These essays have been brilliant of late. You’re obviously on a sort of roll, which I presume is related to the novelistic writing, so consider me pledged!
Your story of being dismissed from the academic precariate is disturbing. You and your expertise deserve better.
I've been thinking about that New Yorker piece, too. But I find myself deeply conflicted about what the remedy might be. I was an interdisciplinary scholar (still am, I suppose), and there are some lovely synergies possible between literature and the sciences. But near the end of my tenure at a liberal arts college I found myself leaning more toward positions like yours, advocating for the arts and humanities on their own terms. Even so, I find it difficult to stake an essentialist position, and there are a couple of strains of that in your post that I'm still mulling over.
I quite understand the defiance behind a stance of literary supremacy, but I don't think it holds up anymore than a STEM supremacist stance might. What I hear you saying that I agree with is that literature needs to have its own integrity -- it is diminished by becoming the host for parasitic theories or by trying to ride the coattails of STEM. What I despaired of ultimately was the loss of institutional belief in my discipline. It was one thing to face skeptical undergraduates with their transactional attitudes toward education. I could usually win them over by semester's end. Whatever they'd been told about the uselessness of the humanities typically fell apart four or five weeks in. But when the college itself began to sideline the humanities in its marketing, in its boilerplate language for press releases, and in its support for staffing, it was clear that the game was lost. When you win a grant for a creative project and the press release about it says the college is known for its excellence in STEM, that is straight bullshit.
As long as ROI drives decisions about curriculum, the humanities will have a hard time making its case. Stanley Fish captures much of that futility: https://www.chronicle.com/article/stop-trying-to-sell-the-humanities/. But while I agree with your point about not subjecting literature to theory or to the social sciences, but allowing it to stand on its own integrity, it is also true that literature often requires us to know other things: about religion, philosophy, biology, culture. And so I wonder about that notion of literature as all we need to study literature? As an undergraduate I wrote an essay comparing Shakespeare's kings to Plato's spectrum of leadership in The Republic, and I still think that kind of cross-pollination is worthwhile.
Anyway, more questions than answers, but thanks for raising the questions.
Thank you! I wasn't arguing that literature should be studied independently or in ignorance of these other subjects, only the point Murdoch made in that quote, similar to Vico or Shelley or Emerson, about literature's priority as the forge of the language and even imagery in which the other subjects take their shape (mathematics being a possible exception and a whole other question, beyond my competence). The "supremacist" position is not strictly intellectually defensible, but sometimes the extremist's presence is required to achieve even moderate reforms. Re: The American Conservative article, yes, that's another issue, the personnel shift from the eccentric to the professional.
I hope my questions and contrarian tendencies aren't too annoying! I often learn by thinking out loud and sometimes by changing my mind once I hear how my stance sounds. Hmmm. Now I'm thinking about primacy instead of supremacy. Literature as the "forge of language." Technology, per your earlier post, as a kind of mold or shaping device for literature....
This may be a tangent, but I think the body is where literature begins. Probably too much to layer in here in a comment thread, but if the mind is the expression of the body, there are visceral sources for imagery, understanding, and delight that precede language. Maybe that makes little difference once one joins the literary conversation, however. But I think the body is sometimes unfortunately left out of our understanding of language. Maybe I'll give you hives by referencing a cognitive science term, "intersubjectivity," but I think it helps capture some of what happens when we hear the echo of a text within ourselves.
Not at all—I work the same way. Sometimes I contradict myself from one post to another; I figure my sensibility will provide a higher unity without my having to worry about it.
I think the origin of language in the body, or in sensory experience, is implicit and sometimes explicit in some but not all of the Romantic and modernist writers I cite, even Emerson, who otherwise seems Platonic, or Thoreau who sees language coming out of the earth in the sandbank passage in Walden, and the wholly corporeal Joyce. I also once read a post years ago, back when there was more robust discussion on the liberal blogs of the Bush era, about how it was not only vain but even inhumane to try to eradicate "ableist" language since we all draw metaphors for abstract experiences from physical ones, so that of course, there's no way around it, we will speak of "lame" clothes or moral "blindness" or what have you.
Bravo.
These essays have been brilliant of late. You’re obviously on a sort of roll, which I presume is related to the novelistic writing, so consider me pledged!
Thank you very much!
I also thought of this in conjunction with your article. Not sure I agree with everything here, but much does indeed resonate.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-english-departments-died/
Your story of being dismissed from the academic precariate is disturbing. You and your expertise deserve better.
I've been thinking about that New Yorker piece, too. But I find myself deeply conflicted about what the remedy might be. I was an interdisciplinary scholar (still am, I suppose), and there are some lovely synergies possible between literature and the sciences. But near the end of my tenure at a liberal arts college I found myself leaning more toward positions like yours, advocating for the arts and humanities on their own terms. Even so, I find it difficult to stake an essentialist position, and there are a couple of strains of that in your post that I'm still mulling over.
I quite understand the defiance behind a stance of literary supremacy, but I don't think it holds up anymore than a STEM supremacist stance might. What I hear you saying that I agree with is that literature needs to have its own integrity -- it is diminished by becoming the host for parasitic theories or by trying to ride the coattails of STEM. What I despaired of ultimately was the loss of institutional belief in my discipline. It was one thing to face skeptical undergraduates with their transactional attitudes toward education. I could usually win them over by semester's end. Whatever they'd been told about the uselessness of the humanities typically fell apart four or five weeks in. But when the college itself began to sideline the humanities in its marketing, in its boilerplate language for press releases, and in its support for staffing, it was clear that the game was lost. When you win a grant for a creative project and the press release about it says the college is known for its excellence in STEM, that is straight bullshit.
As long as ROI drives decisions about curriculum, the humanities will have a hard time making its case. Stanley Fish captures much of that futility: https://www.chronicle.com/article/stop-trying-to-sell-the-humanities/. But while I agree with your point about not subjecting literature to theory or to the social sciences, but allowing it to stand on its own integrity, it is also true that literature often requires us to know other things: about religion, philosophy, biology, culture. And so I wonder about that notion of literature as all we need to study literature? As an undergraduate I wrote an essay comparing Shakespeare's kings to Plato's spectrum of leadership in The Republic, and I still think that kind of cross-pollination is worthwhile.
Anyway, more questions than answers, but thanks for raising the questions.
Thank you! I wasn't arguing that literature should be studied independently or in ignorance of these other subjects, only the point Murdoch made in that quote, similar to Vico or Shelley or Emerson, about literature's priority as the forge of the language and even imagery in which the other subjects take their shape (mathematics being a possible exception and a whole other question, beyond my competence). The "supremacist" position is not strictly intellectually defensible, but sometimes the extremist's presence is required to achieve even moderate reforms. Re: The American Conservative article, yes, that's another issue, the personnel shift from the eccentric to the professional.
I hope my questions and contrarian tendencies aren't too annoying! I often learn by thinking out loud and sometimes by changing my mind once I hear how my stance sounds. Hmmm. Now I'm thinking about primacy instead of supremacy. Literature as the "forge of language." Technology, per your earlier post, as a kind of mold or shaping device for literature....
This may be a tangent, but I think the body is where literature begins. Probably too much to layer in here in a comment thread, but if the mind is the expression of the body, there are visceral sources for imagery, understanding, and delight that precede language. Maybe that makes little difference once one joins the literary conversation, however. But I think the body is sometimes unfortunately left out of our understanding of language. Maybe I'll give you hives by referencing a cognitive science term, "intersubjectivity," but I think it helps capture some of what happens when we hear the echo of a text within ourselves.
Not at all—I work the same way. Sometimes I contradict myself from one post to another; I figure my sensibility will provide a higher unity without my having to worry about it.
I think the origin of language in the body, or in sensory experience, is implicit and sometimes explicit in some but not all of the Romantic and modernist writers I cite, even Emerson, who otherwise seems Platonic, or Thoreau who sees language coming out of the earth in the sandbank passage in Walden, and the wholly corporeal Joyce. I also once read a post years ago, back when there was more robust discussion on the liberal blogs of the Bush era, about how it was not only vain but even inhumane to try to eradicate "ableist" language since we all draw metaphors for abstract experiences from physical ones, so that of course, there's no way around it, we will speak of "lame" clothes or moral "blindness" or what have you.