Theory? What Theory? Where?
This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is hilarious. Oh, Theory is so over, what empire, it’s all fragmented, what a silly fuss everyone is making, it says. Then it offers a comment backing up the claim.
First, theory has become so much part of the literary profession that one needs to have some familiarity with the “isms,” no matter which (if any) one embraces most closely. Being labeled a theorist does not advance a career the way it might have 10 or 15 years ago, but theoretical naïveté is a luxury that few aspiring professors can afford. James F. English, chairman and professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in an e-mail message that while “it’s become very rare for literature departments to hire so-called pure theorists,” the theoretical movements of the past four decades have “created an intellectual climate in which a whole range of writers (from Kant and Hegel to Lacan and Kristeva) is now part of the conversation within literary study as such.” It is almost impossible to imagine a newly minted Ph.D. going on the job market without some grasp of structuralism as well as of Shakespeare.
Understand? It’s over, but you’re not allowed to not have it – you’re not allowed to wonder what is meant by a ‘range of writers’ that includes Kant – and Lacan and Kristeva. You’re not allowed to have theoretical naïveté – oh god no! But it’s over, you know, so there’s nothing to see here, go home.
Then the article offers example after example after example of how over Theory is.
When she plans her graduate-level classes, Lynn Enterline, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, tends to “organize the course around texts and problems they might raise.” If Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is on the syllabus, for instance, she’ll draw on “theories of the performative” in the work of such thinkers as Derrida and the feminist-psychoanalytic critics Barbara Johnson and Shoshana Felman. “Since I’m interested in questions of gender, sexuality, and the body,” she says, “I tend to work mostly with rhetorical and psychoanalytic theory.”
Ooh! Wish I could take that class! Questions of the body – I do love those. Especially when they got psychoanalytic theory, and the performative, and rhetoric – I can almost hear Judy Butler off in the distance. No theory here, folks.
Her colleagues in the Vanderbilt English department employ a similar strategy in the classroom, she says, even though their research interests vary widely in topic and theoretical affinity. “They’re all deeply theoretically informed,” she says, “but the choices they would make depend on the problems they’re addressing.”
Deeply. Deeply. Because they’re a deep crowd, you know. And informed. Deeply.
Jeffrey J. Williams…calls himself “very topic oriented” when it comes to teaching. Carnegie Mellon has what he describes as a fairly heavy emphasis on theory, and “the students kept coming to me and complaining that they weren’t reading any literature,” he says. His solution? “Now I try to teach hybrid courses.” In a recent course on “narratives of profession,” for instance, he mixed sociology and theories of professionalism with half a dozen novels, and taught Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Thorne alongside a history of the medical profession.
His solution? He declared himself a sociologist pro tem by way of giving the students the more literature they wanted. Of course he did! Because Theorists are all so Deeply Informed that they are experts on all subjects and can teach anything and everything the moment they decide to. Remember Judith Halberstam? Like that.
But those charged with introducing students to theory don’t appear to be trying to throw out Conrad and company. The University of California at Santa Cruz is not known for its aversion to theory. Even there, theory “is never taught in the absence of literary texts, and it’s never taught as if it’s gospel,” says Richard Terdiman, a professor of literature and the history of consciousness. “What we try to do when we teach it is demystify it. Everyone who teaches the intro-theory course required for undergraduates in the major chooses a focus, whether it’s Marxism or queer theory or whatever it is, and tries to get students to see the relevance of the interpretative strategy for their own reading.”
What empire? What empire? Do you see any empire? I don’t see any empire around here. Do you? All I see is a lot of people quietly and omnisciently teaching Theory and sociology and politics and Theory, so where’s the empire?
God, it’s a riot, and it goes on and on like that. I’m out of time, I have to go, but I’ll have to make more fun of it tomorrow. It’s the silliest thing I’ve seen in awhile.
Is it not rather obvious that all these people have nothing but contempt for literature, to the point where they’d rather teach anything else ?
You might be right, in the sense that it was fashionable and has now become entrenched. Which leaves the hope that some new fashion will sweep it all away…
I think you may both be partly right, but there are a good couple of academic generations out there who don’t really know a world without all this, people who, in all innocence, can’t conceive of being academic without the jargon.
“Carnegie Mellon” ?!!! Wasn’t he president of Huxley College in ‘Horse Feathers’ ?
“but there are a good couple of academic generations out there who don’t really know a world without all this, people who, in all innocence, can’t conceive of being academic without the jargon.”
Yes but not ‘academic’ tout court. That’s the impression Theorists are always keen to give, but it’s dead wrong. Theory is only hegemonic in its own very parochial piece of the academy, not the whole thing.
I too have many problems with literary theory. However, I do hope none of us would object to lit teachers bringing the political, the sociological, or the psychological into their classroom discussions. Yes, one can read for esthetics alone, but I for one don’t assume there is nothing of interest besides pretty prose in the work of Conrad, for instance.
Now, I don’t mean to defend theory-addicts and jargon-junkies who teach Derrida instead of Shakespeare in a “literature” classroom. But, I also don’t think a teacher is necessarily trying to present him or herself as an “expert” in any other field when encouraging students to inform their readings by looking to disciplines outside of literature. Personally, I think real scholars don’t wear the blinders of their disciplines, but try their best to understand how other disciplines can inform their readings.
I certainly disapprove of any prof who presents such work as making him or her an “expert” in any field. That’s just plain ridiculous. Good teachers, I think, acknowledge gaps in their own understanding and knowledge. However, making reasonable connections among disciplines can show students what good scholars do.
I guess what I’m saying is, please don’t assume all profs who introduce a reading outside the literary cannon are teaching jargon-filled nonsense instead of literature. Some do, sure. Lots, even. Certainly those that get press. But most, I think, save that for conferences and articles (as OB has pointed out, the professional stranglehold of theory still shapes academics!). In the classroom, though, most teachers are theory-lite, or even theory free. (Unless teaching that intro-to-theory course, of course.)
Me, I’m a composition teacher, not cool enough to sit at the lit teachers’ lunch tables, so I can only speak from observation and my experience as a student.
“Personally, I think real scholars don’t wear the blinders of their disciplines…”
At its best, it shouldn’t go to either ludicrous extreme, neither shutting out what may not belong directly to the subject at hand, nor going so far afield as no longer to be connected to it. There’s a great deal of reasonable leeway before it turns into lunacy, but it has not only been known to happen, it has been known to become the only acceptable way to go for some.
“…but it has not only been known to happen, it has been known to become the only acceptable way to go for some.”
For some, yes. That’s all I’m trying to remind us all of. Most folks in literature departments are not out-for-blood careerists or theory-obsessed, anti-literature freaks. The freaks just get named professorships, grants, and press. Unfortunately. The ID freaks in the sciences get attention good and bad, while most scientists quietly think it’s bunk.
Absolutely, Amy. I think interdisciplinarity is great. It’s the people who can’t do it without seeming to take themselves as InstaExperts in every field who cause my nerves to go all twangy. Maybe that’s not what the Carnegie Mellon guy did, maybe the CHE’s paraphrase is at fault for giving that impression – but it does rather give the impression.
A few months ago I had a discussion with a literature professor about the need to institute some critical thinking courses on campus. The main detail I remember from the conversation that followed was him claiming that with a degree in literature a student would be able to do anything and comment on anything – and he meant anything. I briefly argued that expertise in a field may actually be required before one attempts to “do anything.” Mostly I was stunned at the arrogance of the remark, although the person making it is a nice, decent guy and didn’t have an arrogant tone when he made this pronouncement. This made me think that perhaps the idea of being some sort of universal expert is something entrenched in the lit field (and other fields in the humanities).
Anyway, a few months later I am having another discussion with this same person about a variety of current events and other miscellaneous stuff. The actual topics are not relevant to this story, other than, not surprisingly, he took the standard far left position on all topics. At one point I offered some opinions on a topic, and then realizing I had little real knowledge on this topic stopped opining and said: “I really don’t know much about [X] so I can’t offer an opinion or discuss it well.” He responded, half jokingly but also half seriously, that isn’t that what we (meaning academics) do all the time, talk about stuff we know little about.
At least he was indirectly admitting to not being a universal expert, then again, this comment suggested to me that he thought he possessed the skills to adequately comment on anything regardless of specialized knowledge in any area.
Among my issues with this universal expert (or “InstaExpert”) mindset is the degree to which it may affect students’ education – all students, not just lit majors. At this smallish campus there is a big push for a liberal arts education for all, and by liberal arts they mean a heavy emphasis on the humanities and social sciences. Thus, as an example, students graduating from the environmental studies program take a course on “literature and the environment” (taught by above person, who BTW, is sympathetic to the causes of eco-“terrorist” groups) but take no courses devoted to risk analysis or population-based health. What will be the result of these students being employed as environmental health “experts” without necessary technical skills? More scary media stories about the dangers of GM foods or the MMR vaccine?
“and he meant anything.”
Oh dear. That’s exactly it – I’m sure he did.
Lit crits haven’t always been like that! Really they haven’t. Leavis had some pretty grandiose ideas about the centrality and importance of lit crit, but even he didn’t think it conveyed General Expertise on all subjects. What happened around 1970 (or was it 1966, in Baltimore…) to make lit theorists think that?
I myself try to remember to wear boots if I’m going to be near such an English Department as that at Vandy, ’cause it tends to get deep over there. :)
Literary Aesthetics: the Very Idea
By LINDSAY WATERS
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=3ynlz6vqsby2z0cymc6gsjt2d02rwfd0
This article seems to me to provide a re-centre-ing compared with the one you are bagging in the post. To a total outsider (to lit crit) the author appears to provide not only an overview but more importantly an insight into what a claim of ‘conservative mood’ in academic departments refers to.
I had thought it meant a move to ‘reactionary’ politics, whereas it seems to mean emphasising priorities of ass-cover and career protection rather than exploration and enquiry. Like any workplace where a substrate of insecurity is growing… I think I know it. Someone moved MY cheese too.
Lyndsay Waters: “In fact, you should know, a growing and diverse group of scholars is producing very exciting work, exploring just the issue of aesthetic experience urged upon the reader by Gumbrecht. Such people are not the dupes of de Man, and many of them probably have never heard of Gumbrecht. Look to Isobel Armstrong’s The Radical Aesthetic (Blackwell, 2000), which soundly criticizes those who claim that aesthetics is politically reactionary. Drawing on contemporary literature and criticism, the book instead points to the democratic potential of a revival of aesthetics. Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002) argues that contemporary media like television, film, and the Internet evoke various levels of sensation — some of which operate well below the level of simple meaning; Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings (Harvard University Press, 2004) uses examples that range from 19th-century American novels to contemporary cartoon shows to study the fleeting feelings we often have about art. In different ways, all those scholars resist reducing art to ideas; all reveal anew the complex ways in which art holds us in its grasp.
Yes, the transformation that Gumbrecht calls for in the humanities is beginning to happen. If we can let go of our past battles, we may even let it flower.”
And when I rush to Amazon to choose one of these encouraging books, what do I read in the customer reviews:
(Massumi) ” I particularly like the way that he uses such real things to discuss the “philosophical.” Indeed, Massumi does express a higher empiricism (one unencumbered by prefabricated categories and other forms of abstraction).”
Damn that sounds like a pre-fabricated category of wank!
So here I go OFF TOPIC from that article on the Evil Empire with the hovering spectre of Darth Eagleton, and admit why I went to Amazon instead of the library for those books.
I am looking for an artful gift, for a person studying fine art. She is very bright and hardworking, just finished second year university in a great department; has studied studied eg Orlan the body modifier, and is herself a painter. Her literature has been full of feminism, de Sade, Freud, Lacan et al., some great, some horrid, all densely opaque to me.
Can anyone recommend a recent book that genuinely takes us forward in ideas of aesthetics, and is better grounded than just in the aspects of theory mocked by OB?
Reading some of the output of the pomo movement reminds me of a sentence from Flann O’Brien . Commenting on some strangled syntax, he sniffed “It’s too much reading of the French [language] that causes sentences like that to be written”
I linked to the Waters article in News a couple of days ago.
Re Literary Aesthetics: the Very Idea
By LINDSAY WATERS
Waters says he is for aesthetic experience against meaning in litcrit. He is happy that people like Paul de Man, Derrida, Barbara Johnson, and Shoshana Felman have been making “an effort to devise new defenses for literature, by updating and developing the idea that the arts proceed in their own ways, different from those of society, politics, and the economy.” To think that de Man and Derrida and Felman would be placed in the aesthetics team!
Waters mourns, “The fact that those theorists [de Man et al] have been so eclipsed by the meaning-mongers [Stanley Fish et al] has been much heralded as a return to clarity and common sense in literary criticism.” Fish’s weird interpretation of Milton apart, substituting clarity and reasonig for bad writing and obscurantism would certainly benefit the humanities. Enough of the convoluted writings of Bhabha, Butler, Spivak et al. Give me ideas to wrestle with, no unreadable prose to try to find my way through it and eventually discover … nothing.
ChrisPer,
I’m probably not the best one to offer the recommendation you asked for, but John Updike’s Still Looking has been well reviewed. Penguin has also recently re-issued some of John Ruskin’s books.
Thanks Allan, I will look into it!