point of view

The places we live - both physically and mentally, inner and outer lives - have the quality of palimpsests. A palimpsest, according to one definition, is 'something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form'. 

Often, what we experience as a crisis, is the removal of what we have known to make way for something new and surprisingly good. 

The way we see ourselves is different from how others see us, and I think their view is closer to the truth. 

implications of theory

I shouldn't be judged by the things that I 'like' on facebook. I'm intrigued by thinking that I don't necessarily agree with. I've been further exploring the arguments against critical theory. 

There are actually some good points, I think, against the critical theory/ post-modernist/ social justice....insert lots of other ideological lenses here.....paradigms. I made an interesting discovery. I've been associating opposition to these ways of thinking with Christianity. There's a long-standing, ongoing dispute between Christianity and post-modernism, etc. But then I discovered that some of the people who are most strongly and directly critiquing critical theory are also critical of theism and talk about how it makes no sense to believe in God. 

So, they lose me on that. The Christian critique of critical theory loses me as a thinker and the humanist critique of critital theory loses me as a Christian. But anyway, neither of those are the main point. The main point is that I like critical theory and am fascinated by it. 

A lot of what I'm calling the humanist critique comes from inside academia itself. Harold Bloom spoke of 'the school of resentment'. In 1996, Alan Sokal, a physicist, published a paper in a cultural studies journal which was purportedly about the application of post modern theory to physics. Then, after the paper was reviewed, accepted and published, he announced that it was a hoax to expose the shortcomings of post modern theory, because it was basically a bunch of nonsense that nevertheless conformed to their expectations about what constitutes scholarship. A similar thing was done more recently (in the last couple of years) by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose. They wrote a whole series of papers that effectively used the discourse of critical theory to make arguments that were seriously flawed but were reviewed and published anyway - and some praised as ground-breaking - because they represented acceptable ideology. They, and others, call the dominant movement in academia at the moment, 'grievance studies'. 

These examples remind me of the Ern Malley affair which happened in Australia in 1943. Conservative writers, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, wanted to mock modernist poetry and show how vacuous and lacking in real literary value it was, so they wrote 16 poems in one day, imitating the style of modernist poetry, and submitted them to a modernist literary journal, claiming that they were the work of Ern Malley, who didn't actually exist. The literary journal devoted a whole issue to Ern Malley and hailed him as a genius. So, it was pretty embarrassing for Max Harris, the editor of Angry Penguins - the literary journal in which the poems had appeared - when it was revealed that the poems were a hoax. The hoax affected the reputation of modernism in Australia and undermined, not just modernist poetry and poets, but also novelists - for example, Patrick White - and artists who painted in an abstract, modernist style. 

Interestingly, McAuley went on to found a periodical called Quadrant, which is still around today, and just three days ago published an article titled, 'The True Crisis of the Humanities', which brings us back to the current issue. 

Personally, I have a deep appreciation for literature and history, which was only encouraged by my Arts degree. I think the criticism of the academic enterprise as it is currently conducted is a bit misplaced, although I do accept some of the points that are being made. This hatred for critical theory or literary theory is too much, and it's very negative. Aside from the quality of the argument being made, I just don't like negative arguments or books where the whole thesis is a negative statement. For example - and I want to give an example that's not related to this issue that I'm writing about - books that argue that the internet is adversely affecting our minds and lives, and the whole book is about that. I don't see the point of doing all that work of writing a book, and the main function of the book is to point out a problem - to say something is wrong. 

I thought it was interesting that, in the Quadrant article, the writer singles out the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism as representative of everything anti-western culture and traditional humanities. Come on....that's going too far. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism includes representative work from a vast range of the most important scholars and thinkers going back to Aristotle and Plato. 

.....I'm reading the article as I wrote this, so it's like a live commentary....

now the writer is criticising structuralism, which he says, 'reduces human beings to place-markers in an infinite system of signs'. I'm not sure what that means but it's not how I understand structuralism. 

but I want to change tack and agree with the anti-theory argument in some ways, but in a way that shows why I disagree with them in other ways. I've noticed the decline in English (as in English literature) as a separate discipline. The movement is towards 'cultural studies'. A lot of universities don't have separate schools or faculties of English like they used to - they've been brought under the aegis of media studies, communication. Where English courses are offered, they often don't have any reference to actual works of literature. I've heard from students who desperately want to study literature, because that's why they chose to do English, and some semesters, there is not one course available to them that actually deals with literature. So, I see that and I don't like it. It's part of what those who are saying there is a crisis are talking about. 

But - and this is just my own personal view - theory, literary theory, critical theory, whatever you want to call it, is intrinsic to the study of literature. Theory is not the enemy or the problem. 

symbiosis

I published my first e-book on Amazon (Daemons and Radicals), although it's more like a pamphlet than a book, at 15 pages, but I have plans to write actual books now. It's probably going to be a while before I publish anything, because I want to work on a few different books of different types. There's at least three that I have in mind and I'm going to work on, or have already started.

I like the idea that they will influence and relate to each other - that, in some ways, they will be about each other. 

creation

it's Sunday and I'm having a very unproductive day....looking through Twitter....watching/ listening to youtube videos...as I write this I'm listening to an interview of David Foster Wallace by Charlie Rose (in 1997)....and writing this. 

Writing is not easy. Writing this blog is not easy, and I would love to (and want to, one day) write a book, and that's even harder, or maybe it's not...I don't know, but I admire people who write books...in general, I mean - I admire the achievement. 

I'm listening to another David Foster Wallace interview now, by David Kipen in 2004. This one is getting more into the technique(s) of writing, which is interesting. but I could listen to him talk about anything. 

Wallace is talking about how he finds writing fiction so much easier than non-fiction. I've often wished I could write fiction. I enjoy literature, but I can't seem to produce it. At uni, part of our first year English course was creative writing, and I did very well at it. The mark I got for my creative writing project was actually the highest mark I have ever received for anything (to the best of my memory, and I think I would remember). But that's because what we were taught was that creative writing wasn't about starting with a good idea and then executing it, it was about playing with language, and we were taught some ways of doing that, which I really enjoyed. And I noticed that this way of doing creative writing was somehow like painting, which I also did and also wasn't very good at in a traditional sense....the idea of playing and trying stuff - being experimental and exploratory. So, for my final project I came up with an idea for combining visual creativity and language creativity in an interesting way. I didn't know what I was producing but I had an idea about how I was going to do it that I was very excited about. It was actually incomplete when I submitted it, but it wasn't really the kind of work with regard to which completion means anything. In anoher sense it went beyond completion....like, you could take out parts of it and they were complete in their own right...a kind of poetry. 

So, going into second year, I had this idea that I was good at creative writing, so I enrolled in a whole course about creative writing. But it didn't go well. I actually failed because I just didn't end up doing the work. The problem was that, for whatever reason, everyone doing this course was now actually trying to do 'proper' creative writing - writing actual stories, and just using the techniques as a way of producing 'real' creative writing. I tried, and that was probably the problem. I feel the need to produce a certain kind of product and I really can't. First of all, when I try to create 'proper' creative writing - when I try to write a story - I write very slowly, but then, that would be OK if what I wrote was at all good, but it's just so....I think the best current word to use for it is 'cringy'. 

I don't know how to make up stuff that simulates reality. I'm not very creative in that sense. I tend to think and write what seems to me to be true. 

I keep coming back to the idea though, of writing something like a novel, or maybe it will just be an extended piece of writing. I do like the idea of making things up. I like doing that when I'm blogging. I haven't done it so much, if at all, in this blog but I did it a few times in my old blog - caeusura - which I have now closed and deleted. I would make up characters and circumstances, but I only do it when I want to, because it's kind of fun. I couldn't expand those elements into a short story, never mind a novel.  I can't sustain all the elements of a fiction...I have to keep grounding what I'm writing in reality. I like having the freedom, which I'm experiencing in this very moment, to do whatever I want from this point on. I have no idea what my next paragraph is going to be like, just as, before I wrote this paragraph, I didn't know what it was going to be about. 

But I've heard novelists talk about their work like that. They begin with an interesting premise and see what happens. They don't know how their work is going to develop, and what makes their work really zesty and compelling is their sense of suspense and drama and anticipation. 

theory as thinking

Something I never thought I would see/ hear, but I have lately, is people expressing the view that critical theory is something evil and destructive. They say that its agenda is to undermine western or Judeo-Christian values. Marxist literary theory is especially pernicious, but so is post-colonial theory, post-modernism, all of the French theory - Foucault, Barthes, Derrida. 

In this argument, critical theory is linked with certain ideologies and ideological constructs which are regarded by the people making the argument as harmful, toxic and doing actual damage to society. I don't want to name or discuss those ideologies because I don't want to engage in an ideological debate or argue one way or another about ideology. 

To me, critical theory has always been about understanding literature. Critical theory - at least the kind that I am interested in - is primarily concerned with literature, and not with ideology, although I can see how it could be applied to ideology, and there probably are critical theory texts that have more ideological implications. 

For me, as a student of English/ Literature, that subject is what critical theory is about and that's why it interests me. It was very liberating when, in my first year of my degree majoring in English, I was taught about all the different theoretical approaches to literature. It was like an overview of the whole field of literary theory. We had a week or two of lectures about each different approach....structuralism and semiotics, post-structuralism, post colonial theory, and yes - Marxism, Russian Formalism, etc. But it was the ideas that were fascinating. There was nothing ideological about it (at least as far as I could tell). 

Why I say that it was liberating was because, in high school, they teach you a certain way of approaching and understanding literature, and they give you the idea that that's it - that's how you analyse literature. And, for me, it's a boring approach...you identify certain key aspects, like the plot, characters, tone, style, etc. So, when I learnt that there are lots of different ways of understanding literature and that there are some really interesting and insightful approaches, it was exciting because I realised that I could develop my own approach. Studying English was about engaging with the scholarship of others, and engaging with literature yourself, and, over time, developing your own approach - your own theory. I've been, formally and informally, doing that ever since. 

familiarity and strangeness

The preface to the 1818 edition of Frakenstein says this about the main event in the story - the animation of a corpse - 'It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.' 

In other words, the portrayal of such contrived and unrealistic events strikes more of a chord with the reader than the portrayal of everyday events would. But the portrayal of extraordinary events needs to be able to accommodate aspects of the ordinary for the reader to relate to it. On the one hand, if the story was pure fantasy, with no recognisable human feelings and developments portrayed, it wouldn't resonate with us as it does. On the other hand, if it was just about normal events that one would encounter in everyday life, it wouldn't interest us. The story moves us because we relate to the experience of the characters and it interests us because it portrays events outside our experience.

I'm reading a book at the moment which also embodies that dynamic: Invincible (2019) by Suman Rao. I think it's always the case with good novels....there's some kind of real connection with the characters and the situations...we recognise ourselves in them, and that comfortable familiarity is heightened by the tension between it and the strange or unreal aspects of the story. 

the past is another place

I heard about a conference that's happening in August on the subject of distance. Here's part of the call for papers that describes what the conference is about:

"The long eighteenth century saw the experience of cultural distance through overseas exploration, empire, travel and trade. The diverse interactions led to comparisons with other states, subjects, languages and traditions. In 2020, physical and social distance has once again become a defining feature of our society, and this virtual conference invites all to consider how our current situations can bring a new appreciation for how distance was integral in the communities and cultures of eighteenth-century society."

It captured my interest and made me want to write something on that topic. 

George Berkeley was a prominent philosopher of the 18th century. In Berkeley's, AN ESSAY TOWARDS A NEW THEORY OF VISION (1709), he writes a lot about distance and he brings it up right at the start, which shows how central it was to his essay. What's interesting is how strange (from a 21st century point of view) his idea of distance is. 

Here are the first two points in Berkeley's essay:

1. My design is to show the manner wherein we perceive by sight the distance, magnitude, and situation of OBJECTS. Also to consider the difference there is betwixt the IDEAS of sight and touch, and whether there be any IDEA common to both senses.

2. It is, I think, agreed by all that DISTANCE, of itself and immediately, cannot be seen. For DISTANCE being a Line directed end-wise to the eye, it projects only one point in the fund of the eye, which point remains invariably the same, whether the distance be longer or shorter.

It's as if the very concept of distance is something new and open to question....as if, maybe, distance could be considered a characteristic of the objects being viewed. It seems to be premised on a whole different conception of what it means to see and also what distance is - a conception in which it's rational to say that you can't see distance. To us, that seems obvious. 

Maybe it shows that the idea of distance was relatively new and was still being defined. When I look up the etymology of the word 'distance', it says that the meaning "remoteness of space, extent of space between two objects or places" is from the late 14th century. Before that, earlier in the 14th century, and as far back as 1300, it had the meaning of "a dispute or controversy, civil strife, rebellion;". 

I did some more research and found out that one of the things Berkeley is doing in his second point above, is disagreeing with Descartes. Descartes had made the suggestion (which fits more closely with our modern understanding of distance) that we can assess distance based on what we see - basically that the smaller something appears, the further away it is. Berkeley's response was - how ridiculous....you can't see distance....the same data enters the eye, however distant the object is. From our point of view, Berkeley misinterpretted Descartes - wilfully, maybe - but that's only because Descartes's view has become our reality. To put it in terms of distance, Descartes is closer to us than Berkeley, even though he's further away chronologically. 

It's fascinating the way that the pioneers of science, through their analyses, were led to view phenomena in ways that are radically different from our assumptions about those phenomena, because those assumptions had not formed yet. For example, even after publishing his Traité élémentaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry) (1789)  which in many ways represents the real beginning of modern chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier still believed that heat was a substance (see p 245 of The Age of Wonder (2008) by Richard Holmes). 

So, the distance between us and people who were writing in earlier centuries illuminates our assumptions. When we engage with those works, we experience a sense of cultural difference. It's a journey of discovery.