Tuesday, January 13, 2004
(8:34 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown!
Our dear friend Winston has responded to my critique of his entire worldview and his quality as a person -- and rightly so. I have "unfairly characterized [him] and [his] position." The primary evidence of this is this paragraph:
Just because you and your friend Steve evince contempt for the thinker as well as the thought, please do not assume the same of me. I have a number of leftist friends, including several who know exactly what I think about politics, the academy, etc. While I may think some of their ideas are ridiculous, I am able to get along with the person behind the ideas. In fact, there are even a few I enjoy arguing with, and they with me. Were I hired by a theory-ridden department, I'd like to think I could develop some of the same relationships--agree to disagree, but always hoping of course that I could make a difference.
As an aside, I don't even know for sure who Steve is, and even if it is who I think it is, we're not close friends. I will take Winston's word for it on his characterization of his personal interactions with colleagues of differing opinions -- clearly, if he could not get along with Theory-oriented people on a personal level, he likely wouldn't have made it as far in the academic game as he apparently has. This paragraph, however, contains an example of something that is prevelant throughout his post: assumptions about me. For instance, he seems to assume that I think Stalinism is a good thing, even though I characterized Stalinist purges as a horrible waste. I was not saying that the Soviet system is good; I was saying that problems other than pure principles brought it down. In addition, he seems to ignore basic points of fact when taking down my argument. For instance, when I mention the fact that the U. S. was much richer than the Soviet Union to start with at the beginning of the Cold War, he says,
Yeah, the U.S. was in terrific economic condition during the Great Depression. You might want to talk to my dad, sometime. He could tell you some great stories about how well off the U.S. was.
Well, he might want to talk to my dad or, you know, anyone else in the world, to learn that the Cold War didn't start until after World War II, by which time the United States economy had recovered from the Great Depression. The deck was stacked against socialism in the beginning, simply because capitalist societies, which were already firmly entrenched, had a significant stake in keeping socialism from growing -- for instance, Europe as a whole may well have gone communist if not for the United States' (right, positive, generous) decision to give Western Europe a vast amount of money under the Marshall Plan. My pointing out facts like this does not amount to a longing for a Stalinist society -- it's an academic question.
Also, he seems to assume that I think I'm right about everything -- this is only true on a meta-level (in that I'm right about myself when I step into a self-critiquing mode and point out the ways I'm wrong). So, when he says,
Yes, Adam. Hopefully you will outgrow your current phase, a phase of leftism apparently brought on by the anger of the right, if I'm reading you correctly. But I thought that one political extreme couldn't drive a person to move towards the other extreme? Oh, I forgot. I guess you've invoked the double-standard again.
he's kind of missing the point. I'm not invoking a double-standard. I spend more time on him than on myself in the post at hand, but I have a multitude of self-critical articles, both on the blog and from my site's previous incarnation as The Homepage. I'll admit that my leftism is not entirely motivated by a dispassionate assessment of empirical evidence -- and no one's position is. At the same time, I am responsible for the positions I take and the decisions I make, and I took Conservative English Major's blame-game to be a way of passing the buck. Emotions are tied up in political positions to a huge degree, but Winston consistently acts as though the broad outlines are drawn out of science. I find that highly implausible. I mean, sure, he can say his political beliefs are based on science, but what special expertise does he have in science? Lacan thinks some of his ideas are based on science, too, and he gets nothing but ridicule for it. Ah, but here's this jewel from Winston: "And yes, the difference IS that I’m correct. I have a set of biological facts on my side, proven through the use of scientific method, and you have ideology."
In any case, this discussion is not likely to get any prettier. I believe that Winston has mischaracterized my position on a variety of issues, but that's largely my own fault. I wasn't clear enough in my opinions. I don't have a lot of use for Foucault or Derrida, and I think that "postmodernism" in general has probably outlived its usefulness. When I do literary analysis, I generally do New Critical-type stuff. I admire T. S. Eliot and Cleanth Brooks to no end. If people want to do literary analysis without a particular theoretical stance, I say more power to them -- in fact, I think there's probably a nice niche for people like that at conservative Christian universities such as my alma mater.
I think that science produces real knowledge about the world, but I am highly skeptical about attempts to "apply" those insights in social situations -- I think that in general, the gap between social science/theory and the hard sciences is a valid thing and that we shouldn't attempt to close it. I don't think that either psychoanalysis or Marxism has been "disproven" by advances in science. Marx is widely regarded as having a piercing (perhaps even unparalleled) insight into the workings of the capitalist system, and Freud's ideas have so thoroughly penetrated the modern mind that nearly all psychologists are Freudians to some extent.
I personally have a great interest in theory, based in a reading of theoretical texts, especially Marxism and psychoanalysis, as should be clear by now. I don't see many places where those theories are studied outside of literature departments, and so I'm glad that people who have those interests have some sway in literature departments. I'm not simply defending the status quo, with which I don't have a lot of direct experience aside from reading some books the status quo has produced, but I don't know how the current status quo is any worse or better than any previous or future status quo in terms of being open to new ideas. A "Winstonian" hegemony in English departments would probably be less hospitable to those who don't share the Winstonian viewpoint, but -- just like in the current situation -- some people with differing views would get through, and those people might end up producing scholarship that's exciting and insightful and that demands everyone's attention to such a degree that it starts a new trend and results in a new hegemony. I doubt the current regime is any more or less open to such a shift than any other possible state of affairs. In fact, the very stasis that Winston evokes makes me think that a shift is inevitable -- if the Theory people really can't come up with anything new, someone else will.
Winston, I wish you the best of luck in finding a job, and I hope you continue to stand up for what you believe (even though I clearly don't agree with you). Given the very high regard for hard science in American culture, I would even predict that within a generation, people like you stand a fair chance of taking over literature departments -- the whole culture seems to be shifting rightward, and so the last remaining bastion of leftism will almost certainly decline in power, leaving room for more conservative individuals such as yourself. To some degree, that probably won't make much difference, because it's not like Fred Jameson or Judith Butler has had much influence on public policy or on anyone's daily life. I hope, though, that if you do achieve a position of power in academia, you will remember your frustration and give a fair shake to that young beleaguered upstart who thinks the establishment is stacked against her. I have no particular reason to believe you won't.
And in conclusion, I recommend Stanley Fish's book Surprised by Sin as a work of sensible criticism. I know you aren't necessarily looking for works on individual authors or texts, but I found it to be a very exciting and productive piece of criticism back in my Miltonophile days, and it certainly dates to before Fish went off the deep end.
