Re: Dan’s post on the “Caric” effect:
Ric Caric is a minor educator at a minor university. His academic “work” is entirely template-driven and circular, beginning with a common premise — white Americans, particularly men, are inveterately (for Caric’s ilk, the construct itself, when pressured, shows itself to be foundational) racist, sexist, and homophobic, and can only be saved by the Church of Progressive Politics, where the demons of HATE are exorcised in a ritual of daily self abuse, coupled with projection of remaining vestiges of hatred onto those who have not, as yet, converted — and working back from that premise to establish its “truth” in a given context.
This procedure, which is analogous in many ways to writing a detective story, consists of adding and subtracting indexical markers — the clues — that will “justify” the pre-decided narrative denouement. The reasoning behind which indexical markers are privileged is utilitarian rather than rigorous or rational. Thus, certain historical moments are overdetermined, while others, whose equally-weighted inclusion would diminish the force of those overdetermined moments, are either minimized or ignored entirely; free will and individual choice — which are seldom called upon, given that humans are inscribed by a cultural dialogic — are applicable only insofar as they either demonize the neo-orthodox narrative’s opponents, or turn its supporters into stalwarts, martyrs, or heroes. More commonly, though, “scholarship” of the kind practiced by Caric is determined to reduce human agency to a condition entirely “inscribed” by a particular (yet generalized) historical situatedness (or some other extraneous and irrepressible superstructure, the specifics of which depend upon the jargon of the analogous critical paradigm [see the “update” at the provided link]) — one that is defined, not surprisingly, by the very narrative that confines it: we are all prisoners of the history that proceeds and envelopes us, and it is only by recognizing such — as Caric claims to have done — that one can “escape” the condition. Which is to say, self-awareness of one’s own complicity in the historical fatalism that “scholars” like Caric set up as a rhetorical end point is the pre-condition for change to begin with, and even then, that change most be pushed forward (in the political realm, through policy advocacy). Thus, historical change requires an embrace of progressivism — but only if one accepts the premise that begins the entire argumentative chain, which is a premise developed to lead, inexorably, to the very “conclusion” that began, rhetorically and ideologically, as the (hidden) premise. Perfect circularity.
This is but another iteration of projecting a particular will onto history — and as such is an ego-driven exercise. And its rhetorical force comes from its attempt to shame those who don’t accept what it posits as the historical complicity that informs it. Those who don’t accept the premises of progressive narratives are “deniers,” and as such, they carry on the tradition of hate — indeed, they give such traditions both intellectual cover and rhetorical succor — and so must be removed from polite society.
That we do so now through rhetoric rather than with gulags is but a testament to the fact that progressives feel they are at their strongest on the linguistic and philosophical playing field — bolstered as they are by the liberating notion that man controls “truth,” and so consensus (however it is manufactured) is the end point of post-Enlightenment philosophy.
Thus, he judges his worth by his ability to shame and to indoctrinate.
A helluva way to make up for having a small dick, if you ask me — but, you know, to each his own.
Caric is worth a mention, to the extent he is at all, only insofar as he is unable to hide his structural brush strokes — making it easy to see just how his “arguments” are constructed, and what they rely upon for their rhetorical force (generally, nothing more than emotional fallacies, question begging, and selection bias).
But as a scholar, he’s a dime a dozen, and I’d prefer we didn’t keep massaging his ego by writing about him specifically.
If you want more of a challenge, engage an actual scholar like SEK. Plenty of progressivism there, but it is pragmatic, and doesn’t pretend to rely on the kind of foundationalism that Caric seems (and I have my doubts that he actually believes it, outside of its “usefulness”) to embrace.
There. I said it.
Gosh, I hope I wasn’t massaging his ego. It was meant to be more like, “This is your brain on C’ric.”
I mean–EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
Besides, SEK is much more polite.
Whatever. I’m going to work out.
Did you write “exorcised in a ritual of daily self abuse”?
It may not be working. I’ll bet you the dweeb that did that Myspace thing abuses himself at least daily, and still he has not exorcised his demons. better look for some other remedy.
I’d argue he’s exemplary, rather than “dime a dozen,” but Caric’s clumsy shit is less soap-opera interesting than SEK’s recent cack-handed (and -headed) attempt at McCarthying K.C. Johnson.
I was surprised it didn’t come up here, but then again, we know what Scott is obligated to say about everything before he says it, too, so the ensuing discussion would be no more enlightening than the one under “Caric Post #78,” would it? In fact, it would be less so.
Neither can be fruitfully “engaged.” Scott just strings you along a little better.
[Obligatory “‘actual scholar'” my black ass” portion of comment goes here.]
Re: “exemplary”. Well, the title of the post is “Emblem,” after all.
If you want more of a challenge…
Who said we wanted a challenge? But I suppose I see your point. Trying to dissect Caric’s type is, in the end, unsatisfactory because he/they have a level of mumbo-jumbo in their logic that makes my brain cramp.
My what, psychologizer? “Academic McCarthyism” is the title of one of KC’s chapters, not anything I’ve written. As for not being fruitfully engageable, you’ll note that KC engaged with, as have a number of his conservative commenters.
[W]e know what Scott is obligated to say about everything before he says it, too
Well then, would you care to finish my chapter for me? Needs to be done by the end of business today. Just make sure you don’t repeat what Brook Thomas or Walter Benn Michaels said about it, as they’re both readers and “I” am no sycophant.
Speaking of minor universities…I was inspecting Morehead State University’s webpages, not being all that familiar with the place, and found:
On following their link, I find that Morehead’s was ranked a stunning 53rd in the Southern region. Out of 60. Which puts a whole new face on “one of the top”. I think in a similar vein, I can claim that I graduated as one of the top electrical engineering students in my class, simply by the virtue of not having finished dead last.
Oh, and this about the category:
Not that any of that is either here or there, just amusing.
I can see why Caric gets so upset with Jeff. If it’s the Prof.’s schtick to ego-crush these kids and then resocialize them, it’s straightforward to see how he wouldn’t want anyone around who holds inconvenient political positions but who might be cool enough for his subjects to identify with. Caric wants these kids on the verge, and Jeff’s approach is to be clever and playful. Poison, antidote.
FWIW I think we ought to leave the kid alone given there may be some degree of suicidal ideation going on, and judging by the comments on his page everyone seems to be doing just that. Ten posts from now he might completely have turned on Caric, anyway.
Well what would you expect from someone so steeped in the heady musk of feminist thought that he would entitle a paper co-written with a female professor: “What Sex Killed Jesus?”
http://www.bernadettebarton.com/vita.htm
Can’t wait to read that one… so, anybody? What sex killed Jesus? I didn’t even know sex killed Jesus but, then again, I don’t have a PhD.
“One of the top” universitites in the South must mean “not one of the 5 worst”.
BJ – Why would you intentionally subject yourself to that?
Oh, wait a minute! “What Sex Killed Jesus?” Is that a trick question? Maybe the Pharasees were asexual!!! Dan?
Devious women’s studies professors…
Raises hand
“Excuse me, Professor Caric. Will we need to know that for the final?”
You know, I already mocked that paper a bit. It’s not a trick question. The answer is as evident as the patriarchy on your face.
Dan – There is nothing the matter with multiple mockings, given the level of idiocy involved.
Wow SEK, deadline have you touchy?
That might be true if there were only 60 colleges in the entire South. With all the colleges in the South, I would say being in the Top 60 or so would be pretty good. Then again, the US news and World Report thingy is made up anyway.
Reverse cowgirl?
Those who suffer from white guilt always expect me to join their cry of “we are oppressors.” What do you mean, we, kemo sabe? I was born a half century ago, and haven’t oppressed anyone, though I’ve annoyed a tremendous number with my inability to go along with their bullshit.
I prefer to wear my Patriarchy on my sleeve.
BECAUSE OF THE FRILLY CUFFS!!!
Salad tossing.
Wow SEK, deadline have you touchy?
It must, David, because I was aiming for “playfully sarcastic.” (Unless, of course, psychologizer actually wants to finish my chapter for me, in which case, I was deadly serious, and can email my notes/drafts immediately.)
Scott:
I’d finish your chapter for you but I’m a marketing guy and I assume that you actually like your writing career. :-)
Nevermind…
SEK – Why don’t you allow the PW community to collectively write that chapter for you?
Sounds good to me, JD. Here are the first three paragraphs:
The rest of it will concern Twain’s (Lamarckian) theory of training, as part of my larger argument that “social Darwinism” didn’t exist, that there were many evolutionisms at play at the time, &c.
Note: I wouldn’t have posted this, except that I wonder whether some of you have ever seen the kind of work that goes on in an English department, and thought this might be a less-than-painful way to show you. Since it’s so amazingly off-topic, Jeff, feel free to delete it.
It may help to print out a picture of Work Bird and tack it on the wall next to your computer. Because, as you well know, Work Bird hates when you procrastinate. (You should see the look he’s shooting me right now — wait, I suppose you can.)
What? Sex killed Jesus?
I take it JD’s busy scribbling away the remainder of my chapter? I hope so, because I spent the past ten minutes formalizing Work Bird.
Work Bird am smiling.
Scott —
I’ve posted a couple excerpts from what we Lit types do, often to expand on a point I’ve been making on a related topic. For instance, in dealing with identity formation and bookstores decided where to shelve “black literature,” I posted a comparison of Morrison’s idea of a Black aesthetic and how it informs Beloved vs. Portnoy’s desire to eschew a “Jewish aesthetic” in Roth’s novel.
I also posted a bit on some reviews of Peter Jackson’s King Kong.
Having taught Curious George to an honor’s seminar, I felt confident in my abilities to take on a larger mythical monkey.
Personally, I would go with “often tasty,” but I doubt that’s where Twain would have ended up.
Jeff, I think the Beloved post may’ve been the first one I read here, but I can’t be sure. Which is to say, yes, you’ve done yeoman’s work, but it’s not necessarily representative of the field. Walter Benn Michaels is a pariah — an important, argumentative one, but a pariah nonetheless. The balkanization of the profession is such that the people who do identitarian or anti-identitarian work are outside the (largely historicist) mainstream … as are the people who do hardcore theory, i.e. Sokal’s targets. For example, here’s the table of contents from the latest American Literature:
“A” for Atlantic: The Colonizing Force of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
Affective Geographies: Sojourner Truth’s Narrative, Feminism, and the Ethical Bind of Sentimentalism.
Getting the Picture: American Corporate Advertising and the Rise of a Cosmopolitan Visual Culture in The Ambassadors.
“Out of Joint”: Passing, Haunting, and the Time of Slavery in Hagar’s Daughter.
Aesthetics, Politics, Homosexuality: F. O. Matthiessen and the Tragedy of the American Scholar.
The Morality of Aesthetic Action: Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, and the Politics of Poetry.
None’s overtly theoretical, nor do any fit squarely into the race/class/gender hierarchy. They all toe this formalist/historicist line, a point many of the old-guard bemoan. The latest American Literary History is even more representative:
Indigenous Illustration: Native American Artists and Nineteenth-Century US Print Culture.
The Hum of Routine: Issues for the Study of Early American Indian Print Culture: A Response to Phillip H. Round.
Temperance, Mass Culture, and the Romance of Experience.
The Romance of Classlessness: A Response to Thomas Augst.
Print Culture as an Archive of Dissent: Or, Delia Bacon and the Case of the Missing Hamlet.
Mystic Ciphers: Shakespeare and Intelligent Design: A Response to Nancy Glazer.
Common Places: Poetry, Illocality, and Temporal Dislocation in Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
The Temporality of Commonplaces: A Response to Meredith McGill.
Toward a History of Access: The Case of Mary Church Terrell.
Temperance, Mass Culture, and the Romance of Experience sounds like a humorous book of drinking games.
The rest sound boring, unless by temporal dislocation they mean time travel.
Fuck. I’ll never reach pariah status.
SEK – I am trying to edit. I am not sure that terms like rectal ram rod, ballsacksucker, mental midget, and carnivorous warmongering Nazi are what you were looking for.
After reading that list, I find myself amazed that suicide isn’t as common as a beer bong among students of literature.
There really is a tenth circle.
Jeff,
Add to the poltroon’s offences that he provoked you into writing “indexical” twice. Is that a word? What does it mean, and how does it differ from “indexed”? Is its formation analagous to that of “lexical”?
T&T
Temperance, Mass Culture, and the Romance of Experience sounds like a humorous book of drinking games.
It is also the only title that fails to CONFORM to the MLA standards for essay, book, and article titles: <clever play on words> COLON <useful keywords and a scintillating verb>
Oh, how I don’t miss academia. It’s so nice to write things that have practical value.
That’s just elegant is all that sentence is.
T&T — My Peirce is showing. Or maybe my teaching of Iconography.
At any rate, here you go.
Scott —
The titles you list all rely on a set of critical assumptions that, as one who is primarily a fiction writer, annoy me to no end.
I remember being on a panel at the RMMLA, and I fairly skewered both Greenblatt and Skura (psychoanalytic) on The Tempest, paying special attention to point out the flaws in the kernel assumptions of the theory animating their readings (it’s not that they weren’t interesting; just that they told us more about Greenblatt and Skura than about, say, Caliban, and I didn’t think that’s what we were “supposed” to be doing as teachers; many of my arguments return againa and again to pedagogy).
A wonderful old professor of mine (a Romanticist whose wife was a Renaissance Quijote scholar) — well-known as a psychoanalytic theorist — was on the panel with me, and as I was delivering my paper, I saw him reading through his, crossing out entire passages.
Turns out part of his paper was in praise of Skura’s reading, and he told me after that I’d convinced him enough that he decided to do some on the spot editing.
Granted, he was no community college prof. But still. The entire discipline these days seems to turn on everyone’s silent agreement to simply accept the assumptions of materialist criticism. I never could bring myself to do so — mostly because I was less interested in how the text was formed historically and culturally, and more interested in how it worked structurally, rhetorically, and cognitively.
That’s why the program I was in was so unique: having PhD creative writing students taking the same courses as PhD lit studies students created an interesting dynamic, and oftentimes raised useful tensions.
Nowadays, I wonder if any lit studies grad student would know how to read Wells without bring the Boer War into things.
I am absolutely confident that I could do this.
Shit. All that crap I wrote in Popular Balkanizer down the toilet, and I really thought I was onto something with my discoveries about antidisestablismentidentiarianism.
Oh, well. I still have my day job where I actually accomplish something.
Nowadays, I wonder if any lit studies grad student would know how to read Wells without bring the Boer War into things.
Jeff:
And herein lies my problem with my profession. It is almost as if at one point the literary profession looked around and said, “You know, there really is nothing more to say about Wordsworth that has not been said. Whatever shall we do”?
…and the answer was, co-opt other disciplines. Hence, Derrida, hence, Existential theory, hence, feminist theory, queer theory, and on, and on…
Driven by a financial (tenure) need to publish, our colleagues, with their often superficial knowledge of philosophical, anthropological, sociological concepts mined fields far away from literature in order to keep on keeping on.
It’s enough to make an otherwise sane scholar examine the Old Milwaukee Swedish Bikini Team as a rape of the proletariat woman, fleeing from the patriarchical hegemony.
Gentlemen, gentlemen! Enough! I concede and surrender! You have indeed elevated this discussion far above the playing field of this poor geoscientist. I have nothing to contribute and my quick reading generates no particular desire in trying to truly understand whatever the hell it is you all are saying. I came here to witness Jeff eviscerating another pseudo intellectual and to posit (perhaps more simply) that of course there is a circularity. The man is an asshole.
As for the titles sounding boring, well, in my books, that’s a good thing: they’re detailed specialist works, designed to be read by other specialists. This isn’t the time or the place, but the idea that literature professors ought to proselytize — speak truth to the masses, &c. — is one of the reasons for much of the ireesponsible generalities and abstractions that dominated in the ’90s. This turn to historical detail and formal analysis is a good thing, I think.
Jeff:
Nowadays, I wonder if any lit studies grad student would know how to read Wells without bring the Boer War into things.
Not only do I know how to, I do: I discuss how Wells dramatized competing theories of evolutionary theory in The Time Machine. (Short version: it’s not nearly so Darwinian as you might think, since it relies on the heritability of acquired characteristics.) I don’t think anyone can complain that I’m taking that novel out of context if I discuss the role of evolution in it … nor do I deny the way Wells’s aesthetic and narrative compulsions influence said integration. I’m not not paying attention to the literariness, I’m merely contextualizing it.
As for psychoanalysis, my relationship to it is vexed to say the least, as is obvious if you compare what I wrote here to what I wrote here. (If you’re really interested, click here and scroll down to “Psychoanalysis: The Movie.”)
I never could bring myself to do so  mostly because I was less interested in how the text was formed historically and culturally, and more interested in how it worked structurally, rhetorically, and cognitively.
Again, this requires a much, much longer response than I can deliver tonight, but let me say this: ideally, I agree with you; however, the past few decades have done the structural/rhetorical/cognitive material so irresponsibly that I think an historicist corrective is in order. Cleanse the system, you know. To return to my comments in the other thread, I think some people are better suited for one kind of intellectual labor than another, and this applies to discipline-specific intellectual labor as well. The formalists need the historicists to dot is and cross ts, and the historicists need the formalists to teach them new ways to integrate what they’ve excavated from the archives. I’m more or an historicist, you’re more of a formalist, but we’re both necessary. If nothing else, we need to keep our worst instincts in check.
Cowboy:
It is almost as if at one point the literary profession looked around and said, “You know, there really is nothing more to say about Wordsworth that has not been said. Whatever shall we do�
Did you read what I wrote up there? How it mentioned, in passing, that scholars have applied the wrong school of evolutionary thinking to realist and naturalist writers? Because if you did, you’re either implying 1) I’m lying, that Darwin really did reign supreme (despite Stephen Jay Gould referring to this time as “a decade of maximal diversity in evolutionary thinking”), or 2) that I’m a base careerist, inventing distinctions in order to land a job. Either way, I recommend you read some of the popular texts (circa 1900) I cite in that introduction, then get back to me.
Also, I’d love to hear which discipline I’ve co-opted, and which bits of the above demonstrate the superficiality of my knowledge. Seriously, your criticisms aren’t entirely off-base, but you present them like a fifth-rate Mark Bauerlein. (And I would know, as he’s a friend.)
SEK:
Did you read what I wrote up there? How it mentioned, in passing, that scholars have applied the wrong school of evolutionary thinking to realist and naturalist writers? Because if you did, you’re either implying 1) I’m lying, that Darwin really did reign supreme (despite Stephen Jay Gould referring to this time as “a decade of maximal diversity in evolutionary thinkingâ€Â), or 2) that I’m a base careerist, inventing distinctions in order to land a job. Either way, I recommend you read some of the popular texts (circa 1900) I cite in that introduction, then get back to me.
Also, I’d love to hear which discipline I’ve co-opted, and which bits of the above demonstrate the superficiality of my knowledge. Seriously, your criticisms aren’t entirely off-base, but you present them like a fifth-rate Mark Bauerlein. (And I would know, as he’s a friend.)
I’m sorry, SEK. As you’ll notice, my comment was #47, and yours was #49–so no, clearly, I have not read the pieces you refer to.
What follows in your post is part third-grade insult that would make my third grader blush, and part obfuscation.
And to know that I’m a fifth-rate Mark Buerlein is pleasant, I suppose, when the methods you employ rate you a sixth-rate Timb.
SEK is touchy today.
Where is the PIE?
Cowboy, we’re both English types, but I believe the more mathematically inclined would say 28 is before 47. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
John Wallis had skillz.
It is an old saw that folks study psychology mostly to find out what is wrong with themselves, I am starting to wonder if ya’ll don’t major in Literature to try to figure out why you hate reading.
Not that we need much more bickering on this thread, but I’d make a plea for cutting SEK some slack if I thought it’d do any good. Not argumentative slack, mind you, so much as some doing-away-with of the notion that he’s as worth of dismissal as our worst of trolls. Scott’s good people, even while he’s disagreeing with you. Mostly he gives folks here better treatment than they’ve deserved.
And I’d also point out that the heaping-upon of disdain (practically in place of regardable counterargument) is much akin to what most of us objected to in the postings of some community college associate profs. If that’s your preferred technique, there are places for it. I don’t think this is one of them, though. I like to think that, anyway.
My two cents; take it or leave it.
Hey, look. Two cents!
Hey…a Benny shaved is a Benny urned.
Slart wrote:
Not that we need much more bickering on this thread, but I’d make a plea for cutting SEK some slack if I thought it’d do any good. Not argumentative slack, mind you, so much as some doing-away-with of the notion that he’s as worth of dismissal as our worst of trolls. Scott’s good people, even while he’s disagreeing with you. Mostly he gives folks here better treatment than they’ve deserved.
And I’d also point out that the heaping-upon of disdain (practically in place of regardable counterargument) is much akin to what most of us objected to in the postings of some community college associate profs. If that’s your preferred technique, there are places for it. I don’t think this is one of them, though. I like to think that, anyway.
My two cents; take it or leave it.
I’ll gladly take those two cents, Slart. SEK, if I was out of line, I apologize. Chalk it up to a long day and a longer commute than usual, OK?
I cannot ever remember agreeing with SEK, but in my experience, he is one of, if not the most tolerable and pleasant Leftist on these here innertubes. Being nice and being wrong are not mutually exclusive.
Not chastising, Cowboy, just offering up a suggestion. I’ve had a few exchanges with Scott, and he’s just about as pleasant a fellow as one could expect to encounter.
At least, on the Innertubes. He could be a complete bastard in person, for all I know.
Anyway, I think it’s more constructive to conduct a discussion when possible, as opposed to the automatic exchange of make-wrongs. Even having that Thersties guy perpetually on the losing end of the exchange…well, even I eventually reached my fill of popcorn.
…contrast conversations with Scott, for instance, with an exchange with someone who insists that a vote for a Republican maps one to one into a preference for torture, invasion of privacy and election-rigging, with a side of latent homosexuality combined with homophobia, and a big slice of racism for dessert, and you’ll begin to see what I’m getting at. Scott tends to argue the point, not the man.
Point well made, Slarti–you too, JD.
Thanks.
As for the titles sounding boring, well, in my books, that’s a good thing: they’re detailed specialist works, designed to be read by other specialists.
My eye translates this: “Everyone wants to face a downward-sloping demand curve.”
omment by Cowboy on 9/4 @ 7:33 pm #
Nowadays, I wonder if any lit studies grad student would know how to read Wells without bring the Boer War into things.
Jeff:
And herein lies my problem with my profession. It is almost as if at one point the literary profession looked around and said, “You know, there really is nothing more to say about Wordsworth that has not been said. Whatever shall we do�
…and the answer was, co-opt other disciplines. Hence, Derrida, hence, Existential theory, hence, feminist theory, queer theory, and on, and on…
Driven by a financial (tenure) need to publish, our colleagues, with their often superficial knowledge of philosophical, anthropological, sociological concepts mined fields far away from literature in order to keep on keeping on.
It’s enough to make an otherwise sane scholar examine the Old Milwaukee Swedish Bikini Team as a rape of the proletariat woman, fleeing from the patriarchical hegemony.
Like comparing “The Death of The Ball Turret Gunner” as a metaphor for abortion? Just askin’