Haloscan

note: I was unhappy with the 'coda' post, so have deleted it**. The ensuing haloscan knockabout was, I think, much more revealing and more entertaining, and is produced below. The flavour of the anti-theory position is particularly sharp here:

Sean McCann: "the obvious incoherence of the more polemical anti-Theory positions"

Ah, thank you, Mark! Finally, an acknowledgment of the point you wouldn't concede before.

I wouldn't see the remark about Eagleton's pomo book as being very significant--for two reasons. It's late work and quite different, I believe, in style and sensibility from, say, the Machery or Benjamin stuff. For another, both Eagleton and his one-time American admirers seem to realize that a once perceived affinity no longer exists.

Your argument here is a clever version of Matt's endlessly reiterated point: the claim that there's no there there. This is a strange attitude for a materialist to take. There are recognizable facts of social practice in, at the least, the American academy. They are not in doubt--until, that is, Theory is criticized, when all of a sudden it's pretended that it doesn't exist. Yes, there is vagueness and even incoherence in what Theory entails, just as there quite frequently, in fact rampantly, is in individual works of Theory. (Someone like Judith Butler thinks nothing, for example, of throwing together Foucault, Lacan, Bourdieu, Derrida, Hegel, and Austin in a single work of 100 something pages. A bit of this a bit of that, all hard edges rounded off and incompatabilities resolved/ignored. See, e.g, Homi Bhaba or Lisa Lowe for a similar hodgepodge of big names. The practice is utterly commonplace. An indifference to incoherence is, in fact, one of the hallmarks of Theory.) But that fuzziness does not affect the recognizability of Theory. (There are a lot of fuzzy categories that are perfectly recognizable.) The institutions Scott has mentioned are testimony to this. There are many such. The anthologies, including the Norton are another. The prevalent curriculum of graduate and undergraduate programs is yet a third. The bookshelves of hip book stores (St. Mark's in NYC) is another. The discourse of publication and professional conferences is a fifth. (In those settings, there are names you are expected to know and work you're expected to be able to pretend a familiarity with. [...]
What people mean when they say doing Theory, as I've mentioned several times now, is predominantly poststructuralism and poststructuralist influenced work, with room made for the gentle absorption of various figures who can seem to be read in sympathetic ways--even if this depends on sheer ignorance. [...]Those people are often manhandled to share similar attitudes: assumptions about the non- or weak referentiality of language; about the epistemological and moral dubiousness of realism; about the pervasiveness of power operating primarily through cultural forces (and very rarely arising as a product of economic or political forces); about the terribly dangers of normalization and various informal forms of social enforcement; about the value of isolated acts of resistance to norms; about the subversiveness per se of this set of intellectual assumptions. All this means that in the American academy you can be seen to combine Gramsci, Foucault and Lacan (dubious though that combination should be) and will be called someone doing Theory, but that, if you want to, say, bring Chomsky's TG to the study of meter, no one would ever, ever consider you to be doing Theory. There you have it, a meaningful social distinction that distinguishes t from T.

There are stylistic traits that go along with this set of basic intellectual assumptions--including the kitschiness John H describes so well or the performative grandstanding mentioned by Culler. The premise to be addressing the fundamental features of social reality by practicing a high-test form of literary interpetation (on display, e.g., in CR) is another facet of the quality both Culler and Holbo and Cunningham identify.

To ignore all this requires a determined resistance to acknowledging social reality and, ironically, a kind of anti-intellectualism.

Mark Kaplan: ' a determined resistance to acknowledging social reality and, ironically, a kind of anti-intellectualism'.

Sorry, are these being attributed to me?? It's just that if they are my reply might be different than if they are not.

Anon: keep swinging, Sean, you've got 'em on the ropes!

Roy Genders: 'Those people are often manhandled to share similar attitudes'

Sounds like a matter for the police.

McCann: 'Sounds like a matter for the police'

Oh, for pete's sake, Roy! Objection to intellectual sloppiness = policing? How absurdly melodramatic is that?!

Mark, do I think you're anti-intellectual? No. I couldn't avoid tossing back an intimation so frequently sent my way in recent days. My mistake. That said, I think Matt, say, and Jodi and to a lesser degree CR have staked out almost explicitly anti-intellectual positions. What counts in their view of things is not your argument, but your attitude. [...]

Matt: I'll respect Sean to kindly stop using my name as associated with any sweepingly inaccurate positions as he sees fit. I'm sick to death of this whole anti-intellectual meme you've insisted on foregrounding. Nobody ever accused you of being anti-intellectual. Merely pointing out objectively that "there is a history of anti-intellectualism in America" and wondering where, if anywhere, in this history, and where on the political spectrum (in the absence of any exceptionally visible left critiques of theory or positive demonstrations of something better) _Theory's Empire_ may fall is *not* the same thing as accusing anyone--Sean, say--of being an anti-intellectual.

the premise that there is matter of intellectual affinity among Theorists to consider

Who could ever argue, honestly, against such a hopelessly vague premise? The problem is where one goes with it, the uses to which such a line is being put, the sweeping dismissals without bothering to engage with particular examples, the broad sociology, revisionist historiography, etc. etc.. But I'm just repeating things here now, and I'll stop.

I've "stake out" nothing; you just don't get it. And, quite frankly, you seem rather determined not to get it.

McCann: Sorry, Matt, was I accusing you of something? I should have said I wasn't talking about you, I was just talking about your framework. It's not what you insist you believe, it's just the frame you keep advancing. The anti-intellectual meme, btw, was first put into play by you. You can hardly be surprised if it returns to whence it came.

Agreed, though. You've staked out nothing. That's not your method. No stakes in fog.


Kaplan: I suppose it’s quite amusing. After asking whether I’m guilty of anti-intellectualism and the wilful denial of reality, I’m reassured that of course I’m not anti-intellectual! On this wilful denial, more in a moment.

So, just a couple of things:
"the obvious incoherence of the more polemical anti-Theory positions"

Ah, thank you, Mark! Finally, an acknowledgment of the point you wouldn't concede before

I’ve obviously always thought that the more polemical anti-theory positions were incoherent. Where have I been insisting on their lucidity & consistency? I take you to mean that I was refusing to concede the possibility of a non-polemical position. This is false. See, for example, my response to Scott’s initial comment to T1/t2.

wouldn't see the remark about Eagleton's pomo book as being very significant--for two reasons. It's late work and quite different, I believe, in style and sensibility from, say, the Machery or Benjamin stuff

This is a strange observation. The point was not about the book’s place in Eagleton’s corpus but whether some people seem to think that Theory and Postmodernism/ Postmodern Theory are practically synonyms. On Eagleton, incidentally, the books ‘on’ Benjamin and Macherey (I take it you are referring to Criticism and Ideology) are markedly different from each other, of course, both stylistically and in terms of the presiding influences. I’d say only the Benjamin book conforms to your definition of Theory. Eagleton has always been very critical of postmodernism, certainly well before 1997. He has remained, at some level, and by his own confession, a fairly classical Marxist. Criticism and Ideology is a failrly straightforward eg of Marxist aesthetics.

Now, let me be clear. The post above does little more than record some of my ‘cursory’ impressions and then go on to ask a number of rudimentary critical questions - how are certain definitions compatible, what is the referent of Theory, what kind of a concept is ‘Theory’ – are we talking about a philosophical turn, or the result of institutional dynamics; are we dealing with a ‘Post-modern’ phenomenon in some non-trivial sense. In other words: what exactly is the object under consideration.

When such elementary critical questions are impatiently brushed aside with a brusque ‘tsk, tsk’, and an invitation – or demand- to pass beyond them to a reality which is self-evident and obvious, then forgive me if this very gesture arouses my suspicions (and impatience). The familiarity and self-evidence you speak of is, of course, precisely the proper object of critical thought.

Critical theory as I understand it is always a reflection on the things themselves at the same time as being a meditation on the concepts and categories by which we apprehend those things. So, for example, when thinking about poststructuralism, which you also invoke, we should bear in mind that the concept is largely an Anglo-German invention, and so on.

How this elementary operation, and the broaching of elementary questions can be equated with psychosis (which is what, surely, the perverse resistence to reality is) I have no idea.

McCann: Mark, I'm afraid the primary brushing here has been done by yourself and your colleagues. It's like lugging a train up a hill to even get you guys to admit that there might be a thing called Theory and that to consider it critically might be intellectual feasible and politically legitimate. That's not psychosis [..] It's simply the invention of quibbles in the guise of critical thought.

The remark about concession refers to your "Breaking News" post. Despite your later complicated elaborations, the clear point there was that criticism of Theory is incoherent and dubious. Question decided in advance.

p.s. To remind you of the obvious, no critical questions were brushed aside impatiently at the Valve. If you'll review the discussion there, you'll see that beginning efforts at probing some of them were taken up before the conversation was waylaid by various imputations of illegitimacy or unwisdom.

Kaplan: Thanks for reacquainting me w/ 'the obvious', except I wasn't talking about the Valve I was talking about your post above. As for the Breaking News post, might I suggest - as it seems to have presented you with insuperable interpretative difficulties - you ignore it, for all our sakes.

McCann: Same objection. Since some of the issues you raise were anticipated in my posts, as well as elsewhere, it's clear that I'm not trying to brush them aside--or trying to dismiss them via reference to motivation, psychology, context, hidden or unconscious agenda, or intellectual incapacity, all tactics evident in your posts and in those of your colleagues.

The Breaking News post did not present me with insuperable interpretive difficulties. It's meaning was perfectly obvious despite extensive efforts to obfuscate it away.


Kaplan: Re the monster post, it’s odd that others, coming to the post with the necessary good humour and good sense, were able to grasp its meaning without authorial intervention. What I will happily withdraw is the suggestion that your misreading of the text may have been my fault. Your error first appeared, you will recall, in the ill-advised ‘ad hominem’ post, which you at least retracted, or – rightly - regretted, after most of its rather hasty claims were shown to be groundless. What you might have learned from this episode is that your ‘opponent’ is seldom likely to be so generous as to act out your low and tendentious estimation of him.

Your other assertion, that the meaning of the category ‘Theory’ is perfectly transparent or (again) ‘obvious’, that resistance to this obviousness can only be interpreted as obfuscation, becomes no less false with each iteration. The appeal to ‘obviousness’ should put any critical mind on read alert. Incidentally, none of what I have said assumes or asserts the non-existence of Theory, and so what obscure jouissance you derive from repeating this claim I have no idea

Finally, ‘my and my colleagues’ don’t exist, there is no ‘position’ corresponding to this entity. I speak only for myself and will continue to do so.


An aside: Cunningham himself concedes that Theory is a ‘huge flag of convenience’. What he means by Theory is, he says, what gets taught as Theory in departments across the country. Hmm. Strictly speaking, what gets taught as Theory is anything from the Russian Formalists to Lacan to Reception theory to Walter Benjamin. The fact that a category has institutional ‘security’ in no way makes it conceptually coherent. (For what it’s worth, Val Cunningham was - shrewdly? - pronouncing himself and English studies ‘post-theory’ back in 1989.)

A recent ‘introduction to Derrida’, inevitably ‘one in a series’, carries the following blurb: “This series demystifies the demigods of Theory.’ Other ‘demigods’ in the series include Heidegger, Jameson, Said and Stuart Hall. The organising ‘concept’ here is little more than a colophon. Something that can be marketed as Theory is more likely to sell than if it was labelled ‘historiography’ or ‘philosophy of language’. Consequently, that a thinker is annexed by ‘Theory’ has more to do with commercial strategy than conceptualisation, and one shouldn’t of course misrecognise the former as the latter.

The institutional pinfold and the publishing colophon, needless to say, need to be examined and their raison d’etre worked out. It is necessary to explain their conditions of emergence etc. But to think that these pinfolds/ colophons deliver to us a ready made concept or denote something like a coherent ‘movement’ is folly.


McCann: it’s odd that others, coming to the post with the necessary good humour and good sense, were able to grasp its meaning without authorial intervention.

Yes, e.g., Matt got the point because he was aware, as was I, of the intended mockery. The humor he saw was precisely the smugness I recognized. That was its meaning. You yourself were unable to offer any other coherent account.

Your error first appeared, you will recall, in the ill-advised ‘ad hominem’ post, which you at least retracted, or – rightly - regretted, after most of its rather hasty claims were shown to be groundless.

No retraction was made. I regretted bringing my colleagues into contact with intemperate and thuggish writers like AvW and CR, and I attempted to give you the chance to back off some of the nastier of your suggestions. I stand by every one of the assertions in that post. The Valve's effort to talk about Theory was met with innuendo, contempt, vilification, and least courageously, quibbling and pedantic mockery--all of which congratulated itself on its political bona fides.

[...]

Kaplan: If there are any readers left, other than the impressively indefatigable Sean, who would like to consult my gloss on the Monster post, please see here, here and here
I think it blindingly obvious that I am not proposing that “what would catch a Theory monster [would]be Theory itself”. Anyone having genuine difficulty should email me.

McCann: and good luck to you trying to make sense of it.

Kaplan: 'And that's good night from me',
'and it's good night from him.'

** After receiving an email request, I've now reposted the deleted post at the end of the comments.