all, to tell you that you have more in common with this person or that than you think? Granted. Still, think about it in editorial terms:
Who is this other person to tell me what the best way to phrase this sentence or organize this argument is? I spent seven years writing this.
To which I would say:
Precisely! You are the worst person to ask, Mr. Invested-in-Every-Sentence-and-Argument, as you have no distance from the material you've produced.
Similarly, I think those with whom we don't share intellectual assumptions are better positioned to make certain judgments about the shape of a discipline. (This is why, for example, I'm committed to the idea of interdisciplinary work -- why I share my work with as many people in as many different disciplines as I can -- because I'm well-aware not only of my own personal limitations, but those which have been drilled into me. Only, self-awareness isn't enough. A radically different perspective is sometimes needed.
(And yes, I'm aware this invalidates what I have to say about "theory." So I'll shut up now.)
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 4, 2007 4:49:35 PM
I was wondering if there could ever be an actual discussion between denizens of faucets and pipes and denizens of the Weblog and Long Sunday that was an actual discussion that wouldn't degenerate into a flame war.
A modicum of mutual respect might help. Or are the denizens of the interminable diurnal incapable of that? Also, I've had numerous conversations with Ken, Adam, Anthony and CR which haven't devolved into conflagrations. So your statement lacks a little in the accuracy department.
There are critics of feminism who claim that their reasons are serious and intellectual rather than ideological.
Of course there are. But they're not the Right, the group mentioned in your post, to which you (unsubtly, yet somehow still implicitly) liken critics of theory.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 4, 2007 5:04:12 PM
Scott continues to ignore the part of John's post where Jodi's article shows that it was "our" fault that the debates consistently broke down, because we theorists are guilty of massive intellectual dishonesty.
And interestingly, the positive traits that John consistently uses to portray "theory" people basically all amount to intellectual dishonesty: classically, the "theory two-step" where people claim to represent theory in the sense of critical thought when really they mean theory in a highly reified sense. We get no sense of shared intellectual affinities -- the way these bodies of thought emerge from various interplays among major strains of European intellectual life such as structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, phenomenology, etc. No, it's as though some grab-bag were chosen absolutely arbitrarily.
It seems to me that conversation with Scott about these matters is possible (and is currently happening), but not with Holbo at this point -- at the end of the day, he's still too enamored with the "Higher Eclecticism" routine and still too wounded that everyone didn't jump right onboard with something that seems to him to be blindingly obvious.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Feb 4, 2007 5:16:22 PM
Say I ask "Why do Deleuzians talk to Zizekians but not to Parsonians?"
Your question would be as hypothetical and mystical as all of this "Theory" nonsense - I'd be mighty surprised if you could find someone - anyone - under the age of 65 who identifies as a "Parsonian." Even insofar as "Parsonianism" is the official ideology of academic sociology in North America, people still wouldn't identify it as "Parsonian" in character. Even the most positivistic of sociologists are hesitant to jump on the "general theory of society" bandwagon. Are Parsons' books even in print anymore? Is he even taught outside of "history of sociological theory" undergrad courses?
Regarding your comment else, SEK, I'm not particularly familiar with people who say, "I do theory" or "I am a theorist." I've heard people say, "I do social theory" or "I do political theory," but rarely - outside of undergrads who speak of "theory class" in the same way they speak of "methods class" - do I hear what you are saying. Your claim is too superficial to actually have any interesting or important meaning: people can and do just as easily say, "I do political sociology," but that statement, "I do political sociology," doesn't tell us anything about what they do.
Posted by: Craig | Feb 4, 2007 6:16:08 PM
Unscrew the locks from the doors !
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
People unhappy with The Higher Eclecticism might prefer my paradigm, described by Holbo as "Eclecticism on Stilts".
I think that this point by Jodi is good:
So, can one criticize an entire discursive community by invoking one of their terms? Yes, if one is rejecting the community per se.
As I understand it, she's saying that a large and diverse community of discourse might be defined by certain core terms shared by all of them under some definition, and that if you attack this term (e.g. by redefining it or claiming that it's meaningless) you attack the whole community through attacking its forms of discourse.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 4, 2007 6:34:46 PM
I'm sorry, but I clearly am either too ignorant or too proud to understand the tension that erupts every time this conversation starts over again. I guess I simply cannot accurately fathom the stakes, so if anyone would like to lay them out for me, I'd appreciate it.
I said previously that I would hate to be a theory blog, and it is this sort of a conversation that provides my warrant. If by "theory" one means simply a certain mode of thinking through problems, then it is certainly the case that theorists and theory blogs can lay claim to some common ground that connects them together as a community. One can claim this, to be sure, but really, why the fuck bother? It doesn't mean much, because certain commonalities do not a coherent structure make. So instead, theory gets configured and imagined as being more structured by implicit practices and the body of research and thought that qualifies as theory gets circumscribed. Higher eclecticism, as the obvious example, required an almost acrobatic propensity to group together the worst of tendencies and chastise them as was fitting, a feat that no one would find problematic if not for the casuistic stretching by which Higher Eclecticism becomes Theory and Theory becomes theory.
And this counter-claim Jodi seems to be making, that any discussion can happen only through an initial dismissal of a community, seems equally tendentious, in that it seems to rely upon a community based on conversational source material. I love a good throw down and an in-depth discussion on a work or a collection of works by an author or on some particular subject, but I cannot imagine a community predicated on shared reading material. Shared reading, yes, requisite material, no. Everyone always tosses out the net's current favorites: Lacan, Deleuze, Zizek, and I think these are all fine people to discuss, but the combat that ensues over whether or not they should be discussed, who has the right to discuss them, and what that discussion means is mind-numbing. Where's the Heidegger? Where's the "screw philosophy, that shit is done - let's try some thinking?" Isn't there something eerily similar about this recurring debate? Can't we just say theory is done (it was a recent invention, so I'm sure we can imagine life without it) and let's try something less, well, concrete?
There's something of the occupational psychosis in all of this.
...
Incidentally, didn't de Man already deal with this issue in his discussion of the resistance to/of theory?
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Feb 4, 2007 7:08:58 PM
"......a large and diverse community of discourse might be defined by certain core terms shared by all of them under some definition, and that if you attack this term (e.g. by redefining it or claiming that it's meaningless) you attack the whole community through attacking its forms of discourse."
BS. There's claims about data--economic, psychological, biological or otherwise. Marx asserts much the same at the beginning of the German Ideology. The rest is Charm School enforcement, or worse: postmodernist/pragmatist theology.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 4, 2007 7:11:26 PM
Ken--I didn't say discussion can happen only through initial dismissal of a community.
Scott--which 'certain' judgments do you mean about the shape of a discipline? you might specify this in an interesting way. Without that specification, I read you as saying that someone outside a discipline or practice is better able to make a judgment about that discipline or practice than someone inside it. And I would fully disagree with that. So, someone who doesn't practice yoga is better able to judge the practice of yoga than someone who does. That seems wrong. But, there are different ways to think about: the audience judging the performer or movie (so, lots of times audiences like movies more than critics or, say, moviemakers do).
Also, I don't say that discussions between V and LS/W are impossible--I think that John Emerson's number 2 designates their conditions of possibility, and you specify one of these conditions with your term 'modicum or respect.'
Posted by: Jodi | Feb 4, 2007 7:34:59 PM
The modicum of respect thing is difficult to achieve when both parties are on hair triggers. (Or at least some members of each party are, which results in the same kind of atmosphere.)
I, for one, would be in favor of a blogosphere-wide conflagration centered on Heidegger.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Feb 4, 2007 7:56:45 PM
Adam, I'm old and tired an conflagrationed out by now.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 4, 2007 8:32:08 PM
Sorry, by "discussion" I meant critique. I'm all euphemism and shit.
And Adam, I'm all for some H-man ho-down. Let's all hit Identity and Difference.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Feb 4, 2007 8:43:31 PM
Craig:
Even insofar as "Parsonianism" is the official ideology of academic sociology in North America, people still wouldn't identify it as "Parsonian" in character.
Translation: Even inasmuch as Scott's characterization of contemporary sociology is correct, people won't own up to it, therefore Scott's characterization of contemporary sociology is incorrect.
Nice thinking there, sport. Hope no one sees through it.
Are Parsons' books even in print anymore?
If only there was some way to check up on that, I could answer your question. Are you even trying to respond intelligently?
I'm not particularly familiar with people who say, "I do theory" or "I am a theorist."
Well then, it must not be true.
people can and do just as easily say, "I do political sociology"
Very good Craig. People can say that, yet choose to say "I do theory" in a way which meaningfully communicates something. Or would, if I weren't a liar whose anecdotal evidence is trumped by your anecdotal evidence. Perhaps you want to limit your argument to Canada? "In Canada, people don't say that, so the fact that they do in America means it isn't important." After all, if the standard is to be your anecdotal evidence, it ought to at least be contextualized.
Ken:
Can't we just say theory is done (it was a recent invention, so I'm sure we can imagine life without it) and let's try something less, well, concrete?
We certainly can...but that wouldn't have the slightest impact on its institutional stature, and for someone for whom this stature looms over the past 40 years of his discipline's history, I can honestly say that I don't want to stop talking about it until I understand how it attained and maintained that stature. (You are, of course, welcome not to listen, but I think you'd agree that it's important to understand the history of one's discipline, since that history girds its present structure, &c.)
As for the de Man, I'm fairly certain you're being facetious there, but just in case Craig doesn't understand, I'll say it anyway: I'm not sure a book in which all thought is subsumed under the aegis of "theory" is the best one to mention in a thread in which "theory" is said not to exist. (Actually, now that I typed that, I'm positive you're being facetious. But still, you know, Craig.)
Jodi:
I read you as saying that someone outside a discipline or practice is better able to make a judgment about that discipline or practice than someone inside it.
That would be correct. (It's a fore-echoing of Ray's point, actually.) And I stand by it. What makes "theory" interesting in this regard is that, having no "home" discipline, if you will, it creates a space in which it can never be challenged in whole, since those qualified to do so would still be imbricated in the discourse (a la de Man).
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 4, 2007 10:27:48 PM
Adam, the thing you say that I'm uniquely unwilling to discuss sounds to me suspiciously like the line I have been pushing all along. Namely, that two-step feints over 'theory' are not very interesting. What we need is some critical intellectual history of theory, by way of arriving at a judgment of what its advantanges and disadvantages might be. I have repeatedly suggested that it should be regarded as a very late repetition of some patterns we meet for the first time in post-Kantian German romanticism. This suggestion on my part has not received a very favorable reception, because the objection has been made that I'm not defining 'theory' - and maybe there is no such thing. (So I guess I'm happy if you throw me in that briar patch, come to think of it.)
Posted by: jholbo | Feb 4, 2007 10:28:58 PM
John,
Yes, you have suggested the Romanticism thing before, but I always took that as being a different angle on defining "theory" stylistically -- rather than, say, in terms of critical intellectual history. Virtually all of your work that I've read on this topic have been about stylistic matters, rather than actual intellectual history.
Was Freud a romantic? Was Marx? Husserl? Surely Heidegger was in some sense -- but what sense? And what was it about American intellectual life that made the reception of European thinkers so biased toward romantics? That kind of thing would be interesting to investigate. If you were to start actually doing that, I might even revoke my auto-ban policy, especially now that blogfights will apparently be deleted before they start.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Feb 4, 2007 10:43:09 PM
See, and we're back to where we were before, Scott. I'll agree with you and John that intellectual history is important - even essential - and that the institutional celebration of theory is worthy of critique. Where we depart is the attempt that I see, as the argument unfolds, to take that engagement with a disciplinary and institutional history and conclude some predictive taxonomy that explains something beyond the rise and fall of a heavily overdetermined historical object. So when you complain that theory lacks a home discipline, you're no longer doing disciplinary or institutional history, and at that moment, your critique falls apart for me, as I see you stretching to apply an analytic model to (and here is where I agree with Jodi) discourse communities who have their own institutional and disciplinary histories and thus receive what you call theory in one venue through their own idiosyncratic contexts and filters. Now you could argue that these contexts vary in ways limited by certain structural tendencies at work in the reception or production of theory across disciplines and institutions, but I have yet to see much evidence of that, and the data set would need to be pretty massive to justify such a claim. And it would need to be more than the "look at all the examples of bad theory out there," which is still, to my tastes, what a lot of the so-called evidence demonstrates.
Then again, I'm not a lit guy, I'm a rhetoric guy from a communication background, so I guess I'm neither completely outside of the lit theory forest (I suppose for the purposes of Scott's argument philosophy is the outside to literature? that seems a rather icky claim), nor am I up there swinging in the trees with the Chaucer folks. I don't know what this means in terms of my ability to perceive anything correctly, but as it probably excludes me from both Scott's and Jodi's estimation of who knows best, I suppose I'll just start ignoring me.
And yes, I was being facetious. I thought it was rather funny, all things considered. I remember reading an anecdote in a lecture of Sam Weber's where he talks about de Man telling someone about his "discovery" of Derrida, announcing that Derrida was doing exactly the sort of thing de Man had been trying to figure out how to do, and how this admission was somewhat of a sad moment for de Man. I also remember thinking how true de Man's admission seemed, and Resistance to Theory confirms this, at least to me.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Feb 4, 2007 10:53:03 PM
How modicumnish. The Valve will not approve my humble comment (posted twice now, the first time several hours ago) saying, only:
"Spot on, Ray." If only addressees had ears to hear you.
Please mind your manners, Scott.
Posted by: Matt | Feb 4, 2007 10:55:02 PM
Adam, why would you assume that what was distinctive about post-Kantian German Romanticism was something 'merely stylistic'? Rather, it was an intellectual movement that was particularly focused on stylistic questions - or, if you like, questions about linguistic forms. To see 'style' as some merely ornamental inessentiality seems ... well, unromantic of you (I am somewhat bemused to be prodded to discuss something that, I think, I've been trying to discuss all along, against considerable resistance.) Was Freud a romantic? Was Marx. Husserl. I would say yes, mostly yes, and oddly yes.
Posted by: jholbo | Feb 4, 2007 10:55:53 PM
Presumably some thing beyond a yes/no answer would be the stuff of at least potential interest, at this juncture.
Posted by: Matt | Feb 4, 2007 11:12:56 PM
May I take that as a sign of agreement with what I have been suggesting all along, Matt? Namely, that the proper way to proceed is to waive excessive skepticism about the bare existence of theory, proceeding to questions about intellectual history with an ultimate aim of critically assessing the advantages and disadvantages of theory for life?
I do think it is still important to give a kind of 'stylistic' analysis of theory, for the same reason that an understanding of German romanticism will focus on how they understood, for example, 'romantic poetry' (a term with curiously similar valences to 'theory'.)
Posted by: jholbo | Feb 4, 2007 11:32:06 PM
SEK, you are showing more than a little bit of ignorance and arrogance. Perhaps you should step back for a moment and reconsider your point. There's a significant difference between the official ideology of North American sociology (i.e., structural functionalism) and what sociology actually is (i.e., how it is practiced). There's a good case to be made that most undergraduate programs in sociology are likely structured around the tenets of structural functionalism - it makes sense, of course, because most of them were founded in the sixties and seventies when Parsons was at his peak! Likewise, the senior figures in North American sociology were students of Parsons or students of his students. All the same, if you ask a practicing sociologist - be they a graduate student or faculty - you won't find a single one who will call themselves a "Parsonian" or a "structural functionalist." This, of course, is an interesting problem in itself. However, it makes your hypothetical all but impossible: there are no Parsonians for your Deleuzian to talk to! To accuse Deleuzians of ignoring Parsons is just dumb.
But you knew that.
Let's move on to your next point: people can say "I do theory" - and, let's keep in mind, you've framed the question in terms of sociology via reference to Parsons - and be meaningful. Your ignorance is, once again, getting ahead of you. For the vast majority of sociologists, "doing theory" means what is called "theory construction" and "hypothesis testing." When people say they are interested in "social" or "sociological theory" this is what they, by far, mean: their interest is in translating "theoretical statements" into "quantifiable propositions." A "theoretical question" for the mainstream of sociology is whether or not the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline can be proven or disproven through multiple regression or whatever. This is also, by the way, Jodi's point vis a vis political science. What you call "theory" by and large does not exist in the social sciences in the same way they do in Book of the Month Club degrees like your own. No wonder, when you seek to engage people in the social sciences or theology or Continental philosophy that they look at you with a great deal of confusion!
But you knew this too.
Posted by: Craig | Feb 4, 2007 11:58:23 PM
Jodi:
I read you as saying that someone outside a discipline or practice is better able to make a judgment about that discipline or practice than someone inside it.
That was addressed to Scott and not me, but that expresses one of the basic principles of much of what I do. I don't actually say "better able to", but I do say that the external perspective on a discipline has its own value, and people within disciplines are very often blind to that perspective. (This, incidentally, as a big part of Foucault's practice.)
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 12:04:32 AM
You know, there is a "Norton Anthology of Criticism and Theory" which has been authoritative for a lot of people over recent decade. Pp. 1000-2500 are pretty heavy in what is nominally called "theory".
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 12:08:51 AM
there is a "Norton Anthology of Criticism and Theory" which has been authoritative for a lot of people over recent decade.
Really? Because I'm, well, in the trade and honestly I've never seen a single person assign the text and not a single person as ever referenced it or discussed it with me. Not once. Only on here do I hear about it. I'm sure somebody uses it - just no one I know.
The NA of English Literature, on the other hand, yes.
Posted by: CR | Feb 5, 2007 1:36:57 AM
Book of the Month Club degrees like your own
Um, Craig. That was a little bit over the line. Seriously. If you'd like me to start talking shit about sociology as a refuge for failed English majors, I am quite willing to do so. I know a few myself.
Posted by: CR | Feb 5, 2007 1:40:38 AM
I do think it is still important to give a kind of 'stylistic' analysis of theory,
I'm all for it. In fact, this is what I am constantly trying to get my grad students to do in seminar, though they resist. But I do think that "stylistic" analysis requires work with individual texts, particular instances. Unless you're Franco Moretti, of course.
By "stylistic analysis," you don't mean "close reading," though, do you?
Posted by: CR | Feb 5, 2007 1:45:46 AM
I think at this point, in spite of the relative novelty of Theory's proliferation, the ubiquity of theoretical discorses places the burden of proof of the necessity of the value-of-Theory debate squarely with those who would position themselves outside the so-called forest. Show me the argument that starts outside Theory that doesn't begin with the premise "You theory people need to stop talking" and I'll start listening. The modicum of respect ought to originate outside Theory. It may sound like I wear Theory arrogantly or with a chip on my shoulder; I would say we live in a Theoretical world and I put the chip there pragmatically. Any talk of the commensurability of our debate is secondary.
Posted by: VA | Feb 5, 2007 2:09:43 AM
Scott,
I know you hate him now and all, but if you could put your emotions aside I'd think you'd find that Craig has a valid point. I myself have also never met anyone who says "I do theory." It's always political theory, critical theory, etc. I don't consider what I do to be 'theory' by the terms that you and Holbo seem to think are obvious, though I'm sure if you read any of my work you'd think it was (because you wouldn't like it).
John,
To say that Husserl is a Romantic is just wrong. It's a send up and nothing more, deployed to try and make a point through performative rhetoric and not through analysis. The fact that you basically include the canon of ‘Continental philosophy’ (Marxism to Phenomenology and beyond) shows that you are still well within the stupid and boring debates about analytic v continental.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Feb 5, 2007 3:37:32 AM
Craig:
you are showing more than a little bit of ignorance
You’re right, I am. I chose the Parsonian example because I happened to be talking to a sociologist the other day about the disconnect between foundational aspects of academic sociology and what she’d heard at the “theory” lecture we’d both just attended. So, my bad. Still, note how you’ve grasped onto a single example, made in passing, in part of a much larger argument. I bet you wet yourself when you saw my flip example happened to fall in your area of “expertise.” Fine, good sir, this round to you. Of course, you’re still not making the argument you think you are. The statement “this is an interesting problem in itself” glosses over the very thing I’m discussing, namely, the impact of foundational statements on the future shape of a discipline. An “interesting problem,” isn’t it? I wonder, then, why you’re so averse to all attempts to confront it.
But I digress. Back to your “point”:
Your ignorance is, once again, getting ahead of you. For the vast majority of sociologists, "doing theory" means what is called "theory construction" and "hypothesis testing."
Yes, that’s exactly what someone leaving a seminar on Derrida and Theories of Justice means when they say they “do theory,” Craig. It’s exactly what someone who leaves the Badiou/Balibar mini-seminar last night means when they say they “do theory.” Hate to the harbinger, Craig, but you’re inventing contexts to score rhetorical points. Shall I continue? Do you want me to run down the course description for Irvine for the past six years and demonstrate how, in every single instance, you’re wrong about what the person who says they “do theory” means?
What you call "theory" by and large does not exist in the social sciences in the same way they do in Book of the Month Club degrees like your own.
My “Book of the Month Club degree”? I can see the spittle running down the screen here, Craig. What next, are you going to insult my mother? (Hint: Call her a “two-dollar whore,” as it’s the accurate statements that sting the worst.)
CR:
I've never seen a single person assign the text and not a single person as ever referenced it or discussed it with me.
Really? I know they assign it here now at the undergraduate and graduate level, and the impression I got at the MLA – granted, it was from the editors, so they may have been selling me a line – was that it had quickly become the, um, “Norton” for introductory theory classes. I looked up the sales ranks for the three most popular theory anthologies on Amazon:
Norton #10,903
David Richter #57,244
Hazard Adams #194,956
And was about to say something, but then I realized that you can only look at new sales, so of course the newer Norton, without its well-established backlog of used copies, would outsell the Richter and Adams. Still, I’d love to get hard numbers on this, you know, for that thing I’m writing.
VA:
Show me the argument that starts outside Theory that doesn't begin with the premise "You theory people need to stop talking" and I'll start listening.
Um, hello? Is this thing on?
Anthony:
I'm sure if you read any of my work you'd think it was [theory] (because you wouldn't like it).
I think the causality’s a little weird there, but I don’t think I’d dislike it for those reasons. For instance, I find much of what you write at The Secret Blog interesting, just as I find much of what Sinthome writes interesting. Sure, I have methodological problems with both, but that doesn’t mean I’d dismiss it flat.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 5, 2007 4:12:52 AM
Anthony, when you deny that it is possible that Husserl can be read as belonging, in an odd but significant way, to the same philosophical lineage as the post-Kantian German romantics, exactly what CLAIM are you so sure is false? In short, how do you know that my position is wrong?
Posted by: jholbo | Feb 5, 2007 5:36:15 AM
I didn't say it was wrong, I said it was stupid (in a technical sense). Seriously, if you claim to be doing rigorous intellectual history (or moving toward RIH or however you want to put yourself in relationship to RIH) and try to make the claim that Husserl is, at all, a German Romantic (or in their lineage) you need to rethink your definition of rigor. Husserlian phenomenology shares more in common with positivism than it does with romanticism. The only possible way I can even conceive of you coming to this conclusion is by way of a very bad, non-rigorous and ahistorical reading of the Crisis texts.
If this isn't a send up, I don't know what is. So I guess I know you are wrong but you don't seem very serious about this. Which is fine, if you weren't trying to regulate.
SEK,
You're missing the point - I think when you say theory you mean something specifically coming from the literature departments. When I talk to people outside my discipline (broadly lets say what I do is religious studies and philosophy of religion of a certain stripe) I don't understand it as talking to other theorists. I understand it as a general orientation in the humanities, a 'trans-disciplinary' conversation. I don't read Lacan (never have) but I'll have a conversation with a Lacanian from which I may take new insights (or maybe not, depends obviously) into my own studies. The same goes for historicists of all stripes (in fact many of the actual theologians I talk to are essentially historicists).
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Feb 5, 2007 6:02:50 AM
SEK,
Oh, and the blog isn't secret. Any one can visit An und fur sich and comment on my vitalism posts, I just don't want to get in pointless discussions about my methodology. You want to be a historian, that's fine, but I do not. History is good and valuable and all that, but I don't treat it as the new Queen or, what it really is, Police Officer of the disciplines. And, as I'm sure you know, I have serious misgivings about what I call your common-sense rationalism (probably not a good term).
That said, I'm open to historicists and historians and all manner of historically minded people educating me about some historically aspect of vitalism (or any of the subjects I'm interested in).
I am most interested to see if I'm considered a 'theory blogger' by you and the other haters.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Feb 5, 2007 6:15:51 AM
I'm reading Husserl not just through the crisis text - though there is that - but through Derrida and Heidegger. (I'm not sure what angle you prefer. You may prefer to NOT read Husserl through these inheritors, as it were. But I would hope you would acknowledge Heidegger and Derrida as possible inheritors of Husserl's phenomenology. Is that fair?)
Ask yourself: why did Frege become the father of analytic philosophy and Husserl become the father of 20th Century continental philosophy? Frege and Husserl had much in common. But then again, in many ways they were different. How so? The features of Husserl that attract the likes of Derrida and Heidegger to Husserl seem to me to be many of the distinctive features he shares with German thinkers of the immediate post-Kantian generation. A focus on transcendental experience, and on crisis (yes, there's that.) A refusal of natural science as a model for philosophy. I don't know how much Husserl you are familiar with, actually.
Anthony, let me be frank with you: when I make serious claims you simply bark in my face that I am wrong. You spew abuse and accusations at me. Can you imagine why I might find that tedious. I have certainly never attacked you. The worst I have done is, when abused, ironically responded by nit-picking at the extremity of your ill-temper. If you want to have a conversation, then calm down. Consider what I have to say on the merits. Don't just scream that I am a narrow-minded analytic philosopher or that I never read enough Zizek. You yourself don't believe the first thing and could hardly have any way of knowing the second. When you have gotten to the point where you are so annoyed at me that you are making accusations even you yourself don't believe, it's time to back off and calm down. Breath. Relax. Now decide whether I'm worth talking to or not. If not, fine. But don't confuse annoyance at the fact that I have these intellectual interests with knowledge that my intellectual interests are confused. How could you possibly know a thing like that?
Posted by: jholbo | Feb 5, 2007 6:18:01 AM
I think reading Heidegger and Derrida as inheritors of Husserl's phenomenology is at best very vague. Heidegger pretty much leaves behind Husserlian phenomenology half way through Being and Time and all his later work is more 'in the spirit' than actually phenomenology (he says as much). Derrida is certainly within a certain tradition of French phenomenology, but he is not a phenomenologist. It is Fink and Merleau-Ponty (if you want to stick with a German and Frenchman) who are of the true lineage of Husserlian phenomenology. Surely you must know that there are many, many phenomenologists who think that both Heidegger and Derrida wrote 'nonsense'!
I prefer to read Husserl through Husserl and the tradition from him, not Husserl through Heidegger and Derrida. So I read the Husserl who was for more pre-Kantian and Kantian than post-Kantian. Even his 'refusal of natural science as a model for philosophy' is an attempt to make philosophy more scientific, to give it the ability to ground science not to reject it in favour of the same kind of ‘transcendental experience’ present in German romantics.
You can think I'm barking at you, but I think this has far more to do with a contention on your part that people have these debates on your terms than on my actual tone. I'm not saying you are a narrow-minded analytic philosopher, I'm saying you're doing a very weak and contentious reading of things. I can turn around and say that I'm not really sure how much Husserl you've read.
I think you are the one getting excited. I've been perfectly calm this whole time. Being calm does not mean I have to be polite, I think your reading is wrong and built upon a history of thinking about these issues in a wrong way. In a certain way I don't think you are worth responding to because you will always assume I'm just being overly aggressive or that you know more about the topic than I do, but it is precisely because of this attitude that I can't but help respond.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Feb 5, 2007 7:19:41 AM
Frege, Russell,and Husserl all trace back to Brentano, directly or through Meinong. Brentano was a Viennese Reform Catholic working in a late-Leibnizian tradition. Brentano's uncle was Clemens Brentano, the Romantic poet. Of course, this makes Frege a Romantic too.
Mach and Schlick, the first positivists, were also from the Vienna of that period. So everything is Viennese.
In Wittgenstein you do see both the Fregean and the Romantic sides.
Ernest Gellner's book "Language and Solitude" and Toulmin's "Wittgenstein's Vienna" both talk about a sort of "Science / Emotion" dualism expressed in different ways by different Viennese. (For example by expressionist poets on the other side. Wittgenstein financed Trakl and also Rilke). Se also Johnston's "The Austrian Mind" and Francis's "The Viennese Enlightenment").
That's the genealogy of the phenomenology / positivism split.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 7:23:57 AM
Brentano was a bit of a Thomist as well, no? That is interesting about his uncle, not sure it means what you are trying to say it means but interesting.
Holbo,
Just because I think you're wrong doesn't mean I think you are a bad person or that all your work is bad. Hell, I'm romantic enough to think that work I consider wrong can be good work as well. You're clearly a better writer than many (myself included) and I do admire some parts of the way you think. I assume a certain amount of friendship with anyone I enter into conversation with for an extended period of time. This often leads me to be more blunt than I would be and I am sure that I shouldn't assume it. But, yeah, I still think you are really wrong on this Husserl thing. Obviously we’d have to write huge, proper ‘papers’ to get to the heart of this and that is why I approach this as if we were in a non-academic setting.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Feb 5, 2007 7:39:16 AM
John,
Can we find someone influential in theory (other than Austin) who isn't a Romantic?
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Feb 5, 2007 9:17:13 AM
I'd say Levi-Strauss, Jakobsen, and the other structuralists were non-Romantic. But "Theory" has something to do with "post-structuralism".
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 9:38:57 AM
John Emerson--
a Foucauldian account of a discursive formation that might be called 'theory' in terms of its productions of power/knowledge, generation of rules governing truth, falsity, and the admissibility of statements, constitution of objects etc would be fascinating. It occurs to me that one way such a project would unfold is not through readings of major figures, but through minor ones.
It would also be interesting to do such a project in different Foucauldian ways, so, one way would be in keeping with the archaeological method of The Order of Things, sort of like a next chapter.
Another way might be more genealogically: here it could be interesting to add an account of interdisciplines to his notion of disciplinary knowledge. Do interdisciplines discipline even more, constraining their objects even more tightly? and how do these constraints fit in which changes and adaptations to the university overall? or, do interdisciplines free their objects, providing them a different sort of mobility? and, better, isn't it likely that interdisciplines free and constrain at the same time, enabling objects to travel because of the constraints upon them?
I think 'different' perspective makes more sense then 'better' (it also usefully avoids the problem of determining how better is assessed, better in terms of what?).
On who Deleuzians talk to: there are some pretty good reasons for Zizekians and Deleuzians to talk together: a fundamental disagreement over psychoanalysis. So, Lacan provides a nodal point for the conversation. There is also the issue of Capital and how to understand it and overcome/overthrow it. So, there are some points overlap that make conversation not only possible but important and interesting.
I know some Deleuzians who engage Habermas and Rawls. But, the deliberative democrats don't pay any attention to them, they don't address them at all.
Posted by: Jodi | Feb 5, 2007 9:38:59 AM
Interdisciplinary stuff I've seen, thus defined, usually is doubly constraining and gets theorized as a subdiscipline of each parent disciplines. I think rather of non-disciplinary thought. Non-disciplinary people couldn't have method uniting them into a group, and by definition they'd be skating on thin ice in everything they do. On the other hand, they might be quick at picking up the blind spots of the institutional disciplines.
Deleuze talked about nomad thought, and I sort of liked that, though I think he meant hnter-gatherers rather than nomads. methaphhorically, you would look at the uncultivated hedgerows between "fields" -- ecologically the meeting of two zones is always more diverse than either zone by itself.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 9:54:29 AM
Marxistas--or ex-Marxistas--capable of understanding or criticizing Rawl's Theory of Justice: C'est Theorie. (as Marx understood Hobbes as well). No need for spook-phenomenology chat.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 10:25:57 AM
JE--the idea of uncultivated hedgerows is fascinating.
SM--the claim that someone influenced by Marx couldn't understand Rawls makes no sense to me. Most graduate programs in political theory in the US require close reading and engagement with Rawls and the debates around his work. Reading isn't the same as understanding, of course, but being a marxist or a poststructuralist doesn't mean one doesn't or couldn't understand Rawls. For example, I had to take a graduate seminar on Theory of Justice, going through the book in detail, as well as the criticisms and debates, and then the later articles that became chapters in Political Liberalism. Actually, I don't know any political theorists who haven't read and understood Rawls. And, finally, rejecting, say, the premises of the original position (which I do) doesn't mean that one doesn't find other elements of the theory helpful. I think the idea of the difference principle can be used quite radically.
Posted by: Jodi | Feb 5, 2007 12:21:38 PM
Tho' what is more astounding about this chat (plzzzz delete if this offends) may be how Xtians invoke Vati Heidegger--whose DaseinSpeak falls to the right of Nietzsche hisself--- with nary a peep of protest from anyone--"theorist," progressive, marxist, or lit-person.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 12:22:02 PM
"This is why I never take a stand on alien abduction or 9/11 truth; that would constitute me as a member of the group/discursive community I'm trying to understand."
Well, of course you take a stand on it!
Firstly: a) by admitting that the Bush administration *lied* about the 9/11 attacks; b) by pointing out that it blocked the work of its own Commission; and c) by asserting that the Commission's report is simply not credible.
Secondly (and paradoxically): by describing all and any critics of the Bush Gang's farrago as "hysterical", "paranoid" or "psychotic":
http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2007/01/index.html
In short, you admit the main premise - that your government is lying about a matter of enormous importance (i.e., its Universal Casus Belli) - yet you pathologise and marginalise anyone with the temerity to question that "official account" persistently and to demonstrate its falseness and mendacity. (And in this post, you do so once again, by bracketing what you call "9/11 truth" with alien abduction.)
What is this if not "taking a stand"? De facto, and quite obviously, you are taking your stand with the Bush administration, which also endeavours to pathologise and marginalise any critics of its grotesque "official account".
P.S. It also goes without saying that you cannot *avoid* being a member of that "group/discursive community" - any more than any educated adult in the Western world can avoid it.
Posted by: warszawa | Feb 5, 2007 12:36:15 PM
""the difference principle""
OK. At the very least discussions of distribution (how to implement it politically and economically, and related matters--the "ought" issue), and efficiency would seem relevant to, like, about any political blog. Yet any such discussions are rare.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 12:39:48 PM
SM, don't be silly. No one was talking about Dasein.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Feb 5, 2007 12:43:04 PM
SM is a well-known guy, I'm afraid.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 12:47:49 PM
So are you, JE.
Heidegger--or phenomenology-- has no bidness being included in poli-chat.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 1:00:56 PM
OK, to be P-C--let's grant there are discourse communities: politico-economic, psychoanalytical, scientific, journalistic, literary, etc. Yet the thread (and most of Ms. Dean's writing) seems to suggest the political types of discourse as primary, with other discourses relating to that primary discourse. And that seems a fairly orthodox economic materialist position, tho' one might be more in favor of say a Hobbesian econo-materialist foundation (or Hobbes retrofitted via Rawls, greens, etc) than Marx or Zizek.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 1:17:11 PM
Sm, by poli do you mean politics or poly? I figured out bidness, but my interpretive skills have their limits.
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | Feb 5, 2007 2:19:37 PM
Poli, as in Pollytical.
Rawlsian contractualism presents some practical political strategies, however booj-wah or Amerikan they might seem. By rejecting Rawls--and "bourgeois" ethics as a whole--it does seem that one thereby suggests the superiority of various non-democratic political models, whether marxism, anarchism, or, maybe the Blackshirts. Rawlsian ethics is, granted, not real sexxay and lacks that deeep parisian- aesthete vibe, but better some tangible poli-chat than the endless "object petit a", or, Osiris forbid, Dasein.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 2:57:04 PM
Faucets & Pipes neck and neck with Long Sunday coming down the stretch...
The Valve: 3 writers, 17 posts, 40% of total word count (3241).
Everyone else: 10 writers, 37 posts, 60% of word count (4835).
Um, hello? Is this thing on? Yes, and your amps go all the way up to 11.
New topic: The Valve for Thee and Thee and Thee? In which Theory calls for "some critical intellectual history of [The Valve], by way of arriving at a judgment of what its advantanges and disadvantages might be."
Or better yet, not: I use the Theories grad school taught me, if they don't mean anything any more, teach me new ones. Or let me be silent.
Posted by: VA | Feb 5, 2007 5:28:33 PM
First, an apology: CR is quite right that I took that comment too far. I fully apologize and regret referring to a PhD in English as an extended "Book of the Month Club" meeting.
Second, at risk of causing another forty comments, I'll try to return to the matter at hand (so conveniently derailed by the representative of "msn.com").
My intervention in this discussion was around the question of why "Deleuzians" ignore "Parsonians." The easy and obvious answer, of course, is that there are no "Parsonians" for the "Deleuzians" to listen to. While "Parsonianism" or "structural-functionalism" is certainly the official ideology of sociology as it is practiced in North America, you won't be able to find anyone who will stand up claiming to be either a "structural-functionalist" or a "Parsonian." The point I was making here is that SEK's and Holbo's "critique" of "theory" just doesn't work when you take it outside the English departments for two reasons:
(1) What passes for "theory" in the social sciences isn't the same as what passes as "theory" in English departments. "Theory" in social science departments consists primarily in what is called "theory construction" and "hypothesis testing" and doesn't resemble philosophy - "Continental" or "analytic" or "French" or "Anglo-American" - in any way;
(2) Those who they (i.e., SEK and Holbo) attempt to attack are not in a hegemonic position within either political science or sociology in the same way that practitioners of "Theory" are in English departments. On the contrary, those engaging in the social science analogue to "Theory" are in the distinct minority and have, at best, only been able to organize themselves as a sub-discipline (the point Jodi repeatedly makes and which is repeatedly ignored). Indeed, for those wishing to do "theory" in the social sciences, they are forced to almost always enroll in interdisciplinary doctoral programmes, usually with variations upon the names of "rhetoric," "history of consciousness" or "social and political thought."
Consequently, the claim that people in the social sciences can say "I do theory" and be meaningful is absolute rubbish and can only be made by someone completely ignorant of the disciplinary structure of the social sciences as they are presently practiced. Contrary to SEK's repeated claim to be interested in "interdisciplinary" models of scholarship, what we see is an attempt on SEK's part to erroneously extend a critique of English departments to the entirety of the academy. In other words, SEK's point might score against rivals in his or other English departments, but it leaves everyone else absolutely confused. His point may very well be valid in the context of the MLA - I really don't know and really don't care - but it is ignorant and arrogant relative to other disciplines.
A reply is most certainly invited from SEK, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that all he can muster is invective and insult. Here's hoping for change.
Posted by: Craig | Feb 5, 2007 5:29:45 PM
I don't think this is going anywhere, but what about defining "Theory" as a time-space-specific phenomenon referring to the American appropriation of mostly-French structuralist and post-structuralist work, together with their necessary structuralist, Marxist, Freudian, Hegelian, and other ancestors, mostly by English and French departments but extending into some other departments, between about 1975-80 (??) and the present?
With the proviso that it peaked around 1995 or 2000 but that people are still grumbling about it.
With a nod to Cultural Studies, feminist scholarship, and various sorts of sex-and-gender centered scholarship, which are often but not closely related.
This actually is, IMHO, a properly vague and usable definition which does include a lot of people but not everyone, having an inside and an outside with some uncertain cases.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 5, 2007 6:09:05 PM
"Theory" in social science departments consists primarily in what is called "theory construction" and "hypothesis testing" and doesn't resemble philosophy..."
That resembles something like induction (or fallibilism), and quite a few filosophical types have an interest in induction, and related issues, probability, etc. That Marx's central arguments (surplus value theory, class struggle) are themselves inductive (contingent, er, falsifiable) seems to be one of the most commonly ignored aspects of leftist dogma (or leftist postmodernist dogma)---and mentioning that does not mean one sides with the right. Yet better contingent claims about perceivable events (such as finance capitalism) than literary or theological guessing games.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 6:13:01 PM
Matt:
Spot on, Ray.
If that was the entirety of your comment, I doubt it even made it past the spam filters. If it did the first time, and you reposted it again, I'm positive it would've gotten snatched. That said, by the time I saw the thread this morning, you'd chimed in. So, manners minded.
Ken:
Sorry to not respond to this last night, but it wasn't here when I did. Anyhow:
Where we depart is the attempt that I see, as the argument unfolds, to take that engagement with a disciplinary and institutional history and conclude some predictive taxonomy that explains something beyond the rise and fall of a heavily overdetermined historical object. So when you complain that theory lacks a home discipline, you're no longer doing disciplinary or institutional history, and at that moment, your critique falls apart for me...
The problem is, theory does lack a home discipline, despite being most influential in English departments. Many of the entanglements with this conversation are the result of 1) the strange institutional status of English and 2) the strange institutional of theory. The first problem, as Graff noted in Professing Literature, is that English departments were constructed such that they could absorb and compartmentalize dissonant areas of study (250). And they did, and did so organically inasmuch as the works they addressed were of, say, psychological or sociological import. Either they had to limit the discipline to what's particularly literary about Isabelle Archer's transformation in Portrait of a Lady, or they had to incorporate theories of psychologicial development, class-mobility and the like and treat the content. We know what choice they made. However, it led to the creation of this hybrid thing, "literary theory," which possessed the ability to analyze material technically within another academic purview, but at the price of self-consistency.
When 1966 rolls around, it is English departments which adopt post-structuralist thought. For example, outside of ads for The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structuralist Controversy in the back pages of Philosophy of Science, The Journal of Philosophy and The Philosophical Review, almost all of the early English-language citations of Derrida are in journals associated with English or Comparative Literature departments: ELH, Contemporary Literature, PMLA, Yale French Studies, &c. The institutional effect of this has been well-documented, but that doesn't mean that it's been well-understood, because (obviously) it hasn't. What is known, however, is that the foundational works of "theory" were imported and published in venues aimed at English and Comparative Literature scholars. (The ostracism of Hayden White speaks to this.)
In short, then, my critique falls apart because, not in spite, of my determination to write a disciplinary history. "Theory" is a part of my institutional history, and its adoption by English no doubt deformed it, since they had conflicting disciplinary pressures. So one way to look at this would be to say: I'm interested in how 20th Century continental philosophy was deformed by being adopted, then disseminated, by literary scholars. Because no one would argue it hasn't, and at every institutional level imaginable: the decision to publish this work instead of this one; the attention paid to subsequent generations of continental philosophers based on how they accord with a set of foreign disciplinary pressures; the money granted to bring this scholar over instead of another; &c. All of these have been heavily influenced by institutional pressures specific to English and Comparative Literature departments, right?
And yet, the subjects addressed aren't exactly within their charter. To take another example, when Zizek's published in The South Atlantic Quarterly, it's under the editorial hand of Grant Farred, a member of Duke's Literature department. When he published in American Imago, it was under the direction of Vera Camben (English, Virginia) and Peter Rudnytsky (English, UFL). All of which is only to say, that whatever deforming effects the institutional relation between theory and the literary disciplines still exists, even if the connection seems illogical. (I've a whole slew of concretizing moments like these for an article I'm writing.)
Illogical or not, it has been and still is there, and it's worth investigating.
Craig:
The point I was making here is that SEK's and Holbo's "critique" of "theory" just doesn't work when you take it outside the English departments for two reasons
If that's the case, then, as I've said time and again, we're not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about "theory," the thing institutionalized as such in buildings and anthologies. You're talking about something altogether different. And yet:
those engaging in the social science analogue to "Theory" are in the distinct minority and have, at best, only been able to organize themselves as a sub-discipline
What could the "social science analogue to 'Theory'" be if "theory" itself doesn't exist? You're slippinng between terms here.
Consequently, the claim that people in the social sciences can say "I do theory" and be meaningful is absolute rubbish...
Who claimed that? I said, and I quote: Do these people who claim to "do theory" -- who write on "theory blogs" -- have anything in common? After all, they claim to be "doing" the same thing.
You responded: I'm not particularly familiar with people who say, "I do theory" or "I am a theorist."
Did it ever occur to you that we might not be speaking about the same people? The distinction's important -- key, I'd say -- but again, even if we're not talking about the same people, the question about "the social science analogue to 'Theory'" remains.
Contrary to SEK's repeated claim to be interested in "interdisciplinary" models of scholarship, what we see is an attempt on SEK's part to erroneously extend a critique of English departments to the entirety of the academy.
See above RE: the relation of "theory" to the institutional history of English departments.
he can muster is invective and insult.
Funny, the first mention of you in this thread was by you, in which you called a passing remark of mine "nonsense," then proceeded to intimate that this kind of thinking isn't seen "outside of undergrads." I replied with sarcasm, but no invective, no insult -- scroll up to 10:27 p.m. and see for yourself. You replied that I was "showing more than a little bit of ignorance and arrogance," that my "ignorance [was], once agai, gettinng ahead of [me]," and that I belong to a "Book of the Month Club" degree program ... and now you chide me for invective and insult? I have this straight?
VA:
Yes, and your amps go all the way up to 11.
I think you missed my point. You said "show me an argument that starts outside theory" -- mine doesn't -- and doesn't begin with the premise "you theory people need to stop talking" -- and mine doesn't. (Of course, you implied that "theory" was some definable thing one could step outside of, which is, after all, part of my point here.)
As for the word-count, well, I'm not sure who the third writer for the Valve is here, but I will say that since I'm currently writing an article on the institutional history of theory, I'm interested in fleshing out these points. In other words, I'm not going to apologize for my interest.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 5, 2007 8:14:24 PM
Hey everyone!
Far be it from me to intercede in this seeming well-established draining of some blood-blister that's nature is to fill back up again, requiring further draining, each drain conducted as if the blister might go away if we all just do it right...
So this is just to say, as someone who currently "does" theory (at least according to others) inside an English Department, and a reasonably serious, au courant department at that, that the accounts from any parties here about what that's like and how it means make very very little sense to me.
That "theory" may have no ground is a matter to which much theory has addressed itself; that this discussion has no ground is actually a different matter, perhaps a necessary and enabling one for this (from the outside) ritualistic behavior. If only we could arrive at the imaginary reconciliation of actual contradictions and head off for less triste tropiques...
Posted by: jane | Feb 5, 2007 10:17:39 PM
Scott, no apology necessary! But I do owe John Emerson an apology for associating his words with The Valve. Sorry, John.
Of course, you implied that "theory" was some definable thing one could step outside of, which is, after all, part of my point here.
Nope, I implied that anyone who proposes to "evaluate" theory creates a position outside it, establishes theory as an object, and, typically, sets about trying to write it off. To me, creating that position leads to the problem Jodi articulated (are we who you say we are?) to which the answer would have to be no; but that's not really what's at stake for me. I'm saying, as far as I can tell, the move to evaluate theory (or "the thing that theory people do") is a precursor to writing it off. Really: where is the book that proposes to define Theory as an object that then goes on to champion it?
Now, I'm certain I've fallen into a version of the trap Jodi describes: "People accuse one another of not conducting themselves according to agreed upon criteria--of bad faith," etc. I'd say I fall halfway in: I'm willing to listen to someone who tells me who I am as long as there is no evaluation implicit in the telling (and to be clear, I think relegating me to history counts as evaluation). This is probably half-way to ending the debate, but of course, it's an ending I wouldn't mourn to a debate that excludes me to begin with.
Posted by: VA | Feb 5, 2007 10:26:41 PM
"""Natural science leaves no room for doubt that its assertion that the earth existed prior to man is a truth. This is entirely compatible with the materialist theory of knowledge: the existence of the thing reflected independent of the reflector (the independence of the external world from the mind) is a fundamental tenet of materialism. The assertion made by science that the earth existed prior to man is an objective truth. This proposition of natural science is incompatible with the philosophy of the Machians and with their doctrine of truth: if truth is an organising form of human experience, then the assertion that the earth exists outside human experience cannot be true..."
VI Lenin, from MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM.
Does VI hang on the theory or aesthetic wagon? Nnnnnnnnnnnyet.
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 5, 2007 10:44:33 PM
spot on, VA and jane...
Posted by: Matt | Feb 6, 2007 8:24:22 AM
I have long been the foremost theoretician and historian of The Valve, but my startling insights continue to fall upon deaf ears within The Valve community itself. They fear change.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Feb 6, 2007 11:00:55 AM
'Nuff with the Hegel-Marx schtick: real aesthetes dream of Il Duce : O Camicie Nere
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Feb 6, 2007 12:31:56 PM
Sean, you're tedious.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 6, 2007 1:04:37 PM
I implied that anyone who proposes to "evaluate" theory creates a position outside it, establishes theory as an object, and, typically, sets about trying to write it off.
Just last night I mentioned to someone that I ought to stop participating in these debates, since no one actually reads what I write anymore. To first bit:
I'm aware this invalidates what I have to say about "theory."
As to the second, what evidence do you have at hand that I'm trying to "write [theory] off"? You'd be hard pressed to find any in this thread, as it's not what I intend. You're confusing my critique -- which, as Jane says, and as the many citations in my current work attests, has a long and storied tradition -- with someone else's, then smearing me with. It's a lazy reading of what I've written and an unsophisticated imputation of my intentions.
I'm saying, as far as I can tell, the move to evaluate theory (or "the thing that theory people do") is a precursor to writing it off.
Again, I'd like to see evidence of this in my words, my critique.
to be clear, I think relegating me to history counts as evaluation
Not really. It acknowledges the fate of all things to become, you know, historical. Ignoring the longue durée in favor of a radical presentism warps any examination, regardless of the object. Now, the durée here may not actually be all that longue, so to speak, but the principle remains the same.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 6, 2007 1:09:04 PM
"Last night I stayed over at Brenda's. Our goal was to stay up all night. The ouija board told us to watch nightmare theater. The movie wasn't that good. It was giant ants that wrecked a trailer.
"Around 2am we went to make pillsbury biscuits but we couldn't get the biscuit thing to pop open. We hit it on the counter 500 times then Brenda hit it with a hammer and it flew across the room and crashed into the dog dish and Brenda's mom woke up and told us to get to bed.
"Then the guy on KOL said call in your request so we snuck back in the kitchen and Brenda requested a song by Cream that she didn't know the name of about the love that you laid on my table. "It's for Donny," she said. "Make it from Brenda to Donny." The guy said he'd play it.
"For around 3 hours he didn't play the song. When finally it came on, he left out the Donny part. Brenda gave the finger to the radio for around one half hour after that. Then she asked me if I dared her to call him up and say "you suck" and also did I want to make some pancakes. And then we started to hear the birds. 10,000 birds and the light in her room turned pale pale blue."
-- Lynda Barry, 1990.
Gentle mocking, I assure you, and bittersweet. The enthusiasm of this comment line is irresistible, I confess, like a giddy all-nighter. My observation is to take it up or down a notch and suggest that the reason this question is so intoxicating is because it is a basic existential question: who are we, what are we doing with our lives, and is the path we are on good? These are eternal questions, as far as I am concerned, and the enthusiasm arises in part from our curiosity and our desire to see the conversation never end. It never ends, in the sense that each generation raises it anew, and we seem to understand this, and asking these questions brings us into conversation with our ancestry and the cosmos, so to speak. But like the night at Brenda's, it ends for us, and there's something tragic about the inevitable come-down. It's not a fear of death so much as a fear, perhaps, of animality, i.e. meeting basic requirements of sustenance, when there's no time for ontologies.
On a different tact, I'm currently reading Ferdinand Lassalle's "Science and the Workingman," a self-defence this quasi-marxist gave in Prussian court against charges that he "publicly incited the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes." Lassalle's defense is to invoke the Prussian constitution, which stated "science and its teachings are free." At stake in his defense, however, is not the interpretation of "free" but of "science." Lassalle feels compelled to prove that his work "System of Acquired Rights" is a work of science and not propaganda; in other respects his defense is superb, but in this one he makes a very weak case. Scientists, he says, are the only people equipped to judge whether or not a work has scientific merit. And he goes on to prove his scientificity by arguing his objectivity, counterposing his written statements to popular sentiment as well as his own opinions. He performs the division between faith and reason, as do all scientific theories; the courtroom simply heightens the drama. And the courtroom drama begins as a scientific inquiry, by suspending judgment, but like all scientific inquiry, it too must come to rest. One difference being that the verdict in court is supposedly final, whereas the scientific verdict is supposedly provisional, when in reality neither supposition is, or can be, rigorously adhered to. So what is the difference? The final ground reached in each case is based on a different regime of truth. In court, finality is maintained by precedence, constitutional law, and the temporal powers of the state; whereas the openness of a scientific inquiry is maintained by reopening the question, as Veblen will do in his essay "The Place of Science in Modern Civilization." (Veblen translated the Lassalle document). What I am wondering is whether or not this question of the nature of science could have been raised in the way that it was raised by Lassalle and continued by Veblen from within the scientific community itself. Can science "objectively" ask what science is? Or might these questions of validity, authenticity, "truth," ontological status, be mutant strains, growing out of collisions between incommensurate discursive communities? The question assumes some prior autonomy between these communities, which may seem untenable, unless we accept that discursive communities form around canons, or more generally media, in which case there can be a clear division between "inside" and "outside": you've either read the books, heard the stories, seen the episodes, or you haven't. You either contribute to Long Sunday or you don't. What's "at stake" in this tame discussion (in comparison with Lassalle, facing eight months in prison), is the legitimacy of a discursive community; but it may be that this question as to the legitimacy of "theory" or "science" or whatever cannot but be raised by someone who does not belong to the community. Therefore, disputing whether or not the other's representation of "us" is legitimate may be no more than (and indeed the enthusiasm of this comment line suggests that this is not lost on "us") to thank the other for the opportunity to raise an existential question in ways that we could not have otherwise posed. (I'm channeling Heidegger, denken ist danken.) "Are we who you say we are?" not as accusation but as investigation.
Posted by: Cornchops | Feb 6, 2007 2:06:19 PM
Whoops, I sort of lost the urgency of the comparison with Lassalle's situation at the end there. Something to investigate further, I suppose.
Posted by: Cornchops | Feb 6, 2007 2:19:29 PM
It acknowledges the fate of all things to become, you know, historical.
True enough, but as far as I'm concerned a history of theory would have to be written in the future anterior. It sounds like what you actually want to write is more like a survey.
But even still, you're trying to have it both ways. You're claiming to have a position "inside" theory that nevertheless perceives the field as a "forest." From my lazy reading of your numerous and lengthy comments, I think you're more invested in the "outside" position, in which case, we're either not having the debate we think we're having, or your project isn't what you say it is. I'm reminded of your post about the current MFS. You conclude by saying, "but for some reason, I feel eminently qualified to analyze this issue of MFS." You claim it's not your inner "enthusiast" (insider) doing the analysis but your inner "historicist." The problem should be evident there: you think that claiming to be a historian automatically puts you "outside" and "qualifies" you to critique away. The historicist gambit just doesn't work for me, at least not when it comes to Theory.
A history of theory's institutionalization would certainly be interesting; I thought Guillory's was, for example. But even in the way he set up his argument about the arrival of deconstruction at Yale, Theory gets set up as a group of guys getting together in a cafe once a week and flattering the hell out of each other. I'd be interested to see how you set up the meeting of the academy with Theory without abjectifying it.
Posted by: VA | Feb 6, 2007 4:29:19 PM
"Historicist gambit" is a good way to characterize it, only in the chess instead of colloquial sense: I play the Historicist gambit knowing that it'll require certain sacrifices be made; increase the likelihood of certain positions over others; &c. I play this game because I think it's what'll best allow me to "win," i.e. accurately describe the object before me, be it a poem, novel, intellectual trend, &c. I aware of the price I pay and have accepted to play within the limits I've imposed upon myself; in short, I know it's a gambit and what that entails.
The alternative, in my experience, has been to fetishize immanence and make arguments about the relation of one body of thought to another as if they existed outside institutions, as if theoretical work transpired in a Platonic realm of Ivory Towers (to borrow from Jeff Williams). It doesn't, and never has. Institutional forces have always existed, always deformed thought, and a proper institutional history accounts for both the interplay of ideas and the context in which that interplay took place. To do the latter, you're forced to play the Historicist Gambit.
(Also, although I'm not comfortable with Guillory's book after the first chapter, I can't discount his account of deconstruction's arrival in America. It may not have exactly been three men at Yale sitting around a table, but the circumstances of its arrival and dissemination are so unusual, it may have well of been.)
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 6, 2007 5:46:18 PM
Just a query: Which Guillory book are you talking about? Cultural Capital?
Posted by: Jon | Feb 7, 2007 12:12:22 AM
Yep, Cultural Capital. I've heard it said Guillory was airing personal grievances with the story he was telling about DeMan and his acolytes.
Scott, thanks for offering your rationale.
Posted by: VA | Feb 7, 2007 2:31:21 AM
LongSunday, Grade:
Surrealism 500
F
Posted by: DebussyDecapitated | Feb 7, 2007 12:05:12 PM
VA writes:
I'm willing to listen to someone who tells me who I am as long as there is no evaluation implicit in the telling
[end VA]
Absolutely! I agree with that. If there's some way to tell me, for instance, that my views are expressions of my petty-bourgeois existence, or that they are the unconscious justifications of a class society, or that they are the product of an unresolved oedipus complex, without implying that I am an idiot, naive, frustrated mother lover, etc., there's no good reason for me to refuse to listen, at least, and respond on the merits. There is zero intellecutal value I can make out in making personal comments about the person who has written something. Even if all of us at Long Sunday could peer into the motivational states of every poster and know for a fact that someone says 'x' as a result of 'y' personality defect, it would still be irrelevant to the discussion of the topic. If someone says something stupid, just address that, without going on to say that someone is stupid. And that's the right way to proceed not because it's sweet and the mood is less 'tense'; not at all. No, focusing on what's wrong with what someone says and refraining from going on to assault that person's character is crucial for keeping on topic. The topic has much more general interest than anyone's specific personality. If a discussion veers away from a topic to discuss whether or not someone has written something in bad faith, the topic can't help but suffer.
The idea behind 'collegiality' can be abused when it is used to suppress discussion. "Be collegial! Don't say anything about Derrida to Professor Huff'n'Puff or he'll explode!" But when actual intellectual topics are being discussed, 'collegiality' in the sense of keeping the focus on the thoughts we are carriers of requires that we refuse to switch the discussion over to the carriers. Keeping the right focus probably also requires that if someone does something in bad faith, it is ignored rather than eagerly pounced on. Again, not to be nice, and not to avoid heated exchanges. I've seen heated intellectual exchanges that never once included an 'ad hominem' attack over a long series of back and forth posts; no one once saying "you must not have ever read so-and-so, you mediocre fraud." Probably the authors had serious doubts about each other's acumen. But that had no place in the exchange; in the clarification of ideas. And so I don't think there is the slightest bar to talking about anything with anyone as long as a strict, self-imposed ban on ad hominem attacks is maintained.
Posted by: Swifty | Feb 7, 2007 5:28:34 PM
But when actual intellectual topics are being discussed, 'collegiality' in the sense of keeping the focus on the thoughts we are carriers of requires that we refuse to switch the discussion over to the carriers. Keeping the right focus probably also requires that if someone does something in bad faith, it is ignored rather than eagerly pounced on.
Not sure that I agree. Not sure that the "collegiality" that you name here doesn't have some pretty tragic (or is it bathetic) effects in the academy as currently constituted. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to work without working on the institutional (and wider social) contextualization out of which text x or moment y or utterance z emerged. Especially when it comes to theory.
Calling names is very different matter. But I am having a lot of trouble not slipping from the dance to the dancer, the utterance to the utterer. It is partially paralyzing and probably interminable work, but perhaps still more valuable for it.
I know that you're talking about blog comments and I'm blowing this up to a different level, but I think the different levels are very much related, interdependent even.
Posted by: CR | Feb 7, 2007 10:24:47 PM
CR, could you clarify the terms of your disagreement? Not only am I inclined to agree with Swifty on the grounds of liberalism, I'm inclined particularly to agree with him where the issue under discussion is people doing theory. In my own consideration of the issue over at the Valve (I'm the Third Writer! I want my own Swiss penicillin scandal!), I compare academics working on theory to Daniel Johnston, who is bipolar. My point is not that these academics are loony. It is that the kind of alienated insistence necessary for good theoretical work frequently verges on "hysteria." In an important sense, being unable to tell the dancer from the dance is taken one way (it makes the argument feel subjective and illegitimate) when it should do the opposite, when hysteria and other "disorders" turning out to be derogatory ways of speaking about courage.
Posted by: Joseph Kugelmass | Feb 8, 2007 1:54:35 AM
Oh, I'm not much interested in "hysteria" and "disorders." Just institutional entanglement. And the general socio-political matrix that winds up with someone like me trying to write about politics via novels etc.
I don't mean psychopathologizing conversational partners, I mean working only with a sense of the space we're all taking up - never too many reminders of it.
Not only am I inclined to agree with Swifty on the grounds of liberalism, I'm inclined particularly to agree with him where the issue under discussion is people doing theory.
Why extra-liberalism for the theorists? That seems like a strange position.
Posted by: CR | Feb 8, 2007 10:38:05 AM
Re "bipolar", formal logic seem to be to be the science with the highest proportion of mad scientists: Zermelo, Goedel, Alain Lewis, Emil Post, and John Nash were all institutionalized at some point, and John Von Neuman and Gerald Kramer all suffered from very severe depression.
Nope, not avant-gardists or lyric poets. Logicians.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 8, 2007 11:31:26 AM
Aw yeah--avoid the schitzoid logic choppers and bottlewashers; progressives should affirm the wisdom of sane, self-actualized visionary-aesthetes such as Nietzsche or Ezra Pound, Virginia Wooolfe, Foo-cault.
Posted by: 01001010 | Feb 8, 2007 11:50:53 AM
CR, I'm not much interested in institutional entanglements, but I support anything that will keep them from extending to unjustified critiques of works.
I'm not talking about a second scoop of liberalism for the theory heads. I agree with Nietzsche that philosophical writings end up as a form of autobiography; something in the writer makes the piece possible. I differ from some liberals who think of debates over truth as grounded in access to Platonic objectivity.
So I should have put the matter like this: "As far as making progress as a whole academy, I agree with the liberal method of reasoned, impersonal debate. Furthermore, where ad hominem attacks are based on a style that is hard to assimilate (for example, the style in which Anti-Oedipus is written) we can offer the same defenses of these 'psychotic breaks' in writing that Foucault, Lacan, Zizek and others have offered in their studies of what today we call madness."
Posted by: Joseph Kugelmass | Feb 8, 2007 12:02:31 PM
"reasoned, impersonal debate..."
Hear, hear: a debate on Pentium vs. Athlon CPUs, say, for starters. AMD Athlon 64 smokes the jap crap.
Posted by: 01001010 | Feb 8, 2007 12:13:35 PM
01001010 is not someone who can safely barge into discussions of mentally-ill logicians.
Posted by: John Emerson | Feb 8, 2007 1:36:31 PM
Joseph,
I think that we are talking about two different things. At least I think so. The fault is mine for picking up a few sentences from Swifty's post that poked out at me, but I maybe took things out of the line of argument here.
I didn't mean to knock your interests with my "I'm not much interested in..." bit. I simply meant that my initial reply wasn't in favor of the psychopathologicalization of theorists. Sorry if I was unclear.
All that I meant to say above is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to read "theory" without thinking of the material conditions and institutional affiliations that informed its production. I can't think of, say, Adorno vs. Benjamin without thinking of the Institute for Social Research, NYC vs. Paris, etc etc. To see, say, Adorno's Aesthetic Theory as an entrant in an "reasoned, impersonal debate" further seems to contradict the basic presuppositions of the project in question.
In short, as literary modernist, I have no idea what you might mean by "impersonal." For me, as a reader of Flaubert, Joyce, etc, "impersonality" is the name of the moment when we see the contextual stuff flow into and in fact wholly or almost wholly constitute the thing that we might have called the "individual."
Posted by: CR | Feb 8, 2007 1:38:58 PM
'Tis true, ad hominem attacks on analytical philosophers appears to be one of your many specialties, JE. Pragmatists, like literary folks, seemingly enjoy the privilege of being able to deny and affirm Twuth simultaneously.
Posted by: 01001010 | Feb 8, 2007 2:09:31 PM
Because the trackbacks, see, they do not work.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Feb 8, 2007 4:13:47 PM
What do you mean about impersonality at the end? I'm not talking about the obligation to be objective in art, as it was conceived by Flaubert and (to some extent) by Joyce; I'm thinking of standard procedural rules, everything from checking facts to making logically consistent arguments. All of which Adorno certainly did.
I think compounding the personal history of a thinker's development, with the history of a particular institution that fostered a piece of work, makes a ton of sense. You may have a lot to add, if we do start to see posts about the history of theory at The Valve, especially since you're not antagonized by theory.
Posted by: Joseph Kugelmass | Feb 8, 2007 5:21:54 PM
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