The Idiot's Guide to Scott's Idiosyncratic Theoretical Orientation (Sadly, Not Complete With Cartoons)

I'm not up to producing original content tonight.   Fortunately, Forgotten Boy and N. Pepperell are having an incredibly stimulating conversation down in the comments to this post.  Were I able to put two and two together tonight I'd jump in.  (Forgotten Boy continues to write circles around the competition.  I wish I'd wished to be hit by a car to write like him before.  I'd wish it now, but it'd be in poor taste.  Don't want to be offending myself after all.) 

Also, a number of people have professed a desire to understand my particular theoretical orientation.  Here are some links to posts in which its contours are visible:

1. My long meditation on theoretical eclecticism.  It's my contribution to the Theory's Empire event and discusses why I value a confrontational mode of literary scholarship. 
2. Another long post, this time about New Historicists' love of homologies and my problem with them.
3. A veritable sonnet concerning my devotion to historical accuracy over and above all commitments theoretical. 
4. Speaking of which: my feelings about uncritical theoretical commitments.  (Be sure to read the comments.)
5. A bit about my tortured relatonship with Foucault.  (The second bit of which is, as Matt'll tell you, still pending.)
6. My intellectual history.
7. The funnier version of my intellectual history.
8. The New Historicist reading list I put together earlier this year.
9. The text of my public lecture about historicisms old and new.

All of these pieces are flawed and incomplete, but as I've never written a comprehensive account of my critical position, they'll have to suffice for the moment.  Needless to say, I've changed my mind about some of that since I wrote it, but it'll provide those who seek to understand my position better a sound starting point.

P.S.  Some of you have websites whose banner and layout bore me to sleep before I have a chance read a word you say.  Luckily for you I have a solution: Lauren's "willing 2 work 4 fud."  You can find some examples of her work on Feministe as well as the sites she links to in that post.  Like Dr. B's.  How can you not love that banner?  It's classic.  Yours can be too.  Were I not married to a graphic designer, dirt poor and on the path that terminates in Dickensian gutters, I'd hire her myself.

Comments

[geoduck2]

Scott,

Um, could you please read the last few messages on the Valve. Do you want me to stop posting on the Valve?