Anti-Thoughts about the Anti-Desires of the Deeply Stupid, or Ideas Obscured by Assumptions

So many points to make.  So little desire to organize.

The debate about the debate about the debate about the debate about Theory rages on.  (Much, much more below the fold.)

I had completed half a post last night in response to this by Jodi Dean:

The Right promises a transgressive thrill of racism, sexism, nationalism: enjoy excluding! enjoy 'returning' to the true values, the true text, before it was corrupted by all these women and ethnically identified or figured people, when it was really English and American literature.

The point would have been that she psychologizes the reasons people must not "do Theory." "You don't read Zizek," I would have had her say, "you must be a closet conservative and crass careerists enraged by your inability to master these difficult works.  What other explanation could there be?"  I would have then followed with a list of my complaints that would've demonstrated the reason she didn't read any of the articles on which she presumably based her diagnosis is that she already knew what everyone would say (even though she didn't) and already knew why they would say it (even though she doesn't) and that the only way she could continue to write, think and do Theory is if she ignored the fact that legitimate complaints about its usage and purview exist. 

Then she had to go be polite and reasonable in her response, so I'm not going to write it in the same way Cicero avoided calling attention Quintus' philanderings by informing everyone that he intended avoiding the topic of Quintus' philanderings.  Actually, I'm not going to not write it that way either.  I'm going to write it as an example of why I think debates about Theory are so often side-tracked: everyone believes everyone else is intellectually dishonest to the limited extent people so deeply stupid can be intellectually dishonest.  I know, I know, I'm not breaking new ground here.  Here's the thing:

I think we're right.  All of us.  I think we are all intellectually dishonest (to ourselves and others) and deeply stupid when it comes to thinking about Theory.  Consider this comment to Jodi's post:

Excellent post, and far more gracious than I would have been if I had time to read the related posts, I'm sure. I just have no patience for graduate students, and especially professors, who profess their desire, or anti-desire, for ignorance. Why get into the profession, why claim to profess, if one doesn't want to challenge one's thought, one's way of being? Why not just do the authentic thing, and become a bureaucrat?

This is one intellectually dishonest, deeply stupid comment.  Its author--who no doubt considers himself as open-minded as critical thinkers come--assumes that anyone who would question the self-evident importance of Theory desires, er, anti-desires ignorance.  (Wouldn't an "anti-desire for ignorance" be a desire for knowledge?  Nevermind.) Although this professing machine has yet to answer Jodi's latest comment, I wonder how he'll react to this statement:

Yet, I am against Deleuze and Deleuzian approaches in a nearly visceral way. They make me crazy--and I think my reaction is nonsense, nevertheless I fully accept and embrace it. I hate the reductive ontology; I hate the failure to acknowledge antagonism; I hate the rejection of the unconscious; and I really, really hate the way the theory operates as an apologia for global capital.

Is she airing a legitimate set of concerns about the substance and implications of Deleuzian thought?  No!  She's professing an anti-desire for ignorance!  How does Jodi's confession differ from Holbo's admission that he believes philosophy took a wrong turn around 1965 and that he wants this beast he calls Theory killed or at the very least vigorously sterilized?  It doesn't.  They've excluded different intellectual traditions from their sphere of legitimate scholarship, but neither of them are being anti-intellectual.  They're both being selectively intellectual, and contrary to Jodi's claim that her anti-Deleuzian sentiments are "nonsense," they both have logical and compelling reasons behind their selections.

So why is everyone so jumpy?  Because there are sides and teams.

But there's more.  These teams are comprised of the most ignorant, pompous, pretentious blowhards each side can muster.

Since the sides only ever see the other team, they both assume the team's a reasonable representation of the side.  And since we see the teams play more frequently than we visit the other side, that specious assumption's reinforced.  For example, when I hear some anonymous genius accuse me of intellectual laziness and collusion with dark conservative forces, being the deeply stupid person I earlier confessed to being, I assume that player not only represents the other players on the team but entire other side.  Why do I do this?

Because I'm deeply stupid.  But not alone. 

This is all by elliptical way of responding to Matt's desire to hear me speak more on the burden of proof and where it ought to be placed.  The burden of proof should always belong to the party of who asserts the validity, legitimacy or importance of a school of thought. Prove to me why I should read Zizek and I will read Zizek.  Prove to me why I should read Lacan and I will read Lacan.  I believe that should be the ideal purpose of an anthology.  It should meet some basic evidentiary standards.  A selection should hint that the burden of proof will be met without itself meeting it.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism avoids the whole issue of the burden of proof by asserting that the selections meet this burden instead of arguing that they do.  More on this tomorrow.   

Comments

[Jodi]

I think I do more than psychologize--I prefer the broader term contextualized which brings out institutional and economic factors as well as psychological ones. And, my point is not about the choice not to engage theoretical work, it's about the politicization of this choice, the sense that this is a mighty choice, one that is part of a movement or moment.
For example, in political science departments, theory is the smallest field. Most wonder why people choose it at all. Many departments don't even have theorists.

I think there is a difference between my stance and the one you described above as Holbo's. First, mine is about a specific thinker, not a vaguely defined group of thinkers. Second, my reasons are specific to the debate around this thinker. Third, I continue to worry about trouble my reaction, suspicious of it, in a way. I don't celebrate it as crucial to a new, liberated mode of thinking.

On Zizek, I've posted at icite links to two articles on Zizek that I've written as defenses of him. They can be found in the Zizek section. Both were published in law journals. One is on Zizek and law, and it aims to show how Zizek is useful for thinking about law. The second is on Zizek's critique of democracy. Those skeptical of democracy today might find it interesting.

For the most part, though, it rarely makes sense to me to argue for reading someone in a general way. That is, what makes most sense is knowing what someone's project is, what their interests are, and then lettng them know if one's own area of scholarship might overlap helpfully. Like, I can't imagine telling a graduate student, go read Zizek, unless the student were saying something like, you know Agamben's homo sacer is really interesting, but what kind of subjectivity is presupposed in it? Is it some kind of Aristotelean or peformative subjective? or, maybe just a space or lack? And, then I would suggest that the graduate student, in addition to reading more Aristotle, look at Butler and Zizek. Conceivably, the graduate student would find these useless, and then develop a fascinating dissertation on Agamben with critical chapters on Butler and Zizek.

[Luther Blissett]

I think Jodi says it well above: I can't imagine trying to convince someone to read something. I don't do it with poetry or novels. I don't even do it with music any longer. There's no way of making a convincing case about why someone needs to read anything -- or read at all, for that matter. A quotation from Frank O'Hara that gets to this broader point:

"But how can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? for death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the Americans are better than the movies."

That said, all one can really ever do is relate to others what one likes about a certain text (or song or movie). I've read one Zizek book -- *The Sublime Object of Ideology* -- and I enjoyed reading it. Why? Because it made me think about things I find interesting. Not because it's "right" -- I don't really think anyone will ever be "right" about the unconscious, about the relationship between politics and pleasure, about Hegel, and so on. But if you like the themes Pynchon explores you might like the themes Zizek explores: history, loving your facist. I enjoy reading people who make me think about these issues. I like Norman Brown for this reason, even if I don't ultimately buy into the entire Freudian edifice. And Zizek is frequently a quite entertaining writer. To be funny about Marx or Lacan in an un-snarky way is a true fear. And his tossed-off readings of Jane Austen or Hitchcock are better than most scholarly books. Not because they are "right" -- but because they make me re-think my take on Jane Austen or Hitchcock. Where else will you get a point-for-point comparison between Hegel's project from the *Phenomenology* to the *Logic* and Austen's novels?

I suppose I'm exactly the type of scholar that annoys you. When it comes to the Social, to politics, to culture, I don't care about empirical rigor unless the work itself wants to be taken serious on those grounds. I don't care about a thinker being right unless s/he insists on his or her rightness. I care about being interested. About having dead things come to life again. About being forced to rethink what I've thought I had settled in my own brain.

Of course, willful or ideological distortions annoy me. Factual errors irritate me. But the fact that Cornel West and Paul Gilroy misread *Beloved* doesn't annoy me. Novels aren't things I'm heavily invested in being "right" about. Any novelist worth her salt will tell you a novel's only there to make you think. To bring dead things back to life. A critic getting a novel wrong isn't the end of the world. It's just an excuse for another critic to try her hand at it.

[Debra Riley]

326145: Hey, does anyone know where I can find a list of gas stations with low prices in my area?