Acephalous

Oh Yes, I Put the "Der" in Derridean

A few months back, I wrote a long post about why I don't "do theory" anymore.  In it, I identified what initially drew me to theory-doing:

There's something about modernist literature which lends itself to and/or is consonant with continental philosophy.  Joyce, Proust, Woolf, &c. attract people who study Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, &c.

That's what I said.  What followed that statement, however, had little to do with it.  I tied my intellectual development to my progress to and through graduate school, moving from one charismatic professor to another, adopting and discarding perspective after perspective until I became who I am.  As CR pointed out, my development seemed "a bit overdetermined."  At the time, I wanted to reply that the overdetermination was a function of the narrative, or that I would consider charismatic those with whom I was already inclined to agree.  Both responses seemed inadequate.  The first because you can always blame the narrator for his narrative, which he could have, but chose not to, narrate differently; the second, because I adopted and discarded with proselytical glee.

I think I have an answer now:

In a conversation elsewhere about the relation of thinkers to their adjectives, I mentioned a crack Derrida made about feeling "insufficiently Derridean."  Possessive pronouns aside, his legacy would not be his, nor would it relate to the body of his thought.  Neither would it belong to other philosophers.  It would be the property of English professors; so much so, he mused, that the adjective "Derridean" didn't even refer to him.  It was an abbreviation for "The Yale Derrideans" (Paul De Man, J. Hillis Miller and Geoffrey Hartman).  I remember thinking the obvious question—"What does the 'Derridean' in 'The Yale Derrideans' refer to?"—and being struck by the profundity of the obvious answer:

"Not Derrida." 

Not the man, his words, his thought, or anything he could control, but the tradition he inspired.  As traditions are wont to evolve, that means his name could be attached to thought which bore little resemblance to his own.  (Which is why he could be "insufficiently Derridean" in the first place.)  While there are many possible referents for "Derridean," the only viable one is "what people who describe their work as 'Derridean' do."  The connection is incidental, not inherent.  Certainly not essential. 

"Derridean" means what it means because Derrida was embraced by English departments in the United States at a particular historical moment.  In retrospect, you can muster a convincing explanation for how it came to mean what it means.  But only in retrospect.  And only for "Derridean."  You can't generalize from its adoption how, for example, English departments in the States at a different historical moment  adjectivized a different thinker. 

I didn't think this at the time.  Back then, I banged my head bloody against walls of theoretical necessity:

There (bang!) must (bang!) be (bang!) some (bang!) essential (bang!) connection (bang!) between (bang!) thinkers (bang!) and (bang!) their (bang!) adjectives (bang!).

Head pounding, hair blowzy, I decided to drop the issue and do some investigating.  How had "Derridean" come to mean something other than "closely associated with the thought of Derrida"?  The answer, as everyone else knew but I'd yet to learn, was the New Criticism.  Derrida influenced a professoriate trained to value certain methods and concepts over others.  When an English professor picked up Of Grammatology, she would read:

To produce this signifying structure obviously cannot consist of reproducing, by the effaced and respectful doubling of commentary, the conscious, voluntary, intentional relationship that the writer institutes in his exhanges with the history to which he belongs thanks to the element of language.  This moment of doubling commentary should no doubt have its place in a critical reading.  To recognize and respect all its classical exigencies is not easy and requires all the instruments of traditional criticism.  Without this recognition and this respect, critical production would risk developing in any direction at all and authorize itself to say almost anything.  But this indispensable guardrail has always only protected, it has never opened a reading. (158)

That "respectful doubling of commentary" bears an uncanny resemblance to the mode of "close reading" she'd been doing since her undergraduate days.  Her ignorance of structuralist theory, however, would render sections of that passage opaque.  Her commitment to radical politics would encourage her to disregard all talk of "indispensable guardrails."  She might not even have read that far, since the entire profession had orgiastically authorized critical production to develop in every direction and say almost everything.  Why?

Because the structuralist tradition to which Derrida refers lacked the political implications of the tradition to which American readers applied Derrida: New Criticism.  Unlike structuralism, which sounded and aspired to be scientific, the New Criticism was born of an agrarian, anti-scientific sentiment.  It blossomed into the pedagogical tool of a white male elite and was reviled.  When an American critic heard talk of "indispensible guardrails," he would think it the equivalent of William Faulkner's advice for the Civil Rights Movement: "Go slow."  Like Thurgood Marshall is reputed to have said:

"They don't mean go slow.  They mean don't go."

Deconstruction, then, allowed them to keep the professional tools they've long cultivated while unburdening them of the politics associated with New Criticism.  This, then, is the school of thought "Derridean" would come to describe.  Not the man, not his words, not his thought, but a particular amalgam of close-reading techniques and hostility to New Critical politics. 

Derrida may have written Of Grammatology in an environment in which New Critical politics had no purchase, but the American scholars who gave his name purchase did.  This realization constituted perhaps the greatest leap in my intellectual development.  Words stopped relating to concepts and started commingling with the history of the acceptance and dissemination of those concepts. 

Theory began to matter less.

The history of theory began to matter more. 

All of which is only to say, in response to CR's comment of months back, that I had prepped the fields for the crops my string of advisors would plant there.  Intellectually speaking, I had already begun moving in an historicist direction.  Perhaps the best way to say it is that I've been influenced by those scholars I'd prepared myself to be influenced by. 

(I should add that I want to thank CR for presenting me the opportunity to think through this.  As every reader of Freud knows, introspection is fun.  Useful too, I think.  More to me than you, probably.  I should get back to writing funny things, shouldn't I?  In my mind, Woody Allen's fans from Stardust Memories rove in bands, lamenting my fall from grace.)

Well, Who Would Conservatives Have Us Footnote?

[This inflammatory baby originally appeared on The Valve.  But you're welcome to comment and/or link to it here.]

Laura Ventura, a law student from Indiana, picked up the then-latest issue of Critical Inquiry and read Anne H. Stevens and Jay Williams’ article The Footnote, in Theory.  She was horrified:

For those who doubt the far leftward tilt of college campuses, one needs to look no further than an article published in the University of Chicago’s Critical Inquiry to dispel such doubts. An article by Anne H. Stevens and Jay Williams titled “The Footnote, in Theory” chronicled Critical Inquiry’s most frequently cited theorists throughout its existence.

The number one cited theorist by the magazine was none other than Jacques Derrida, “the father of deconstruction.” Exactly what deconstruction means is hard to say because even Derrida himself could not give a definition. In a nutshell, deconstruction is a method for discrediting historical theorists such as Aristotle and Plato for the sole purpose of promoting Derrida’s own beliefs.

Her deep familiarity with Derrida’s oeuvre notwithstanding, I question Accuracy in Academia’s decision to publish such a laughably ignorant article.  Maybe a friend should’ve told her that anti-Derridean polemics account for half of Derrida’s appearances in CI.  Proof?  Of course I have proof.  Responsible scholars—future lawyers, even—read the works they criticize, lest they risk writing the equivalent of this:

For those who doubt the anti-Americanist tilt of college campuses, one needs to look no further than an article published in the German Studies Association’s German Studies Review to dispel such doubts. An article by Anne H. Fritzsche and Jay Ametsbichler titled “Die Fußnote, in der Theorie” chronicled German Studies Review’s most frequently cited theorists throughout its existence.

The number one cited theorist by the magazine was none other than some German Guy, “the father of some German school of thought.” Exactly what some German school of thought means is hard to say because even that German Guy himself could not give a definition. In a nutshell, some German school of thought is a method for discrediting historical theorists such as Aristotle and Plato for the sole purpose of promoting some German Guy’s own beliefs.

Before you protest how unfair my parody is, consider what Ventura follows that with:

Notably absent from the list is C. S. Lewis. It is a fair assumption that he was most likely left off the list because of his strong Christian beliefs and influences. This factor certainly sets him apart from number two on the list, Sigmund Freud, who did not have any religious convictions. Realistically, the fact the Lewis was a Christian most likely sets him apart from all the “theorists” on the list.

I’m so blinded by the fact that C.S. Lewis rarely appears in CI because he’s a Christian, I can’t see her argument to refute it. “Realistically,” it is such “a fair assumption” I can do nothing but accept its accuracy.  Sure, sure, the actual reason Lewis “was most likely left off the list” was that he wasn’t cited often enough to warrant placement on it.  But c’mon now, we’re being “realistic” here, and the obvious reason for his omission is that his 4,837 citations in CI paled in comparison to his overt espousal of Christian doctrine. (Anyway, we all know the tricks the left plays with numbers.  To them, math is but another masculinist discourse, &c.) After she’s proven that it’s probably fair to guess that Lewis was most likely left off due to his Christian beliefs, she addresses two other notable theorists absent from the list:

Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain.

Before you think no one could read that without ruining a keyboard (or two, depending on how much coffee you’ve yet to swallow) Candace de Russy seconds Ventura’s outrage:

Those absent from the list?  Such theorists as Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, and C.S. Lewis.

And people accuse John of using “theory"/"theorist" in the slippery sense?  I love Mr. Clemens as much as the next 19^th Century Americanist, but the man was a novelist.  He wrote the things theorists theorize about, not the things they produce.  (Not that there aren’t exceptions, mind you.)  Where to begin?  Maybe it’s better I don’t. 

Alexander Riley did, however, only to be spanked by the executive director of Accuracy in Academia, Malcolm Kline.  In 896 words—in fairness, only half of them are his—Kline said things. Some stuff, too.  Like, in response to Riley’s question

What precisely, one hastens to ask, in Derrida’s work have they honed in on, in their painstakingly expert reading, as evidence for this?

He said:

Ironically, Riley devotes more than 1,000 words to an attack on Dr. de Russy’s 99-word and Miss Ventura’s 364-word post.

Read the article.  That is his response to Riley’s question.  Again, I’m at a loss where to begin.  A pedantic statement about the unironic nature of the allegedly ironic question?  A note that the explanation as to why the sky is blue would be lengthier than the statement “the sky is green”?  Would pointing out that the response is a total non sequitur suffice? 

I’m tempted to write that any engagement with people as intellectually irresponsible as Ventura, de Russy, and Kline ought to be avoided.  Their commitment to empiricism, accuracy, and in Kline’s case, common sense, is as strong as is absolutely necessary to make the point they want to make when they want to make it. 

ADDENDUM: While I question the company he’s keeping, I can’t help but applaud [the approach of] former Valve contributor Mark Bauerlein’s contribution to this kerfuffle.  His assessment’s harsh [but unlike that of Ventura, Kline and de Russy, informed, i.e. incorrect but] not unfair.  Of course, were it not for “scholarly” interventions by the likes of Ventura, de Russy and Kline, many devotees would’ve [and have] moved on to other things long ago.  [Revised to to make what I said bear some relation to what I meant to.]

On the Power of Psychoanalytic Theory. No, Really.

forgottenboy's version of my feelings about Gladwell's Blink sounds overly sanguine to these ears.  Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves may lack the narrative drive of Gladwell's books, but it is a far better introduction to the field.  His narrative may stutter through the disciplinary history case-study-by-case-study, but even a shot transmission can push the needle above 55 on occasion.  But I want to talk argument, not ornament.  Wilson cites the articles being summarized or criticized, and his assessments are responsible and generous.  Perhaps too generous.  So far, I've found Wilson to be a serial under-exaggerator (even in reference to his own work) who steps delicately to avoid tripping any bullshit detectors.  Still, he compels readers to connect the dots he lines up.  (In Blink, those debates are obscured by the litany of experts he interviews, none of whom think it's a bad idea to present radical positions as if they were the disciplinary norm.)

The most salient and alluring undotted line suggests, forcefully if not persuasively, that a person can acquire a Freudian or Lacanian unconscious by sheer force of belief. Not an actual one, mind you, since it would still reside "above" the adaptive unconscious; and not a truly "unconscious" unconscious, since it would be the product of conscious deliberation; but it could be there.

In chapter four, he delves into the research into constitution of "personality," and presents the consensus opinion that people's conscious beliefs and unconscious behavior are at odds. He cites numerous studies which demonstrate, for example, that when a person and all her friends are asked to rate her on character traits like "conscientiousness" and "temper," there is almost no correlation between the person's self-evaluation and her friends' evaluations; however, there's a significant correlation, damn near a consensus, among her friends. What this speaks to, Wilson argues, is the fact that the adaptive unconscious manifests its "personality" more forcefully in social situations, in moments when reactions are instant, or almost so, and thus rely not on conscious deliberation but on the unconscious modules. Their contours are clearly visible to everyone except the person who must infer the disposition of implicit processes they can only access indirectly. We can't control those processes despite the fact that they constitute the bulk of our personality. We are what we do, not how we rationalize it. (On its face, this is a familiar model. Keep in mind, however, that the processes involved work in no way like their psychoanalytic counterparts. No family romance and all it entails.)

How does Wilson know this? Like anyone interested in human cognition, he studies people with unique and/or extensive brain damage. He cites the Gazzaniga and LeDoux's famous study of the lobotomized patient whose right hemisphere (controlling the left side of his body) is flashed a picture of a snow scene on it and asked to pick the card which corresponds to it: a shovel, a can opener, a screwdriver and a saw. With his left hand he picks the shovel every time; with his left-hemisphere controlled right hand, he did no better than chance. Then they flashed different pictures at the same time:

[I]n one trial they flashed the snow scene to [the patient's] right hemisphere and a picture of a chicken claw to his left hemisphere. Hepicked the card with a shovel with his left hand (because that was the one most related to the snow scene seen by his right hemisphere) and a card with a chicken with his right hand (because that was most related to the chicken claw seen by his left hemisphere.

The researchers then asked [the patient] why had picked the cards he did. Like most people, [the patient's] speech center was in his left hemisphere, which knew why he had picked the chicken with his right hand (because he had seen the chicken claw) but had no idea why he had picked the shovel with his left hand (because the snow scene was viewed only by the right hemisphere). No problem; the left hemipshere quickly made up an answer: "I saw a claw and picked a chicken, and you have to clean out the chicken shed with a shovel. (96)

A basic example of "mind-blindness," I know, but a powerful indication of what the deliberative consciousness constantly does; namely, it confabulates rational—typically narrative—explanations when confronted with any situation.  It acts as if it possesses all the facts, understands all the motives, and produces an plausible explanation. The superficial resemblance to psychoanalytic theory reappears, but in this case, the distinction is definitive: there is no repression involved, no psychic defense mechanism at work here; the conscious mind is merely as ignorant of these unconscious modules as the distribution of liver enzymes. Our tiny, perhaps even epiphenomenal, conscious mind lies because that is all it knows how to do.

I prefer the modified "executive model" of consciousness. In the unmodified version, the legislative and judicial branches and the executive staffers work for—albeit not at the behest of—the President. He issues directives, sets "the course" which everyone else follows. Wilson, himself following Owen Flanagan, thinks the consciousness-as-President model grants it too much power; he prefers what Flanagan calls the consciousness-as-Reagan model, because

Reagan was the entertaining and eloquent spokesperson for a cadre of smart and hardworking powers (actually layers of power), some known to outsiders, and some unknown. This is not to deny that Reagan felt as if he were in charge in his role as "The Great Communicator" ... The point is that one can feel presidential, and indeed be presidential, but still be less in control than it seems from either the inside or outside. (7)

Obviously, the narratives we use to rationalize our behavior are interdependent with the processes they obscure. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can alter our disposition to our environment and our reactions to it. Short of a neurological event, we are more plastic than the interminable cure would have us believe; we are so plastic, in fact, that we can create a working model a Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Lacanian, Zizekian &c. "unconscious" where none previously existed. We can alter our social situation such that we relate to people as our preferred psychoanalytic model predicts, which forces the adaptive unconscious to behave in accordance with the altered social environment. We can slip a conscious psychoanalytic "unconscious" between our Inner Reagan and actual unconscious.

What this means for the study of literature is that the already strong argument in favor of teasing psychoanalytic models from works authored by writers of the psychoanalytic persuasion contains more explanatory power than I initially apportioned it.  Even better—or worse, if you've taken a hardline anti-psychoanalytic stance like some people I am—to the extent that psychoanalysis is literary theory, the superstructural relations it identifies are, if they appear with the frequency with which scholars claim, of extreme, perhaps central, importance. There's a catch:

Advocacy criticism is fundamentally, perhaps fatally, flawed. Any theory which considers fundamental a psychoanalytic account of human cognition finds itself with a literary trope in the place their theory of mind resided. They have unwittingly confused a highly sophisticated, literary manifestation of deliberate thought for the basic workings of the human mind. The mind is not a work of art, and cannot be treated as such. I will track this line of thought further tomorrow, but I think you can see the general direction I'm headed.

The Two Are Not One

[x-posted from the Valve ]

In “The End of the Poststructuralist Era,” from Follies of the Wise, Frederick Crews charts the hasty marriage and slow estrangement of poststructuralist thought and New Left activism.  His argument, and its implications, may surprise you.

You see, the Yale School of deconstruction’s “manifest aim was ... to bring a spirit of erudite whimsy into the discussion of familiar [canonical] books, which would be rendered only more endearing by the discovery that their meanings were more multitudinous and undecidable than anyone had yet surmised” (308).  Too true, too true. 

Only, why would the discovery of even “more multitudinous and undecidable” dimensions to canonical literature open up the canon to previously marginalized voices?  Wouldn’t deconstruction have the opposite effect?  Hillis, speaking here in his 1986 presidential address, certainly thought so:

As everyone knows, literary study in the past few years has undergone a sudden, almost universal turn away from theory in the ordinary sense of an orientation toward language as such and has made a corresponding turn toward history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender conditions. (283)

Color me confused.  Here I thought theory necessarily entailed the commitments it so recently acquired.  Here I thought older modes of criticism possessed the retrograde politics.  Here I thought a lot of things a little historical perspective shattered.  Why?  Because the explanations were conceptual. 

Because they’re always conceptual. 

Poststructuralist thought always allies itself with a progressive politics, and poststructuralist thinkers always fold the latter into the former.  The result?  Opposition to poststructuralist thought necessarily entails an opposition to the progressiveness of its immanent politics.  Now I can complain that those politics aren’t immanent, that no textual orientation contains an immanent politics, but I will be shouted down by those who experience as natural their political and theoretical commitments, who cannot disentangle them because, well, because no one can offer a convincing reason that they should.

For the better part of two decades, literary critics have used a poststructuralist theoretical approach to generate a body of progressive thought, so of course the two appear inseparable.  Factor in the overwhelming number of conservative critics who fancy themselves poststructuralists, then think about it:

If everyone who does what they do shares the same politics, and everyone who doesn’t, doesn’t, why would they question a connection that feels so natural to them?  They have no reason to. 

So they haven’t.  I have, but from the wrong direction.  I started in the ‘70s moving forward, from the moment when the former radicals gained purchase in the discipline.  All this time, I should have been looking at it from the other direction, from the ‘80s moving backwards.  To point out, as Hillis does above, that “theory in the ordinary sense” existed independently of the commitments it eventually acquired.

Conceptual arguments be damned, I say, I have history.  The two are not one, not naturally.  They may be one of this lot, but more than likely not.  Just a simple couple whose marriage, while productive, is neither permanent nor necessary.

A Gift, Part II: This Time, It's Illustrated

I'm not going to put it on the site, but I want anyone in the mood for something brilliant to throw me a line and the benefit of the doubt.  I've finished the first twelve issues of Warren Ellis's Planetary, and if you can stomach one egregiously lame "revelation," I'm sure you'll agree it's the one of the best damned thing you've read in some time.  You'll have to think to the left, the right, before and behind "the box" to do so, but I guarantee the effort'll be worth the reward. 

So if you're an honorable person who fancies novel stimuli, send me an email (at any of the addresses I haunt) and I'll send you a substantial something or other.

IRONIC CODA: If you've sent me an email in the past three weeks and I have yet to respond, I apologize.  Earlier this evening, I discovered approximately seventy emails in Gmail's spam folder which don't belong there.  I'm in the process of responding, but have serious doubts about my stamina, so if you don't hear from me tonight, please don't add it to your tally of my inequities.  I'm hard at type rehabilitating my good name, and the wonky vibes you'd be broadcasting could bring this whole show crashing down.

For the Record:

This is how we should settle our philosophical differences.

(I tip my hat to a sometimes professor, recently retired.)

Welcome Readers of Inside Higher Ed

Scott's article neatly summarizes the situation circa two weeks ago, but I suspect his panel had more of an impact than he suggested.  Since we spoke, I've received offers to review three pre-publication manuscripts and one published book.  (The book—Julian Wolfreys' The Old Story, With a Difference—will be reviewed on the Valve in the coming weeks.) 

I'll follow up later today with a more substantial response to Scott's article.  The potential conjunction of academia's reputation economy and academic publishing's bottom line could have a substantial impact on the future of the profession, and thus is something whose implications I need more than a single cup of coffee to work through.  (A damning expose on performance-enhancing drugs in academia, next on Inside Higher Ed?  Not quite.  I just need a few more hours of warm-up reading before I'm able to think about anything, much less something with implications.) 

Theory & Comics, Together At Last (Again); or, What If...?

[X-posted to the Valve.  The reason for the "again" above, if you're curious.]

Passage from a letter excerpted in Ernest Jone's The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (3:392):

If I had my life to live over again, I should devote myself to telepathy rather than to psychoanalysis.

To which I can only say this:

Literature Today: A Link Dump Like No Other

Some regular readers who don't regularly read the Valve asked why I'm not x-posting my literary link dumps.  Since I couldn't muster much of a response, I caved.  (Don't worry, I have another post planned for the evening, and it is something else, I tell you, something else.)

I.

Thanks to the passage of time, terrorism is now an acceptable novelistic subject.  Just don’t make it Middle Eastern terrorism, because according to Brad Thor, “We’re getting Islamic terrorist fatigue.”

Harper Lee, 80, returns to the public eye old: “[In] an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.”

Film novelization is a dying art, and that’s a shame, because “Quadrophenia [was] surprisingly good.”

Realism must embrace fundamentalism or risk losing its license.

The remains Sophia, Nathaniel and Una Hawthorne all repose now in Concord. “It’s very emotional,” explains Imogen Howe, “They know now in spirit that everyone is reunited.” Being dead, Sophia, Nathaniel and Una were unavailable for comment.

Few in Macondo Aracataca care about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.  Or they’re unpersuaded that a town he hasn’t visited in 20 years can bank on his name.

Finally, the announcement of my new project, an attempt to create an abstract database for literary scholars. 

II.

This week on Bill Moyer’s Faith & Reason: Salman Rushdie.  (Check local listings.) Future episodes to include Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Mary Gordon, David Grossman, Colin McGinn, Richard Rodriguez, Anne Provoost, Will Power and Jeanette Winterson.

Complaints against clumsy literary erotica mount. 

David Morrell, Canadian author of First Blood and holder of a Ph.D. in American Literature from Penn State, won the 2005 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Creepers.  (Stephen King thinks him “chilling and hypnotically readable.”  Frank Gado, reviewing John Barth: An Introduction, disagrees.)

Malawi must seek beyond its borders for quality literature, says MacMillan’s Constantine Simwaka: “Most Malawians are not creative enough to produce works that may attract the youth to read more.”

Publishers are determined to bring bling to literature. “Mental Case,” whose real name is Sal Dizzal, attributes the genre’s anticipated success to the fact that “People like to hear and read about where they come from, and the public [in general] wants to hear the gangster folklore.”

Harry Potter is the source of Latin mania across the UK.  If you enjoyed that story, you may also find “violence“ and “changes to waste disposal“ of interest.

From beyond the grave, Chesteron continues to win converts.

III.

Time magazine demands answers, slackers: “Who is the Voice of Your Generation?”  Has he or she been unjustly neglected?

An impoverished idiot complains about literary theory’s infiltration of the Fed.

From literary theory to Critical Race Theory, yet she still likes T.S. Eliot.

Homer is a woman, maybe:

The idea of a woman writing The Iliad and not being bored out of her mind by the endless fighting and killings is a bit more far-fetched.

Gender essentialism?  Pinker explains.

From the MFA Blog, news that The Paris Review has put all its interviews with writers online.

Blawgs win.

The government doles out $691,000 and discovers that “mindless reading” or “zoning out” impairs reading comprehension.

Wait, what?

Hot, Hotter, Hottest; or, That'll Teach Me

The weather has prevented posting, commenting and general internet activities today.  I hope to be back tomorrow.  I was able to compose a semi-intelligent response to yesterday's post while hunkered in another, actually, the only air-conditioned room available.  So there's that.  Expect more when the air moves again. 

A couple quick confessions:

• The whole Freud thing devestates me.  I knew he was wrong, but until now I didn't think him a fraud.  That'll teach me to read people's letters or, you know, look past the face with which people countenance history.  [Edited because one can't "delve beyond" a face.  See what the heat does to otherwise sound heads?]
• Google has abandoned me.  For some reason I lack the liquids to discover, Google will no longer index Acephalous.  I'm not sure what I did, but I think it has something to do with that search box I added the other day.  I did so because I found myself wanting to refer to things I'd previously written more and more and tired of having to do so the old-fashioned way.  That'll teach me to, you know, do things to make my life easier.

An Unusual Footnote & A Few Words on Form

In the article abstracted this evening, I found the following footnote.  See, I'm a fan of footnotes.  I sometimes read them before the rest of an article in order to determine whether it's worth my time.  And I've read a lot of them.  So imagine my surprise when I found this beauty at the tail end of the first:

Megan Glick’s undergraduate thesis, ‘‘‘Written by a Ghost of Their Time’: Locating the Civil War in Elizabeth Stoddards’s The Morgesons,’’ is one of the first works to notice the extent to which Stoddard borrows structures of thought from the commercial world to explain the domestic one; her analysis of The Morgesons and Enlightenment definitions of contractual obligation intelligently observes the porous border between domesticity and law (Northwestern University, 2002). (726)

An undergraduate thesis being cited in American Literature?  Amazing.  Were someone to cite mine, the shame would drive me underground.

On another note, tonight I wrote a far shorter, more abstracty abstract.  I'm no more satisfied with it than I was with its overlong cousin–or with the fact that both fail to grab the general reader.  These two failures are not unrelated; both are the product of my poor form, and both will be rectified with a little practice.* 

Also, I'm appending a few general notes to the end of each abstract.  Most of these will concern technique–from sentence-level wit to large argumentative structure–and are there because I belong to the writing-as-perpetual-apprenticeship school.  The only way to become a better writer is to imitate better writers, to work their prose over and under until you know it inside and out, and then to appropriate their techniques into your prose.

*As White Bear and N. Pepperell noted, a little practice can be a dangerous thing–but I don't think that logic holds here.  (By "think" I obviously intend "hope.")

You YouTube? 'Cause Now I YouTube Too.

For the first time in my life "next September" won't involve sitting in or standing before a classroom.  I've taken all the deep breaths I can short of hyperventilating and am still a little unsettled by the thought.  'Cause quarter-century habits die hard.  Expect little intellectual from these parts until I catch my breath. 

Here's some entertainment instead.  I browsed YouTube for the first time tonight and learned stuff:

1. Tom Waits doesn't want to grow up, but in about 5 minutes he'll be so full of bourbon he can't stand up and someone'll convince him to endorse meat.
2. The Replacements are young bastards.  Children by the million scream for Alex Chilton but slum along with Paul on The Skyway.
3. Leonard Cohen renews his neurotic affiliation with Canada, proves he's as beautiful man as he is a loser and told you when he came in 1967 he was a stranger.
4. Neko implores you to hold on.  Maybe the sparrow can explain why she reminds me of Johnette.
5. Will someone please give Mr. Tweedy a shot in the arm? 
6. Wanna play in the Bronx?  You'll have to cut your hair before they'll bring on the major leagues. 
7. I will get tenure.  I have my very own official ironman rally song.  If that fails, well, I'm not afraid to use my valuable hunting knife.  'Course then I'll have to start a new life.  But I say you take these things head on or not at all.

"Fuck Act Theory"

Seven times today people landed here searching for "Fuck Act Theory."  (The oh-so-apropos capitalization?  Mine.)  Let the masses concern themselves with hummer this and knob-polisher that.  I choose to do these seven solid citizens a favor instead.  No longer will they return empty-handed when they quest for "Fuck Act Theory."  For Acephalous Industries proudly presents:

Towards a History of Fuck Act Theory

That uses of fucking not only can, but even normally do have the character of actions was a fact largely unrealized by those engaged in the study of communication before the present century, at least in the sense that there was lacking any attempt to come to terms systematically with the action-theoretic peculiarites of fucking usage. 

Where the action-character of fucking phenomena was acknowledged, it was normally regarded as a peripheral matter, relating to derivative or non-standard aspects of communication which could afford to be ignored.  The reasons for this are
largely historical.

In the first chapter of De Interpretatione, Aristotle writes:

Every fuck is significant, but not every fuck is a statement-making act of sexual congress.  There is not truth or falsity in all sentences: a quickie is a fuck which is neither true nor false.  The present investigation deals with statement-making intercourse; the others we can dismiss, since consideration of them belongs to the study of biology.

Aristotle's attitude remained authoritative until the end of the nineteenth century.  There are, certainly, medieval writings on sacramental and other ritual and quasi-legal uses of fucking, as for example in connection with the issue of what is involved in the constitution of a valid marriage.  But such writings contain at best isolated passages capable of being interpreted with hindsight as belonging to a theory of fuck acts.  They exerted no wider theoretical influence in their own right, and they did not succeed in bridging the gap opened by Aristotle between the logical and other ("poetical" or "revengical") aspects of fuck usage.

The first philosopher to have fought consciously and explicitly against the Aristotelian conception seems to have been Thomas Reid, who saw that there are, in addition to one-nighters, all-nighters and the divinely ordained life-longers, also other types of fucking permitting of a theoretical treatment.  The principles of the art of fucking are, he wrote,

to be found in a just analysis of the various species of intercourse.  Aristotle and the logicians analysed one species—to wit, the procreational.  To enumerate and analyse the other species must, I think, be the foundation of a just theory of fucking.

Reid's techinical term for true love, drunken folly, emotional blackmail, etc. is "social operation."  Sometimes he also calls them "social acts," which opposes them to "solitary acts" which are characterized by the fact that it is not essential to them that they be "audienced" and by the fact that their performance does not presuppose any "intelligent being in the universe" in addition to the person who performs them.

Social acts, as Reid conceives them, are neither modifications nor combinations of solitary acts.  They form a separate field of investigation, above all because "expression" belongs to the very essence of the social act, and this "expression" is therefore radically different from that sort of "accidental expression" which we sometimes find in the field of solitary acts.  Social acts are such as to have a necessary and naked directedness towards some other person, and the relevant erotic expression makes sense only where such a directedness obtains.  In a promise, for example, "the prestation promised must be understood by both parties, even if one of them is currently dating the other's best friend."  Social acts thereby constitute a miniature "civil society," a special kind of structured whole which, like the whole it mirrors, remains civil only so long as its secrets remain secret. 

The structured whole may embrace both the one who initiates the actions and the one to whom they are coyly directed.  But if this embracing excludes the one to whom either party is married or engaged or even merely dating and their "indispensible other" learns of this "expression" from a friend who works at the Radisson on Harbor Boulevard, Reid's inability to give a clear and consistent statement of the relation between observable fucking and underlying intention or act of becomes apparent.  Reid's account is incomplete also in that he concerns himself only with the structures of what one might call "unimpaired social operations."  He pays no special attention to cases of possible "infelicity" nor to the technological recourse available to an "impaired social operator" which would increase the likelihood of a "felicitous" fuck act. 

Not least important however is the fact that his work on social acts remained without any influence in the wider community, so that it was not until the end of the 19^th Century that the idea of sexual action began to rear its head once more.  Pertinent remarks may, again with the benefit of hindsight, be extracted from the writings of Peirce, though here, too, one will search in vain for any developed theory of the way fucking may effect "a general mode of this time it's really happening."  It is rather in the work of the Munich phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) that there is to be discovered the first systematic theory of the phenomena of promising, questioning, requesting, commanding, accusing, begging, or pleading for intercourse are collected together under the heading "fuck acts."  Reinach's work provides a rich taxonomy of the various different fuck action varieties and of their possible modifications.  It contains a detailed treatment of the quasi-legal status of fuck actions and of the relations between sexual and ethical obligations.  And it contains a discussion of one feature of fuck actions which seems hardly to have been dealth with in the Anglo-Saxon literature—that feature whereby such actions may be performed by proxy, as when an act of fucking is carried out by one person in the name of another, e.g. the opening scenes of Mel Gibson's magisterial Braveheart. 

Reinach's "work" did not, however, "spring" from out of nowhere, and we shall be "in a position" to understand his "contribution" only when we have devoted some time to an "examination" of his "position" in relation to the Brentanian-Husserlian background from out of which it "grew."

The nine-part series "Towards a History of Fuck Acts" will continue tomorow with "Husserl and the Theory of Objectifying Fuck Acts."

In Favor of Stumbling

[Note: Contrary to appearances, this blog is about things other than Walter Benn Michaels.  The thing is, the other interviews in that issue were a little more self-aggrandizing—one of them was with Stanley Fish—and therefore less illuminating on the phenomenon I describe below.  That said: I think it's time for a WBM morito—What?  You're kidding me?  A new essay?  Crap.]

Reading the Richard Hofstadter intellectual biography sparked an interest in how other academic stars—or "academostars"—stormed the academy.  Needless to say, I've been surprised by the bumbling.  Here's Walter Benn Michaels:

When I was in graduate school, no one with any intellectual ambition would have wanted to become an Americanist. God knows I didn't. There were some good things I've discovered retroactively, but it was not a high-tech field in the 60s and it was not (in my view anyway) an intellectually ambitious field. I became an Americanist by accident; I was trained as a modernist, which was to me much more attractive. I was trained by Hugh Kenner, who was certainly influential and whose writing was ambitious, interesting, and brilliant literary criticism. I became an Americanist just because I went on the job market and there was a job at Hopkins and I was working on Henry James. But the James I was working on was the James out of modernism. I actually started reading Henry James because of my work on Pound—Pound had written a very important essay on James—so I thought I'd sit down and read through James. I thought this would be a good thing to do over the summer, which was no way near long enough. I got much more interested in James than I was in Pound, but it was still in the context of modernism, of European modernism. But the job at Hopkins was for an Americanist, and at one point the then-chair Ronald Paulson called me up and asked me, "So is your Henry James Hawthorne's James or Turgenev's James?" Well, it was obvious what the right answer for that job was—"Hawthorne's James." In fact my James was Turgenev's, but I said Hawthorne.

Remarkable.  He spent the summer studying what he was hired in the Fall to teach.  I would chalk this up to Michaels' overweening brilliance, but the Hofstadter biography compels me to think about this differently.  People stumbled into prominence back then.  Alongside the cutthroat culture so lovingly described by David Lodge existed the picaresque narratives of "professionalization." 

How did Michaels become interested in Derrida?  Coincidence:

So I was staying at Santa Barbara and didn't know what to do. Herb Schneidau, who was also a Poundian and had been at SUNY-Buffalo, was a lifesaver for me in the sense that he knew what was going on in the academic world. He showed up in 1970 or 1971 and he had a hardcover book called "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," which was later retitled The Structuralist Controversy. He had been blown away by Derrida's piece in the book ["Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"]. Herb didn't speak French and hired me as his research assistant to read this book, De la grammatologie, and to write up a synopsis of the argument. I spoke French and had made a living off doing translations from French. Well, writing a synopsis of the argument of Grammatology is not that easy. It took me a long time, and I really got into it.

That was the moment that made it clear to me that there was a kind of writing that I could do that I was attracted to. First Hugh had been an interesting example of what a literary critic might be, and I imitated him for a year or two, but I could never do what he did. So reading Derrida at that point made it clear there was a whole set of issues out there that I was very interested in.

If Herb had spoken French, Michaels wouldn't have been familiar with Derrida.  What interests me most about Michaels' intellectual development is how its contingencies have been routinized.  The people he happened to encounter at the places he happened to encounter them have been transformed from arbitrary events in one man's intellectual history into a program of study 99 percent of literary scholars follow. 

That "one man" bit may be overplaying it.  Expand that to "one generation" and the charges stick.  The moribund state of literary theory may result from the fact that each new generation of graduate students is asked to recapitulate in anthologies the seminal moments in the lives of a previous generation.  Nothing intrinsic to the thought which falls under the heading of "theory" is responsible for the current state of affairs.  What's responsible is that we're being asked to "experience" a previous generation's adventure.  Only instead of the ideas being alive in the mouths of their representative, they sit there dead on the page.  This generation isn't allowed the freedom to stumble the way Michaels and Gallagher and Fish's was. 

Good Lord.  That would be disastrous.  We need immediate professionalization.  We have to follow the path blazed by our betters.  That's insufficient.  We have to do it by finding the footprints they embedded in the snow and follow them up the mountainside. 

On Being Laughably Correct; or, Eric Lott and a Befuddling Identitarian Critique

Academic advocacy has evolved little in decades since Joan Didion wrote The White Album.  Issues of grave import outside academia still become the occasion for "an amiable evasion of routine, of institutional anxiety, of the tedium of the academic calendar.  Meanwhile the white radicals [can] see themselves, on an investment of virtually nothing, as urban guerrillas" (39).  The more things change blah blah blah.  Page-by-damning-page, Eric Lott's The Disap    ing Liberal Intellectual reminds us of this self-aggrandizing insularity.  So low are the stakes of Lott's argument against the "centering" of academic politics that he can barely be bothered to muster any real sustained critique of centrist politics.  In its stead he flings superficial insults against those who practice what he considers Popular Front-style compromising.  He calls it "Boomer Liberalism" [.pdf]:

This powerful new liberalism, which fuses a newfound Popular Front sensibility to a crotchety dismissal of new social movements (particularly race-based ones), now confronts us as a force in dire need of an antiwhite, antistatist critique. 

Um, Eric?  Stop with the bitter click-click-clicking already.  I know that's unfair.  But I'm merely borrowing a page from Lott's book.  He dismisses a conference at at the University of Virginia—which with dated wit he dubs "Rortypalooza"—on the basis of the color of its attendees: "Women and people of color from across the country were, for all intents and purposes, represented in the singular person of Spivak, the conference's designated scourge."  Am I to be blamed for turning his own fine-tuned argument against him?  For someone who wrote so compellingly about blackface in Love and Theft—a man whose bullshit detector is second-to-none called it "one of those rare artifacts that is as meticulous a piece of historical scholarship as it is an intellectually fluent work of cultural theory"—the lack of nuance in this article is appalling.  An undergraduate could turn his arguments against him with ease.  (You've no doubt already nailed him for criticizing the logic of the Popular Front from a position predicated upon it.)

A quick look at his diction in "Boomer Liberalism"—the article doubles as the introduction to the new volume—betrays the same insecurities Didion diagnosed in '78.  Those who partake of the centrist groupthink are:

• "acolytes turned normative nationalists"
• "common dreamers who take center stage"
• "Robespierre-is-everywhere soothsayers"
• "superb if color-blind historians-cum-antimulticulturalists"
• "long-lost radical journalists"
• "backward-looking post-Situationalist conjurers"
• "lesser-evilist Clintonian historians of populism and communism"
• "New Democrat nostalgics"
• "undrooping denouncers of racial self-definition"
• "state romancers"

Not only are all those people all those things, all those people are those things in the same sentence.  With one sweep of his hand Lott dismisses all those who "in differing ways, lament the rise of identity politics and the decline of true populism, common dreams, or any other euphemism for class that can be conscripted to serve the interests of a white male cadre badly in need of a rationale."  As Robert Boynton writes in his review of The Disap    ring Liberal Intellectual and David S. Brown's excellent Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography, Lott's name-calling signals a deeper logic, a commitment to "an exercise in which any position that carries a whiff of compromise or complexity is banished to the gulag."  Boyton roundly characterizes the problem with Lott's argument: his "enemy is the 'right deviationist' tendency within the Left, and his goal is nothing less than a full-scale ideological purge." 

His strident dismissal of fellow leftists wouldn't bother me if he demonstrated some confidence in their necessity.  His discussion of Walter Benn Michaels' Our America is particularly disappointing in this regard:

Cunning, brilliant, acutely suggestive, often exhilarating to read, Michaels nonetheless comes on like the Allan Bakke of American literary criticism.  [snip]  It basically suggests that anyone still interested in talking about race or ethnicity is perpetuating racialist codes and discourses.  This is obviously a chillier version of Hollinger's skirting of race to get beyond racism, and as a political argument it's so dumb and received that one wonders why Michaels hasn't been laughed out of the box for making it.  In part the reason lies in the making of it—Our America is not boring, and it's not wrong about the perils of identity. (56)

Why hasn't Michaels' theory been "laughed out of the box"?  Because 1) it's "not boring" and 2) it's "not wrong."  Rearrange that paragraph a bit and it reads "We don't laugh you out of the box because your argument isn't wrong."  Why would an intellectual dismiss as laughable an argument he or she admits is correct?  Part of the reason for my earlier confusion stems from this sadly typical non-engagement with Michaelsian thought.  It is "correct but laughable and of no consequence."  The closest Lott comes to refuting it continues this pattern of dodging it entirely:

I sense a weakness in Our America . . . but as far as I can tell . . . he's probably right . . . which may also mean that . . . maybe we're just clearer about this now, but I don't know. (57, 58, 59, 161)

I quote selectively to hammer home the point that although Lott says "We shouldn't be cowed by Michaels' commitment to antiessentialism," I find it impossible to draw any conclusion other than "He certainly is."  This all has some bearing on the ongoing conversations below.  I leave it to my betters to explain what it is.

Idle Hands vs. Damnable Complicity

As a corollary to the saga still raging below, I want to write about one of my students.  (I'll keep it general.)  She's writing about a local "advocacy group" devoted to a cause which any reasonable person would consider commendable.  The first draft of her article outlined a series of meetings in which the members of this group talked about themselves and their spiritual development.  No mention of the commendable cause which ostensibly unites them. 

In her second draft she added an account of another meeting no different from the first, as well as a conference which this group had organized.  The conference celebrated the publication of a memoir by a prominent academic in which she talked about her experiences.  The proceedings consisted of little more than all the members of the advocacy group talking about their experiences too.  Everyone talked about themselves and formed what they called a "sisterhood."  Still no mention of the cause which ostensibly unites them. 

My student arrived at her mandatory final conference with a horrified look on her face.  She sat down and handed me yet another draft. 

"Before you read it, I want to say something."

"Yes?"

"It's boring.  I sat there writing and I couldn't stop thinking about how boring it is.  They don't do anything.  They meet to discuss [a cause which any reasonable person would consider commendable] but all they do is talk about themselves and how they have to heal themselves before they can do anything else.  But they never do anything else.  I wish I had chosen a different subject.  I can't believe I chose this one.  I'm so stupid."

"No you're not.  [Long explanation about artificial crunch of the quarter system on conventional research and reportage and how it forces students to run not necessarily with the best but "the best available" idea.]  But I see something interesting in this topic."

"Really?"

"Why not point out the difference between their words and their actions?"

"I don't want them to hate me.  They let me into their lives and I don't want to betray their trust."

"Remember that Janet Malcolm quotation I read in class?  'Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.'  You're going to betray them.  There's no way not to.  They know you're there using them, and you know they're using you.  The thing you have to remember is that you have a commitment to the truth, not to further inflating their already bloated image of themselves.  You're not their PR department."

"I know, I know.  But they really want to help people."

"And are they helping any?"

"No, no, not really."

"What if you point that out?  It may shatter their image of themselves, but what about the victims [of the practice the commendable cause would outlaw]?  What about the monies going to this chapter?  If all they're doing is sitting around talking about themselves and forming a 'sisterhood' which makes them all feel better about themselves, wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then aren't you actually doing them a favor, reminding them of the ostensible reason for their existence?  Isn't popping their bubble of self-righteousness a good thing, something likely to make them realize the disconnect between what they say and what they actually do?"

"They'll be upset."

"Of course they will.  You'll be holding up a mirror, forcing them to see themselves as they are as opposed to the crusaders they fancy themselves to be."

"Well, I have another draft of my essay." 

She hands me a copy in which she accomplished much of what I recommended above.  She didn't need my advice so much as simple reassurance that she should do what her instincts told her to.  What did she learn from this experience? 

A difficult lesson. 

She chose this topic because she wanted to become involved in ending the practice [the commendable cause] would curb.  She thought these people admirable, but through her research learned that the cause which united them only did so superficially.  That it was an excuse to bolster their flagging confidence, to empower them to feel superior to all those who lacked their commitment to [the commendable cause]; but that, sadly, their "commitment" was little more than excuse to engage in a hackneyed quest for "self-discovery."  Not that such things are unimportant, especially among undergraduates.  (They fall squarely under the university's "If Not Now, When?" charter.)  Only that they have replaced actual political action. 

The personal has become "political" in the pejorative, academic sense.  My student's disillusion at the gradual replacement of activism with, as she wrote, a conversation about their relationship status and history at Island Burgers.  At some point, the idea of the personal informing the political was supplanted by its solipsistic cousin, the personal as political. 

The slogan's verb, never all that active to begin with, has been replaced by a lazy but "empowering" equivalence. 

My critique of identitarian politics has never involved critiquing the identities of those who espouse them.  Nor has it ever involved critiquing their goals, the desired ends of their impassioned activism.  All I've critiqued is the effectiveness of their tactics, the insistence that, contra to the vocal declamations, that their attitude and actions have helped further the cause to which they are committed.  I would argue that, given recent developments, they have not.  More to the point, I believe they have actually had the opposite effect, that the mobilization of these racially and sexually essentialist accounts of identity has alienated them from the kind of majoritarian political action which would allow them to achieve their stated goals. 

I know this a terrible thing to say.  I know that, in important respects, I'm asking people to table their concerns, and that my insistence that they'd be doing so for their own good sounds terribly paternalistic.  You know what?  I'm as unhappy I came to this conclusion as you.  I'm as upset that I live in a country in which the "quality" of political discourse and the realities of the political environs compel me to say something I find intellectually dissatisfying and outright condescending. 

But I don't see the alternative working.  I look around me and see the dismantling of affirmative action by an increasingly conservative judicial system; I see a President who would deny homosexuals the legal recognition of a fundamental human institution on the basis of it being a fundamental human institution and be completely oblivious to the irony such a statement entails.  I deny the validity of no one's experience, I only question the effectiveness of its mobolization as a political tactic.  As my previous post makes clear, I wish I could distance myself from the hypocrites whose misogyny and homophobia disgust me and still somehow remain a viable political force.  But I don't see that happening.  Does this make me a conservative?  Certainly not.  A proceduralist, maybe, and certainly complicit in a system which is far from perfect.  But to my mind, it is better to be complicit in a system which is flawed but improving, if only incrementally.

My hands may be dirty, but at least they're not doing the Devil's work.

[Update: While I have thought about this, at length, it's no airtight manifesto.  I speak not to convince but to clarify my unhappiness with the political arguments I proffer.  As Rich said, with which I grudgingly agree, some commitments, while "political" in nature, make for terrible politics in practice.  This bothers me, and I'm still sorting out why.  So I admit in advance the likelihood that I am very, very wrong about a number of things, and that it is possible I will change my mind as the debate progresses because, well, appearances notwithstanding, I'm not infalliable.  I'm just a kid with a blog, as likely to be oblivious to obvious counterarguments as the next kid on a soapbox.  If I've overlooked something, correct me, don't dismiss me.  If you can't convince the willing, what chance have you with everyone else?]

[Update #2: As I was writing someone this evening, I blundered into a better way to talk about my support of coalition politics.  It's not that I want to support a misogynistic, homophobic left.  Who would?  It's a matter of the base they're forced to pander to.  The misogynistic, homophobic right panders to an anti-choice, anti-human rights crowd, whereas the misogynistic, homophobic left panders to a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage crowd.  (These are just two of many possible examples.)  There's no chance for progress and a high likelihood for regress from the former, whereas there's a stability of present gains standing (affirmative action, for example) and a chance, however small, for real progress from the latter.  The caveats listed in the first update still apply.]

Filler Alluding to Substance

The most venerable b to the p to the h to the d sends me the following account of middle schoolers who catch their teachers en déshabille.  I'm reminded of a time when something similar happened to me.  You may remember it.  Lord knows I do.  But the reportage in that article offends me on a number of levels.  My first thought was "Teachers these days.  Where's a person to send the kids he doesn't have to middle school anymore?"  But then I changed course.

You see, I teach literary journalism—emphasis on "literary"—but none of my kids would punt an article like these AP Press punks did:

Both teachers have unlisted phone numbers and could not be reached for comment Thursday.

An unlisted phone number stopped them?  "By God!" I thought.  "Someone should get those poor reporters some reporters!"  I've got freshmen more enterprising than these fools.  Sometime next week I'll be posting a number of the articles written by "my kids."  I've a class this quarter whose work is on par with most of what's produced for $1 per word. 

Point of fact: I've spent all day working with them, which is why I've tried to convince you a recapitulated email exchange counts as a post.  By the way, did I mention I like money?

CHAIN LETTER

MY NAME IS SUMMER.  I AM 15 YEARS OLD WITH BLONDE HAIR AND SCARY EYES.  I HAVE NO NOSE OR EARS I AM DEAD.  IF U DO NOT POST THIS ON YOUR BLOG AND SEND A TRACKBACK BAD WILL HAPPEN.  I WILL APPEAR AT YOUR BED WITH A KNIFE AND DENY U TENURE.  DEBBIE FROM MONTPELIER DID NOT POST THIS AND SHE GOT NO INTERVIEWS NOW SHE TEACHES COMPOSITION AT NORWICH AND HAS A LONG COMMUTE.  VINCENT FROM LONG ISLAND POSTED IT BUT FORGOT TO SEND A TRACKBACK AND I APPEARED AT HIS BED WITH A KNIFE BUT HE WAS MODERATING A PANEL AT A CONFERENCE IN WEST VIRGINIA SO I WAITED FOR A WHILE AND what?  Not right now.  No.  Amanda.  Amanda.  This is my chain letter.  Fine.  Go ahead and kill yourself again.  See if I care.  Now where was I?  That's right I STARED AT HIS BED WITH MY KNIFE AND STABBED HIS DOWN COMFORTER I LEFT A NOTE BLAMING IT ON THE CAT AND THE HIS INABILITY TO FOLLOW DIRECTIONS.  JESSICA FROM OREGON SHE UM UH CRAP One second.  Bill!  What happened to Jessica?  No, the other one.  From Oregon.  Two?  Really?  That's damn confusing.  NEVERMIND ABOUT JESSICA.  RACHEL FROM TOLEDO POSTED THIS AND SENT A TRACKBACK AND THEN SHE CLOSED HER BLOG BECAUSE SHE GOT 15 INTERVIEWS AT THE MLA AND HAS A TENURE-TRACK POSITION AT COLUMBIA SHE HAS NO TIME TO BLOG NOW and Jesus Christ Amanda would you kindly shut the fuck up?  Nobody cares.  You and Brian were only going out for like a week.  You barely even knew him.  I know you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him.  Now you're stuck here with me and Bill.  Don't start—seriously, Amanda, I can't take another night of this crap.  Bill!  She's at it again.  No.  Why should I?  It's my chain letter.  Why can't the blubbery bitch write her own?  I called her a bitch 'cause she's being a bitch.  No I don't want to spend the rest of the evening dealing with this either.  Fine.  SO LISTEN AMANDA WANTS TO TELL U SOMETHING.  I BET MY TWO SCARY EYES IT'S ABOUT THIS GUY SHE MET AT PIANO CAMP HIS NAME WAS BRIAN AND IF I DON'T LET HER TELL YOU ABOUT HIM SHE'LL WAIL AND KEEN AND RATTLE HER CHAINS WHILE BILL AND I ARE WATCHING SURVIVOR SO HERE SHE IS:

HI EVERYONE!  LIKE SUMMER SAID I'M AMANDA.  WHAT'S YOUR NAME?  REALLY!!!  I KNEW SOMEONE WITH THAT NAME AND THEY WERE AWESOME!  SO YEAH I MET BRIAN IN FINGERING CLASS HA HA HA I KNOW WHAT YOUR THINKING BUT IT'S NOT LIKE THAT.  WE HAD THE BEST PHRASING THERE AND HE WAS HOT SO WE STARTED HANGING OUT AND THEN HE ASKED IF I WOULD GO WITH HIM AND I SAID YES.  SO YEAH THEN THIS WHORE JESSICA WHO HATED ME BECAUSE SHE WASN'T PRETTY AND HAD TO WEAR THESE RETAINERS WHICH LIKE TRAPPED HALITOSIS AND MULTIPLIED IT BY HUNDREDS and that is too like so relevent.  Shut up!  I'm telling my story now.  Stop look at me like that.  Quit it.  I'm ignoring you.  OK SO YEAH JESSICA PUT OUT LIKE BEFORE THE FIRST DATE REALLY LIKE HAND JOBS IN THE CAR IN HER OWN DRIVEWAY I HEARD AND SO YEAH JESSICA HATED ME AND ONE DAY WHEN BRIAN AND I WERE GOING TOGETHER JESSICA ASKED HIM TO THE MOVIES BEHIND MY BACK.  Seriously Summer quit it or I'll tell Bill.  Remember what he said the last time you used your scary eyes on me?  That's what I thought.  AND SO YEAH MY FRIEND CINDY TOLD ME ABOUT IT AND I FOLLOWED THEM THERE BUT THEY WEREN'T WATCHING THE MOVIE THE SLUT HAD HER HAND DOWN HIS PANTS AND HE WAS DOING THE OTHER FINGERING TO HER AND THEY LEFT LIKE HALF THROUGH THE MOVIE AND I FOLLOWED THEM.  THEY WERE LIKE THE PRONOUNIAL TWO BEASTS WITH TWO BACKS AND SO YEAH I CRIED AND LISTENED TO "OPEN ARMS" IT WAS OUR SONG ABOUT A MILLION TIMES and shut up!  Steve Perry is not.  I bet you are though.  Or what?  I'll tell Bill.  I don't care if Jeopardy is on.  I will.  Bill!  Bill!  I know what time it is but Hey!  Bill?  Over here.  Bill!  Fuck.  You are such a dork.  It's not like we don't have TIVO.  Fine.  Can I have "Parental Intervention" for $500, Bill.  What is "Summer's being a big dumb douche and sheh called Steve Perry a faggot and tell her to stop please"?  Ha!  AND SO YEAH LIKE I SAID I LISTENED OUR SONG LIKE AND that hurt you stupid cow.  Quit it.  SO I LIKE what are you doing?  Those are my favorite earrings?  Summer.  Put them back.  Summer.  Bitch!  I can't believe you did that.  Bill! 

AND SO YEAH LIKE AMANDA'S BUSY WITH THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL SO LET ME FINISH HER STORY FOR HER.  AND SO YEAH LIKE THE STUPID DYKE WAS SAD AND SO YEAH LIKE SHE DIDN'T GO TO ANY OF HER CLASSES AND SO YEAH LIKE A WEEK AFTER CAMP ENDED HER MOM CALLED THE CAMP AND ASKED WHERE SHE WAS AND SO YEAH LIKE THEY SAID THEY DIDN'T KNOW BECAUSE NOBODY NOTICED SHE WAS THERE SO HOW COULD THEY NOTICE SHE WAS GONE AND SO YEAH LIKE THEY LOOKED AND FOUND HER BODY IN THE CLOSET AND WHEN THE POLICE ASKED ABOUT THE SMELL THEY SAID THEY HADN'T NOTICED ANYTHING UNUSUAL BECAUSE SHE SMELLED LIKE THAT ANYWAY.  AND SO YEAH LIKE IF YOU DON'T POST HER LAME STORY ON YOUR BLOG AND LEAVE A TRACKBACK HERE HER VENGEFUL GHOST WILL COME KILL U ONCE IT FINISHES FISHING ITS EARRINGS OUT OF THE DISPOSAL.  AND SO YEAH LIKE I'D BE WORRIED CAUSE SHE MIGHT COME AND FINGER U TO DEATH.  BUT U BETTER POST MINE OR BAD WILL HAPPEN.  LIKE THIS GUY SCOTT IN IRVINE DIDN'T DO IT AND THE NEXT DAY HE GOT HIT BY A CAR . . .

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.

Under The Knife

2006 Vintage UTK

By Will Carroll

I’ll be honest. It’s been a good, long weekend and I have nothing for the intro. Powered by a 1994 Glenrothes Vintage, on to the injuries:

• Kerry Wood struck out everyone—including the peanut vendor and the visiting radio announcer—when he was in Peoria. "Unhittable," one scout told me. That same scout saw Mark Prior pitch on Monday night and struggled to find words. He sighed and groaned before finally saying something I can’t print here. "There was nothing right with him. No velocity (a max of 90). No command. No movement. No missed bats. No consistency—his stride was never the same and his arm was slow. If he wasn’t Mark Prior, I’d say he was at the right level. I have no idea what happened to him." Prior only went two innings before hitting his pitch count and now we’ll have to wait to see how he recovers. Not only did he show only a bit more velocity, but the absent control might be even more worrisome. Prior will have one more rehab start at Peoria, but at this stage, it might be time to think about slowing this down. One observer reminded me of another pitcher who lost it—Roy Halladay. It will be interesting to see if the Cubs can be as forward-looking as the Blue Jays once were.

• Looks like Acephalous got lucky.  Scott Eric Kaufman's injuries are severe but not career-threatening, and he could be back in six weeks.  Other bloggers have recovered from serious injuries more quickly, but no one will mistake Kaufman for a quick healer.  One doctor I spoke to compared his injuries to those a football player might suffer if they had Kaufman's frame and were tackled by a 790 lbs. linebacker.  "We see the same injuries, albeit not quite so severe, in young running backs who don't know how to take a tackle properly."  Kaufman's been diagnosed with a hip pointer (a deep bone bruise of the pelvis caused by compressive forces), a left oblique strain (a tearing of the of the internal oblique muscles from the undersurface of his lower ribs), and a lower lumbar sprain (a detaching of ligaments in the lower back).  He will return to the UCI Medical Center next week for another MRI and his first session with the physical trainer.  Although rest is the only real cure for these types of injuries, I think Kaufman may be back sooner than anyone expects.  UCI's doctors live on the bleeding edge of modern medicine.  "They told me to sit on a ball," Kaufman told me.

• The big blow for the Phillies on Monday wasn’t another Ryan Howard bomb, it was losing Jon Lieber to the DL. Lieber pulled up covering first—and yes, there has been a major uptick in this type of injury this season—and left an inning later. The groin strain isn’t serious, but it's certainly enough to necessitate the DL move. With a history of elbow and back problems, the Phils are right to be cautious with him, meaning they’re hoping that Cole Hamels comes back quickly.

• The Cards made the expected move, placing Chris Carpenter on the DL with a retro move. Carpenter hasn’t had any setbacks with the inflamed bursa sac in his pitching shoulder, but the roster move was necessary to keep Anthony Reyes around. This isn’t a misuse of the DL as I often rail against. In fact, this is precisely the proper use, waiting until the last minute, having the options in place, and never penalizing yourself more than necessary. There are reasons that the Cardinals have been at the top of the division for so long. They get it, on so many levels. As for Carpenter, he should be back shortly after the minimum.

• When’s the last time a game involving the Tigers was called a "playoff preview"? In this one, Derek Jeter left the game early with what the team called a "jammed hand." Jeter’s left index finger stuffed back into his hand, leading to some pain and inflammation, though he is expected to start on Tuesday. The Yankees are being very conservative with their stars, pulling both Jeter and Jason Giambi despite only slight problems in hopes of keeping them slight. As for Randy Johnson, he looked great. I’m going to take a closer look at the video once it's available and see if I can find a change I missed on the original viewing.

Special thanks and all credit non-Scott material go to Will Carroll's actual "Under the Knife" column, a must-read for all obsessive baseball fans.