Saturday Morning Hatred I, in which Our Hero Hates that He Hates

I've had the most intellectually taxing breaks today--some of which involved reading, some of which involved writing--so tonight I forego my nightly devotions to the Great God of Winding Down to complain about some things I hate:

Kotsko-style.  (Just like Hamster, only with less little arms and more bite.)

I hate that everything that's been written about Jack London is so infuriating.  I hate that even the most intelligent and nuanced readings suffer from a basic lack of fact-checking or the self-evident desire to white-wash his Anglo-Saxon supremacism.  I hate that these critics can't just accept that London thought one thing one year and another the next and deal with it.  I hate that instead of talking about the evolution of his thought, these critics instead talk about its consistency and in so doing deny that he could've thought one thing in 1904 and another in 1912.  I hate that these critics seem to abide by a punk ethos that values consistency and not-selling-out-ity over all else even though it's obvious that his opinions on these issues changed because of he "expanded his horizons" or however you'd like to euphemize "sailed around the world, met other people, acknowledged their dignity and changed his views accordingly then died."  I hate that I can't take these scholars to task for valuing intellectual consistency over historical contingency.  I hate that it's in my best interest to be more polite than some Jungian archetype of Jeeves in my dissertation.  I hate that I have to be politic if I ever want to be hired somewhere. 

And that's enough hatred for me.  Almost.  I hate how addictive hatred is.  I hate that when I wash dishes listening to the old New Pornographers album that Neko Case doesn't sing lead or harmonize on every song.  I hate that when I think about hatred I couch everything in terms of hate.  I also hate that it's come to my attention that I hate far too many things to fit into a single post and that if I continue to think about them, the process won't be cathartic so much as a doused-in-gamma-radiation-while-sporting-purple-shorts situation, and if I rampage around the apartment again there's a good chance I won't be married come the morrow. 

Comments

[Camicao]

I think the consistency over time vibe is often just lazy scholarship. I've been guilty of this myself in the past; but when I've returned to the author or the theme later on and done more research, I've discovered my previously published argument was not quite right. Also, I find that some scholars kind of circle around one theme or author so much that they become inured to new readings and new ideas. Sounds like what you'll be doing with London will be fresh (as long as you mind how you come across vis-a-vis other critics) and important.

I am curious to know what you believe the stakes are with regards to the London establishment and why scholars may be promoting the view of London that you describe (I have a sense of this with Whitman, Twain, Neruda, Lorca and others but not with London).

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Cam, somewhere deep in the archives I outlined the "Kill All Fathers" approach to literary criticism, and I must admit I've pulled that essay up again to second your advice that to be careful how I present my claims vis-a-vis those of published scholars. Because I'm increasingly inclined to dismiss instead of incorporate the work of other scholars because, well, not because they're lazy so much as unaware that the assumptions on which they base their claims are unfounded. So I write:

Such appeals to the proven fact of social Darwinism easily outnumber arguments that attempt to prove it. That Mitchell carries on in this tradition is no discredit to him: nowhere in his essay does he prove that London’s oceans consist of a dihydrogen oxide solution containing approximately 29,500 parts per million dissolved sodium chloride. I only say this to demonstrate the myth of the tent’s pervasiveness: Mitchell no more felt the need to demonstrate the salinity of the ocean in The Sea Wolf (1904) than prove the existence of social Darwinism.

The stakes of my argument are, first, historical accuracy, since the record doesn't match what's been written about the period, leading to misconceptions about the work written during the period, leading to accounts of literary naturalism that don't accurately describe even the most canonical "naturalist" works. The bigger stakes in an accurate assessment of the social and political influence of social Darwinism are better left to bigger fish, i.e. I'm not sure I'll address them in my dissertation, but they include: rethinking turn-of-the-century politics, especially the crucial role reform Darwinism played in the various Progressive movements; undermining the consensus (among us humanistic types) that Darwinian thought necessarily entails Hitler or capitalist excess; and I know I should have a third term in this series, but all of the potential third terms are subsumed by the second, e.g. Darwinism and theories of gender, its place in science studies, &c.

That said, I'd love to hear what you think the stakes of such an argument would be (as well as for Whitman, Twain, &c. would be). Fresh perspectives on topics I feel like I've been working on since 1931 are always welcome.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

That "myth of the tent" comment will sound silly out of context. I'm talking about the "big tent" of social Darwinism. To wit:

Since the only articulation of what social Darwinism is denies its Darwinian heritage, the problem of how to define it seemingly backtracks to the conceptual questions with which this paragraph began: how big should the tent be and who should be allowed under it?

Only there is no tent. No matter how many illustrious scholars believe there to be a tent, a tent cannot be believed into existence. Either it’s there or it’s not. This is not to say that the years of intellectual energy poured into the perpetuation of the myth of the tent have been wasted: disentailed of arguments over the nature of “social Darwinism,” the nuances whose incommensurability had foiled all attempts at a coherent conception of “social Darwinism” can finally constellate according to their actual historical relations. Once rid of the tent, in other words, formerly hard “facts” must be reevaluated on their own terms.

Note the Waffle: again I approach on an attack vector only close my gunports, open my arms and offer everyone a hug. Also, I haven't cleaned up the tone of the chapter yet; I still sound far too flip, not nearly serious enough, and this is a source of some conflict between my advisor and I. I know he's correct, and he knows I know he's correct, but I don't have it in me to bleed my dissertation dry yet.

[Luther Blissett]

Scott, some of the best advice I've received from my diss committee deals with this issue. The point, as one of em said, is not to make the objects of scholarly critique sound obviously dumb or wrong. Why? Because, as my advisor said, correcting a dumb opponent doesn't make you smart; it just means that you're holding coversation with a dummy.

I was taught simply to set up "the critical conversation" relevant to my chapter, and then fire my salvo into the fray without necessarily going after individual scholars.

I'm not sure I'm following your take on London and Social Darwinism, but couldn't you just set up the chapter like: "The critical consensus is that London's work articulates a consistant Social Darwinist perspective. I will argue in this chapter that this is not quite the case. Instead, proper attention to the shifting registers of London's social vision leads one to conclude . . ."? And then footnote the first sentence with a brief list of relevant citations.

My own diss really only cites other critics on my authors when the critics' work is similar but still different. Which is to say, I'm more concerned with differentiating my work from the good work out there than I am with spending time criticizing misguided work. But this is perhaps due to the contemporaneity of the authors I'm writing about (Pynchon, Morrison, and so on). And I don't have a real agonistic critical stance (something that makes my arguments on The Valve kinda funny to me, because I'm more the "can't we just agree to disagree" type).

Not sure if this is helpful. Probably not. Just thought I'd pass along what little I've learned having reached the (hopefully) ass-end of the dissertation process. But you seem a much more rigorous scholar than I. I'm more the sloppy, Greil Marcus type, for whom every idea, no matter how contradictory, has its place in my choose-your-own-adventure style diss chapters.

BTW: are you going on the market this coming year?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

LB, I'm not hitting the market this year. I've 1 1/2 chapters finished, but two more on the boilerplate, so I'm holding out until next. Actually, you and Cam echo the same advice I keep telling myself again and again and again...I suppose I just to hear it from others sometimes. Even if they are an of almost antithetical scholarly bent. (Which isn't a bad thing; since I've been active reading and writing blogs, I've allowed myself to loosen up in many respects, and your intelligent eclecticism is a large reason for that.)

That said, one of the problems with my dissertation isn't that I'm saying the critical consensus is incorrect in assessment of London's work vis-a-vis Social Darwinism, but that I'm arguing 1) that Social Darwinism didn't exist, 2) therefore early attempts to define naturalism in terms of a rigid determinism that didn't exist are, um, "problematic," and that 3) therefore works that build upon those works are also "problematic." I'm undercutting an entire way of reading realism/naturalism, so oftentimes there's very little scholarship that's actually useful for me...but I do need to illustrate why I feel the stakes of my argument are so high: namely, because if I'm right (and I am), then I need to show that the difference between reading a realist/naturalist text in key with Social Darwinism and reading realist/naturalist texts without Social Darwinism is meaningful. Doing so almost forces me to engage their arguments head-on (hence the defense of Mitchell, who had no more reason to question whether Social Darwinism existed as he did the salinity of the ocean of The Sea Wolf.

[martin eden]

Lil' A. Kwatsko on Jack London? Ye gods, too weird and unsavory for even a parody. Do the reigning sluts of LitLand U. even allow scholarship on golden Jackie? I doubt it. Far too many anglo-or perhaps irish jagg offs (ones with substantially more powerful jabs than lil' A K) might then have a ticket to some sort of drunken success which, of course, you yourself would disapprove of. I think the last person (other than my reading of the really quite motha-f-in splendid Martin Eden and the boys story Call of the Wild, and some stories decades years ago) to read Jack London was Jack Kerouac, sort of his froggy-canadian cuz, who unfortunately has also had his balls cut off by lots of lit gorgons and east coast snobs; and however primitive and unsophisticated current cafe-artistes might find either of the one-eyed Jacks, some caucasian-expressionist swagger might do LitLand some good.

[Luther Blissett]

Wow: no Social Darwinism? None at all? I look forward to, one day, reading your work! (I should admit, though, that I did enjoy that Haraway chapter in *Primate Visions* on Roosevelt and nativism.)

I've had a similar relationship to "postmodernism," which I don't think exists. It's certainly not a period term that encompasses a style (unless we define that style very narrowly: Barthelme, Laurie Anderson, and, say, Mike Graves). I don't buy it as a historicizing term (a la Jameson), in part because I reject any causal relationship between economics and art. Poetry today is "schizoid" because poets like dada and hate Billie Collins, not because their money is digital and their labor affective. All of which has made a project about the historical novel kinda difficult!

That said, I still think the key is to be as "positive" as possible. Not "positive" in the happy, slappy sense, but positive in the sense of articulating your own positions in positive terms rather than negative terms. My own solution has been not to mention postmodernism at all.

But I see your issue. A radical claim like "There never was this thing we call Social Darwinism" *does* appear to necessitate going after those who *do* posit such a discourse. I guess the key there is, if possible, to take on a very secure, big-wig in the field, admit that that critic has a point, but then show how that point could be even *more* effective if understood from your (more radical) perspective.

But my tongue in cheek advice would be: go after someone in a different field. A historian, if possible. Historians tend to hate us lit folks anyway.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

That's right, LB, none at all. Alright, so there was William Graham Sumner, but that's really about it. Robert Bannister's book discusses the myth of Social Darwinism in general terms; my primary research validates his claims. I hope that you one day will read my work in some published form or another, because that would mean I might even have a job that didn't entirely involve the wife's coat-tails!

(And I do try to stick it harder to the historians, but at a certain point, it's hard to work with the incorporative model, since the fundamental assumptions of other people's work are exactly, as you point out, what I'm refuting.)

[Camicao]

Hey Scott, back after a few days. Much enjoyed Luther's comments in response to this whole conversation about your diss. I like what he has to say. I agree. My tack is to treat all scholarship as contingent. I like it if it can teach me something, however small. Not everything. Not something that will necessarily last. Perhaps its accomplishment is as modest as an observation or way of reading that furthers the conversation at one particular point in time. When I wrote my diss, and even now, I focus on that kernel in the scholarship of others, however small. I can appreciate why your dissertation work presents some challenges with regards to how to finesse dealing with canonical scholars. But I think that's a rhetorical challenge and nothing more. The classy way to deal is to be straight up, not too persnickety, and generous in your accounting of the work of others.

My original question about stakes was meant to be about the stakes of the London establishment, if there is such a thing. With Whitman there's the old shtick of the Good Grey Poet stuff that he himself began, and more recently the queer Whitman discourse. So I was referring to the well-worn tracks in a particular field, and was curious about the case of London.

Re: Kill all Fathers, etc. When I sent my book manuscript out, my publisher insisted I take out all the dissertationy-stuff (even though the ms. was not based on my dissertation). What was a fair amount of that stuff? The bowing to fathers and mothers. But the editor's comment about this being "dissertation-y" is a good illustration of what a dissertation is supposed to be: a self-conscious argument with certain prerequisite and pre-set components exposed and magnified like the cogs and gears of a nineteenth-century engine (think Chaplin's Modern Life).

Best Cam,

P.s. Who was that Martin Eden guy? I hope it wasn't you after a shot or two of Triple Sec and a laptop nearby.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Cam, I'll answer you more substantially later, but for the record, Martin Eden n'est pas moi: it's the Troll of Sorrow. (A frequenter of The Weblog and Long Sunday.)

[ishmael]

what's really funny and predictable about lit. guys and this blog: at some point in the middle of their dissertations--maybe after some confrontations with historians, or scientists or analytical phil.--they realize they are in essence specialists in the art of lying. What is a novel but a lie really? (as Marlow in Heart of Darkness lied about Kurtz's last words as well). Beautiful eloquent lies, or not-so- beautiful. And an industry, nay worldwide conspiracy, of lie interpreters. There must be some literary-lie meme; I think it's social darwinism as well, or maybe just darwinism: those human-primates who can Shakespeare-like spin marvelously complex but false sign-systems do something (what it is I am not sure) for the gene pool.

Lit. guys should perhaps research why there is presently a lit. business at all, since I do not think the classical academies allowed the study of poesy and "romans"; only permitting rhetoric and logic and history.
Methinks it was some Harvard or Oxford professors' wifeys wiling away with their Rabelais or Shakespeares, in love with the pomp and the scandals, who sort of cajoled the university presidents into sneaking in English and French departments next to the classicists, the experimentalists, and the mathematicians. Lit departments now of course roar (no more than the dogphucker gal and her postmodernist initiator galpal at Haw-vawd) but whether that roar should even be
permitted is not much debated ( I'll wager Dr. Summers would shut those c*nts down were he able to).

Anyways, Darwinists, if it's "nature red in tooth and claw" you want why even bother with literature: and it would seem you might appreciate someone, a "troll" even, willing to like tell bad jokes and jack your ass for free.

(I only visit the Weblog on search and destroy missions about once a month--)

[Camicao]

Dear Ishmael- I'm sorry if we make you feel so unappreciated!

[ishmael]

not a surprise--lit. types would much rather display their rhetorical flourishes and asides, sort of like doilies, than actually say anything of value.

Someone such as J. London would have knocked yr ass down, and would do the same to most any modern varsity boy ...

I know this may be hard for lit. dudes to confront, but yr no genius: yr an ENGLISH major, taking a seat next to all the equivocators and prevaricators of the ages. I'm more proud of knowing some C code, integrals, and playing a semi-decent game of chess than ever reading Shakespeare's or Joyce's tripe........

[John John]

This whole blog is a bunch of pretentious narcissistic hooey.
How about you all get over yourselves and practice some of this transcendental crap that has been shoved down our literary throats since birth.