The Machine's Only As Reliable As Its Cogs; or, Are Such Statements Ever True?

Whilst rereading Rereading Jack London (1996) I often stumble across statements like “Naturalism’s claim to be a catalyst for change is perpetually undermined by its own combination of pessimistic determinism and Social Darwinism” (151).  Readers familiar with this humble blogger’s dissertation immediately recognize one cog in Christopher Hugh Gair’s claim that’ll cause some consternation, but I’m not on the Social Darwinian beat for the time being.  I want to focus on the category of the claim itself, on what it means to refer offhand to a body of thought so grossly generalized as to never resemble that to which it presumably points.  To put it another way: any summary of Marxism will, to the studious Marxist, summarize vulgar Marxism.  Another still: everyone else’s interpretation of Das Kapital so exaggerates some sub-sub-sub-claim of a point itself so inconsequential that to call what he or she preaches “Marxism” sends Marx sliding down a slippery slope (at the bottom of which Andrew and Dale Carnegie consume crumpets while discussing the merits of the responsibility assumption).  Given that contemporary “categorical” debates are always hotly contested, why are critics so comfortable with historical categories?  At what point does the need to qualify end and a category’s life as a cog begin?  I ask this in part because of CR’s comment yesterday:

And the thing is, things are heading now in the other direction. Ebb tide. Toward serious scholarship, historicism in the New Historicist sense, but even worse: textual criticism is coming back (for non-initiates, that doesn’t mean close reading but rather hanging out in libraries, looking at multiple copies of the same dusty book—yuck!) Theoretical extravagance is regarded as outre and kind of silly. [...] In other words, a specter’s haunting English, a specter that brings narrowness, specialization, horrendous boredom, and useless expertise.

CR implies that theory is as parasitic on the work of “serious scholars” as their work is on whatever unacknowledged theories subtend it.  If that’s the case—if these categorical beasts are as beastly as I contend—then despite the horrendous boredom works of “serious scholarship” ostensibly entail,[1] without such work the quality of theoretical tinkering will decline.  The machine’s only as reliable as its cogs.  What disaster would befall the machinist who depends on cogs of talc!  Springs all sprung but the talc cogs have evaporated and the machine, dear readers, the machine, its innards dusted with a fine coat of talc, grit for future gears. 

Grit for future gears!

Given that any theoretical approach necessarily builds on these historical commonplaces, its fate is inextricably bound to the claims beneath the claims beneath its claims.  If some of those are of dubious quality, then no matter how sophisticated or interesting the theoretical edifice built upon them, they fall with the foundation.  Everywhere I turn I find foundations I wouldn’t even pitch a tent upon.  (Much less build a house.)  Since muddy foundations and putty cogs endanger all in equal measure, the call to continue pouring water on dirt from mixers made of talc seems to me the worst possible solution for all involved. 

To put it another way (back on the beat!), the critical race theorist whose formulation of racialism involves a discussion of Social Darwinism in Gilded Age or Progressive America either 1) discovers the fact that Social Darwinism did not exist as advertised and adjusts his account to reflect more accurately the lineage of contemporary racial politics or 2) he never learns that Social Darwinism as advertised was a myth, never adjusts his account and, consequently, disseminates an inaccurate (and depending on the nature of the inaccuracy, potentially dangerous) account of race in contemporary America.   

One question I demand answered by all invested parties is whether what I’ve said here rings true or is 1) simply more evidence of my substantial historicist bias or 2) another example of the same empiricist logic behind my persnickety resistance to psychoanalysis.

[1]This argument, I should add, elides the fact that the writer’s as responsible for the quality of the work written as his or her approach, evidence or what-not.  I can still sit down and read with enjoyment David Wallace’s Chaucerian Polity.  We all feel this way about certain authors, as well.  For example, I always find myself mesmerized by J.G. Ballard, but were you to describe to me the plot of Concrete Island, there’s little chance I’d be interested in reading it.

Comments

[camicao]

Hi Scott, I really agree with you. Maybe it's just me being cranky on an overworked saturday morning, after 4 weeks of not being to be a scholar because of my classes, but some of us actually study subjects that are shrouded by the past and which require philological and material reconstructions in order to be understood, interpreted and projected into more abstract models. Scholars who work on theory should work on theory. That's fine. But don't pretend to make historical statements that are unfounded. And I will stay out of high theory debates because that's not my specialty. This notion that everyone is an expert in everything or should be, or pretend to be, and have -tude about it, is a load of crap. I believe that literary critics who work on theory are rigorous and can do important work. Such theorists need to recognize that historicist literary scholarship also has its merits. We're not all the same. There's too much to know and examine from too many points of view. OK I have to go and wipe up some cat vomit now. I mean it. I'm not being creative when I say that. My cat just puked.

[CR]

I don't disagree with you, in a certain sense, Scott. Yes - the grand claim maker stands on the back of hundreds of library workers. No doubt.

My question is - where are the grand claim makers? Where did they disappear to? The dustiness is all well and good (even if it's not my thing - and I overstate that a bit for effect on the Valve) - but what doesn't it all add up to if it emerges as the sole sanctioned activity...

Know what I mean?

(Of course, this brings to bear a strange "class" configuration within literary academia. And who gets to determine who picks nits and who gets to shout? But without both shouting and nitpicking, we're screwed... And I'm afraid the tide has turned against the shouters...)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Cam,

You capture in this sentence what I danced around in my post: Some of us actually study subjects that are shrouded by the past and which require philological and material reconstructions in order to be understood, interpreted and projected into more abstract models. I feel like valuable work, theoretical or otherwise, cannot be done without careful attention paid to the context in which a work's written and read. The latter is especially important if one plans to theorize a work's continued and future significance.

CR,

My question is - where are the grand claim makers? Where did they disappear to?

I think there's an absence of the kind of synthetic superstars--those who dance from Freud to Nietzsche to Hegel and back again--who ruled days past, but I don't think there's a dearth of ideas, or that the work currently being done isn't considered by those who do theory to be of critical importance. I think what we're seeing isn't the result of less celebrity aspirants so much as less celebrity-enthralled audiences. The Lacanians have split from the Foucauldians in ways that make critics who appeal to both thinkers suspect to both audiences. The fact that, say, I didn't see many of the faces familiar to me from Derrida's seminars at Zizek's lectures indicates that, on some level, theory has specialized in ways that make the kind of thinkers whose absence you lament difficult to both produce and disseminate.

And who gets to determine who picks nits and who gets to shout?

We do, of course. When I came to UCI, I came here to "do theory" and study Joyce. I chose to do otherwise, to become the foot stool of future theorists, and I don't regret the decision.

[Stephen Schryer]

I think (vs. CR) that the distinction between "grand claim makers" and "library workers" is spurious. Good theory is good scholarship - i.e., it draws general conclusions (relevant for a wide variety of other researchers) from careful combing of an archive of materials. Bad theory, by contrast, is also bad scholarship - i.e., general conclusions floating alone with nothing to support them.

The relevant class distinction should instead be between good scholarship that is broad, and good scholarship that is narrow. The former synthesizes a broader range of materials and is thus relevant to more researchers - think, for example of John Guillory's Cultural Capital or Michael McKeon's The Origins of the English Novel. Not everyone has the energy or ability to produce this kind of work.