Which commonly studied writers or thinkers do you absolutely hate?

[rems]

[bfat]

While I in no way would defend empiricism as a literary methodology--I think "truth" and the human experience are far too subjective--I appreciate the insights that science and analytic philosophy can bring to literature, especially in terms of paradigmatic shifts. And I think that these scientific discoveries, if anything, have the potential to verify what people in the humanities have been saying all along. For example, the discovery that the notion of "race" is biologically/evolutionarily unfounded (see this or this) has verified the previous theoretical deconstruction of these boundaries by people working in the humanities.

 

But I also don't think that literary theory or analysis needs to be "validated" in any way either. Instead, both approaches can be used to inform one another--philosophical thought inspiring scientific inquiry, and scientific discovery opening new doors for literary endeavor and/or analysis. Part of "breaking down boundaries" is tackling the wall that has been constructed between the humanities and the sciences, and I think that's where a lot of future work in English and literature will be. If I'm not mistaken, I think this is what Two Espressos was getting at. Though, of course, there will (and should) still be plenty of room for investigating the psychological states of Lear vs. Gloucester, or examining how Foucault's notion of the panopticon plays out in Orwell. These ideas can never be "invalidated" by science, nor should we assume they could.

[Imogene]

Even though I may be revealing my ignorance and penchant for over simplification (I hail from the school of C.S. Lewis, I suppose) in saying this, this debate about the "role" of humanists (vs. scientists), or, alternatively, the posthumanist future, strikes me as leaving out an important part of the equation: the art and the artists.

 

It seems to me that a very real objective in the ongoing "making new" is both to better *represent* and to *destroy* (sometimes simultaneously) human thought, experience, and institutions.  I can agree that the current "fetish" may be data, and both artists and interpreters (as well as philosophers and scientists) feel compelled to be more data-driven.  But I foresee a reaction in the very art and literature that we "interpret" and "measure" or "observe" to reveal/invent/question data itself and our attempts to quantify, measure, map, and correlate everything (and I say this as someone who has a slight data fetish).

 

Furthermore, I question those who might say that posthumanisim is our way out of capitalism/exploitation. I think it *is* another form of exploitation of the very essence of humanity (whatever that might be - I know this is up for debate, even whether it exists) -- where capitalism might exploit specific bodies and tastes, posthumanists seem to seek to exploit identity/knowledge itself (making these things infinitely divisible, replicable, and interchangeable).

 

And, again, revealing my naivete, no doubt, I look forward to analyzing/interpreting/observing the data-humanity dance in academia and the arts (inshallah I ever get into a program).

 

I'd also like to add that much of this discussion is new territory for me, and I've really enjoyed and learned from this discussion thread.  So, please be kind in your inevitable strikes against this post -- I mean it when I say I'm fascinated by this debate and have more questions than firm opinions about it.

[Troppman]

Language is a fetish.

[bfat]

Furthermore, I question those who might say that posthumanisim is our way out of capitalism/exploitation. I think it *is* another form of exploitation of the very essence of humanity (whatever that might be - I know this is up for debate, even whether it exists) -- where capitalism might exploit specific bodies and tastes, posthumanists seem to seek to exploit identity/knowledge itself (making these things infinitely divisible, replicable, and interchangeable).

 

 

Posthumanism is divided and often misunderstood. On the one hand there is "trans-humanism," which seeks to transcend the boundaries of the human through technology. However, this is really an intensification of humanism and its concept of a disembodied essence (or Cartesian dualism). Cary Wolfe calls this "bad posthumanism." What posthumanism really is, is the deconstruction of the notion of the human essence, and of "fantasies of disembodiment." It offers a paradigmatic shift away from the notion that humans are superior because of this essence (opening the doors for animal studies, and other cognitive research). It is "liberating" in that it offers a return to embodiment, biology, and, really, diversity--if there is no "great family of man" (i.e. Barthes), there is no unified essence that the arts must aspire to.

 

(Unlike Freud, this area is my bag, baby)

[asleepawake]

What posthumanism really is, is the deconstruction of the notion of the human essence, and of "fantasies of disembodiment." It offers a paradigmatic shift away from the notion that humans are superior because of this essence (opening the doors for animal studies, and other cognitive research). 

 

Yes, this. Animal studies high five!

 

I do want to say something straightforward about Freud/Lacan/etc, briefly. I'm not responding to anyone in particular, as I've only just browsed the other comments. Like others, though, I find that much of their work is foundational and thus valuable, but I also cannot help feeling that much of their work delves into the world of pseudoscience. For example, in my first graduate seminar as I was writing my first real seminar paper, I was shocked to have Moses and Monotheism suggested to me as an appropriate source which I should take seriously. I remember writing "discredited!???" in the margins at least a few places. While certainly an interesting read, I couldn't get on board with so much of it. Likewise, I have sat in another seminar while everyone discusses Lacan's mirror stage as if it were a thing, when a basic review of the current science shows he was pretty much making a lot of stuff up. I just can't participate in this discussion earnestly, because there are too many underlying assumptions I find absurd.  It has historical importance, and we should read it, but so much of the use of these texts in the humanities seems naive to me. It is true that we ought to be skeptical of "empirical evidence" as the only measure of knowledge-gathering, but I also do not take young Earth creationism as seriously as I do evolution, for example (not to, uh, compare the mirror state to creationism or anything...).

 

Also, I don't have penis envy.

Edited January 21, 2013 by asleepawake

[Troppman]

Yes, yes, you might not be envious of those who have the penis... but don't you wish you were a phallus? Or that you could enter the symbolic more concretely through extension of the penis-child? In all seriousness though, both works that you mentioned are in the bibliography of my thesis :-)

 

edit: what about Kleinian breast envy?...

 

"There is no stronger evidence that we have been successful in our effort to uncover the unconscious than when the patient reacts to it with the words 'i didn't think that,' or 'i didn't (ever) think of that.'"

-Freud

Edited January 21, 2013 by StephanieDelacour

[asleepawake]

Hahaha

&Sorry! I don't mean that any and all uses of them are bad/wrong/naive, I just struggle with taking them completely seriously. I ended up using Moses and Monotheism in that paper if I remember correctly, and it worked out just fine for that assignment. I was just careful to pick and choose sections that I could reconcile with my own argument, which sounds like something I wouldn't do anymore.

Edited January 21, 2013 by asleepawake

[Troppman]

Hahaha

&Sorry! I don't mean that any and all uses of them are bad/wrong/naive, I just struggle with taking them completely seriously. I ended up using Moses and Monotheism in that paper if I remember correctly, and it worked out just fine for that assignment. I was just careful to pick and choose sections that I could reconcile with my own argument, which sounds like something I wouldn't do anymore.

:-) Big smiles here. I was actually just putting down standard edition volume 19. I had reread the notes on the mystical writing pad (as suggested here) and "on negation" when I saw your post...

Sounds to me like Jungian synchronicity... discuss!

[Imogene]

Posthumanism is divided and often misunderstood. On the one hand there is "trans-humanism," which seeks to transcend the boundaries of the human through technology. However, this is really an intensification of humanism and its concept of a disembodied essence (or Cartesian dualism). Cary Wolfe calls this "bad posthumanism." What posthumanism really is, is the deconstruction of the notion of the human essence, and of "fantasies of disembodiment." It offers a paradigmatic shift away from the notion that humans are superior because of this essence (opening the doors for animal studies, and other cognitive research). It is "liberating" in that it offers a return to embodiment, biology, and, really, diversity--if there is no "great family of man" (i.e. Barthes), there is no unified essence that the arts must aspire to.

 

(Unlike Freud, this area is my bag, baby)

 

Thanks for clarifying -- it is interesting stuff.  And it sounds like maybe I wasn't misunderstanding, as this is what I meant by "infinitely divisible, replicable, and interchangeable" -- which is where a whole new door (or hallway of doors) opens up for exploitation, new kinds of commodification and valuation, especially disembodied classification.  I guess there's nothing "new" there, except that it's a new "new" -- I think there'll always be a way to deconstruct a paradigm, and always a way to exploit a life or a cell or a chemical reaction -- and bingo, that must be the essence of us, afterall: always be deconstructing; always be exploiting (ABD and ABE). And I'm joking, but maybe this isn't so funny after all?

[Two Espressos]

Before I say anything further, let me just say that I'm really enjoying this spirited discussion, and I hope each of us can continue and develop these within the context of a PhD program. Two Espressos, we have obvious differences, yet the give-and-take going on here is something I, at least, am really enjoying.

 

From what I've read so far, your animosity toward Freudian psychoanalysis seems to be bundled up with a larger grouping of work within the humanities that you perceive as obscurantist/built on shaky reasoning/simply obsolete. I agree with the latter in some respects. I'm not terribly fond of Zizek, reading Butler is often more difficult than it needs to be, the same can be said of Bhabha, and so on. However, what I'm arguing is that Freud is not to be tossed into this group, mostly for the reasons I already mentioned earlier.

 

What I cannot understand is your almost absolutist insistence on "falsifiable, empirical studies." You also say that our "job is both to discover truths and study them critically." I thought we were long past this rather hubristic (and very Enlightenment-era) notion of "discovering truths"! Surely after Adorno and Horkheimer, and Foucault (to name just a few), the era of humanistic pursuit of "truths" as though they wander the wilds of civilisation waiting to be discovered is over? You claim that humanists are pretending to access "knowledge about psychological phenomena...through Freud, et al." Some do/have done, certainly. But there are also many, many others (and this is the group I'm a fan of) who have successfully navigated a path between aspects of Freudian thought that are clearly in error, and aspects of Freudian thought that in many ways offer philosophical understandings of...well, a whole lot of things across the humanities. I cited a few examples earlier (Lippit's work, Lear's work, the continuing relevance of the Mystic Writing Pad), but also consider things like Derrida's "Freud and the Scene of Writing," etc. It is not for no reason that nearly all of the 20th and 21st centuries' most prominent thinkers across fields have, at some point or other, confronted Freud in their work. 

 

"Categorizing and analyzing knowledge and ideas is exactly what we should be doing as humanists." I disagree most emphatically. The time for categories and disciplinary stakes is long, long past. My own field is perhaps the best example. As film increasingly insisted on its own critical studies, humanists fought to establish it as a discipline unto itself (film studies, that is). This took most of the early 20th century. Among the principal criteria used was the famed indexical rhetoric of the film (photographic) image, that is, the logic of the trace. The photograph inevitably is an index of something that occurred in time, something that was there (Barthes deals with this in Camera Lucida). And just as film studies finally became among the hottest fields in the humanities, everything fell apart. The emergence of the digital image all but wrecked one of the core founding criteria of the field. Today, film studies is increasingly conversing with art history as we are (re-)framing film and the moving image arts within a much longer historical tradition of projection, movement, and time-based imagery. Categories were set up, and are now being broken down. This does not risk exploding the essence of film studies as a field; it simply redefines the stakes.

 

If anything, the kind of compartmentalisation you desire strikes me as very reminiscent of Taylorisation, of commodification, and ultimately of corporatising academia. You may see it as good practice, but I ask: according to whom? It seems to me that only a market that predicates itself upon commodification would approve of narrowly categorised (pigeon-holed) fields.

 

You say that it is not self-evident that the work of the humanities is to interpret the data churned out by science. This is a good point, and has given me something to think about. I think it is justifiable to ask that the humanities demonstrate its claim to the work of interpretation. I don't have an answer for this right away. However, if you're referring to Alex Rosenberg, then that definitely explains our differences. I think Rosenberg is a science-fetishist, and his constant harping on "neuro-___" is nigh-unbearable. I really cannot abide those who jump at the lure of whatever offers some perceived "validation" to other eyes--in our times, this means tagging "neuro-" onto whatever and calling it a day.

 

I also must disagree emphatically with the idea that the humanities are dying. Yes, the various pressures you named are all part of why they are denigrated, but considering that (again, relevant to my field) the last 2-3 decades have seen the output of a couple of books (Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer and Martin Jay's Downcast Eyes) that have fundamentally affected ideas of historical vision, visuality, visual culture, and indeed the stakes of visual perception itself, and considering that neither of these needed to rely on empirical "evidence," I'm more than confident that this era, too, shall pass. By which I mean, again, the ongoing fetishisation of science and data. Yes, we live in a data-driven age. Of course it seems that data is indispensable. By the way, do read Crary's book. It is 150 pages or so, and is a near-perfect example of how the humanities can do the work of "interpreting" scientific razzle-dazzle.

 

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.

@Two Espressos: Can you define "empirical evidence" within the humanities? I have an issue with this word because even (and it's been mentioned already) bloodletting had "empirical" evidence as to why it was effective during the time. I also think you're giving the scientific methodology (and all that junk) too much credit. "Science" is not a science. Can you give me an example of an "empirically" determined truth in literature (that's not a date or fact)? What exactly are you referring to, and how are you comparing it to Freudian studies? 

 

If you've already answered these questions, and I missed it while reading through this tread, my apologizes! I've been away from the cafe for a bit, and it was a lot to go through, but very interesting convo! 

 

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'd be very interested in reading their response later on, as promised. This comment by rems is one that really resonates with me:

 

"Can you give me an example of an "empirically" determined truth in literature (that's not a date or fact)?"

 

For some years, certain figures within film and visual studies pursued and pushed a cognitivist approach that claimed to move away from High Theory while, ironically, promoting its own version of High Theory. Many acknowledged the new information made available to us through these cognitive approaches, but ultimately, the fact remains that no amount of neuro-babble will deliver up a formula for the perfect film, or the perfect horror film, or the perfect comedy film, etc. Likewise, I do not see science in general ever overthrowing or 'defeating' the humanities by laying bare the "secret" of why, or how, a work like In Search of Lost Time produces the kind of affect that it does. I welcome the kind of analytical information scientific methods can offer, but I see them as holding little further potential than that. 

 

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.

 

While I in no way would defend empiricism as a literary methodology--I think "truth" and the human experience are far too subjective--I appreciate the insights that science and analytic philosophy can bring to literature, especially in terms of paradigmatic shifts. And I think that these scientific discoveries, if anything, have the potential to verify what people in the humanities have been saying all along. For example, the discovery that the notion of "race" is biologically/evolutionarily unfounded (see this or this) has verified the previous theoretical deconstruction of these boundaries by people working in the humanities.

 

But I also don't think that literary theory or analysis needs to be "validated" in any way either. Instead, both approaches can be used to inform one another--philosophical thought inspiring scientific inquiry, and scientific discovery opening new doors for literary endeavor and/or analysis. Part of "breaking down boundaries" is tackling the wall that has been constructed between the humanities and the sciences, and I think that's where a lot of future work in English and literature will be. If I'm not mistaken, I think this is what Two Espressos was getting at. Though, of course, there will (and should) still be plenty of room for investigating the psychological states of Lear vs. Gloucester, or examining how Foucault's notion of the panopticon plays out in Orwell. These ideas can never be "invalidated" by science, nor should we assume they could.

 

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.

 

 Like others, though, I find that much of their work is foundational and thus valuable, but I also cannot help feeling that much of their work delves into the world of pseudoscience. For example, in my first graduate seminar as I was writing my first real seminar paper, I was shocked to have Moses and Monotheism suggested to me as an appropriate source which I should take seriously. I remember writing "discredited!???" in the margins at least a few places. While certainly an interesting read, I couldn't get on board with so much of it. Likewise, I have sat in another seminar while everyone discusses Lacan's mirror stage as if it were a thing, when a basic review of the current science shows he was pretty much making a lot of stuff up. I just can't participate in this discussion earnestly, because there are too many underlying assumptions I find absurd.  It has historical importance, and we should read it, but so much of the use of these texts in the humanities seems naive to me. It is true that we ought to be skeptical of "empirical evidence" as the only measure of knowledge-gathering, but I also do not take young Earth creationism as seriously as I do evolution, for example (not to, uh, compare the mirror state to creationism or anything...).

 

Also, I don't have penis envy.

 

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.

 

"There is no stronger evidence that we have been successful in our effort to uncover the unconscious than when the patient reacts to it with the words 'i didn't think that,' or 'i didn't (ever) think of that.'"

-Freud

 

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.

Edited January 22, 2013 by Two Espressos

[Troppman]

So what you're saying,Two Espressos, is that Freud's Copernican Revolution was in the final analysis only a Copernican step?  Sounds pretty Lacanian to me...

I can think of another thinker who agrees about what scientific thought should be: "It is not permissible to declare that science is one field of human mental activity and that religion and philosophy are others, at least its equal in value, and that science has no business to interfere with the other two: that they all have an equal claim to be true and that everyone is at liberty to choose from which he will draw his convictions and in which he will place his belief. A view of this kind is regarded as particularly superior, tolerant, broad-minded and free fro illiberal prejudices. Unfortunately it is not tenable and shares all the pernicious features of an entirely unscientific weltanschuung and is equicalent to one in practice."

 

....

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Sigmund Freud

 

 

they see me trollin...

Edited January 22, 2013 by StephanieDelacour