Alternative? Alternative?
A little more on the Chronicle’s newsflash that Theory is hardly at all very much influential or mandatory or orthodox any more.
Meanwhile, at the University of California at Berkeley, Ian Duncan, a professor of English and the department’s chairman, reports via e-mail that “postcolonial, national/transnational, race and comparative ethnicities studies are flourishing” while New Historicism “does not exert the hegemony it did 20 years ago, although I think it’s fair to say it’s been digested by many of us and maintains a strong presence.”
And yet a lot of wacko people go on saying that Theorists seem to be interested in everything but literature – it’s staggering, isn’t it? Why would anyone think that? When postcolonial, national/transnational, race and comparative ethnicities studies are flourishing just as they should and all is right with the world?
“We believe in a broad intellectual training,” says Toril Moi, a professor in the literature program and the Romance-studies department at Duke University. “So that means students should know some theory, right?” In practical terms, she observes, theory has become “part of a cultural-social-historical conversation.”
Well of course it has. It’s quite impossible to carry on any kind of cultural-social-historical tragical-comical-pastoral now stop that right now conversation without ‘knowing some theory’ – by which is meant of course knowing the right some theory, as opposed to the wrong some. Some Foucault and Derrida and Butler not some Abrams and Rawls and Nussbaum. Which just goes to show how distant Theory is from conformity and groupthink and orthodoxy – how endlessly unpredictable it is. It’s pure coincidence that all the emails in this article mention the same few names over and over again and ignore all the others. There’s ‘broad intellectual training’ for you!
Mr. Keith, of Binghamton, cautions that “trying to map out alternative ways of knowing is going to be inherently difficult and demanding.” Complex concepts sometimes require complex terminology, and hurling abuse at theory for its “excessive difficulty has been used too often as an overly quick strategy of dismissing and not engaging.”
There there. There there. We know. It’s so unfair. You guys are so deep, and Deeply Informed, and you’re sooo smart, you know how to do such difficult and demanding things, because you’re so smart, and can use complex terminology – and then people just hurl abuse at you. It’s totally unfair. Obviously you can’t map out alternative ways of knowing by endlessly recycling the same ten writers over and over and over again, without using a lot of complex terminology. Can you?! Of course not. This is hard stuff. This is big, important, difficult, complex, grown-up thinking. Not like that simple easy childish shit that people like philosophers and physicists do, but really complex and difficult – and alternative. Therefore needs complex terminology. Much more than boring old positivists like Hume or Bacon or people like that did.
In his essay “Theory Ends,” Mr. Leitch offers up one final definition of theory: “a historically new, postmodern mode of discourse that breaches longstanding borders, fusing literary criticism, philosophy, history, sociology, psychoanalysis, and politics.” The result, he says, is a “cross-disciplinary pastiche” that falls under the increasingly wide banner of cultural studies.
Yeah. Which is great, because it’s six for the price of one. It’s like one of those all-you-can-eat places, or like a garage sale. Where before Theory you just got the one thing, now with Theory (even though it’s over) you get multitudes. You get a literary critic who is also a philosopher, a historian, a sociologist, a psychoanalyst, and a political scientist. Isn’t that great? Six fields in one! Because Theory fuses them all, you see. It doesn’t draw from these other fields, it doesn’t inform itself by reading and thinking broadly, it fuses them, so that it is in fact just as much sociology as lit crit and psychoanalysis as history. One wonders why the people in the other fields don’t do that. Why don’t historians do that fusing thing so that they too can be six things at once? They must not be as clever as Theorists. Or as Theorists used to be before Theory was over.
Mr. Williams points out that as universities lose funds, the humanities have come under more pressure, external and internal, to justify themselves, “not by saying that we do this high-research thing called theory, which nobody seems to care about, but to deliver the goods in a way that engineering does.”
Oh yeah. High-research. You bet. That’s one of the many impressive things about Theory: how research-driven it is. Funny that it all ends up sounding exactly alike then – unless all theorists do their research in the same place? But then wouldn’t they jostle each other over the archives? But maybe the Complicity & Hegemony archives have very very big print, so that there’s room for all.
So there you are, Theory is over, so it’s time for everyone to stop making fun of it now and let all those nice mappers-out of alternative ways of knowing get on with their high research and their deep informedness and their complex terminology and their fusing of many disciplines. And the sun sinks slowly in the west as we climb the hill, pausing for a last look back at the theorists’ peaceful little village [cue music, fade up]
The great thing about psychoanalysis is that, however invalid it may have been as a description of the human psyche, much literature written since is infused with it, so it can live on in the English and ‘cultural studies’ departments despite being relegated from psychology.
“Six fields in one!”
Wow, the Red Queen would be perfect for the job – after all, she believes six impossible things before breakfast every day!
Somewhat off topic, but since psychology and postmodern theory both have been referenced…is anyone familiar with the field of phenomenological psychology? A colleague has a degree in this, and from what she told me it draws on postmodern theory. She’s a big fan of Derrida, Foucalt (you know the list) and their writings appear to be the foundation of her graduate school training in phen psych. How is this field regarded in psychology? I haven’t come across any information on this. Oh, and she is at least an equal-opportunity believer in all forms of nonsense – postmodernism, feng shui, psychics, ghosts, iridology, homeopathy, you name it. Nice person, just have to choose my topics wisely!
No idea. Sounds worth exploring.
Aha. It has a journal. Been around awhile, too – long enough to rack up 37 volumes.
“the discipline of psychology from a phenomenological perspective as understood by scholars who work within the Continental sense of phenomenology. Within that tradition, however, phenomenology is understood in the broadest possible sense”
Something tells me ‘in the broadest possible sense’ means pretty much ‘just anything we want it to mean, really anything at all.’ From Merleau-Ponty to, I dunno, Tarantino.
Nah, not fair. On looking at the contents, it looks as if it has at least something to do with actual psychology.
Talking of “Theory”, in the current Times Higher Educational Supplement (Dec 9) Terry Eagleton gives us the benefit of his thoughts on modern-day celebrity. Discoursing (as they say) on society’s need for celebrities, he writes: “The trouble with middle-class society is that it is drably unheroic, dedicated as it is to the distinctly prosaic business of preserving social order and augmenting its profits.”
Evidently gritty working class folk don’t exhibit a predilection for celebrities, although the Sun newspaper (hardly the common reading matter of the “middle classes”) would likely choose some shenanigans involving a TV celebrity for its front page spread even if full-scale war broke out in the Middle-East. And I rather like the idea of all those teachers, office workers, etc, who are dedicated to the task of augmenting their profits. But then Eagleton is probably using “middle class” as a synonym for “bourgeoisie”, since nowadays even Marxists are shy of using a term that immediately identifies them as old-fashioned ideologues.
Anyway, he goes on to point out that none of this celebrity worship “would have come as a surprise to Freud.” For Freud “the so-called real world is just a kind of Soho of the psyche, a low-grade place of projection and displacement. Freud knew all about the business of collective libidinal investment in some fantasised power-figure, a process that in its own time took the form of Fascism.”
Good old Freud. He understood the processes underlying the rise of Facism, Madonna-ism and Princess Di-ism. And no doubt Stalinism, Beatles-mania, the adulation of Ayatollah Khameinei, you name it. It’s all “libidinal investment”, you see. Simple really. Isn’t it wonderful to be h’edificated like what Terry Eagleton is.
Nothing would have come as a suprise to Freud, nothing, I tell you, nothing, nothing. He saw it all. He saw, he smiled gently, he passed on.
“…it looks as if it has at least something to do with actual psychology.”
Yes, it does appear so. I’m still suspicious given what I have heard from my colleague.
Re. phenomenological psychology:
The actual rigorous, but dated, stuff is in Husserl. Of course, most of the phenomenological psychologists probably haven’t read Husserl. This for the same reason the “high theorists” don’t read Husserl – he’s as serious about getting it right as any analytic philosopher. Why read Husserl when you can quote some secondary hack’s “high theory” about what Derrida says about Husserl. Text is like sex, or so they think: reading some high theory gives you instant wisdom about everything it cites and that its cited texts cite ad infinitum in the way that sleeping with one person means that, disease-wise, you’ve slept with everyone that person slept with and so on. My god, I think this is a s/textual theory. I wonder if it is “high” theory? It’s so easy to do theory, one could probably do it while high.
While we’re on the topic of lit crit, etc….something I’ve been wanting to forward to you for a long time…
Here is just another example of the arrogant, we-know-everything-and-our-opinions-are-of-the-utmost-importance attitude exhibited by some in the humanities. About a year ago a symposium entitled “Modernity and Contemporaneity: Antimonies of Art and Culture After the 20th Century” was sponsored at my former university. Highlights of the symposium as described in a university newspaper:
“…Terry Smith and a few of his colleagues set about recruiting a dream team of world-class intellectuals to convene at Pitt and hash out the most vital artistic, cultural, political, and philosophical issues of the post-9/11 world.” Terry Smith is the university’s (U of Pittsburgh) Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory. Goodness, art history was one of my faves as an undergrad, but I had no idea that this is where I’d find the great thinkers! Later in the article it refers to how the conference organizers set out to bring together “the best contemporary thinkers from around the world,” including Bruno Latour, Frederic Jameson, and others. The event was dedicated to Derrida. Smith also noted that, “We’ve also got to invite the next generation of great thinkers—younger artists, critics, historians, and curators from around the world.” Really, these are the next great thinkers? Oh, and one last quote, when asked if anything tangible will come from this gathering of great minds: “Pure thought usually precedes the events of the world,” Smith replies. “I would argue that pure thought actually has huge impacts on real-life things in the world.” Supposedly an example of some deep thought? Aye!
Sorry for the length of posts today. If you want more on the above, full article and links to symposium can be found at: http://www.umc.pitt.edu/media/pcc041101/contemporaneity.html.
I have to confess that I’ve never really been able to figure out what phenomenological psychology is. Obviously it isn’t just about taking a phenomenological approach qua science, since that is largely what psychology is like as a science. I think it may have some connections with qualitative and discursive research methods in psychology, although I’m not sure I’d call them ‘phenomenological psychology’.
Rather it is, as Angelo suggests, I’ve only come across the term in connection with the philosophical movement of phenomenology (Husserl et al). As such, I have only really seen it used to apply to a diverse set of continental philosophy and psychoanalytic inspired pontifications on psychology, rather than as an active research programme.
Re the “dream team” of great thinkers brought together by Terry Smith at the U. of Pittsburg, the subject of the symposium was: “In the aftermath of modernity, and the passing of the postmodern, how are we to know and show what it is to live in the conditions of contemporaneity?”
I’m still stuck in the modern, so I didn’t realise that the postmodern was on the way out. So is post-postmodern “contemporaneity”? It’s so hard to keep abreast of these things. Still, it’s good to know these people are on the job and reporting back from the front (as it were) on how to live in, errr…, contemporaneity,
http://www.mc.pitt.edu/
“In the aftermath of modernity, and the passing of the postmodern, how are we to know and show what it is to live in the conditions of contemporaneity?”
Yep, just like those magazine articles about The Next Big Thing. What is the new black? Are narrow ties coming back?
All the same, really.
I know we’ve had this argument before, but I think that Theory and its offshoots is all so much fun. I have not for a while read something so enjoyable as OB’s note on this.
Academics (some) have always done foolish things (Luck Jim) but at least Theory gives so many people so much amusement.
I am waiting for someone to find some papers of Derrida explaing that it was all a joke.
Ah, Husserl is it. No wonder I had no idea.
Don’t apologize LD! Long posts fine thing when telling us about world’s great thinkers.
Yeah – Theory is pretty funny, I have to admit. World’s greatest thinker-comedians.
Yeah, I’m just a simple painter, an artist. When I see good art, when I read good literature and philosophy, I am moved to feel alive and be thoughtful. When I read theory, I feel like I’m at a funeral.
I’ve wondered if theorists feel impelled by the success of the sciences and the influence of philosophy to make occult stuff to seem sophisticated—and to hold on to or create a job while the real artists live meager extra-academic lives. Parasites. Still, I’ve always had a secret admiration for P.T. Barnum. Seriously.
it’s a joke whether derrida says so or not.
Of course it’s all bollocks, but the trouble is, literary criticism was always bollocks. Why should anyone need to take a University degree to learn how to read really good books? The discipline originated less than 100 years ago in a cultural panic by encrusted elites that perhaps really good books wouldn’t be read unless people were taught how to do it, and thus preserve the [ahem!] “timeless values of western civilisation.” Then forty or fifty years ago Marxists and other theorists got in on the act, and decided that good books were as good a way as any of peddling certain ideological presuppositions by way of analysis to a student body that probably could no longer tell what a good book was. Cue disciplinary metastasis…
Never, ever, forget that the core exercise of literary criticism, notwithstanding all its grandstanding pontifications, consists of writing about things that *other people just made up out of their heads* — for entertainment, for money, to sound clever, whatever. Keep that perspective, and it really doesn’t matter how arsey they get, ‘cos none of it has anything to do with anything at all…
Of course, it can be bloody annoying when such people are taken seriously by promotion panels, etc, but then so are sociologists…
Anyone hear of the time when AC Bradley (http://www.clicknotes.com/bradley/welcome.html) was the hegemon of Shakespeare criticism?
It led to a good piece of doggerel:
I dreamt last night
That Shakespeare’s ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper of that year
Contained a question on “King Lear”
That Shakespeare answered rather badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.
PM wrote: The great thing about psychoanalysis is that…. it can live on in the English and ‘cultural studies’ departments despite being relegated from psychology.
I am not sure that psychoanalysis has been relegated from psychology.
You can do an MSc in the Psychodynamics of Human Development and an MSc in Psychodynamic Counselling at Birkbeck College, University of London
(‘Psychodynamic’ is another word for ‘psychoanalytically based’). At
Birkbeck, it is also possible to study for an MSc in Group Analysis, also
loosely based on psychoanalytic theory. An MSc in Psychoanalytical
Developmental Psychology and an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytical Studies
are available at UCL, University of London. An MSc in Psychoanalytic Studies
is available at Manchester Metropolitan University. None of these courses
were available, less than ten years ago. I’ve also heard that Analytical
Psychology (the Jungian version of psychoanalysis), plays a major part in
psychology postgraduate courses at the University of Kent.
And if I may step away from pure academia, what about the Tavistock
and Portman NHS Trust, a clinic and a training organisation still predominantly operating on psychoanalytic theory? Visit their premises in Hampstead, (a leafy quarter of London) and marvel at the life size statue of Herr Freud at the entrance; it’s particularly impressive when lit up at night! Millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money thrown at a bunch of so called mental health professionals who still write papers with titles like ‘A Psychoanalytical Phenomenology of Perversion’ or ‘On Psychoanalytic Figures as Transference Object’. I mean who needs evidence (of effectiveness) when you have this kind of influence?
Shafika
“I am not sure that psychoanalysis has been relegated from psychology.”
Psychoanalysis has almost entirely separated itself from academic psychology, partly through being ostracised, partly through developing in different directions, and partly through choice.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have a foothold in academia and the NHS. Remember, the NHS has Homeopathic hospitals!
“writing about things that *other people just made up out of their heads* — for entertainment, for money, to sound clever”
Yes, literature is perfectly useless and makes nothing happen. In the ideal technocratic society, just as in Plato’s Republic, the poets would be banned.
Seriously, how does one get from an agile hammering of “Theory” to a perfectly Gradgrindian disparagement of literary criticism as such?
Yeah, I second Stephen. In fact, Dave, I think you ought to read The Mirror and the Lamp. It would do you a power of good.
But dahling, I find literature perfectly *divine*! Ever so good for nourishing the soul, but, frankly, reading it is not something people ought to need to be taught how to do, especially not by other people who don’t write it [David Lodge aside]. At least historians write history, physicists do physics, doctors do medicine, etc.
Changing tack, I suppose someone is going to try to tell me that writers in the C18 were rubbish, because they didn’t have whole university departments devoted to analysing their texts, or to teaching them ‘creative writing’?
The direction of this argument seems to be implying that there is ‘good’ lit crit, under attack by ‘theory’. My point, not so far rebutted, is that all lit crit is just theory, waffle, “wavering, chaotic, phantasmal” [5 points for naming source of quotation…]
No, people don’t need to be taught how to read literature. I agree that it’s not an expert subject. However, lit crit can enhance, enrich, deepen the reading of literature. That’s a fuzzy category, but I maintain it is far from valueless.