Did You Miss Me?

You certainly missed new content—site stats don't lie, they merely differ markedly as to the number of you who stop by and the frequency with which you do so—and after five days of flying knees-tight in airplanes; driving spine-crunched in cars; sitting through commencement speeches dull enough to melt your unmentionables; and spending one evening among old friends—one of whom reads this blog but bails out on you at 1 AM (ONE AM!) pleading exhaustion—after five days of that you're just going to have to settle for missing it some more.  As of now I'm only able to produce sentences of Faulknerian length and Fourth Gradian clarity. 

But I have quite a bit on the burner for this week, including:

1. A substantial review of Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World. 
2. Advance notice of a project in which I'll devote a post per week to a prominent thespian whose works I've expressed strong dislike for in the past but which, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I've acquired a sudden desire to read seriously.
3. Answering all the email which has graced my inbox unanswered for the past three weeks or so, as well as an explanation as to why I sometimes find it difficult to answer the five or emails I daily receive from you wonderful strangers when I also have 297 student emails in my inbox.
4. Responding to the comments left whilst I was without reliable internet connection.  (There are some great ones which need responses from some better version of me than I can currently muster.)
5. Writing a response to Laura's comment  (and Marco's too) about loving the one you're with you teach, which strikes me far more forcefully now than it did last week (and which, yes, has something to do with both #1 and #2).
6. (As does the post I plan to write in response to CR's comment about the relationship of teachers to careers vis-a-vis last week's "revelatory" post about my intellectual heritage.  (I have posts responding to pretty much every comment in that thread.  I'm currently unsure which will be comments and which will stand alone as posts.  I reserve the right to change my mind without being held accountable for doing so.)
7. Recounting the two very interesting conversations I had on the trip to Houston and on the trip back.  The first has to do with Sean's current celebrity; the second, with my future celebrity.
8. And, finally, responding to the flurry of debate about a certain novel by a certain expat Russian novelist which lately has been getting reduced to, well, openly advocating pedophilia.  But doesn't.  That needs to be said and hasn't been yet. I will bravely swim counter-current and demand people stop taking literature for propaganda despite frequently treating it as such.  (Because that's how I roll . . .  hypocritical.)

And that's just the beginning. 

A week without blogging will bring harvest to this barren blog.  (Or will if I don't drown in work come tomorrow.)

Comments

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Well, I don't quite think Rich's reading a useful failure, since he seems to say something valuable about the text which, if my memory doesn't fail me, generally accords with Derrida's own criticism of it. I do, however, think the categorization of a particular work as a "useful failure" is a generous reading, since it implies that the work fails to deliver on certain terms, but contributes to the conversation, forwards the argument, &c. despite its perceived failings. I'm making a general point here about Rich's rhetoric: he's not saying Derrida's worthless, or that his take is uninteresting or unproductive, only that it fails to meet his expectations but was useful in other ways. That's a generous reading, no?

Yes, I certainly could be "anonymous," but the thing is, my voice is too recognizable. I have too many tics, take too many familiar shortcuts, to think my anonymity genuine. I could spot me a mile away, is what I mean, so I'm not comfortable even in the guise of another. That said, I find it amusing that I'm the one whose attacking English department hackery here, since my defense of Theory is predicated on its distance from said hackery. I'm not trying to sneak a critique of Theory in the back door here; I'm only saying that there is some lazy, sloppy, self-righteous "work" being passed off as scholarship in literature departments, but I don't think such work resembles continental philosophy so much as it unthinkingly abuses some of its premises. Over the course of our conversations, I've come around; by which I mean, my experience here led me to conflate the two, but as the discussion's progressed, I've become convinced that the problem is more parochial, that it's almost entirely about the appropriation of particular bodies of thought by people unprepared to digest it.

In other words, I don't think I'm casting lazy glances anywhere, nor do I think I'm encouraging other people to. (I did, after all, read nearly the complete run of CI last summer.) I'm encouraging people to challenge critical orthodoxies on their own terms, to ask the deconstructive literary critic to explicate his understanding of the continental foundation of his work...and I'm finding many of those critics wanting. In short, I'm not disagreeing with you in the least: if Theory is to improve their intellectual seriousness quotient, literature departments certainly need to embrace the continental tradition they've grossly oversimplified. I'm with you there. So what are we arguing about now?

[Matt]

Scott, thanks. I suspect we're still arguing, or could always argue, about what "embrace the continental tradition" means, but maybe best another time.

As for Rich's take, well. I don't doubt that it is honest. As far as I recall, Derrida refers back to Specters favorably, and on more than one occassion. But if you come across a more critical reference, don't hesitate to let me know (and no, you probably wouldn't be aware of the article I mention, because it hasn't yet appeared - details, details).
Cheers.

[FORGOTTENBOY]

It is impossible for me to live up to Scott’s kind compliments; I hope you will not expect to have your minds blown. I am rather in debt to all of you for a debate of such liveliness. I’ll write more straightforwardly here than I do on my blog; my blog is entirely personal, and it is a matter of coincidence that I wrote about Henry Staten while this thread was still ongoing. I'll post twice. This post will reproduce the discussion between Henry Staten and Gayatri Spivak, and will risk being boring. Please skip it if you feel any inclination to do so. The next post will respond to the fascinating question of our relationship, as writers and thinkers, to the contemporary structure of academia.

In order to understand Spivak’s response, you have to understand Staten’s argument. He suggested, in a somewhat arrogant fashion, that through his readings of Dennett, Derrida, and Darwin he had overcome the impulse to impute any natural phenomena or effects of consciousness to the transcendent operations of Spirit. Thus he had overcome, in an almost yogic fashion, the ingrained desire to imagine a unified, ethereal “I” (ego / spirit) residing in a purely material, subservient body. Instead, he now viewed consciousness as a shadowy, hectic “pandemonium” of “demons” and as a “machine.” Staten did not define the term "demons" very precisely. He compared Dennett’s model to the Nietzschean model according to which an individual’s consciousness contains multifarious drives, which either compete and prevent action, or unify and produce it. However, this is a poor parallel because the subcomponents in pandemonium theory are pieces of language that articulate functions without meanings. For example, the function “eat” could be a demon, but could be linked in one case to the pleasure of sampling a dessert, and in another to the destruction of an incriminating note, from which one derives no gustatory pleasure. This is quite different from Nietzsche’s drives, which more closely resemble the highly articulated drives (sexual etc.) and complexes of psychoanalysis.

I believe that Staten wished to ally these demonic automata with Derrida’s theories of linguistic traces, where language creates a residue the intention of which cannot be determined. Thus Staten describes consciousness as a menagerie of fragmentary traces which produce, in semi-unpredictable fashion, the momentary coherence necessary for conscious thought. I have to speculate somewhat here because the talk was not as clear or as comprehensive as one would have liked.

Spivak’s primary dispute was with Staten’s assertion that by conceiving of the mind as a pandemonium, he had somehow freed himself from the myths of transcendence. She said the following (this is, contra Scott, a paraphrase): “Derrida would want to insist on the double bind; that is, that we cannot help producing the transcendent ego through language even while we are discussing its nonexistence.”

Spivak also objected to Staten portraying Derrida as a scientifically minded materialist. Staten triangulated Derrida, Darwin, and Marx on the basis of Marx’s excitement over Darwin’s work, Derrida’s quotation of Freud on the blow struck by evolution to human narcissism, and the following 2001 Derrida quote: “Philosophical schools of thought take the essential from science.” Staten gave the quote out of context. Spivak refused to grant his interpretation without an opportunity to examine the quote in context and determine whether, in fact, Derrida was making science the foundation of deconstruction. Spivak: “It seems to me that you have taken only the Derrida which you like and fashioned your argument out of these pieces...I would have to see the whole context of the quote.”

It seems to me that the chaotic machines which Staten substitutes for human beings are very similar to the models advanced by Deleuze and Guattari in their collaborative work. It is not irrelevant to earlier posts to suggest that he picked Derrida instead of Deleuze and Guattari because at Irvine Derrida carries more water.

[FORGOTTENBOY]

I worry that by extending our discussion of theory to all imaginable (or even all experienced) instances of theory, we may end up straying from the important questions raised by Scott’s bildungsroman: What is the proper approach of the critic to his text? Should criticism involve the application of theory to the text, or should it confine itself to a researched analysis of the text’s place in history? After all, I can imagine a graduate student using Foucault for mere self-promotion, and I can imagine a graduate student using Foucault the same way Foucault used Marx and Freud – that is, constructively and in conjunction with readings of artworks like Velasquez’s “Las Meninas.” I’ve seen examples of both at Irvine.

I contend that there is a legitimate reason to use philosophical texts to “read” works of literature, which is as follows: philosophers occasionally articulate, with great clarity, the abstract structures which critics seek to derive from the plot, form, and language of literary texts.
Most worthwhile literary texts are sufficently complex to reflect the work of more than one abstract philosopher. For example, Woolf was influenced by both Walter Pater and Sigmund Freud, and one sees both thinkers surfacing in her novels. Lily Briscoe’s moments of artistic vision are not particularly Freudian; James Ramsay’s desire to murder his father does not remind us of Pater. Therefore I do not find it glib to refer to both Pater and Freud when writing about Woolf. One could make the same case for the simultaneous presence of Nietzsche and Thomas Aquinas in Joyce. One is not trimming the tree with theorists, here; one is employing a palette in the service of a portrait.

This is not to privilege theory at the expense of history. Rather, I see history and theory as two sources of information which can both be used to explain the relations between the parts of a given text, because both can furnish homologies. I was once around to hear Scott recount Jack London’s project of self-education and literary production. London would wake up early in the morning, do a series of exercises, write, and then read until he could stay awake no longer. His reading was organized by subject, according to the degree of wakefulness each subject required. It would be hard to think of something more mundane than a given author’s need for sleep – and yet London’s approach to sleeping reveals a great deal about the ethical system at work in his novels and in his story about failing to work and falling asleep, “To Build A Fire.”

I would like to link the recent posts on generosity to the original question of our academic responsibilities. It seems to me that, as teachers and critics, one of the most consistently rewarding aspects of our profession lies in our ability to satisfy the curiosity of others, and (paradoxically) also to arouse it further. The text is a gift to the reader, so the problem with Barbara Mella’s preface on the detour is that it is stubborn, miserly, self-indulgent. It mocks our desire for progress, instead of enchanting us with the possibilities of play. Whereas the preface to Dave Eggers’s novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is funny and gratifying because in it, Eggers admits his shortcomings. He tells us of his dullness, his inconsistency, and the elusiveness of his subject. He offers us forgiveness if we are short on time. While Mella tries to whip us into shape by laughing at us, Eggers puts himself in our camp. In my opinion, the importance of being Nietzsche has less to do with radical authenticity, and the name-making overthrow of the old order, and more to do with Nietzsche’s deep concern for his profession and his country. He left academia in order to lay siege to it with his books, and change it – which he did. In the process of crafting academic essays, the places we turn for evidence, and the risks we take with our career, must be the work of JHOLBRO’s best angel. I think that is Lincoln’s better angel, working, as always, towards the accomplishment of sympathy under threat of civil war.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Good Lord, FB, you've blown everyone's mind. They're all lost to us now. Thanks a lot.

Alright, seriously, you should've been my guest blogger. Imagine what you could accomplish with a stage. Anyhow, I'll address these two substantial comments tomorrow, when I'm able to address things substantially. (See tonight's post for evidence that I can't.)

[CR]

FB -

Welcome to the club. And look at that - you killed your first thread. Problem is, most of us here come to watch Scott's transformation from mild-mannered historicist into our generation's hilarious (!?!?..... ?????) academic version of David Sedaris, (Me Historicize Pretty One Day) not read serious stuff like this.

Don't worry - I kill threads all the time.

Anyway, I'm interested in this:

Nietzsche has less to do with radical authenticity, and the name-making overthrow of the old order, and more to do with Nietzsche’s deep concern for his profession and his country. He left academia in order to lay siege to it with his books, and change it – which he did.

So what do you see as the distinction between "radical authenticity" and concern for profession and country? Mightn't some see those two things as one and the same?

Also, isn't there a big difference between working with the philosophers that the authors actually used and applying some new, relatively contemporary theorist to them? The examples that you cite - using Aquinas and Nietzsche to read Joyce - wouldn't cause a problem for even the starkest anti-theoretical historicist, right? No one would ever disagree that you need to know your Aquinas to get at the quiddity of Portrait. Whereas using Derrida might be more of a problem, no?

[Matt]

FB-

Thanks for the response, and various summaries (and welcome, to this odd 'community' of blogs - not that I'd presume to speak on its behalf any more than the next). At the risk of trying to say too much all at once, especially in blog-comment form, some quick and scattered thoughts:

She was utterly graceful; her voice was resonant with thoughtful, deep concern; and yet, because she was having an essentially private conversation, the moment bordered on farce.

Your account of Spivak's response sounded familiar to me in three respects. As a criticism of the Designated Mourner-With-Tenure and hir (alleged) over-identification with a certain Derrida, maybe. As the sort of things - content-wise - Spivak would say, and has been saying for years, and is as usual entirely correct about. And also as a general (lamentable, yet unavoidable) thing that sometimes happens in academic lecture settings, where the vast majority of the audience are unfamiliar with the speaker's work and just there to put in an appearance or soak up wisdom, or even just disagree. I once witnessed a similar thing happen between Habermas and a professor (between Habermas' speech impediment and a room packed with unfamiliar celebrity-gawkers, any serious exchange seemed ridiculous - which is why they have dinners, I suppose). So that's part of it anyway, in addition to the sort of personal testimony or guru-tendency which must be hard for anyone, let alone someone whose disciplinary fidelities are strictly otherwise, to stomach.

I was also struck by your praise of Dave Eggers, however, and his regressive avant-garde (which n+1 has pronounced on rather definitively, imho). To me their work often ends up in a similar, quasi-sentimental place, presuming a bit naively that to have a personal voice is enough, and even enough in a 'literary' sense, no less. They deflate profundity of course - but rather to a fault. Any I'd be curious in your response to the n+1 take on Eggers (which is not entirely negative, it should be added).

(Before I forget, my original question to Scott: didn't Spivak herself give a lecture there recently, along with Butler? If anyone has notes, mental or otherwise, from that...well, do share. Having just engaged in a funny blog-symposium, and being naturally curious as to what she's talking about these days..)

But ah, yes, "the dreaded New Historicism," if only cleaving History and Theory in 'twain quite were quite so easy?

Should criticism involve the application of theory to the text, or should it confine itself to a researched analysis of the text’s place in history?

Maybe it's bad manners to do so, and I don't mean to demand the impossible of a first-time blog-commenter, certainly, but can I press you for any flip thoughts, FB, sometime (or later, or Scott, for that matter) on what are commonly known as the three major critiques of New Historicism? Namely:

• That it tends to reduce literature to a footnote of history, and neglects the uniquely literary qualities of the work in question.

• Frederick Jameson's critique: that much New Historicist criticism lacks a theory of history.

• Sedgwick: that New Historicism's emphasis on connecting literature to politics can resemble a "good dog/ bad dog" criticism, where critics praise artists for their progressive views and chastise them for reactionary ones, instead of accepting that cultures have problems, those problems are complicated, and we can learn from how artists tried to grapple with those problems without giving them a grade card.

That is, maybe just - in light of CR's questions - to seek a sort of starting place, from which a more productive debate over various continental philosophers and the question of 'literature' (and not just "Theory") might proceed?

(Then again, I suspect most bloggers would rather read David Sedaris. So there's no burden to respond, much less respond definitively here. Cheers.)

[Rich Puchalsky]

Matt: "that New Historicism's emphasis on connecting literature to politics can resemble a "good dog/ bad dog" criticism, where critics praise artists for their progressive views and chastise them for reactionary ones, instead of accepting that cultures have problems"

You know, I don't think I've ever read anything like this before, certainly not on Scott's blog. I wonder why out of so many posts he's never addressed this?

OK, I should try not to be so sarcastic.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I can take a crack at those three criticisms (which are, Rich, valid for the whole, but which I've never addressed here because I've already addressed them in my work):

That it tends to reduce literature to a footnote of history, and neglects the uniquely literary qualities of the work in question.

It can, but this isn't a philosophical objection to the practice of new historicism; it's an objection to the practice of particular new historicists. No one, for example, will chastise Greenblatt for not paying attention to the distinctly literary qualities of the text. They may chastise Gallagher, however, and possibly me. Then again, I'm working with many texts whose literary qualities aren't all that literary.

Frederick Jameson's critique: that much New Historicist criticism lacks a theory of history.

That's Jameson being a blowhard, if you ask me. What he wants: a formulaic, programmatic theory of historical causality that literary Marxists like him have. Read that last chapter of The Political Unconscious, 'cause I mean, you want teleology? Jameson will give you teleology. I don't think a general theory of history is a particularly valuable thing to have, since history happens personally, then locally, then nationally, then globally, and a general theory can't account for all the permutative intersections between. In short, it's a nice bit of rhetoric on Jameson's part, but somewhere, deep inside, way, way down, he knows it's a cheap feint. (I'd answer this objection more fully, but it's too big and my time's too small today.)

Sedgwick: that New Historicism's emphasis on connecting literature to politics can resemble a "good dog/ bad dog" criticism, where critics praise artists for their progressive views and chastise them for reactionary ones, instead of accepting that cultures have problems, those problems are complicated, and we can learn from how artists tried to grapple with those problems without giving them a grade card.

Presentism. Ugh. Again, though, I don't think it's programmatic so much as something that happened. (On that note, there's not much programmatic about new historicism, or even much new about it outside of a little non-Annales French influence. Thomas' The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics covers this best.) Also, I associate this kind of new historicism with the early, politically-charged pieces in Representations; it's not so much the case anymore since now new historicism is often considered the most "conservative" literary approaches around.

[Matt]

It was a conversation-starter, Rich. Hardly directed at Scott, and not my own view. Though from my understanding, not an uncommon criticism, and who knows, there may even be room for some debate here, say, over New Historicism's tendency to prescribe and indict the 'literary'. In fact it reminds me of a Valve thread or two.

But in short, just a reference to Sedgwick, you know?

[Matt]

Scott, thank you. I think it helps to ground the debate at least.

[Rich Puchalsky]

What I meant to say was that I don't think that there's been a blog post about your work here that hasn't alluded to a concern about presentism in some form.

[forgottenboy]

What a terrific, engaged community. It's a pleasure taking part. I apologize for the time lapse; I've been out of town, with only tiny bursts of Internet access.

It's absolutely crucial that Acephalous draw on Sedaris and Alan Moore as much as Greenblatt. I wouldn't say I read Kaufman for his wit; I'd say wit is part of the method. The blog is a long way of telling the following story: one day I couldn't get any work done, because I came to my office, and found Theory and Modernism in flagrante delicto. When I asked them to leave, Theory threatened to report me for perversion and historicism.

CR, your question makes sense, but there are several ways to interpret the intersection between authenticity and the common good. I'd like to distinguish between two types. Academic A: "By writing in an entirely unconstrained, unique manner about my responses to texts, I'm modeling a kind of freedom which will benefit society." Academic A is, frankly, a certain type of blogger. I am this type of blogger. I write subjectively and blend topics of personal interest with the references to literature which happen to be floating around in my head. To the extent that academics wish to be paid and published for work of this sort, they should be considered prose poets, not critics. I consider many of Derrida's books, such as "The Post-card," to be prose poetry of this sort.

Academic B: "It's essential to revise certain contemporary, widely accepted claims in order for us all to correctly understand the following text(s)." This kind of authenticity -- dissent in the service of progress in understanding – is entirely legitimate. Critics always have the right to reject popular wisdom, including the popular wisdom of institutions of learning. It would have been risky to speak about authorial intention at Yale in the 1980s, but that doesn't mean the author doesn't exist. The risk is a function of power, not truth.

It's true that my examples of writers and theorists (e.g. Joyce and Aquinas) were all documented cases of influence. However, if Aquinas informs Portrait, then literary works can contain coherent "theoretical" elements which can be identified and analyzed. What's the bigger leap? Putting the Angelic Doctor in the context of 20th century Dublin? -- or applying Derrida's work, which is influenced by Joyce, and appears a mere 50 years later? I believe it is possible to write historically responsible criticism without believing that each historical moment is irreducibly singular.

Matt, I haven't read the n+1 piece on Eggers. I picked Eggers because I thought his preface did what Mella wanted to do: use self-referentiality to liberate texts from teleological notions of linear argumentation and the "whole."

That said, I'm teaching Kunkel's Indecision in my survey course on the English novel. To some students, it will undoubtedly appear as though Austen, Hawthorne and Roth merely lead up to Kunkel. So, let me say about n+1's critiques what Britney Spears said about the President under similar conditions of ignorance: We should follow him and give him our support, because he knows best. (I do think Eggers is sentimental, but I think the real problem with his book was that he let all his friends censor it.)

As for the critiques of New Historicism...

"It tends to reduce literature to a footnote of history." I agree with Scott that this is a mistake made by individuals, not a flaw in historicist methodology. Good historical criticism treats literature as a historical event, with antecedents, consequences, and horizontal relations to other phenomena. However, literature does pose some unique problems. First of all, to study literature seriously one has to believe that airy nothings are capable of changing material practices (i.e. fiction can be revolutionary). Second, literature is a type of event that keeps happening – every time a new reader picks up Dos Passos, U.S.A. happens all over again, potentially in new ways.

On Jameson: Historicist criticism of literature does not require a theory of history. It only requires a theory of the effect of historical circumstances on literature. Perhaps we would feel less anxiety about having a theory of history if historians had a theory of literature. Dozens of books are written on gunpowder, but is there one good, researched text on the effect of Shakespeare on the world?

On Sedgwick: Here too, I agree that this criticism applies to individuals rather than the school. I place most of the blame on the French realists, not on critics – writers like Zola proved that you could write great novels about striking miners, after which “The Sea-Gull” seemed rather removed. Hence good dog/bad dog. Good, progressive critics take apparently “personal” writers like Chekhov or T.S. Eliot and demonstrate the recurrence of the political in their miniature portraits of frustrated lives – ignoring if necessary these writers’ more explicitly political claims.

[N. Pepperell]

FB: I've been transcribing interviews all morning, which doesn't prime the brain for thinking about these things... But a quick question (which probably results from a disciplinary misunderstanding, since I'm not directly involved in literary studies or related fields): Why is it specifically important to believe that literature can change the world, in order to believe that it can be an important object of study?

I'm extremely sympathetic to the notion that the divide between "material" causes and "ideal" causes of historical events is not useful - as well as to claims that thought is no less "material" than anything else. I could probably be validly accused of having a tacit theory of why particular works of literature, or political speeches, or similar interventions can exert a strong influence on particular historical moments.

Even if I didn't think these things, however, it could still be important to study literature, for example, in order to map the emergence and spread of particular concepts or forms of expression - treating literature as one form of social practice that, like other forms of social practice, is shaped by and contributes to an enacted experience of the social world.

Or, from another direction, the concern with "whether airy nothings are capable of changing material practices" may already cede too much ground: practices are always and already practices of thought - of mind - as well as practices of body and of action. To do a certain thing already implies the capacity to think a certain way.

What literature (and philosophy, and political speech) can sometimes do is provide a higher-order articulation of these capacities of thought - and thereby shape the way in which people become aware of and interpret new forms of perception and thought. This can then exert a powerful influence on how new forms of social experience are mobilised, how they spread across multiple dimensions of social practice, and how they are constrained and circumscribed. But this influence is also conditioned - not by "material" life reigning the superstructure back in (not that you suggested it would), but by the resonance of the articulation with the intuitive, "common sense" experience that a specific articulation "fits" with its moment in time...

I don't have the specific sense that you would disagree (although I won't hold you responsible for my more specific flights of fancy), but I suppose I'm puzzled by the general issue of how high the "stakes" need to be (revolutionary) in order to justify the study of literature...

[Matt]

Eh, it all comes down to conceptions of death and God, really, how one defines and "values" 'literature.' I'm afraid I'm with the French Heideggerians on this one (the thing about literature is that it 'resists/desists', etc).

[forgottenboy]

I'm not sure where the French Heideggerians stand, but I'm with them, too, as I imagine they are served delicious coffees all the time, and crepes with raspberry jam. In my view, literature envisions, and resists or desists only insofar as a vision is a sort of negation of the present moment. I think this thread may be falling finally to earth, especially since there is the more pressing matter of Scott's accident. Still, I'd like to respond to N. Pepperell's comment.

I think your description of literature as a social practice is helpful. If you'd agree that new forms of social experience produce new practices -- that what we do grows out of how we see the world and other people -- then I think we agree. By calling literature "revolutionary," I only meant to suggest that it can reveal actionable possibilities which are unknown or even hateful to the received ideas of its day. Your model strikes me as similar to systems theory, which makes sense, since reading is a complex and massively parallel social phenomenon that reaches across populations and epochs.

Common sense is a difficult factor to measure properly. It is true that readers must interpret the relevance of a text to their own experiences (perhaps "worlds" is a better term). However, common sense has been used again and again to confine radical projects to the dustbin of fantasy. (One thinks of the contemporary critique of Marxism: "it only works in theory.") Taken in this sense, common sense is a strategy of conservative thought, rather than a sign of the real.

[N. Pepperell]

Sorry - my reference to "common sense" was unnecessarily misleading: most of my work concerns, directly or indirectly, how things come to be experienced as common sense - and the ways in which quite different (and often contradictory) things come to seem commonsensical at different times.

So I would never personally cite "common sense" as a kind of authority (although my abbreviated discussion in the last post could certainly have been interpreted that way). What I was actually trying to say is that "influential" literature often owes its influence to how well it resonates with "common sense" - a resonance that, sadly, doesn't correllate with truth value (a phrase that, itself, may buy me some grief, but I do also have an epistemological theory lurking in the background).

On other issues: I'd certainly agree that new social experiences are generative of new practices - again, this is a major interest of mine. And I think that literature (among other forms of reflecting on and experimenting with articulations of social experience) provides a major means for extrapolating the implications of social experiences beyond whatever realm those experiences originate...

On systems theory: hmmm.... I probably wouldn't put up too strong a fight if someone wanted to categorise my work that way, but I've always tended to think that much systems theory reifies "structural" patterns... But maybe I do too...

[Matt]

These airy dismissals of the French Heideggerians will not stand! (And as soon as I can afford your café in the clouds, Forgottenboy, you shall be made to hear about it!) No offense of course.:)

[forgottenboy]

Matt, none taken, that was hilarious. Are we talking about Kojève here? If so, I could stand to hear more, ignorant as I am of his lectures on Hegel. Or are we talking about Sartre, or Derrida?

N. Pepperell, I'd love to hear more about this backgrounded epistemology. Your definition of "common sense" is an interesting one, and (as you say) somewhat different from the definition on which my response was based. The notion of a resonance between the specific fictions of literature, and general discourses of common sense, reminds me above all of Plato's dialogues. Socrates was able to create so much disruption within Athens because he demonstrated that the conceptual model of the army general did not match the conceptual model of the rhetorician. This contradicted the important democratic assumption that all professions functioned in the same way. Socrates at first used these internal inconsistencies to extend his personal revelation of ignorance to the society at large. Later, he or Plato used the disjunction to create conceptual space for the non-democratic profession to rule them all, the philosopher-king. The efficacy of his arguments was based on the commonplace nature of his examples, because what is ordinary seems unimpeachable to us.

I’ve always thought that systems theory was close to probabilistic quantum physics, especially given its debt to Foucault, who wrote of the need for a “micro-physics” of power. Thus it applies variables in a dynamic fashion across a large number of exchanges, rather than reducing these exchanges to reified structures. However, structuralism itself is often wrongly accused of reifying the social. What could be more flexible than Levi-Strauss’s account of anxiety over origins in the Oedipus myth? As the common sense notion of individual origin narrows from the race to the family, the hubristic desire to produce oneself changes from a curse on the polis (Sophocles) to a neurosis within the individual (Freud). We might say, applying your terms, that the work remains the same, but its evolving resonance with other, unfixed discourses changes its meaning.

[Matt]

Matt, none taken, that was hilarious. Are we talking about Kojève here? If so, I could stand to hear more, ignorant as I am of his lectures on Hegel. Or are we talking about Sartre, or Derrida?

Er, no, not Kojève so much (though that would be another..thing, and maybe interesting to discuss sometime - not that I'm qualified). In truth - and this may irk Scott, I suppose - I was thinking of Lacoue-Labarthe (and Blanchot), primarily.
Cheers.