Two Espressos

Your perception that I'm much opposed to sloppy, obscurantist thinking is exactly correct. It needs to be taken to task. As I've mentioned before, I'm especially concerned by work that takes outdated science seriously. If you start with shitty premises, you're going to reach shitty conclusions. Again, I know that my perspective on this is very different from most of you, but I do think that my job is to discover truths and analyze them critically. Emphasis should be placed on the last part of that sentence. I certainly agree that knowledge and truths should be problematized. And of course they're influenced by society, culture, etc. But that doesn't entail that objective truths don't exist. We're reaching an impasse re: Freud as philosopher. I'm still very skeptical of taking psychoanalytical ideas, which science has shown to be largely batshit fucking crazy, and try to reinterpret bits and pieces of them as philosophy. But I don't really know much about this, so I'll take your word for it that respectable work has been done in this area. I certainly am unfamiliar with the texts you've been referring to in this regard, so it's not my place to criticize them. I'm totally cool with redefining boundaries and categories in human thought. I'm just insisting on the fact that categorization and analysis of ideas is what we as academics do. We should always be critical in these respects, but we needn't disregard the notion of categorization entirely. As far as Alex Rosenberg is concerned, I agree wholeheartedly that he is a science-fetishist. The Atheist's Guide to Reality, while well-written, convincing, eloquent, and humourous, faces severe problems, as several philosophers have demonstrated. I think it's a very important book, but I'm skeptical of some of Rosenberg's bolder claims, especially that only science can provide knowledge about the world: what he--and I, in this thread-- defines as "scientism." The following remarks sum up much of what I've been arguing about thus far: 1. Generally, ideas can be proven to be either true or false. In some cases, ideas can perhaps neither be proven true or false. In these cases, we should strive for discovering which ideas are more likely to be true, and which ideas are more likely to be false. In the humanities, we're never going to reach the level of certainty that mathematics, for example, provides, but I think we can do better than we have been. 2. Skepticism and a commitment to evidence should predicate all of our reasoning. We should vehemently oppose appeals to authority and other forms of fallacious thinking. Appeals to authority seem to pop up in the humanities all the time. It's a problem. 3. Empiricism is the best way to understand the physical world. Humanists, in upholding epistemic humility, should recognize that science possesses the best tools for discovering truths about physical reality and should thereby refrain from pontificating on human nature. By empirical evidence, I just meant that humanists, if they want to write and research about the physical world, need to cite scientific studies in their work. I didn't mean to imply--sorry if I did-- that we ourselves should start doing field work or something. I think we'd make a botch of it, anyways. Although there's the whole x-phil movement, so maybe there are some (supplementary, of course. I don't think humanists should, as Rosenberg basically states, model ourselves off of neuroscience or die) avenues that we could explore? I think I'm giving scientific paradigms of knowledge exactly the credit they deserve. Besides, we need to reconcile with scientists after all the hardcore social constructivism of the late 20th-century. I'm not convinced by the claim that science won't lay bare the secrets of Proust and their affective qualities. Science has been extraordinarily successful up until this point in discovering truths about the world and allowing us to create magnificent things (like the ability to chat online with people across the globe. It's not revolutionary to us now, but 100 years ago, the internet would have been incomprehensible to most people). Maybe that's not a strong enough reason to think science will uncover humanistic domains (although, as I've mentioned before, it has begun to do that in some respects), with Hume's problem of induction and all that, but we'll see. Like bfat, I'm not recommending that literary studies should start doing empirical stuff. I just don't think that humanists can afford to be ignorant of empirical work done in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive linguistics, etc. So I guess I am getting at what bfat thinks I'm getting at: we need to start embracing science, not ostracizing ourselves from it with outdated pseudoscience (Freud, Lacan, etc.). And we need to stop acting like we have tools to understand the human mind or human nature, as I've stated previously. Yes to all this. Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis is to me almost as ridiculous as young earth creationism: both continue to assert ludicrous claims despite strong empirical, falsifiable evidence to the contrary. I love this quote, and not for the reasons you think I should love it. To quote thestage (before s/he self-censored): "that's patently fucking ridiculous." ETA: Again, I feel like my posts have been all over the board (ha!) these past few days, so I apologize for any incoherence on my part. Hopefully I've cleared up at least some of my positions on this matters.

Thanks for responding, Swagato. I don't have time to respond in depth to your post at present (tons of shit to do today), but I'll write something later. I will say, though, that I'm very glad that you've read--or at least are familiar with-- Alex Rosenberg. I'd like to go into that a little further.

Beckett's first "trilogy" is amazing. Some of the best literature I've ever read.

I've heard his name tossed around, and I know he's a philosopher (of mind/science, I believe?), alongside his wife, Patricia. But I don't really know much about him. I'm glad to hear that my thoughts aren't totally off-base; I'll be sure to look into his work, thanks! Posthumanism will be one of the most important areas of study in the coming decades. I've done some reading and research in that area, but I consider myself an absolute novice. Your interests sound fascinating. I too am interested in analytic philosophy and have considered graduate school in that area, though I ultimately dismissed that route as I think that more "continental" thinkers, like Foucault, have lots of interesting things to say, and mainstream philosophy departments usually reject those strains of thought.

Lots of thoughtful responses! I'm enjoying the dialogue. ETA: Whelp, this is a really incoherent post. Oh well. My mentioning of cleaning house has nothing to do with streamlining the humanities, making them more "practical," etc., and everything to do with ridding it of cancerous, ridiculous notions like Freudian psychoanalysis. As I've stated earlier, if you're writing about psychological dimensions in a humanistic context and are not researching and citing falsifiable, empirical studies in contemporary psychology, I see no reason to take you seriously, just like I wouldn't take an astrologist seriously or any other snake oil salesman seriously. Humanists need to stop pretending that they somehow have access to knowledge about psychological phenomena through bullshit artists such as Freud and Lacan. (Again, the "you" in the former remarks is a hypothetical, generalized person, not any poster on this site.) Categorizing and analyzing knowledge and ideas is exactly what we should be doing as humanists. What separates an academic discipline such as English from, say, studying golf? Should we start a Ph.D. program in golf? If not, why not? What are the assumptions that predicate our academic enterprise? I'm certainly against the corporate knowledge-factory, so to speak, of academe. Establishing solid methodologies and epistemologies isn't being complacent with the bureaucracy, the military-industrial complex, or anything else: it's just good practice. Our job is to both discover truths and study them critically. We seem to agree on this point. I'm by no means a poststructuralist (I am extremely skeptical of those schools of thought), and yet you and I seem to be in agreement, at least in part, with what I've been trying (failing?) to express heretofore. I'm very much interested in the epistemological and methodological bases of humanist thought (hint: research interests!), hence my engagement in this topic. But Freud isn't alive and well: no one takes him seriously outside of the humanities, and I think that we need to question why that's the case. You asseverate that this "is largely a function of psychology [...] bow[ing] down at the altar of data-driven scientism," and that data needs "interpretation" and "the work of the humanities to make sense of it." I don't think that any of those claims are self-evident. Indeed, the truly scientistic--in the Rosenbergian sense of the word, which is what I've been using all along-- deny that humanists have any claim to knowledge whatsoever. We're just producing entertainment. As should be apparent by now, I'm somewhat of a naturalist: I think that only science provides reliable knowledge about the physical world (of which the mind is a part, as it's strictly the brain). As a prospective English Ph.D. applicant, I obviously don't agree that humanists are debarred from producing knowledge and discovering truths, this being due to a very important classification (since when is this a dirty word?) between humanistic and scientific knowledge. Humanists should not--and indeed cannot, as I've been proclaiming-- pretend that they somehow are discovering truths about human nature. Empirical science is the only way to discover those things. We should be concerned with abstractions and ideas. (Maybe this sorta plays into what Deleuze and Guattari purportedly say about philosophy as concept creation? I've yet to read What Is Philosophy?, so I cannot comment upon this angle further.) Obviously, there is a link between ideas and the physical world, and what exactly that link is is a fascinating question. As science advances, humanists are going to lose more and more credibility if they don't start recognizing the credibility and reliabilty of empiricism. There is already convincing evidence that meaning is in part a product of what psychologists call the "embodied simulation hypothesis." And morality and other traditionally "humanistic" domains will likely be investigated with much more accuracy by scientists as time goes on. In short, humanists need to contend seriously with the methodological and epistemological cornerstones of their disciplines. I would go so far as to state that the humanities cannot afford to be ignorant of scientific data much longer. There are of course many reasons why the humanities are dying (we all know that they are; we can cut the bullshit): anti-intellectualism, austerity measures, capitalism as a whole, etc. I claim that our self-imposed ignorance (and trust of outdated science [Freud]) is one of those reasons. ETA: I realize that my perspective on these matters is very different from most other people in the humanities. I feel alienated for this reason and question whether or not I'd really be welcome in an English Ph.D. program. Then again, I don't know where else I'd fit. I feel like I'd be out of place everywhere. Sigh.

I'm so very glad you mentioned this! I wanted to say basically the same thing earlier in the thread and forgot. My criticisms of Freud earlier were more geared towards predicating contemporary research, theory, etc. on offshoots of his ideas. Again, I'm completely fine with Freud as a historical resource for analyzing overt or inadvertent Freudian elements in cultural texts produced in his time of influence. And with what I've said before, it should come as no surprise that I'm totally opposed to the phenomena you discuss in your last sentence. (On your ETA material: I kinda discussed this in an earlier post, but I'll add one question: if you're just taking a scant few notions from Freud here and there and using them in different ways, is what you're doing even psychoanalytic theory? Let the "you" in the previous sentence be understood as a hypothetical other, not you yourself, bfat.

In general, I think literary studies needs to clean house. I've brought up these concerns in another thread: I think that there is a set of severe epistemological problems underlying literary knowledge that often goes unacknowledged. In the rare case that I am fortunate enough to begin a Ph.D. in English next fall, I'd like to believe that one day I could help start the house cleaning.

Let me preface this by saying that 1) I certainly think Freud is worth reading for historical purposes and 2) that I'm not going to comment on the content of the specific books you've mentioned or the media studies angle, as I'm ignorant of those things. We all seem to agree that Freudian psychoanalysis fails miserably as a methodology in human psychology, and this being the case, I think we need to contend with a few different issues: 1: Why bother trying to resuscitate bunk science and apply amenable bits and pieces of it as a lens for analyzing film, literary texts, etc. anyway? Wouldn't the application of real empirical psychological studies to film, literary texts, etc. be much more fruitful and interesting? 2: If Freud's ideas hold no water with what we've come to know about the human body and mind, what makes those ideas--or rather, extracted bits and pieces of those ideas, as you state above-- somehow okay for humanistic analysis? Can we even call the application of ideas from bunk science, even if transformed by philosophical analysis to somehow "reclaim" Freud, knowledge? 3: The above point to an even broader issue: how is it epistemologically tenable to take ideas from a completely different field and somehow apply those ideas to a critical object? The third problem is a severe one, as nearly all humanistic fields do this. It's taken to be a truism that such a thing is possible and produces what one could legitimately classify as knowledge. Doing so may be epistemologically possible, but I've never seen a solid defense of it. As far as what you've said about scientism, empiricism, and falsifiability, is this directed towards me? I certainly think that empiricism and science is by far the best and perhaps only way to learn about the physical world, but I'm not scientistic in the technical sense of the term. If I were, I wouldn't be interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in the humanities. I stand by my denigration of Freud (and Lacan, and Zizek, and others whose work is fundamentally predicated on his ideas). This has been a rambling, possibly incoherent post, but I think the following paraphrase of a real-life comment I once heard is apt: "Freud has been debunked by and is no longer important for psychologists, but he's great for literary studies!" Am I the only person who sees a problem with using bad, dated science in humanistic work? No wonder we're never taken seriously.

I'll be more frank than TripWillis: it's pseudoscience. I'm of the opinion that empirical, falsifiable research is the only way to really understand physical phenomena. Psychoanalysis lacks empirical rigor, and I think it's bullshit, to be honest. I extend that sentiment to any other humanistic endeavor that purports to understand the physical world. It's not a popular view, but I think it's intellectually honest and the only position reconcilable with scientific modes of thought. I can't speak to Gladwell or Klosterman specifically as I've never read them, but pop-anything books tend to lack substance and provide fodder for pseudo-intellectuals. They're not useless, of course, as they help introduce ideas to people who wouldn't otherwise have access to them, but they tend to be abused by the general reader who inflates their importance. That's a discursive way of saying I agree with you. This is hilarious and yes, completely spot-on.

Aww, I liked this post better when it ended with "patently fucking ridiculous" or something like that.

Congrats! Here's to hoping other posters--myself included, of course-- share your good fortune in the coming weeks!

I apologize in advance for this mega-long post... Pretty much. Lots of eye-rolling sentimentality in Dickens, though I think he's okay overall. I stand behind my comments about Freud, Lacan, and psychoanalysis. I haven't read Middlesex (which I'm assuming you're referring to here), but I did read The Marriage Plot last summer, and I didn't much care for it. All the philosophical/theoretical jokes were pretty superficial and lame. I'm not even that crazy about Jane Austen, but Absolutely! One of my favorite novels. I haven't read it in a very long time, but it made a huge impression on me. I like it better than The Sound and the Fury, but I'm willing to concede that the latter is a better novel overall. I wouldn't say it's the best novel I've ever read, but it's certainly in my top 10 (20?) or so. It's so powerful. Yeah, "pretentious" is terribly overused by just about everyone. It gets annoying. Most people misuse it, which only makes it worse. I highly recommend Paradise Lost. Some parts of it are kinda boring, if I can be so frank, but overall, it's wonderful. I'm very glad to have read it. The inner traditionalist in me is seething. I'll keep the pitchforks and torches at home this time, though. Same, sadly. I need to read it. I am applying to Buffalo, actually. I know they're really into psychoanalytic theory and stuff up there, but there are other aspects of the program that I quite like, so I'd definitely like to attend if offered a spot. Plus, being the iconoclast in the department might be fun.

I didn't email any POIs. I don't think I had anything substantive to say, really, and didn't want to be the sender of one of those pointless, annoying emails aforementioned. But... One of my favorite professors and letter writers is friends with faculty members at two schools to which I applied and apparently put in a good word for me at those places. I certainly don't think that'll get me into those programs, of course, but having those connections--albeit "vague and obscure"-- cannot hurt.

Wow, the possibility of programs notifying next week is harrowing. I still regard notifications as some nebulous future event, but really, people are going to start hearing from some places within the next few weeks...

My Penn app said that for a while too, but I checked it a few days ago, and it's now listed as complete. Maybe they haven't gotten around to processing your app yet?

Wow, the lit people really dominated the forums last month: the top four posters are all from the Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition Forums.

This is a great DontHate thread, kind of goes off the "is it significant" thing I said elsewhere. But you did the work for me, so kudos for that. This will bring many down-votes. Let's see: -Gertrude Stein, for writing meaningless word games. Why is she important again? -Sigmund Freud, for being egregiously abused by people in the humanities who know little to nothing about psychology. Historically significant, but no longer relevant. -Jacques Lacan, for the same reasons (sans significance), and for writing in the most turgid way possible. -Slavoj Žižek, for taking Lacan seriously and writing a ridiculous amount of books expressing repetitive ideas. He's occasionally insightful, but I'm skeptical of any thinker with such a voluminous output. (I'm looking at you, Derrida.) Basically, if you're writing about psychology in the humanities and aren't reading, researching, and citing contemporary empirical studies, I'd probably hate your work, too.

Damn, so much for gender ambiguity! Now I'm curious as to why JeremiahParadise thought I was female: do I write "feminine"? did I somehow convey information in another thread that led her/him to conclude I was female? That sounds fucking amazing.

Wow, that's awesome. I'm sure you'll have a great time.

Wow, lucky! I'm a huge Francophile, so I'm extremely jealous. I'm sure you'll have an amazing time! ETA: And if anything can keep your mind off grad school apps, it's Europe.

That's totally a respectable goal. I'd still advise against paying for an M.A. in English literature though. If they fund you, it's a sign that they really want you.

Haha, I think what made me think that is the "let's play a game" part: if it had just read "is it significant?" or something of the sort, I don't think I would have reached the same conclusion. And I'm ambivalent about such a thread. It would certainly be a bloodbath, though.

I read the topic title and expected a game where people list someone or something--presumably literature-related-- and others opine on whether or not they think it is significant. I clicked on the link, thinking "ooh, this is going to start lots of arguments," and was seriously disappointed when I started reading the actual thread. Anyways, I don't really know what to make of your email. I'll follow precedent and go with "neutral."

As an offshoot of this, how often do programs offer reimbursement for these visiting days? I know some do, but the grad program websites I've visited haven't said anything about this. It's perhaps too early to start asking, but my job has a set schedule for the entirety of the semester, so I'd like to know as much as possible for the rare case that I get in somewhere.