Long Sunday

Geertz and interpretation

I first read Clifford Geertz's "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," itself published in 1973, in an interpretation seminar in the 90s. I benefitted a lot from this rereading, and here are a few points from it that struck me.

'interpretation'

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

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

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

Serious students need fear not (at least not yet)

Michael Bérubé has published his review [PDF] of Theory's Empire, for those who may be interested.  It is blessedly short, lucid, responsible and well-aimed, including (but hardly limited to) the jibes at Baudrillard, IMHO.  It is to be compared, if you like, with that of the conservative Peter Berkowitz, who seems to spend most of his time bloviating rather mundanely, and proving––at least to himself or to some imagined choir––and beyond any reasonable shred of doubt, that he has neither a sense of humor about Nietzsche nor any familiarity with Derrida's oeuvre.  In any event, an occasion to update that Theory's Empire page yet again, I suppose.  [Hello, that's odd.  The page--and that page only--seems to have been lined-out, at least under Firefox and Netscape, though it's still clear in IE.  I wonder why that is...any ideas anyone?]

Dropped out of the calendar

From Walter Benjamin, section ten of "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" (Illuminations):

It is–if one follows Bergson–the actualization of the durée which rids man's soul of obsession with time.  Proust shared this belief, and from it he developed the lifelong exercises in which he strove to bring to light past things saturated with all the reminiscenses that had worked their way into his pores during his sojourn in the unconscious.  Proust was an incomparable reader of Fleurs du mal, for he sensed that it contained kindred elements.  Familiarity with Baudelaire must include Proust's experience with him.  Proust writes:  "Time is peculiarly chopped up in Baudelaire; only a very few days open up, they are significant ones.  Thus it is understandable why turns of phrases like 'one evening' occur frequently in his works."  These significant days are days of recollection, not marked by any experience.  They are not connected with the other days, but stand out from time.  As for their substance, Baudelaire has defined it in the notion of the correspondances, a concept that in Baudelaire stands side by side and unconnected with the notion of "modern beauty."

Disregarding the scholarly literature on the correspondances (the common property of the mystics; Baudelaire encountered them in Fourier's writings), Proust no longer fusses about the artistic variations on the situation which are supplied by synaesthesia.  The important thing is that the correspondances record a concept of experience which includes ritual elements.  Only by appropriating these elements was Baudelaire able to fathom the full meaning of the breakdown which he, a modern man, was witnessing.  Only in this way was he able to recognize in it the challenge meant for him alone, a challenge which he incorporated in the Fleurs du mal.

[...]

The correspondances are the data of remembrance–not historical data, but data of prehistory.  What makes festive days great and significant is the encounter with an earlier life.  Baudelaire recorded this in a sonnet entitled "La Vie antérieure." The images of caves and vegetation, of clouds and waves which are evoked at the beginning of this second sonnet rise from the warm vapor of tears, tears of homesickness.  "The wanderer looks into the tear-veiled distance, and hysterical tears well up in his eyes," writes Baudelaire in his review of the poems of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.  There are no simultaneous correspondences, such as were cultivated by the symbolists later.  The murmur of the past may be heard in the correspondences, and the canonical experience of them has its place in a previous life:

Les houles, en roulant les images des cieux,
Mêlaient d'une façon solennelle et mystique
Aux couleurs du couchant refléte par mes yeux.

C'est là que j'ai vécu...

The breakers, rolling the images of the sky,
Mixed, in a mystical and solemn way,
The powerful chords of their rich music
With the colors of the sunset reflected in my eyes.

There did I live...

[...] "Recueillement" traces the allegories of the old years against the deep sky:

...Vois se pencher les défuntes Années
Sur les balcons du ciel, en robes surannées

...See the dead departed Years in antiquated
Dress leaning over heaven's balconies.

In these verses Baudelaire resigns himself to paying homage to times out of mind that escaped him in the guise of the outdated.

Latest Salvos

Lindsay Waters strikes again, four years ago (there's also a nice article on Perec).   I say, if you cannot beat 'em, join 'em.   The shame-faced and guilty decades-long Theory-pusher makes amends at last.   And why not?

(Update:  It's been brought to my attention that these two posts may be riding a little hard on Lindsay Waters, so for something a bit less snarky-popular and more philosophical perhaps, why not read this review by Steven Shaviro, from May of 2004.)

Dumm on Melville: Call me Pip

Over at I cite I have a link to an important article by friend Tom Dumm that appeared in the Massachusetts Review 46, 3 (Fall 2005). I'll blow the ending: he argues that Ishmael is Pip. Tom reads Moby Dick in part out of his interest in loneliness. He writes: "To be lonely in America   is to be black, and brilliant, constantly in danger of being bought and sold,   rooted in the deepest genealogy of power and loss, and secret witness to a catastrophe   that only deepens over time."

Here are a few excerpts from Dumm's article:

... C.L.R. James has made it the quintessential artistic   representation of the impossible politics of American racialism. It has been   made into film, into opera, and into a major Laurie Anderson performance piece.   It has been borrowed by all forms of popular culture so ubiquitously that its   characters are a shorthand for specific forms of madness, a fit echoing of Melville’s   own use of master Shakespeare’s characters. The conflation of Melville   the author with the narrator of the story—call him Ishmael (for now)—inevitably   has encouraged psychoanalytic studies of him, perhaps most prominently Michael   Rogin’s densely layered argument concerning the family fortune of the   Melville clan and the political economy of a country on the brink and in the   aftermath of civil war. The influence of the book on one of Melville’s   own descendents has been so pronounced that he has named himself Moby, and has   created ambient music reminiscent of the ocean. It is, in other words, a great   temptation, a book to be reckoned with by anyone who wants to think about American   experience.
...
but for me, above all, the loneliness of the person, whoever he is,   who says, “Call me Ishmael.” Who is Ishmael? For me, this is the   most important question to ask if we are to think about the lonely self, this   strange self that is beyond itself. The “who” of this question centers   our thinking about the ends of loneliness—is there a “who”   to whom we may repair, an identity that is able to settle us, a place for our   placelessness, a home in the world for the lonely?
...

Warning: This Sort of Thing May Actively Bore You

Two items: the first comes via the indispensable good taste of Political Theory Daily Review, whom you should all vote for, by the way. It is a review of Stanley Cavell.
The second may bore you. Then again, it may not. If not, perhaps you could venture to give your reasons in the coments box provided directly below.

Today, in 2005, it looks as if Sontag was dead wrong, her words a painful reminder of how foolish we all sounded back then when we wore our bell-bottoms and tie-dyed T-shirts. Interpretation has established its dominion over American literary scholarship. In so doing, it is threatening to wipe out 30 years of postmodernism that emerged out of the intellectual ferment of the 1960s. Can we break its hold?

Literary Darwinism

D. T. Max's article in yesterday's magazine was the first I'd heard of literary darwinism. Generally, I've been nothing but hostile to evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, finding them to rely on specific social and gendered assumptions that they then project back into the past and across onto all cultures. These sorts of explanations also seem to me to be hostile to political interventions and projects of social solidarity (it's pretty hard to get to social solidarity if our selfish little genes are just trying to have their way). But, maybe it works in literature.

So, here is a list of possible dissertation topics for graduate students in English seeking to make their way as literary darwinists.

1.  Crime and punishment: what's the big deal? she was past breeding years.
2.  Lolita: an aging man's last effort to send his genes into the world.
3.  Beloved: so, you lost your own best thing. Not to worry! You've got other kids!
4.  The Magic Mountain: protecting the healthy from the degenerating effects of sickly genes.

Try it! It's easy. And, a way to write a disseration really, really fast! Be sure to check the second link above for the list of the seven behavioral systems at the foundation of human life.

A Bit of James Wood

Whatever else he may be, he gets this sort of thing mostly right:

At present, contemporary novelists are increasingly eager to "tell us about the culture," to fill their books with the latest report on "how we live now."  Information is the new character; we are constantly being told that we should be impressed by how much writers know.  What they should know, and how they came to know it, seems less important, alas, than that they simply know it.  The idea that what one knows might – to use Nietzsche's phrase – "come out of one's own burning" rather than free and flameless from Google, seems at present alien.  The danger is that the American fondness for realism combines with this will-to-information to produce a hyperliteralism of the novel:  you can see this in Tom Wolfe....

The Neoliberal Imagination in Prep School Novels

Well we don't exactly claim to be on the cusp of anything here, when we get around to claiming anything at all, but in this our (well, let's be honest:  my) quest to be the n+1 groupie par excellence, Crooked Pins has lately been providing ample competition.  In the spirit of generosity, and because I concur with the general sentiment that the article in question is yet another "must-read," particularly for parents and students about to embark on the country club experience that is Ivy League college, I recommend you take a look.  In the spirit of cyber-communism, I'll even provide another exclusive excerpt, available only to subscribers (you really ought to be one) below the fold.  But you could also start with the abbreviated version here (may require bugmenot.com).

And really, their comments thread over there is a bit tired (debating the conservative right's moral authority on race issues by bringing up senator Byrd and the KKK has got to be the most over-used talking-point-that-refuses-to-die EVER, and I suspect we can do better.  The real issue is class warfare, for fuck's sake.)