ILB rolling lit theory discussion

Antithesis: No, it is theory itself that is lame, regardless of any method of initiating discussion.

Hypothesis: Discuss theory clandestinely, as though one were not discussing theory, when in fact one is, in a way, if there is one, that isn't lame.

Another question: Is it just chance that the ebbing of the high tide of theory, a predominately Marxian discipline, coincided with glasnost, the fall of the USSR, and the Berlin Wall? Anyone know?

Theory & Its Discontents

I find that people who write books which have helped me read lit often claim that reading theory helped them do it, and I've no reason to suspect them of lying.

I wrote before deleting it that I'd actually read very little genuine theory, but I'm not actually sure that's true (except compared to Josh Chris Sinker Cozen etc etc obv obv). I think it's rather that the point when I start genuinely enjoying a theorist I instantly stop thinking of them as theory? I do really feel there's a sense in theory at the moment, post-Deleuze, by which difficulty is seen as very close to godliness, but that's not necessarily a bad thing! I mean, it's totally natural to want to read a book pitched at a difficulty you find challenging but not completely impossible - it's possible in the modern world to reach a point where that book is A Thousand Plateaus and isn't any novel ever written (haha except maybe FW), and it seems churlish to do anything other than admire people who've reached that point.

(All of which contains the not-very hidden axiom that theory = literature of course which I am smart enough or even maybe willing to actively defend)

see, i can dig this. i've enjoyed philosophy as literature, even when i don't have much use for the philosophy itself. literary theory seen thru the lens of marxism though, it would take a truly great writer for me to want in on that.(When I was a kid I picked up The Revolt of the Masses thinking it was a famous piece of Communist propaganda. Boy, was I confused. I couldn't believe how much I agreed with the guy.)

Um this should read not smart enough obviously! I am not a total conceited fanny.

Me too. Swift said everything that needs to be said about Gramsci Adorno Lacan et al in Tale of a Tub.

Not sure about 'great writing' but have you read this , scott? Not read it but I got my printer working again..

(I like this new We Must Be The Change We Hope To See In ILB direction!)

One reason I am super keen on theory, as a thing to have existed,

Having typed that, and rereading what you just wrote, though, I realize I'm not sure what you mean. Those don't seem like synonyms to me, those seem like different ideas that sometimes get lumped together in the same word.

If I were to say that there's a doubleness in 'about' between 'about' as in "encircling" and 'about' as in "trying to do" ("what's he about", etc), or when Linda Charnes says there's one in "identity" between 'identity' as in individual selfhood and 'identity' as in "mathematically the same as", is that kind of point, which is super-prevalent in theory, more useful than annoying, or more annoying than useful, do you find?

I just wish I could give you a specific example of these effects.

Theory sometimes seems to create its own contexts (which, outside the circle, perhaps comes off as name dropping -- as in, who cares what Linda Charnes thinks about anything? were we even talking about her? -- oh but she is I suppose a landmark of theory, and thus her opinions have to be reckoned with -- and, it often seems, theorists' opinions end up carrying more weight than anything resembling a real-world fact -- hence the common "navel gazing" complaint) (but, I should point out that this is fine, they have created a context for themselves -- but they are not convincing me (at least) that their content is relevant outside of their context, hence my comment about theory helping you read theory).

Next, in regard to the point about "identity" -- any combination of words attempting to capture an observation of sufficient complexity to deserve to be called literature (as opposed to a shopping list or "I see a cat") cannot avoid imprecisions, ambiguities and vagaries. Language is freighted with these qualities as part of its very nature.

It is equally natural that an author will attempt to control these qualities in their work (to the degree they recognize them - clumsy authors write clumsily). Some authors sweat bullets trying to limit their ambiguity because their target idea is precise. Other authors deliberately welcome ambiguity because their ideas are multifarious.

It is rare for an author to succeed to their perfect satisfaction, but it is normal for an author to understand what they are doing with their materials and what parts of their work work well and what parts work poorly. Nor will an author mistake a poem about a cat for a cat - even if he is striving to create that momentary illusion in the reader.

So, whatever Linda Charnes' point truly was, from GP's nutshell summary it seems to me to be absurdly rudimentary and unhelpful, like a biologist proclaiming to the world that plants and animals are different because plants don't have muscles. Perhaps, if the biologist used enough jargon, this could be made to sound important and profound, but that would only be a literary effect. ;)

The theory I find helpful is culturally instructive to me: Bourdieu, for instance, positing pervading fields of social determinism that explain taste-formation, which I can extrapolate into thoughts complementary to, I don't know, things like Joyce describing the reception of Finnegan's Wake he anticipates: "This one will keep the professors busy for centuries." Or whatever he said. What Bourdieu argues about the operation of cultural capital (in this case, difficulty for difficulty's sake appealing to the agents of academic status-conferment) jibes well with Joyce's cynicism regarding said. But I also understand how that stripe of sociological critique would bug readers solely or even primarily reading for aesthetic jouissance.

my first thought was that linda charnes was made up: having googled, apparently not: my second thought is, is she a mathematician?

(Laurel I owe you $5! I will buy you a drink in June?)

* If you care: It's from a Shakespeare book, she uses it to argue something like that dudes such as Anthony, Cleopatra, Troilus, Cressida, Richard III etc "mean and mean intensely" before they ever even turn up on any given stage and so what happens in those plays is a doomed battle for "identity"-selfhood rather than "identity"-sameasness w/r/t the already-known story. So "This is, and is not Cressid" and "will boy Cleopatra" and that amazing inexplicable Chaucer-layered gorgeous line abt an "unkind self" etc etc. It's actually really beautifully argued and considered and kinda breathtaking a lot of the time, I'm not remotely doing it justice.

I am not really trying to spoil your appreciation of this premise, but anyone striving for "identity" in the sense of same-as-ness w/r/t to the story or characters, precisely as they received them from some external authority is not an artist, but a mimic.

The idea that Shakespeare didn't care to slavishly reproduce what had already been produced by others or to retell a story exactly as it had always been told is not much of a thrill or surprise to me. He retold the story in light of his own insights and concerns, knowing that he must make the story real and fresh to his own imagination first, before he could make it real and fresh to his audience. So, same-as-ness was the first thing he conciously discarded.

As for the characters fighting for a new "identity" in the sense of becoming a newly living character and not an effigy of what had been told in other versions of the story - the fact that the word "identity" happens to have these two meanings in English, and these happen to have some bearing on what Linda Charnes wanted to say is, well, just happenstance. It makes the whole idea seem more clever and appealing to be able to spin these meanings out of one word, but if you reach the same conclusions using another set of words, they rather flatten out and become less magical.

Which is another way of saying that Linda Charnes did an artistic thing by choosing this approach, but also that costuming her idea as a somehow profound theory, she is just hoodwinking you (and maybe herself) into the illusion that she has sawed Shakespeare in half.

Adorno translated into English

While even German readers can find Adorno's work difficult to understand, an additional problem for English readers is that his German idiom is particularly difficult to translate into English. A similar difficulty of translation is true of Hegel, Heidegger, and a number of other German philosophers and poets. As a result, some early translators tended toward over-literalness. In recent years, Edmund Jephcott and Stanford University Press have published new translations of some of Adorno's lectures and books, including Introduction to Sociology, Problems of Moral Philosophy and his book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. These fresh translations are less literal in their rendering of German sentences and words, and are more accessible to English readers.

I used to wonder if it was a translation problem. I was reading it in the late 70's. Maybe there's a better translation out now. Kant and Hegel were a piece of cake, though, so it wasn't an across-the-board problem with German into English, as the Wiki article would suggest.

(1) Why is Derrida more critically cited than Paul De Mann? Is it because Derrida is hooked up to the apparatus of continental philosophy, rather than confined in English? Is it because of the controversy w/ De Mann and Nazism?

(2) Why is it that politics can de-canonize some authors (Eliot, Aragon) but not others (Heidegger)?

(3) Now that Literary Theory is either dead or shifting towards historicism and identity politics, does this mean that the engagement between theory and philosophy is over?

This reads like a question from 1987!

Surely some mistake.

I would totally like to read this! Unless you mean in N.I. itself which I agree is crazy awesome but hardly real world?

link plz!

the most author widely-cited chemist EVER was at my department while i was doing my degree. he was passed over for tenure.

also i don't think eliot has been decanonized, either. celine was a collaborator, too, and it doesn't seem to have hurt his standing.

you might as well ask why eco is less widely cited than barthes. well, is it because eco is a worse thinker? maybe, but it could also have something to do with the fact that most people probably decide that the rewards of learning to use eco's rigorous semiotic systems isn't worth the reward, whereas barthes is more accessible.

i guess what i'm getting at is there's more "general interest" in the "big names". this doesn't mean they're less important. go to a a comp lit department with a big national literatures focus and see how often derrida comes up - probably not a whole lot more than paul de man!