Acephalous

Rape in Science Fiction

Reading zuzu's complaint about the attention a rape inevitably focuses on everyone but the perpetrator reminded me of something I'd drafted a few months back but didn't post.  At the time, I'd just written about rape in comic books literature and didn't want to seem fixated on the subject.  I also didn't want to put Adam Roberts—author of the novel I'll be discussing—on the spot.  But with Adam vacationing in the southern France and the other post nestled in the archives, I feel more comfortable starting this discussion.

Adam's novel Salt describes the colonization of a distant planet by religious fundamentalists.  Getting to that planet takes 37 years, during which time tensions between the different religious factions build.  After landing, the factions settle on opposite ends of the Great Desert.  Despite this distance, the Senaarians—a hierarchical, imperialistic culture—and the Alsists—a radically libertarian culture which, oddly, embraces a recognizably New Left strain of communistic thought—eventually come into conflict. 

For the first 226 pages, the novel switches from the self-hagiography of the Senaarian dictator, Barlei, and the man who would become a leader in the Alsist resistance, Petja.¹  Initially, Barlei's voice dominates, and so the reader's sympathies fall largely with the Senaarians, who seem to lodge just complaints against the free-loading Alsists.  Barlei will wax poetic for pages about how the Senaarians labored to find a way to move in open air despite the chlorine gas which hugs the planet's surface; whereas Petja will say "Our solution to the chlorine problem was a mini-mask.  It was a clever thing" (43). 

Knowing Adam's love of Robert Browning, I can't help but consider these dualing dialogues—presumably drawn from the memoirs of both men—as self-serving in the extreme.  Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I doubt it.  Barlei seems more trustworthy at first, but as his manipulations of even inconsequential truths begin to pile up, his revisionist ethos becomes increasingly troubling.  Chapter-by-chapter, the reader's sympathies drift to Petja and his open, non-hierarchical, sexually-liberated society. 

And when I say "sexually-liberated," I mean it.  Alsists frequently walk up to each other, ask if they desire sexual pleasure, and give and/or receive it.  As one might guess, this utopian version of the free-love movement is reviled and condemned by the strict law-and-orderists of Senaar.  But it works in Als.  Everyone seems happy with the hedonistic gender equity they've created.  As the details of Alsist life are revealed, Barlei's voice and the strictures it demands become increasingly strident.  Here, then, is where the reader's sympathies turn to the Alsist position.  (They're the Palestinians in this allegory.) 

But there's a catch.   A Senaarian ambassador is stranded in Als when the war begins.  Petja, about to leave Als to wander the Great Desert, agrees to ferry her into Senaarian territory.  At this point in the novel, all reader sympathy is with Petja and the Alsists.  The Senaarians inch closer to employing a flimsy pretext to invade and slaughter the Alsists, so as Petja leaves, reader sympathy lies almost exclusively with the Alsists about to be sucker-punched.  As Petja and the ambassador, a woman named Rhoda Titus, move through the desert, their apprehensions about each other slowly disappear.  They become more friendly, more collegial as the trip continues ... until, that is, Petja rapes her.

I say "rape," but in Petja's mind, it's a culture clash.  He's recognized their mutual attraction and acted upon it in a typically Alsist manner.  He construes her struggles as typical Senaarian repression, an inability to reliquinsh duty to pleasure.  The reader, however, is fully conscious of the fact that Rhoda Titus is being raped.  All of the sudden, all sympathetic identification collapses.  Petja mistakes her struggles for signs of cultural difference, while the reader, fully cognizant of what is happening, cannot fathom an appropriate response.  (I should note that such moments are characteristic of Adam's novels.  Their selling point, even.)  Why?

Because there is none.  The dictatorial Senaarians don't deserve sympathy just because one of them has been raped.  In fact, their genocidal streak becomes more apparent after Titus returns to Senaar.  But we can no longer sympathize with the Alsists, as their ideology allows the rape to occur.  Had Titus been an Alsist, she would have simply, directly declined Petja's advances.  But as a Senaarian, she kept her mouth shut, struggled in vain, and had her struggling mistaken for something else.  Compounding the discomfort is the reader's knowledge that if Petja had been able to understand the reason for her struggle, he would immediately desist.

However, the most striking aspect of the novel is that, in its final pages, the dialogue of Barlei and Petja vanishes and is replaced by that of Rhoda Titus.  She gets the last word in a novel otherwise devoted to the movements who conflict her rape was involved in.  I think this a brave, bold move by Adam, especially considering the prejudices of many a science-fiction fan.  But I wonder what those of you who've read the book—as well as those of you who haven't—make of this Ulysses-esque granting of the final word to the wronged woman.

Because Adam has created a situation of such moral complexity that it haunts—there's no other word for it—it haunts readers for months.  It does so largely because Titus gets the final word.  That gesture instantly reorients the entire novel around that singularly disturbing moment.  There are a number of questions I could ask, but before I do, I should say that if I've failed to communicate the emotional complexity of this moment, please say as much and I'll elaborate.  Describing a scene in detail without ruining an entire novel is difficult business, and I'm not sure I trust my ability to practice it.

¹ Calling him a "leader" masks the moral dilemma Petja struggles with almost every page of the novel.  The idea that he "possesses" the forces he leads, that they are "his" men, is anathema to Alsist ideology.  But, for the moment, it's convenient enough shorthand for what he becomes.

Well, Who Would Conservatives Have Us Footnote?

[This inflammatory baby originally appeared on The Valve.  But you're welcome to comment and/or link to it here.]

Laura Ventura, a law student from Indiana, picked up the then-latest issue of Critical Inquiry and read Anne H. Stevens and Jay Williams’ article The Footnote, in Theory.  She was horrified:

For those who doubt the far leftward tilt of college campuses, one needs to look no further than an article published in the University of Chicago’s Critical Inquiry to dispel such doubts. An article by Anne H. Stevens and Jay Williams titled “The Footnote, in Theory” chronicled Critical Inquiry’s most frequently cited theorists throughout its existence.

The number one cited theorist by the magazine was none other than Jacques Derrida, “the father of deconstruction.” Exactly what deconstruction means is hard to say because even Derrida himself could not give a definition. In a nutshell, deconstruction is a method for discrediting historical theorists such as Aristotle and Plato for the sole purpose of promoting Derrida’s own beliefs.

Her deep familiarity with Derrida’s oeuvre notwithstanding, I question Accuracy in Academia’s decision to publish such a laughably ignorant article.  Maybe a friend should’ve told her that anti-Derridean polemics account for half of Derrida’s appearances in CI.  Proof?  Of course I have proof.  Responsible scholars—future lawyers, even—read the works they criticize, lest they risk writing the equivalent of this:

For those who doubt the anti-Americanist tilt of college campuses, one needs to look no further than an article published in the German Studies Association’s German Studies Review to dispel such doubts. An article by Anne H. Fritzsche and Jay Ametsbichler titled “Die Fußnote, in der Theorie” chronicled German Studies Review’s most frequently cited theorists throughout its existence.

The number one cited theorist by the magazine was none other than some German Guy, “the father of some German school of thought.” Exactly what some German school of thought means is hard to say because even that German Guy himself could not give a definition. In a nutshell, some German school of thought is a method for discrediting historical theorists such as Aristotle and Plato for the sole purpose of promoting some German Guy’s own beliefs.

Before you protest how unfair my parody is, consider what Ventura follows that with:

Notably absent from the list is C. S. Lewis. It is a fair assumption that he was most likely left off the list because of his strong Christian beliefs and influences. This factor certainly sets him apart from number two on the list, Sigmund Freud, who did not have any religious convictions. Realistically, the fact the Lewis was a Christian most likely sets him apart from all the “theorists” on the list.

I’m so blinded by the fact that C.S. Lewis rarely appears in CI because he’s a Christian, I can’t see her argument to refute it. “Realistically,” it is such “a fair assumption” I can do nothing but accept its accuracy.  Sure, sure, the actual reason Lewis “was most likely left off the list” was that he wasn’t cited often enough to warrant placement on it.  But c’mon now, we’re being “realistic” here, and the obvious reason for his omission is that his 4,837 citations in CI paled in comparison to his overt espousal of Christian doctrine. (Anyway, we all know the tricks the left plays with numbers.  To them, math is but another masculinist discourse, &c.) After she’s proven that it’s probably fair to guess that Lewis was most likely left off due to his Christian beliefs, she addresses two other notable theorists absent from the list:

Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain.

Before you think no one could read that without ruining a keyboard (or two, depending on how much coffee you’ve yet to swallow) Candace de Russy seconds Ventura’s outrage:

Those absent from the list?  Such theorists as Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, and C.S. Lewis.

And people accuse John of using “theory"/"theorist" in the slippery sense?  I love Mr. Clemens as much as the next 19^th Century Americanist, but the man was a novelist.  He wrote the things theorists theorize about, not the things they produce.  (Not that there aren’t exceptions, mind you.)  Where to begin?  Maybe it’s better I don’t. 

Alexander Riley did, however, only to be spanked by the executive director of Accuracy in Academia, Malcolm Kline.  In 896 words—in fairness, only half of them are his—Kline said things. Some stuff, too.  Like, in response to Riley’s question

What precisely, one hastens to ask, in Derrida’s work have they honed in on, in their painstakingly expert reading, as evidence for this?

He said:

Ironically, Riley devotes more than 1,000 words to an attack on Dr. de Russy’s 99-word and Miss Ventura’s 364-word post.

Read the article.  That is his response to Riley’s question.  Again, I’m at a loss where to begin.  A pedantic statement about the unironic nature of the allegedly ironic question?  A note that the explanation as to why the sky is blue would be lengthier than the statement “the sky is green”?  Would pointing out that the response is a total non sequitur suffice? 

I’m tempted to write that any engagement with people as intellectually irresponsible as Ventura, de Russy, and Kline ought to be avoided.  Their commitment to empiricism, accuracy, and in Kline’s case, common sense, is as strong as is absolutely necessary to make the point they want to make when they want to make it. 

ADDENDUM: While I question the company he’s keeping, I can’t help but applaud [the approach of] former Valve contributor Mark Bauerlein’s contribution to this kerfuffle.  His assessment’s harsh [but unlike that of Ventura, Kline and de Russy, informed, i.e. incorrect but] not unfair.  Of course, were it not for “scholarly” interventions by the likes of Ventura, de Russy and Kline, many devotees would’ve [and have] moved on to other things long ago.  [Revised to to make what I said bear some relation to what I meant to.]

My Day, In Haiku

awoken by brawl
two cats fight, the others flee
claws out on my chest

summer dawn
the heat, pervasive
clutch my lungs

death arrives
by temperature
to melt brains

stumble into tub
turn on faucet, the wrong one
head scalded again

try to towel back
but wrench it, now pain is where
no water should be

fast forward
my day is rather
dull, you see

sit down to compose
works of astounding genius
read Kotsko instead

write one good sentence
erase it now, a senseless
git is what I am

inhale slow and deep
inspiration, it will speak
to someone else now

do not yell at me
what right have you, to scold me
for accuracy

I am just haiku
don't blame me for shortcomings
not my fault you're dumb

to take it outside
you want to take it outside
screaming, you will bleed

poems like me can fight
beat the likes of you, crippled
but with pretensions

yes I like my dawns
and frogs, and dawn upon frogs
and snow on fields too

not on fields of frogs
have you ever read haiku
dumb ass, you dumb ass

do you like me now
all up in your grill, you cry
but Mom hates weaklings

bested by a poem
Scott curls in a ball, pussy
willow, he bends like

Scott best give up now
if he knows what's good, for him
death, I bring with look

see that pony there
I kill it now, for pleasure
and laugh when it dies

I look like a poem
but sting like an enraged bee
you die, for honey

death pangs, they suit you
worthless, all your work has been
give up, already

No, You Weren't Thrown a Curve

[File under Language Log-lite.]

The phrase "throw X a curve" means "to surprise someone with something difficult or unexpected."  That definition baffles your average baseball fan.  Why would a hitter be surprised if a pitcher featuring a curve in his repetoire throws one?  Yet, according to Google:

throw * a curve ~89,400
throw * a curveball ~16,700
throw * a curve ball ~25,200

threw * a curve ~50,200
threw * a curveball ~14,200
threw * a curve ball ~17,600

Husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, sons, daughters ... bosses, employees ... assistant regional managers, assistants to the regional manager ... Mother Nature and Life-with-a-capital-"L" all throw unsuspecting "batters" unexpected curves.  You would think, with all these curves being thrown, people would realize that everyone and everything can throw a curve. 

Then why is it so effective?  Because everyone and everything also features hard cheese.  (Get a little smug and you'll find some mustard on it.)  By baseball logic, that's the only way to be "surprised" by a curve.  Note the scare quotes.  You're not "surprised" by the curve so much as you have to start your swing early in case you're thrown a good fastball.  But a change-up (which looks like a fastball but flies 5-10 m.p.h. slower) would "surprise" you in the exact same way.  The "surprise" lies in the speed differential.  You cheat on the fastball and anything slower—be it a curve, change-up, slider, knuckler, what-not—will "surprise" you in the very same way.

So why is the curve singled out?  Why does X always get you with the curve?  I'm not qualified to answer that question.  (I would've been if LSU hadn't dismantled the linguistics department, but then I wouldn't have caught people having sex in my office and never come to your attention.  He does work in mysterious ways.)  But I insist on commentarying anyway:

You have not been thrown a curve.  You've been frozen by an eephus:

The Eephus is thrown overhand like most pitches, but is characterized by the unusual high arc of its trajectory and its corresponding slow velocity, bearing more resemblance to a slow-pitch softball delivery than to traditional baseball. It is considered a "trick" pitch because in comparison to normal baseball pitches (70 to 100 miles per hour), an Eephus pitch appears to move in slow motion. Hitters typically get very anxious, swing wildly, or ground out.

God and everything you imagine exists in His Creation don't throw a curve.  They throw an eephus.  You weren't looking for it.  Didn't expect it.  But there it is ... floating erratically, so very seductively ... yet there's nothing you can do.  You've already finished swinging.

You thought they'd throw you a curve, but they threw you for a curve instead. 

What?  Threw you for a curve?  Crap, I have no clue what that means ...

A Just Humiliation

Earlier today, on a blog with unlinkable comments, I wrote:

Never fails.  Correct someone’s spelling?  Alwasy wtih a coupel fo typso.  Praise clarity and precision?  Always needlessly verbosely, with neither wit nor style evident in the presentation of the intended declamation, and frequently with errors of a grammatical nature, as evidenced in the previous comment vis-a-vis subject-verb agreement.

The same Law of Just Humiliation applies to outbursts of blog triumphalism.  Yesterday's post applauded in cluttered, clunky prose the clarifying influence of regular writing on the awkward word-stylings of academics.  Terrible, it was, what I wrote, thinking I did so well.  When, in truth, I failed in practice of that which I preached, and most egregiously, no less.  But, I contend, even in this failure—complete though it be—I learned that on a blog you can only merely ever aspire to champion a cause like clarity, because you cannot revise unless you plan posts weeks in advance.  But to do so would defeat the purpose, transfude the daily writing into a daily written chore ... and who among working academics does not already possess hoards of chores they blog to banish momentarily?

If I extravagate into distant, anti-triumphal territory tonight, I do so because I lack the means to trochiscate some palliative into an easily digestible form.  Would that I were possessiant of a pill expatiative, a curative of such impressive spectrum as to wither all fears and roots.  Were that my fears more meloniform, that I could shoot or swat sans purfle and sink or jack them thus from yardland ...

... by which I mean, I'd delve into the OED and make myself feel a little less stupid and pointless by parading my recently acquired vocabulary before all you ignoramuses.  You know, all y'all who don't recognize them words I wrote previously immediately.  Y'all have to "consult" some dictionary to sensify me?  I'm so much more superior.  You may as well as go do what I feel like doing but am "cleverly" "disguising" by "insults" I'm sure y'all "take" "to heart."

Doomed, we are, and to terrible things, no less.

Blogging Derails Unpromising Careers, Too: Part I

I know how much everyone loves meta-blogging, so I've decided to dedicate a couple of days exclusively to it.  All meta-blogging, all the time.   I may even refer to points already presented, thereby engaging in the even more beloved practice of meta-meta-blogging.  I aim to please ... and organize some ancillary thoughts for the MLA presentation, which I esteem finishing sooner than later.  Now, on to the post:

Can blogging derail your career?  The Chronicle wants to know.  As someone currently without one, I'm probably not the best person to ask.  (May account for why they didn't.)  But I want to echo and expand on some of what was said. 

Daniel Drezner:

When I was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, a senior colleague once told me his secret to academic success: One bad article equals five great ones. His point was that the worst thing a scholar can do is to publish too much, as opposed to too little. Any substandard publication creates a black mark that is difficult to erase.

As someone who has worked through disciplinary issues on his blog, this worries me.  The implication is doubly worrisome, as it suggests that people who consider your blog unacademic—unworthy of mention—will read it, discover inchoate ideas or undigested commentary, and consider it reason enough to dismiss your published work.  If blogs as a medium are incapable of producing serious work, then the obverse—that they not be treated a serious work—should also hold. 

But we know this to be untrue.  Careers are made and destroyed in the faculty lounge, the staff meeting, and five minutes of idle conversation while waiting out a storm.  Scholars should base their impressions on more, but as human beings, we can't fault them for basing them on less.  So what are bloggers to do with this online archive they've created?

As I scan through my archives, the first thing I notice is that I ought to revise many, many posts.  Stop boxing your ears.  I said it.  Revise many, many posts.  Stylistic infelicities abound in even the best posts.  You could chalk up such mistakes to means and pace of production.  I blog on a timer, for example.  I start writing at 6 p.m. and I stop at 7 p.m.  If there's no chance I'll finish the post before the timer chimes, I stop generating new prose and start working over old.  I polish up some little something I'd half written already and put it on display.  Why fixate on the polishing?

Because blogging is about paying attention to writing-qua-writing.  The same cannot be said of academic writing.  A successful academic must produce so much material in such a short amount of time, she must be born with or have already acquired a style prior to enrolling in her graduate program.  The traditional outlets for stylistic development have disappeared.  We no longer write letters—and we all know email rarely scales the epistolary heights of previous generations.  Nor can we all be former creative writers turned scholars.  So when are academics supposed to learn how to write?  In seminars when the content-crunch of the quarter or semester buckles knees?  During the dissertation process, when deadlines loom and there is always, without fail, more research to be done?

I know, I know, this isn't the familiar account for the declining standards of academic prose.  Why hold complex post-structuralist thought responsible for the "quality" of our prose?  Why not hold the rigors of contemporary academic life responsible instead?  Granted, Derridean thought hot-dogs in Derridean prose and Judith Butler claims revolutionary intent drives her willful obscurity—but the Derridean hot-dogger and Butlerian revolutionary are exceptional cases.  Most academics don't wrestle with Derridean philosophical complexity or share Butler's revolutionary commitments.  They may appear to, but only because they lack practical experience in communicating abstruse thought to non-specialists. 

When—as is the case in English deparments—everyone seems a specialist unto themselves, expert only in the subject and idiosyncratic method of their expertise, the inability to report their findings to colleagues hinders the development of the entire field.  Wouldn't time spent slogging through hastily assembled essays be better invested elsewhere?  A discipline-wide commitment to clarity—to the creation of a generation whose prose is as masterful as its thought is adroit—begins with the establishment of something not unlike the current blogosphere.  A space in which difficult ideas are hashed in a language which does not, which cannot, partake of the excuse that its difficulty is inherent to the difficulty of its subject.  As Derrida himself demonstrated, supple thought can be communicated in graceful prose. 

Or it could be, if the person writing it had time and incentive enough to polish it.

So what?  Blogs encourage experiments in, and the daily practice of, prose style.  Why do so openly, archivably?  Why not gather up your fellow graduate students and create a small, private online community instead?  These questions are interrelated.  A small, private online community possesses all the drawbacks of being a small, private online community.  The extant familiarity means you wouldn't have to navigate uncharted intellectual waters.  It would replicate, online, the already parochial quality of graduate life.  You know the people you interact with, their ideas, opinions, and the strength with which they're held.  You risk nothing in communicating with them. 

They wouldn't be what blogs currently are—namely, an environment in which thought is ventured without benefit of knowing how it will be received.  The possibility of a stranger encountering your work alters the manner in which you present it.  You renounce some favored shortcuts and impart your work with the explanatory apparatus it should've probably had anyway.  You forsake your professional tics.  You could keep them, but gaudy reminders of presumed professional superiority won't win you many readers.  Speaking of which ...

Brad DeLong:

A lot of a university's long-run success depends on attracting good undergraduates. Undergraduates and their parents are profoundly influenced by the public face of the university. And these days, a thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed Web logger like Juan Cole or Dan Drezner is an important part of a university's public face. Michigan gains in reputation and mindshare from having a Cole on its faculty. Yale loses from not having an equivalent.

Since I've been blogging, I've been approached by no fewer than 40 prospective English graduate students who want to know more about UCI's English department.  When their interests fall far afield from mine, I forward their email (with permission) to graduate students better able to answer their questions.  Think about how strange that is.  The department spends thousands of dollars to impress the top students, convince them that UCI is the best—should be their first—option.  I interacted with some of these students during the application process, after they'd been accepted, and while they were visiting.  They kept me apprised of their wavering, then tentative, and finally firm decision to attend one graduate school or another.  To them, I am an advertisement for the department with whom they feel comfortable interacting.  I played a vital (if unacknowledged) role in the wooing of some of the top prospective students in the country.  In the departmental ledger, that should count as a positive contribution. 

Not that its absence bothers me.  Official recognition would entail the burdens of official recognition.  But no one can deny the increased visibility even a relatively obscure blog like mine brings.  (This is the part when I mention that lots of people who were thinking of applying to Harvard, Yale, Berkeley and UCLA wrote to say that they'd never even heard of UCI before reading my blog.  Unless I'm mistaken, one of them will matriculate here in the Fall.)  All this despite—perhaps even because of—the fact that I'm not a public intellectual of the DeLong or Drezner variety.  No one should look to me or my body of work before deciding their opinion about national policy.

But a person could do worse than to seek out what I've had to say about historicisms old and new, the validity of psychoanalysis as cognitive or literary theory, or definitions of realism in American literature.  The audience for my expertise may be more narrow than DeLong or Drezner's, but blogs are working to expand it.  Witness the popularity of someone like Michael Bérubé and see how the expansion of our narrow niche works to the discipline's benefit.  People who have no clue what happens in English departments read his blog (and mine) and are disabused of the notion that we sit around appreciating literature on government dole.  They acquire an accurate picture of the discipline and its foundational debates, and leave with, at the least, a more nuanced strawman to beat, behead and burn in effigy.  With English departments increasingly under attack for having the audacity to be English departments, the value of such emissaries couldn't be higher.

To be continued ...

Reader Mail

You may have noticed—you may have even emailed your observation—that on Friday I "posted a lame allusion to VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders and haven't been heard from since."¹   I fail to write something substantial for four days and you consider me A.W.O.L.?  Some bloggers disappear for weeks with nary "a lame allusion."  I "disappear" for 48 hours and you call off the search?  I could be drowning in two inches of water right over that ridge but you wouldn't know until they matched the dental records of them bones to mine in 2027. 

Point being, you people care too much, but not strongly enough.  You lose the hounds when I quiet down, but you rein them in before they have a chance to find me.  (A beagling metaphor on a blog?  Is that really necessary?)  That disturbing counter-tenor reminds me that I "reemerged" from my "hibernation" to answer some reader mail.  I receive more of it than you may think, along the lines of three or four missives daily.  (You must seem approachable.)  I must.  To the mailbag!

But not mine!  This is from Adam Roberts' mailbag, which he forwarded to me, and to which I replied, and from which a carbon-copy permission to reprint was ventured and obtained:

Adam:

Glad you like the Valve.  There's a lot of interesting stuff posted there.  Then, once you get hooked on Crooked Timber, Long Sunday, Torque Control and all the other literary blogs you'll really discover the meaning of the phrase 'time wasting'.

Jessica:

Oh, why did you do that?  I am now hooked on Crooked Timber.  (And Acephalous, though that dates from a while back; I've been a fan of Scott Eric Kaufman for beards.)  I also like Pandagon, which keeps me in American-themed righteous feminist rage.

Flattery does wonders for the soul, as does "American-themed righteous feminist rage" (about which, more later).  Only I find Jessica's assertion that she's been a fan of me "for beards" perplexing.  (You have fans?  That's awesome.)  It is, isn't it?  Now hush.  People'll get ideas.  Where was I?  (Beards.)  Yes, "for beards."  What could she mean?

I've narrowed it down.  It must mean she's read me

1. For as long as it's taken her to grow one (presumably, quite)
2. For as long as it takes me to grow one (a week, tops) or
3. That she read that nifty Jonathan Lethem article "The Beards" [.pdf] (in which case I'm one of the three most important people in her life, a fact she won't recognize for a decade or so, long after she's stopped reading me).

I must say, my Canadian readers confuse me mightily.  On to the next question!

I don't know why, but the other day I couldn't get your site to load, so I searched your full [pretentious] name and found you all over the place.  Some of the places I could see why, but what's with all the feminist blogs?  I don't want to sound like a jerk, but you don't strike me as the kind of guy who'd spend time in the feminist blogosphere.

I'm not sure how to answer this one.  I do spend a lot of time reading feminist blogs, and I do comment on Feministe regularly.  I read most of the other big feminist blogs, but I don't comment on 'em so often.  I don't think it has much to do with the quality of the community, since there's substantial overlap between 'em ... so it must be the color scheme. 

When I'm commenting at Feministe, I feel like I'm at  home.  The soothing blacks, greys, reds and the familiar oranges of "Shotgun Sally" must incline me to comment comfortably, as I have no other explanation.  Still, I admit that I feel much like this reader everytime I venture into unknown territory and find a string of comments by John Emerson.  Where does that remarkable man not write regularly?

I'll have more to say about this idea of "community expectations" in my presentation at the MLA ... which means I'll be running it by y'all well before-hand.  To the next email!

You've mentioned your man-crush on David Wright before, so I'm guessing you're a Mets fan.  What do you think there chances are?

Mr. "Brave4life" would love for me to jinx this magical year out of existence, but I refuse to comply.  He or she will have to settle for the following explanation:

David Wright is a beautiful, talented man.  Dos Carlos make my knees weaken when either step to the plate.  And José Reyes?  With feeling I sing "Olé, olé olé olé, José, José.  Olé, olé olé olé, José, José."  What Met fan hasn't questioned his orientation this year? 

We're all way too into men to call ourselves straight. 

Y'all need to deal. 

You love men. 

Get over it.

¹ For the record, I alluded to a conspicuous absence from VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders.  Who doesn't wonder whatever became of "The Cutting Crew" every once in a while?  What?  Seven albums?  A MySpace presence?  A current tour?  Looks like someone will be headed to the Joe's Crabshack in Santa Ana on October 14^th.

The Cutting Crew Regrets to Inform You ...

... that Scott Eric Kaufman just died in your arms tonight.  The Israeli ambassador to Ecuador purports that it must have been some kind of kiss, and confirms reports that you should have walked away. 

You really should have walked away. 

It Should Be a Crime

Browse, browse, browse ...

Nor is there any evidence that implanting sexual images in cake icing increases sales.¹

Flip flip flip flip flip.

¹ For reviews of research on subliminal influence, see Moore (1992); Pratkanis (1992); Theus (1994).  A review by Dijksterrhuiis, Aarts, and Smith (2001) is more sanguine about the possibility of subliminal influence, but acknowledges that even effects found under controlled laboratory conditions tend to be small in magnitude.

Until The Recent Future, That Is

A sentence from an article I'm reading:

This would be like saying that there are no other planets outside the solar system, because we did not (until recently) have powerful enough telescopes to observe them ...

Near as I can tell, that discovery happened in 2002, four years after the article appeared.  The author banked that people would be reading his book around 2002 and won.  But what happens to that parenthetical "until recently" as the book ages?  How will readers in 3018—seventeen years after first contact—react to it?  What will they make of our 21^st Century gambles?

In order to appease whatever sense of humor their nanorganic hive-mind assemblages retain, I'll be larding my work with conjectures likely to be true by the time a member of the collective distributes its photonitelepathic imprint.  I'll start by slipping in references inspired by current events:

This would be like saying that people could still live in Lebanon, because (until recently) it had houses and an infrastructure ...

I'll exhaust near-future history quickly.  (Ain't to0 much important happening right now.)  Then the fun'll start:

This would be like saying that no clone of  Thomas Jefferson could ever become President, because (until recently) the Supreme Court had not decided that the 22^nd Amendment  only applied to the original ...

This would be like saying that no colony of human-Qiso'Jovian hybrids could successfully invade a HumaCorp-controlled planet, because (until recently) none had TelePortal™ technology capable of penetrating a military-grade ImpeneDome™ ...

This would be like saying that Jesus would never return again, because (until recently) no one believed He would also incarnate in non-photonitelepathic space ...

I still have oodles of future history to cover—not to mention chapters to write—so consider The Suggestion Box officially open.

Flatter Me, Please

[Note to readers: Some of the material contained within is absolutely, 100% incorrect.  By "some" I mean "the stuff I linked to," not the bit about me being an asshole.  Which I am, as this post proves.  Sorry all, the next round's on me.]

Not every article bears great fruit.  Sometimes, it blossoms rotten.  Doesn't matter how you approach it, you'll be gagging by the end.  Case in point.

Now you'd think people would recognize it as such.  You'd think they'd read it, be offended, and realize that no response could escape its gravitational stupidity.   Anyone could transform that "argument" into a blanket condemnation of whomever they wanted for whatever the reason.  As thinking folk, we should recognize that feint for the trap it is and Fuck that! I got me enemies! 

I'll use any excuse to vent sense into their breathables.  That'll learn 'em how to think differently 'bout things what ain't the things that article reckons.

Must every poor excuse for an argument by someone you disagree with metamorphose into a whirl of unthinking self-congratulation?  How many times can "You're so right!" appear on the same page before someone's hay-fever acts up?  You send that many allergens flying and someone's bound to not stop sneezing.

I know, I know.  Who am I to deny people pleasure?  Why not let 'em feel good about themselves for a change?  What can I say? 

In this world, there are nice people and there are assholes.

I reckon you can guess my affiliation.

P.S.  I had a much different post planned for this evening.  A followup to the previous two, in which I'd to consider the status of the literary text and why it deserved the special treatment I'd afford it now that it's divorced from theories of cognition.  I even whipped out my copy of Literary Interest, eager as I was to bounce my new theory off Knapp's. 

Then I remembered that literature's no more than an excuse for communal back-patting—a bonding ritual which ensures the survival of the pack by validating the efficacy of its idols ...

Happy 7th Wedding Anniversary ...

... to the Little Womedievalist.  On this day seven years ago, in the middle of an afternoon thunderstorm, she hogtied some poor soul for life. 

I hear word he doesn't much mind.  Even seems to enjoy it.

On the Power of Psychoanalytic Theory. No, Really.

forgottenboy's version of my feelings about Gladwell's Blink sounds overly sanguine to these ears.  Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves may lack the narrative drive of Gladwell's books, but it is a far better introduction to the field.  His narrative may stutter through the disciplinary history case-study-by-case-study, but even a shot transmission can push the needle above 55 on occasion.  But I want to talk argument, not ornament.  Wilson cites the articles being summarized or criticized, and his assessments are responsible and generous.  Perhaps too generous.  So far, I've found Wilson to be a serial under-exaggerator (even in reference to his own work) who steps delicately to avoid tripping any bullshit detectors.  Still, he compels readers to connect the dots he lines up.  (In Blink, those debates are obscured by the litany of experts he interviews, none of whom think it's a bad idea to present radical positions as if they were the disciplinary norm.)

The most salient and alluring undotted line suggests, forcefully if not persuasively, that a person can acquire a Freudian or Lacanian unconscious by sheer force of belief. Not an actual one, mind you, since it would still reside "above" the adaptive unconscious; and not a truly "unconscious" unconscious, since it would be the product of conscious deliberation; but it could be there.

In chapter four, he delves into the research into constitution of "personality," and presents the consensus opinion that people's conscious beliefs and unconscious behavior are at odds. He cites numerous studies which demonstrate, for example, that when a person and all her friends are asked to rate her on character traits like "conscientiousness" and "temper," there is almost no correlation between the person's self-evaluation and her friends' evaluations; however, there's a significant correlation, damn near a consensus, among her friends. What this speaks to, Wilson argues, is the fact that the adaptive unconscious manifests its "personality" more forcefully in social situations, in moments when reactions are instant, or almost so, and thus rely not on conscious deliberation but on the unconscious modules. Their contours are clearly visible to everyone except the person who must infer the disposition of implicit processes they can only access indirectly. We can't control those processes despite the fact that they constitute the bulk of our personality. We are what we do, not how we rationalize it. (On its face, this is a familiar model. Keep in mind, however, that the processes involved work in no way like their psychoanalytic counterparts. No family romance and all it entails.)

How does Wilson know this? Like anyone interested in human cognition, he studies people with unique and/or extensive brain damage. He cites the Gazzaniga and LeDoux's famous study of the lobotomized patient whose right hemisphere (controlling the left side of his body) is flashed a picture of a snow scene on it and asked to pick the card which corresponds to it: a shovel, a can opener, a screwdriver and a saw. With his left hand he picks the shovel every time; with his left-hemisphere controlled right hand, he did no better than chance. Then they flashed different pictures at the same time:

[I]n one trial they flashed the snow scene to [the patient's] right hemisphere and a picture of a chicken claw to his left hemisphere. Hepicked the card with a shovel with his left hand (because that was the one most related to the snow scene seen by his right hemisphere) and a card with a chicken with his right hand (because that was most related to the chicken claw seen by his left hemisphere.

The researchers then asked [the patient] why had picked the cards he did. Like most people, [the patient's] speech center was in his left hemisphere, which knew why he had picked the chicken with his right hand (because he had seen the chicken claw) but had no idea why he had picked the shovel with his left hand (because the snow scene was viewed only by the right hemisphere). No problem; the left hemipshere quickly made up an answer: "I saw a claw and picked a chicken, and you have to clean out the chicken shed with a shovel. (96)

A basic example of "mind-blindness," I know, but a powerful indication of what the deliberative consciousness constantly does; namely, it confabulates rational—typically narrative—explanations when confronted with any situation.  It acts as if it possesses all the facts, understands all the motives, and produces an plausible explanation. The superficial resemblance to psychoanalytic theory reappears, but in this case, the distinction is definitive: there is no repression involved, no psychic defense mechanism at work here; the conscious mind is merely as ignorant of these unconscious modules as the distribution of liver enzymes. Our tiny, perhaps even epiphenomenal, conscious mind lies because that is all it knows how to do.

I prefer the modified "executive model" of consciousness. In the unmodified version, the legislative and judicial branches and the executive staffers work for—albeit not at the behest of—the President. He issues directives, sets "the course" which everyone else follows. Wilson, himself following Owen Flanagan, thinks the consciousness-as-President model grants it too much power; he prefers what Flanagan calls the consciousness-as-Reagan model, because

Reagan was the entertaining and eloquent spokesperson for a cadre of smart and hardworking powers (actually layers of power), some known to outsiders, and some unknown. This is not to deny that Reagan felt as if he were in charge in his role as "The Great Communicator" ... The point is that one can feel presidential, and indeed be presidential, but still be less in control than it seems from either the inside or outside. (7)

Obviously, the narratives we use to rationalize our behavior are interdependent with the processes they obscure. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can alter our disposition to our environment and our reactions to it. Short of a neurological event, we are more plastic than the interminable cure would have us believe; we are so plastic, in fact, that we can create a working model a Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Lacanian, Zizekian &c. "unconscious" where none previously existed. We can alter our social situation such that we relate to people as our preferred psychoanalytic model predicts, which forces the adaptive unconscious to behave in accordance with the altered social environment. We can slip a conscious psychoanalytic "unconscious" between our Inner Reagan and actual unconscious.

What this means for the study of literature is that the already strong argument in favor of teasing psychoanalytic models from works authored by writers of the psychoanalytic persuasion contains more explanatory power than I initially apportioned it.  Even better—or worse, if you've taken a hardline anti-psychoanalytic stance like some people I am—to the extent that psychoanalysis is literary theory, the superstructural relations it identifies are, if they appear with the frequency with which scholars claim, of extreme, perhaps central, importance. There's a catch:

Advocacy criticism is fundamentally, perhaps fatally, flawed. Any theory which considers fundamental a psychoanalytic account of human cognition finds itself with a literary trope in the place their theory of mind resided. They have unwittingly confused a highly sophisticated, literary manifestation of deliberate thought for the basic workings of the human mind. The mind is not a work of art, and cannot be treated as such. I will track this line of thought further tomorrow, but I think you can see the general direction I'm headed.

Untitled Thomas Pynchon

This information shot across my radar a few weeks back, but I didn’t believe it until today.*  You can now pre-order your very own Untitled Thomas Pynchon (Hardback).   

I’m not sure what to make of Amazon’s description (or its purported source):

Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it’s their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they’re doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

*I was burned by Time in 1997.  Some fool wrote a feature about the publication of Mason & Dixon, The Gospel According to the Son, and the “forthcoming” Salinger novel.

Psychoanalysis Is Dead! Long Live—Wait, Nevermind.

As a science, psychoanalysis is dead.  It does not model cognition, nor does it account for individual or group behaviors it has no hand in creating.  (About  which, more tomorrow.)  You can't read Timothy D. Wilson's egregiously judicious Strangers to Ourselves and come to any other conclusion.  All the bulwarks Norman Holland built to prevent its obsolescence have failed.  Spectacularly.  Unlike Frederick Crews or Ernest Gellner, Wilson "attacks" psychoanalysis by recognizing its importance to the field of psychology and citing it accordingly.  (Vicious, he is.)  While that move may not appear spectacular on its face, it's crucial to undermining the special disciplinary status psychoanalysis acquired by evolving alongside psychology. 

Fancying themselves scientists, psychologists distanced themselves from psychoanalysis, which they considered Homo neanderthalensis to their Homo sapiens.  With H. neanderthalensis evolving alongside them, they could point and laugh at its crudities but they couldn't deny its existence.  There it was, matching their pace, refusing to wither under the derisive hail of H. sapiens.  Because Wilson apportions psychoanalysis its proper place in the history of psychology—accepting his discipline's unscientific origins instead of shying away—he can christen psychoanalysis Homo habilis and be done with it. 

He can afford it the same respect granted all other progenitors: a necessary, but from the present perspective, unsophisticated version of the current model.  Just as we outstrip our "handy" forefathers, so too does contemporary psychology outstrip psychoanalysis. 

I realize how strange that argument sounds, what with evolutionary psychology and its reductive models garnering more attention than their cognitive counterparts.  That impression owes more to the inflated rhetoric I discussed yesterday than the current state of the field.  Given the evidence Wilson marshals, the discipline cares more about how the brain works than how it evolved, thus relegating those objectionable just-so stories to the status of window-dressing on the mansion currently under construction.   (While it may be best-selling window-dressing, no one in the profession mistakes it for it a structural element.)

The genius of Wilson's decision becomes obvious when defenders of psychoanalysis argue for its contemporary currency.  Like Norman Holland.  Holland, in an essay someone assured would accurately present "the actual scientific status of psychoanalysis," moves through a series of arguments which Wilson's method renders moot.  (Although, in citing patient responses to Rorschach blots, it teeters on the verge of being hilariously moot.)  Why?

Because all of the psychoanalytic categories which still have purchase do so at the expense of their interpretive uniqueness.  Contemporary cognitive science still believes that "much mental life, including thoughts, feelings, and motives is unconscious," but they now have empirical evidence for doing so.  Moreover, the evidence gathered shares neither characteristics nor origins with its psychoanalytic correlate—unless by "origins" you mean the equally generic "stable personality patterns form in childhood and shape later relationships."  By acknowledging its place in the genealogy of cognitive science, Wilson diffuses debate over whether it constitutes a viable alternative to it.  It does ... to the same extent alchemy constitutes a viable alternative to chemistry.  Its assumptions have not been invalidated, however, merely refined.   In light of evidence.  (Just as Freud imagined it would be.)

I could detail the paucity of that "equivalent" position, demonstrate how the antagonistic, interdependent elements of the psychoanalytic unconscious bear little resemblance to the oblivious, independent elements of the "adaptive" or "cognitive" unconscious.  I could point out how ludicrous is the idea that the unconscious is structured like a language, or how that particular Lacanian notion relies on a naïve overestimation of the importance of language and narrative to the unconscious and conscious mind. 

But then what would I write about tomorrow? 

UPDATE:  I know the promised "fascinating studies" have failed to materialize for the second night running.  Consider these last two posts the groundwork for the critique to come.  I need to demonstrate how Wilson's critique of psychoanalysis avoids the traps Crews and Gellner's charge headlong into, if only to diffuse the "If not psychoanalysis, then what?" responses which follow in any criticism's wake.

On The Adaptive Unconscious & It Not Being a Terrible Idea

[I should dedicate this post to Ray Davis, without whom I couldn't have written it.  But who dedicates posts to people?  That said, one item he linked to deserves special consideration, as it proves stuff written years ago possesses commensurate quantities of wit and intelligence to things posted within the past 24 hours.  Also, I remember now why I miss him, and regret again whatever part I played in driving him away.  But enough of that.  To the post!]

Today is one of those rare days I regret not being a "professional" blogger.  I have so much on my plate—so much which seems urgent—that I hardly know where to focus my attention.  So I'll let someone else decide:

Following Ray's links, I stumbled on Jonah Lehrer's lukewarm defense of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.  Unbeknownst to you, dear readers, I wrote a very similar account not only of Gladwell's book, but of all popular neuroscience, in which I declared sublime those

"meta-" moments that only books about human consciousness provide.  For example:

Picture in your mind the face of Marilyn Monroe.  Ready?  You just used your fusiform gyrus. (219)

Blows my mind every time.  I love books that produce the physiological effects they describe in the act of describing them.  Steven Pinker's explanations may be just-so stories, but the processes for which they account are solid science.  When he says "when Y, then X," you can be certain that when a guy confronts Y, his brain explodes with X—even if X didn't develop because a greater percentage of monkeys who could scuttle up trees one-handed in the rain survived than didn't.

Now, thanks to Lehrer, I can trumpet Timothy D. Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves too, only without all the caveats Gladwell inspired.  For one, the complaint about the dearth of footnotes evaporates.  Wilson documents the studies he cites, and I've spent the past couple of hours browsing through those articles.  I'm surprised by what I've found. 

More often than not, the claims the authors propound are far more radical than those Wilson attributes to them.  He tones them down, renders them more palatable to the regnant orthodoxy.  Which is odd.  Most popular science writers inflate the importance of the research they cite in order to grab the reader's attention.  (Norman Holland and Steven Pinker spring to mind.)  Why does Wilson take the opposite tack?

I'm not sure.  It may be constitutional.  Anyone who can "teach the conflicts"—that is the first non-paywalled link I could find—the way Wilson can possesses the rare talent for fairness in the face of vicious intellectual bluster.  He presents all arguments—the psychoanalytic included—in their strongest forms and that, apparently, entails deflating the work of contemporary cognitive science while inflating the importance of psychoanalytic "findings."  With the exception of Occam's Razor's appearance on page 79 —there is "no need to introduce additional theoretical constructs"—psychoanalysis seems a viable, if frequently problematic, alternative to contemporary cognitive theory.  (Which, of course, merely validates the "scientific" quality of Freud's intuitions.  Not that Wilson says that, mind you, only that he doesn't refute it vehemently enough.)

In short, Wilson's book is diplomatic, albeit devestatingly so.  What do I mean?  His rhetoric aside, one cannot read the first 130 pages and not immediately dismiss psychoanalysis.  While some of the mechanisms of the modern brain resemble their psychoanalytic counterparts, they share neither their power nor etiology.  And etiology is of fundamental, foundational importance to psychoanalytic thinking.  Does this mean that the psychoanalytic model is wholly irrelevant to the study of cultural or literature?

No.  (Although this may convince you otherwise.)  I'll write more once I've finished the book and have time to sort through my new theory of the importance of the obsolete philosophies of mind to study of literature.  (Sure, I sound dismissive, but the strange thing is, I'm not.)

UPDATE: I included no accounts of the fascinating studies Wilson cites in his book.  I'm not sure why, other than the vanilla excuse that I am, on occasion, not all that bright.  So I present those tomorrow, after I've finished the book.  (It only arrived around 3 p.m.  Who can read a 300 page book in two hours?)

On Not Taking the Long-Cut

We all take shortcuts.  We all have a couple of scholars in our pockets who, in a pinch, we feel comfortable reading what they've written about Thinker X instead of tackling Thinker X herself.  Admit it.  You and I both know where you learned about Ernst Bloch.  There's no shame in it.  (Anyway, in Scholar Heaven everyone gets to read all the books they always meant to get around to reading, so why not cut few terrestrial corners?) 

I say this partly in response to forgottenboy and Adam's comments in defense of Freud on the basis of established utility.  As a means to local argumentative ends, i.e. stripped of its universal explanatory power, I could live with the continued presence of psychoanalytic thought in literary studies.  I know—and am presently arguing with—people for whom this better-than-squat model enables them to produce incisive work. 

But I still question its independence.  As Ken Rufo recently wrote:

The splits that we see at work between so-called modernists and postmodernists, between Lacanians and Deleuzians, between all manner of methodological beasts, are in large part not splits caused by differences in reading for meaning, but rather differences in the methods by which interpretation and the subsequent production of meaning is possible. In other words, the theoretical assumptions that inform the interpretation determine the possibilities and final form that any interpretation will take.

That final sentence speaks directly to my concern that even a local psychoanalytic explanation has global effects on the shape and outcome of the argument it assists.  The argument may have turned another way—perhaps an equally tendentious one, but differently so—had it not adopted a set of ready-made psychoanalytic concerns.  A Jamesian reading may have worked better, but the psychoanalytic has greater appeal.  Why?

Cultural capital, for one.  Tradition, for another.  Equally powerful—and equally obvious—is its status as a system of ideas with a built-in fail-safe, what Ernest Gellner calls "a self-maintaining circle of ideas [conveniently] well-equipped with devices for evading falsification."  If we're going to take a short-cut, why not take the well-respected, traditional one we can expertly defend?  To put it differently:

We all turn conservative when we have our hand in the cookie jar.  It seems natural to stuff our guilty consciences behind the most heavily fortified position available, and psychoanalysis is it.  I understand the motivation, but fear it over-applied.  (In some cases, "only-applied.") 

I'm not knocking strong ideological and philosophical convictions per se.  I am, however, questioning the seriousness with which they're held when folks betray little or no awareness of the trap 1) integral to their theoretical druthers which they 2) spring with postal regularity. 

Why not admit it?  Why insist that one is open to new ideas when the very system to which one so rigidly subscribes precludes the possibility of accepting them?  If everyone else knows you play a rigged game, shouldn't you?

The Two Are Not One

[x-posted from the Valve ]

In “The End of the Poststructuralist Era,” from Follies of the Wise, Frederick Crews charts the hasty marriage and slow estrangement of poststructuralist thought and New Left activism.  His argument, and its implications, may surprise you.

You see, the Yale School of deconstruction’s “manifest aim was ... to bring a spirit of erudite whimsy into the discussion of familiar [canonical] books, which would be rendered only more endearing by the discovery that their meanings were more multitudinous and undecidable than anyone had yet surmised” (308).  Too true, too true. 

Only, why would the discovery of even “more multitudinous and undecidable” dimensions to canonical literature open up the canon to previously marginalized voices?  Wouldn’t deconstruction have the opposite effect?  Hillis, speaking here in his 1986 presidential address, certainly thought so:

As everyone knows, literary study in the past few years has undergone a sudden, almost universal turn away from theory in the ordinary sense of an orientation toward language as such and has made a corresponding turn toward history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender conditions. (283)

Color me confused.  Here I thought theory necessarily entailed the commitments it so recently acquired.  Here I thought older modes of criticism possessed the retrograde politics.  Here I thought a lot of things a little historical perspective shattered.  Why?  Because the explanations were conceptual. 

Because they’re always conceptual. 

Poststructuralist thought always allies itself with a progressive politics, and poststructuralist thinkers always fold the latter into the former.  The result?  Opposition to poststructuralist thought necessarily entails an opposition to the progressiveness of its immanent politics.  Now I can complain that those politics aren’t immanent, that no textual orientation contains an immanent politics, but I will be shouted down by those who experience as natural their political and theoretical commitments, who cannot disentangle them because, well, because no one can offer a convincing reason that they should.

For the better part of two decades, literary critics have used a poststructuralist theoretical approach to generate a body of progressive thought, so of course the two appear inseparable.  Factor in the overwhelming number of conservative critics who fancy themselves poststructuralists, then think about it:

If everyone who does what they do shares the same politics, and everyone who doesn’t, doesn’t, why would they question a connection that feels so natural to them?  They have no reason to. 

So they haven’t.  I have, but from the wrong direction.  I started in the ‘70s moving forward, from the moment when the former radicals gained purchase in the discipline.  All this time, I should have been looking at it from the other direction, from the ‘80s moving backwards.  To point out, as Hillis does above, that “theory in the ordinary sense” existed independently of the commitments it eventually acquired.

Conceptual arguments be damned, I say, I have history.  The two are not one, not naturally.  They may be one of this lot, but more than likely not.  Just a simple couple whose marriage, while productive, is neither permanent nor necessary.

On Gifts & Such; or, Pathetic but Purposive Meta-Blogging,

Adam may pummel me with righteous wit for this admission, but honestly, I didn't know how many readers I had.  I estimated that the bulk of my 700 daily hits were random folks stumbling here from Google.  Now that Google refuses to index Acephalous—for reasons they refuse to share with the likes of lowly me—I have a much more accurate estimate of my audience.  To be frank, I'm floored.  One of you (who requested anonymity) told me to check the number of people who subscribe to my feed—that is, the number of you who read below my radar. 

So I did. 

I'm overwhelmed.  I mean it.  Overwhelmed.  I thought I'd get a couple of takers on last night's offer.  Estimated fifteen, maybe twenty, people who'd be interested.  And my TypePad account can handle a couple of people downloading a fourth of a gig each . . .

. . . but it can't handle 153 (one-hundred and fifty-three!) requests.*

I've sent as many of you as I currently can the gift I promised.  I'm thinking of trying to send the rest via my Gmail account, but that'll only fly if I'm sending it to other Gmail accounts.  So if you responded to last night's post but haven't heard back from me yet, please send me a Gmail address or one I can send a Gmail invite to.  Because I feel terrible, not living up to my promise. 

But seriously, I'm also incredibly flattered.  I didn't realize there were that many of  you out there.  I thought my ego inflated by a Googillusion.  Turns out I was wrong.  Which—the burdensome guilt notwithstanding—makes this whole enterprise feel commensurate to my (continued) investment in it.

* That's actually a reference to Joyce.  When he moved to Paris, he sent his family letters in which he emphasized his suffering by means of clever repetition.  For example, a letter to his dying mother in which he writes "Your order for 3s 4d of Tuesday last was very welcome as I had been without food for 42 hours (forty-two)."  I may've added some italics and an exclamation point, but that's only because 21^st centurions are innoculated against the emphasis of simple, powerful repetition.

Literature Today

[If you have recommendations for “Literature Today,” post them to del.icio.us and tag ‘em “thevalve” or send them to acephalous (@) gmail (.) com.]

Vanderbilt builds “a constellation.”  (How’s that for a subtle URL?)

Life? Or Theater?:

While it is usually exhibited on the walls of museums, it could just as reasonably be presented horizontally, like a book. It makes sense to treat it as a graphic novel, a story of ironic complexity and brutal honesty. But of course there is also the title, which indicates that this is really a piece of theater.

[Editor: For your convenience, this article is also available in Yiddish.]

Tintin and the Secret of Literarture: Literary theory or “an elaborately coded ‘art stunt’”?

Peter Nicholson discusses the limitations of the ironic mode: Part One, Part Two.

Letters are “the only really satisfactory form of literature,” claims Lytton Strachey, and he aims to prove his words true:

The world is rather tiresome, I must say—everything at sixes and sevens—ladies in love with buggers, and buggers in love with womanizers, and the price of coal going up, too. Where will it all end?

Mal Peet, after winning the Carnegie Medal for Tamar:

How can [Bush and Blair] have forgotten history, and forgotten Vietnam? How can Bush be so illiterate and unlearned? I think the opposite of learning is literary amnesia, in its wider sense, and I worry we are suffering from this on a large scale at the moment.

I’m not sure I follow.

Finally, those wild, wild undergraduates.  So naïve.  Of course he “expects to finish writing the book by next week.”