Saturday, January 10, 2004
(1:11 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
LitSkunk
Some might notice a new referral over there on the right, called LitSkunk. She apparently got to my site by way of the old lit-crit discussion on John Halbo's site, and she quoted me approvingly on her own new blog. Apparently she is dedicated to undoing contemporary literary theory -- every post so far is anti-theory, including this latest, in which she calls for a return to close, sensible readings. I'm all for close, sensible readings, and in fact, I'm not sure if I have any skills outside of close reading. Virtually every paper I've turned in has consisted of close textual analysis, sometimes extrapolating the meaning of an entire book out of one chapter, paragraph, or even sentence (this last is exemplified in a fun exercise on the use of the word "you" in the introduction to Invisible Man).
Strangely, however, she seems to be intent on applying the insights of cognitive science and all that to literature. My question for her would be: how is this not Theory? After all, structuralism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis all claim to be scientific in some sense. Freud had a deep desire to base his theory directly on the mechanism of the brain, for example, and Marx obviously provides a wealth of empirical evidence to support his claims. Cognitive science may well turn out to be yet another "fad" like the Big Three sources of Theory that I listed above -- so why risk it? Or is it a "real" science, as opposed to pseudo-science, because it is prevalent in the Anglo-American world, as opposed to continental Europe?
The closest thing that we have to a formulated anti-Theory seems to be the New Criticism, which pays attention to the text itself and tries to determine how the text operates. Reader-response adds in the valuable element of the reader, whether implied or actual. Beyond those two, we seem to be in the difficult waters of "applying" some other field to literature. If we accept in principle that "applying" stuff to literature is legitimate, then why is cognitive science any better than psychoanalysis?
