The Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn't Matter [BWAHAHA Alert!]

NY Times ^ | 4-19-03 | EMILY EAKIN

[Pharmboy]

These are uncertain times for literary scholars. The era of big theory is over. The grand paradigms that swept through humanities departments in the 20th century — psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, post-colonialism — have lost favor or been abandoned. Money is tight. And the leftist politics with which literary theorists have traditionally been associated have taken a beating.

In the latest sign of mounting crisis, on April 11 the editors of Critical Inquiry, academe's most prestigious theory journal, convened the scholarly equivalent of an Afghan-style loya jirga. They invited more than two dozen of America's professorial elite, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., Homi Bhabha, Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson, to the University of Chicago for what they called "an unprecedented meeting of the minds," an unusual two-hour public symposium on the future of theory.

Understandably, expectations were high. More than 500 people, mostly students and faculty, squeezed into a lecture hall to hear what the mandarins had to say, while latecomers made do with a live video feed set up in the lobby.

In his opening remarks, W. J. T. Mitchell, the journal's editor and a professor of English and art history at Chicago, set an upbeat tone for the proceedings. "We want to be the Starship Enterprise of criticism and theory," he told the audience.

But any thought that this would be a gleeful strategy session with an eye toward extending theory's global reach, or an impassioned debate over the merits of, say, Derrida and Lacan, was quickly dispelled.

When John Comaroff, a professor of anthropology and sociology at Chicago who was serving as the event's moderator, turned the floor over to the panelists, for several moments no one said a word.

Then a student in the audience spoke up. What good is criticism and theory, he asked, if "we concede in fact how much more important the actions of Noam Chomsky are in the world than all the writings of critical theorists combined?"

After all, he said, Mr. Fish had recently published an essay in Critical Inquiry arguing that philosophy didn't matter at all.

Behind a table at the front of the room, Mr. Fish shook his head. "I think I'll let someone else answer the question," he said.

So Sander L. Gilman, a professor of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, replied instead. "I would make the argument that most criticism — and I would include Noam Chomsky in this — is a poison pill," he said. "I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

Mr. Fish nodded approvingly. "I like what that man said," he said. "I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it."

During the remainder of the session, the only panelist to venture a defense of theory — or mention a literary genre — was Mr. Bhabha. "There are a number of people around the table here and a number of people in the audience, in fact most of you here are evidence that intellectual work has its place and its uses," he insisted. "Even a poem in its own oblique way is deeply telling of the lives of the world we exist in. You can have poems that are intimately linked with political oppositional movements, poems that actually draw together people in acts of resistance."

But no one spoke up to endorse this claim. In fact, for a conference officially devoted to theory, theory itself got very little airtime. For more than an hour, the panelists bemoaned the war in Iraq, the Bush administration, the ascendancy of the right-wing press and the impotence of the left. Afterward, Mr. Gates, who arrived late because he had been attending a conference in Wisconsin, said: "For a moment, I thought I was in the wrong room. I thought we would be talking about academic jargon. Instead, it was Al Qaeda and Iraq — not that there's anything wrong with that."

Finally, a young man with dreadlocks who said he was a graduate student from Jamaica asked, "So is theory simply just a nice, simple intellectual exercise, or something that should be transformative?"

Several speakers weighed in before Mr. Gates stood up. As far as he could tell, he said, theory had never directly liberated anyone. "Maybe I'm too young," he said. "I really didn't see it: the liberation of people of color because of deconstruction or poststructuralism."

If theory's political utility is this dubious, why did the theorists spend so much time talking about current events? Catharine R. Stimpson, a panelist and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University, offered one, well, theory. "This particular group of intellectuals," she said, "has a terror of being politically irrelevant."

[edwin hubble]

"The Ultimate Unified Theory of Everything consists of: Photons, Croutons, Neurons, Futons, Carrions, Gravitons, Crayons, and Morons. "

Thank you for that list.

Incidentally, I find humorous the use of the term 'theory' here to describe what these folks do.

'Theory' in the hands of the scientists in biology, chemistry, physics and the other natural sciences is something very different altogether.

[Pharmboy]

Ping

[squarebarb]

Academics are at bottom class snobs. That's what the deconstructivists were all about. Zora Neale Hurston stood up against people like Richard Wright and was truly attacked and abused. Ended up working as a maid. Her writing is far better than Wright. These people used to be able to destroy others who stood up to them for many years but now people can see what they do, and report on it, and discuss it, at places like Free Republic. They can't hide any more. I was at one time the target of a deconstructivist attack because I made fun of one of their moronic conferences in an article in a small magazine and they were absolutely savage. Not that it mattered much since I am not in academe. But they can't hide in the playpen anymore. Note what happened to De Genova. Time to cut the big salaries and perks.

[Pharmboy]

Good point about De Genova; the uproar over his idiocy helped inform this discussion--no doubt.

[Pharmboy]

What's up with this article? I haven't read the NYT in years. Have they finally added a funnies page or something?

Yeah...you should've seen the drawings of the comics <;-)

[Roscoe]

[hellinahandcart]

Yeah...you should've seen the drawings of the comics <;-)

You mean like this one from the Book Review?

[aruanan]

to the University of Chicago for what they called "an unprecedented meeting of the minds," an unusual two-hour public symposium on the future of theory.

Oh, crap! This shows why I should read the campus newspaper. I could have gone to witness this first hand. All these various types of modern criticism have been examples of, "Hey, look how cleverly I can make up my own peculiar sort of spin using this text as a point of departure!", the actual text and what the author intended to say through it mere irrelevancies.

[Anamensis]

Actually, this foundering about without theory has been going on for a few years now, people are afraid to put forth anything counched in theory because they know everyone else has their torpedoes in the water before they even finish the article. The latest no-theory philosophy that I've seen is Phenomenology. As best I can understand it (and I'm not confident) is "you just describe what you see, and ... you know... just... describe it, right?"

[stands2reason]

They are termites who've eaten through the disciplines of English, Linguistics, History, leaving nothing but a false front built of their own $#it. Is their anything left to save? I curse the old-school academics who stood by and let these Marxist lunatics destroy not only their own work, but decades upon decades of study.

[stands2reason]

Mr. Fish nodded approvingly. "I like what that man said,"

He was talking about you, you bastard.

[aruanan]

Actually, this foundering about without theory has been going on for a few years now, people are afraid to put forth anything counched in theory because they know everyone else has their torpedoes in the water before they even finish the article. The latest no-theory philosophy that I've seen is Phenomenology. As best I can understand it (and I'm not confident) is "you just describe what you see, and ... you know... just... describe it, right?"

That's pretty funny. Now they're back to the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain? What's to stop one from criticizing another for inadequate powers of observation and description? I wish Richard Mitchell were still alive to draw and quarter them.

[Lurker 50001]

"I wish to deny the effectiveness of intellectual work. And especially, I always wish to counsel people against the decision to go into the academy because they hope to be effective beyond it."

This is a joke right? Straight from Ayn Rands "Fountainhead" Right?

[ccmay]

"I think one must be careful in assuming that intellectuals have some kind of insight. In fact, if the track record of intellectuals is any indication, not only have intellectuals been wrong almost all of the time, but they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

This must be a fraud. No academic intellectual is capable of such honest introspection.

-ccm

[Right Wing Professor]

they have been wrong in corrosive and destructive ways."

It doesn't get much better than this.

Except this was the thesis of Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals", written at least 15 years ago. But Johnson, being a conservative, will never get credit for it.

[Anamensis]

What's to stop one from criticizing another for inadequate powers of observation and description?

Oh, nothing stops academics from criticizing each other, and that's one of the points they usually make. I worked on an academic journal for a while and got to watch the peer review process in action. You go in a pig and you come out a sausage, and the egos involved are over-the-top. Watching them cannabilize each other eventually became the high point of my day!

[Anamensis]

Except this was the thesis of Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals", written at least 15 years ago.

As well as a more recent offering called THE RECKLESS MIND, by Mark Lilla. I liked Johnson's book but he relied a little too heavily on smears of person for my taste. (You know, Sartre was ugly, Bertrand Russell had bad breath...)

[StriperSniper]

Flying pigs BUMP!

[MalcolmS]

"Even a poem..."

And there you have it. The Libdem/Chicoms have nothing to offer unless it rhymes.

You poor, dear, naive, FReeper. . . you actually believe that a modern intellectual would write poetry that rhymes. Everyone knows that rhyme is merely a construct of the bourgeious capitalist class to imprison the creativity of the poet, yearning to struggle beyond the bonds or rhyme and meter. (/sarcasm)

[Valin]

During the remainder of the session, the only panelist to venture a defense of theory — or mention a literary genre — was Mr. Bhabha. "There are a number of people around the table here and a number of people in the audience, in fact most of you here are evidence that intellectual work has its place and its uses," he insisted. "Even a poem in its own oblique way is deeply telling of the lives of the world we exist in. You can have poems that are intimately linked with political oppositional movements, poems that actually draw together people in acts of resistance."

This is their problem. They and their theories have been completely taken over by the left, and the radical left.
psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, post-colonialism...and whatever is the flavor of the month are IMO just another reason to trash the west and western thought and tradition.