In Which I Share the Draft You'd Kill to Read (if Theory's Your Bag)

I've half-finished ... something.  I call it "The Culture of Argument: Virtuosos in the Age of Eclecticism [doc]."  Many longtime readers will be surprised by its conclusion.  In fine, I argue that we need to talk about theory more; think about theory more; argue about it honestly; not dismiss it never.  Know why?  Because those literary things we literary folk analyze ain't much in the way of philosophically coherent, so it don't behoove us to be neither. 

Thing is, I'm mighty unhappy with the conclusion.  So unhappy, in fact, I truncated the paper shy of it.  If you have some time, read your way through and give me the what-for.  Should I conclude with talk of what's possible in the present, or pontificate about the stupendous stuff what will be available next week or some such?  (General criticisms of fallacious arguments, laughable prose and/or definitive proof of my stupidity are also welcome.) 

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

There's one super-distracting, non-substantive thing to get out of the way at the start: check your quotes. Did Waters really write "where fames becomes its own promotion" or "the best journal for emerging ides in the humanities for a generation"? If so, you may want to sic-ify. But I suspect not.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I'm terrible about quoted material, since I type it fast and tend to skim over it in revisions. (After all, I know what it says. No need for me to re-read it.) That said, I'm struggling with uploading another, non-insane (e.g. ???????????????-larded version) of it. I'm not sure why, other than Microsoft being, well, Microsoft.

[Adam Roberts]

Um: "The Culture of Argument: Virtuosi in the Age of Eclecticism" ...?

More substantive comment later, when I have time to read the thing itself.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I waffled on that account, but Jameson used "virtuosos," and that's the common usage (on this side of the pond, anyway), so I ran with it. (That said, these are the minor decisions which keep me tossing and turning all through the night.)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I waffled on that account, but Jameson used "virtuosos," and that's the common usage (on this side of the pond, anyway), so I ran with it. (That said, these are the minor decisions which keep me tossing and turning all through the night.)

[Adam Roberts]

A properly virtuoso duet-style posting there, Scott.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I'm not sure how that happened. What's up, TypePad? Got the hiccups?

[Thomas Elrod]

The first comment from Twain also has a typo: it says "skill and crossbones" instead of "skull and crossbones."

[Rich Puchalsky]

I only have minor amounts of time to read this thing, so I'm going to hit a paragraph here and there. But in general, this seems to flow pretty well; I see that the bit about writing an article from a number of blog posts seems to be working -- at least, I've recognized several blog posts in it.

The paragraph beginning with "The institutionalization of sub-disciplines within sub-disciplines coincided with the marked decline in the investment required to print and distribute a journal" could use some work, though. It's a techno-historical argument, and shows the signs of flash that almost always afflict those. Were the new journals really made in Pagemaker? Is the addition of two named journals in a decade an "exponential increase"? Is each subdiscipline really "describing some axial arrangement of biological development and acculturation"? There's a good argument there, but it needs either more or less; either a more documented description of balkanization, or a less technic one that just states points like "the process by which a person of Asian American descent acquired a subject position differed widely from than the one by which a person of Arab American descent did" that aren't reduceable to pseudo-numeric quantities.

On "the gaze", I'll add that "the routinization of “the gaze” in film studies speaks to the intellectual deficit caused by professional isolation" does not seem necessarily true. If "the gaze" has been routinized in the same way as basic Freudian concepts have been routinized, as part of popular culture, then I don't think it's surprising that film critics find the concept important even though the theoretical backing for it has fallen away. That may be a form of intellectual deficit, if you like, but not one caused by professional isolation -- rather, one caused by the fact that film criticism deals with pop culture, and that the people watching and making films have some nebulous concept of "the gaze". It's theory frozen in a different way than theory frozen academically.

[Rich Puchalsky]

OK, I read through the rest of it. I think that there really is a strong central argument there.

But as usual I'm going to bring up a point that I question about it, because for the parts where I agree, there's not much to say. It's too late or I'm too tired or something to remember the word for what the opposite of reification is, but you seem to be doing that with the "theory anthology".

Is it really your contention that people learned the contemporary late-theoretical style from reading anthologies, or are they symbolic? Maybe I'm just reading wrong, but it seems too slanted towards the first. Let's take a look back over the misty vales of a year or so ago -- remember Spivak's scattered speculations on theories of value piece? She wrote that as a professor, as a present or future theoretical superstar, and I have difficulty believing that she was just carrying on what she'd learned by reading some anthology. It's a style that's permitted by her readers not knowing what they're doing, true, so perhaps they have this syndrome -- but that doesn't explain why she could write it.

I think that you're really not honoring the odd value system that has emerged. When Jodi writes about how her beliefs are not challengeable by those outside her tradition of discourse, she really seems to believe it. What you refer to as Hegelian seriousness has no place; it's one reason why mockery is such a common answer. When one objects, say, using the Spivak piece as an example, that a labor theory of literary value would leave the encyclopedia as the highest exemplar of literary value, there is no answer but to take refuge in some form of mystification. The next step is to say that mystification is not in keeping with one's chosen role as an academic -- but who is to say that it isn't? If a subculture can appear, perhaps even through the reading of anthologies, it can then be taken seriously, and its standards supported, with any outside challenge preempted before it is even begun.

There's definitely something to this focus on the anthology -- I well remember the "jealous fury over a book"; there was a lot to learn, seriously, from that. But I think that the attitude came first, the anthology second, or at least that the attitude now is its own thing and no longer needs the anthology.

[Timothy]

"Because those literary things we literary folk analyze ain't much in the way of philosophically coherent, so it don't behoove us to be neither."

Why imitate your subject matter? I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad idea, I'm just wondering why you’d want to do it. You might have already answered this question in your essay, if so please don’t bother answering the question, but if you didn’t I’d be interested to hear your response ( I haven’t got time to read the essay just now unfortunately). It might be that imitating or not imitating your subject matter is fundamental to the distinction between analytic philosophy and other philosophy like pursuits.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Rich:

it needs either more or less

It needs more, certainly, but one thing I'm counting on is that some of that "more" will be provided by the reader. But yes, more footnotes are in order. Evidence shouldn't be "evocative."

If "the gaze" has been routinized in the same way as basic Freudian concepts have been routinized, as part of popular culture, then I don't think it's surprising that film critics find the concept important even though the theoretical backing for it has fallen away.

You make a good point here. I'd counter, however, that in a theoretical register pop cultural authority shouldn't hold sway. "Don't erect theoretical edifices on unknown substances" and what-not. That said -- and as I mentioned a week or two ago -- I need to consider that example more carefully. In the draft's "final" version, I merely backed away from my stronger claims. Ironically, I may need to reconsider their terms.

Is it really your contention that people learned the contemporary late-theoretical style from reading anthologies, or are they symbolic? Maybe I'm just reading wrong, but it seems too slanted towards the first.

A little bit of both: it's symbolic of a particular way of "doing theory," but the anthologies also changed the way people taught -- and therefore thought -- about theory. This doesn't come through strongly enough in the draft, but I do believe what and how we teach influences how we think in fairly predictable ways. This is why, for example, so many articles are work-shopped in graduate seminars. I probably need to spell this out more clearly in the draft, but I also think there's an extent to which the anthologies authorized this lazier approach to theory (and, as those who have read the draft know, I speak to self-identifying theorists and historicists here).

with any outside challenge preempted before it is even begun.

This is why I prefer such challenges coming from within. You're correct, though, that appeals to Hegelian seriousness won't work on someone like Jodi. I mean, really.

Timothy:

Why imitate your subject matter?

I don't really address it in the article itself, actually, but I can here: it's not imitation, it's description. How would you describe a work of literature written by, say, a Vorticist with Freudian sympathies? You would apply the work of Freud and the body of Vorticist thought in an attempt first to describe, then to understand the text. Other understandings are possible, but it's important to understand things on their own terms before proceeding to other forms of critique. I know I make it sound like mere description is the role of the critic, but I don't mean that; what I mean is, if you're already working with competing discourses of little-to-no truth value, there's no reason to limit your analysis to theories predicated on determinations of truth value. Does that make sense? Because I've confused myself here, and really shouldn't have.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"You would apply the work of Freud and the body of Vorticist thought in an attempt first to describe, then to understand the text."

I do see a potential conflict between this and the bit on "the gaze". If films have been made by people who believe in "the gaze", then by the same logic as you use above, that concept is important forevermore. You can say "don't erect theoretical edifices on unknown substances", but a text that you're working on is not an unknown substance.

I suspect that this apparent contradiction could be resolved by an example of the difference between working with "the gaze" as a historicist concept and working with it as a theoretical one. In the quote that you use about it remaining important no matter what, it's not clear which is meant.

As for Hegelian seriousness, I don't think that such a challenge really can possibly come from within. Anyone who does not believe in the subcultural ethos is thereby not within, as a matter of definition. It doesn't matter whether you work in literary studies and know theory, what defines you as "within" involves a rejection of Hegelian seriousness. I admire the neat insulative quality of the system, actually. It means that really, only power relations can breach the boundary, which is why criticism equates to attack.

[David R. Block]

I'll look it over and give you the unenlightened layman's view in an e-mail or something.

[Gavin Weaire]

Not a terribly enlightened comment here, either - but: as far as the practical question of a conclusion goes, the argument is clear as it stands. What IMO might head off an obvious objection is something putting some flesh on the bones of the last sentence. "A new forum—one which shares the commitment to debate once embodied by Critical Inquiry—is necessary if we hope to see a new generation of Jamesonian virtuosos emerge." What are a few possible forms such a forum might take? Esp. as the preceding two sentences exclude both specialist and generalist journals.

[Gavin Weaire]

And rereading the original post, I see that you'd sketched that out already. So, more specifically, what I'd want to hear is more on the "practical, possible in the present" side. Esp. given that it's already time-consuming for people to keep up with their sub-sub-sub-specializations - and you want a forum which is widely read across the whole of your discipline, and beyond.