"I Got a Good Mind to Join a Club and Beat You over the Head with It"

More positive press for the Valve (and, I assume, its contributors) from Henry Farrell in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education:

The recent debate on the Theory's Empire anthology, organized by the Valve, demonstrates how blogospheric argument can work. Theory's Empire is an ambitious volume, which seeks to provide a dissident's version of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism and to argue against the perceived pre-eminence of "theory" in literary criticism. The book is now beginning to attract attention from the mainstream media and will probably be the subject of symposia and debates over the next couple of years. A semi-organized symposium on the Valve, the blog of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, allowed a wide-ranging and active debate on the book within several weeks of its publication. The debate included responses from authors of pieces in Theory's Empire, as well as from prominent academics like John McGowan (an editor of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism) and Michael Bérubé, both of whom have successful blogs. But it also included, on an equal footing, responses from nonspecialists, like the Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong, and from nonacademic bloggers with an interest in the topic, like Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly. The result: an unusually high level of intelligent discussion around a topic more usually associated with stale pro- and anti-theory polemics. As McGowan describes it, "This is not yet another round in the culture and theory wars. ... Is it possible that academics interested in such questions have won their way through to a place where they can be discussed and examined calmly? As someone whose most usual stance has been a plague on both your houses, I am hopeful."

Yes, I realize Farrell and Holbo both post on Crooked Timber; and yes, I realize that Farrell's commented here recently as well; so yes, I realize that we're all patting each other on the back in some respects, and that there's something uncouth about it all, but positive play is positive play.  If I hadn't written this entry, people would've read that article thinking the praise unvarnished and entirely deserved ... which it is, despite recent evidence to the contrary.  (In the aforelinked conversation, everyone reserves the right to talk past everyone else and demands the right to be offended when anyone talks past them.  In other words: not with a ten foot pole.)

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

Hey, Henry commented here recently in response to my interminable Gene Wolfe thread. And John Crowley showed up on The Valve, China Mieville did a long piece on Crooked Timber. You see, if only everyone just wrote about science fiction...

With that in mind, more Zizek. Here's the end of his LRB article, does it remind you of anything?

"In the revolutionary explosion, another utopian dimension shines through, that of universal emancipation, which is in fact the ‘excess’ betrayed by the market reality that takes over on the morning after. This excess is not simply abolished or dismissed as irrelevant, but is, as it were, transposed into the virtual state, as a dream waiting to be realised."

Yes, it's Mieville's _Iron Council_ train! More to follow at some possible future time.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I don't know if you watch South Park, but in the classic episode "Lemmiwinks" (which you can watch, in its entirety, here) the boys are forced to attend "The Death Camp of Tolerance." While there, the brown-shirted black-boots with German accents who run the camp force them to make macaroni pictures of people of all races and creeds holding hands under rainbows. When the boys finish, the "counsellors" destroy them and the kids have to start all over. Only faster! Eventually, one of the kids--the kind, sweet-hearted Butters--can't keep up, and the "counsellors" rip him from his seat and pull him across the floor. Beneath the whimpers you can hear him saying, repeatedly, "No. More. Arts and Crafts. No. More. Arts and Crafts."

That's how I feel. Except about Zizek.