Old Email Archive

digest 1997-02-28 #001


11:27 PM 2/27/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest 1/2
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Date: 27 Feb 1997 05:25:53 -0800
From: Thomas_Weissert@irwins.pvt.k12.pa.us (Thomas Weissert)
Subject: scientists and SLS
Hi all,
I'd like to take a pragmatic point of view for a moment.  Ever since
"cultural
studies" became an acceptable direction to take for literary
studies---it is
legitimate to be that in the profession and admit to it---science and
literature has been also legitimated, although to a lesser degree.  The
end
result being that lit people can come to sls, give papers about science
and
literature and have it count toward tenure, paid for by their
departments, and
add to their professional status.  And you can see where I'm going. 
None of
this is the case for science or scientists, with maybe a few very rare
exceptions, and almost none pre-tenure.  So scientists who do come to
sls are
doing so out of their own pocket and often on the sly, as it were, in
their
professions.  This work is extra and not contributing to their
professional
status.  Of course we can say this is one of the problems with the way
science
is constructed; but sensitivity is what is required, we need to be
sensitive to
those needs and the tenuous nature of the scientist coming out to do SLS
work.
What is not desirable is the all too common, holier than thou attitude
of some
critics who stand out and cause the rest of us to look bad, let alone
the
scientists who take an active stand against the  SLS project.
anyway, that my two bits.
best,
Tom Weissert
- ----------------------------------
Sent from The Agnes Irwin School
http://www.irwins.pvt.k12.pa.us
- ----------------------------------
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Date: 27 Feb 1997 07:58:35 -0800
From: amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu
Subject: scientists and SLS
i'm starting this post (just so's you know) thinking i'm going to pick
up
on tom's last one... i'm in essential accord on this question of
holier-than-thouness... i'd like to take this notion just a bit
further...
it's not just that some number of scientists feel threatened,
justifiably
or unjustifiably, by litcritters who are busy shaking the glitter off
of
the science xmas tree... as though to say, 'we're more willing to
problematize our truth claims than are you'... as though to say 'we're
more
comfortable in less stable epistemological regions than are you"...
it goes
a good deal deeper that this...
for one, if english studies itself (incl. cultural studies) implicitly
seeks its claim to legitimation, as tom contends, precisely in these
terms---and i think it DO (unless it attempts to scientize itself, a la
northrup frye, say, or paisley livingston)---why then there's this
little-BIG question of the institutional status of literary studies
itself... whereas "science" has the money and power, perhaps,
english
studies is surely out to get some too... ok:  so one would have to pry
open
the literary side some, see what makes it tick... most lit folks i know
are
aware of graff's _professing english_... i wonder how many of you are
likewise aware of jed rasula's _the american poetry wax museum: 
reality
effects, 1940-1990_ (ncte, 1996)?... if you think a discussion of the
new
critics, and poetry in general, isn't enough to shake your sense of
what
literary studies is all about, think again... if only i could get more
of
my colleagues in the humanities to engage with rasula's argument,
"holier
than thouness" would seem that much less feasible...
one point here being, in any case, that i don't in general hear at sls
this
sort of self-scrutiny from the "literature" contingent... let
me explain
mself:  "literature" at sls has always been the umbrella term
under which
"the arts" will presumably announce their presence... which
they rarely do,
finally, b/c it's a bit like asking why women don't speak right up in
classrooms that are 90% male... and from a poet's pov (mine, perhaps
joseph
duemer's, perhaps others'), the arts are curiously represented in most
cultural studies projects... this isn't an easy matter to pull out in
the
midst of a "science" vs. "literature" conflict---i
know, i've tried, i
tried real hard during one sls postmortem, to no avail... my colleagues
in
english studies (sorry to have to be so blunt, but---) just don't
always
"get" me... and part of this is my fault, my rather, or my
apparently
rather, obscure take on things... but part is their---or should i say,
your---fault too, your resistance to discussing things differently
(i'll
leave it at this for now---but if you want some idea of what i mean,
check
out rachel blau duplessis' work)...
point the first...
but in broader, more obscure terms still:  any of you read (the late)
bill
readings' _the university in ruins_ (harvard, 1996)?... forget j.
hillis
miller's gloss in _profession 96_ (if you're an english phud, i
mean)---he
messes it all up, converting readings'
university-as-transnational-corporation analysis into an innocuous
"transnational university" gloss... anyway, readings' critique
of
postsecondary education, and of the status of cultural studies in same,
is
invigorating, if not without its problems...
point the second being:  until literary studies folks---that is, MOST
of
the sls membership---find ways of working into their interrogations of
science the necessarily delimited institutional site of their efforts,
why
then we're/you're gonna come off as holier-than-thou, mebbe even
holier-than-us...
now:  naturally, as one might expect, scientists ain't too good at this
sort of thing neither... i'm reminded of a leaflet i saw the other day,
pinned to the bulletin board outside of the physics office on my
campus,
that read:  "fermilab opportunities in high-sensitivity charm
physics"...
opening it up, it took me a full ten minutes before i realized that i
didn't comprehend a single sentence...
now i may be none too bright, but as the story goes, duh boids ain't
usin'
my head for lincoln's statue yet...
at the same time, the way "science" is being constructed in
general at sls
would lead one to believe (those of you who've heard me on this before
pleez plug your ears) that technology is a game played primarily by
science
phuds... and we all know that this just ain't so... as a former
(licensed
professional) engineer, i've got old news for you you folks: 
phud-holding
scientists do not constitute the majority of technological workers out
there... the expertise-driven aspects of technology have found their
chief
proponents these days in engineers (and increasingly in technicians),
and
engineers, as i know everybody listening knows, are not quite the same
sort
of professional worker, not quite the same sort of professional...
and to turn it a final time:  "materialist" analyses of
"science" on the
lit side of things would do well, as i see it, to consider more fully
the
more mundane domains of engineering, for example... i mean, where
materials
are treated in very material terms... but if one were to apply
materialist
analysis, say, to this latter domain, the results are likely to be
somewhat
less shocking, if no less convincing... i don't mean to suggest that
nobody
has bothered doing this---but i do mean to illustrate in broad contour
how
the rubric "science" obscures "engineering" in much
the same way that
"literature" obscures "the arts"... the resulting
science-literature
conflict obscuring its more rarefied dimension, from the pov of a
former
engineer-poet...
and one reason why i no longer attend sls is that it took me a long time
to
figure out that my interests were being sidestepped---in TWO ways (the
closest sls comes is when folks start talking about hypermedia)... at
the
same time, i don't have the bucks ($500 travel only one conference) to
attend conference after conference, though i'd surely attend sls if
money
were not a matter, b/c i *do* enjoy the panels and the people, whatever
my
misgivings...
- -----------------
but i've probably pissed off EVERYBODY, no?... that's OK... pace the
idea
that we should all be respectful in our controversies -- which is fine
as
far as it goes -- i think a bit of edginess, freewheeling and clearly
fuzzy
at times, can go a long way... esp. if you somehow get the impression
that
i mean you anything but harm...
best,
joe (amato)
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Date: 27 Feb 1997 09:12:40 -0800
From: wu10@cornell.edu (Ted Underwood)
Subject: Re: literature and science / paradigms
I suspect the "unsubscribes" we have been registering are less
a
sign of discontent than of the fact that the list has generated high
volume
lately, after a long silence.  People can only have so many active
listservs on their platter.
The last few rounds of discussion have been interesting, though,
and worth the disk space for me at least.  Joseph Duemer's reference to
paradigms raises a point that might reveal something about the
disciplinary
tensions we have been discussing.
>But if science is so bound by paradigm--especially if the case can
be
>made that it is peculiarly or particularly so bound--then it could
be
>argued that they are unable to step back from the system of their
>endeavors.
If I understand Kuhn's point, it is not that the natural sciences are
peculiarly *bound* by paradigms, but rather that they have advanced to
a
stage of inquiry where paradigms are possible.  Most scientific
researchers, in his view, do "normal science" -- that is to
say, they spend
their time filling up the gaps in a (temporarily) stable explanatory
model.
Kuhn argues, if I remember correctly, that this sort of "normal
science"
did not exist before the seventeenth century.  Paradigms can themselves
change, but before some point in early modernity there was not enough
consensus about the nature of a useful research program even to
constitute
a "paradigm."
It seems to me that this makes problematic the expansion of Kuhn's
concept
of "the paradigm" to encompass all forms of human endeavor and
belief.
>If larger cultural paradigms exist that include science, and, say,
>literature, then we are all bound by our belief systems--poets and
>scientists together. Perhaps we are at a moment of crisis in this
larger
>paradigm; if so, perhaps by getting the poets and scientists
together,
>it will be possible to help a new paradigm emerge.
A paradigm exists when people agree -- not of course on the facts -- but
on
a set of fruitful questions.  I'm not sure that I can imagine what a
paradigm encompassing *both* literature and science would look like;
different branches of culture can interact very closely and share
assumptions and metaphors without having that kind of heuristic
consensus.
Literary criticism itself might best be described as a pre-, post- or
at
any rate non-paradigmatic discipline, since there is no consensus (at
least
not at the moment) about what research questions count as fruitful
ones.
And that might tell us something about the source of the problems that
arise when literary critics and scientists try to work together.  The
kind
of interaction with peers that leads to success in a non-paradigmatic
discipline is different from the kind that leads to success in natural
science -- or, as Joe Amato reminds us, in engineering.  To put it
bluntly,
literary critics need pretty thick skins and sharp elbows to stay afloat
in
the dissensus.  They get used to sitting through talks that explicitly
or
implicitly deny the reality/value of everything they work on/stand for,
and
then have to practice the art of responding with a polite if barbed
(internal rather than external) critique while eating grapes across a
table
from the speaker.  (And, as Tom Weissert points out, we get tenure for
doing it well.)
One lesson to be taken away from this may be that we critics need to
disarm
some of our polemical training when we deal with people from other
disciplines.  (Even history, I think, has a somewhat different set of
norms.)  I'd also like to see more cooperation and a bit more heuristic
consensus *within* literary studies, but that's a castle to be built in
the
air some other time.
Ted Underwood
wu10@cornell.edu
Department of English
Cornell University
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Date: 27 Feb 1997 09:17:45 -0800
From: Carol Colatrella 
Subject: Re: Omni article
Michelle,
I just tried to look up your www address for the article and could not
get in to see it.  The message for me was that the file is write
protected.
I'm still interested in publishing it in DECODINGS based on your
description.
Carol
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Date: 27 Feb 1997 10:03:53 -0800
From: e027@lehigh.edu (Dave Leight)
Subject: Re: question and comment
I'm a couple of days late here (and new to the list).  Mike writes:
>Mike Merrill asks why we don't consider some sources, e-posts, etc.
> "'reliable [of]  citation.'  [though] many of us would cite a
single
>*written* source without qualm.  Do we still
>believe that  printing in and of itself gives validity to a
>statement?"
To which Bill responds:
>Wrong question.  In a printed source one can be reasonably sure that
someone
>else will find the same words or pictures in the same place. 
That's
>referrability or citability, whether those words or pictures are
"reliable"
>or "true" or not.  The relation of a text of any kind to
the "truth" or
>"reality" is another thing entirely.  I should say that
the biggest index of
>that kind of reliability is cultural - the ongoing reciprocal
testing done by
>and through membership in professions and disciplines.  Mine's
history, which
>may be why I felt it necessary to write this.
As a rhetorician, I am studying how citations are used to give authority
to
claims.  There's a large literature about this topic that extends
through
citation analysis (from Eugene Garfield and Derek de Solla Price)
through
sociology of scientific knowledge (from Nigel Gilbert to Blaise Cronin
to
Susan Cozzens to Bruno Latour) and over to rhetoric of inquiry/genre
studies/composition studies (from Charles Bazerman to Carol
Berkenkotter).
Bill is right: citations are cultural in that readers from one
discipline will
give authority to a claim made by a writer if the readers recognize the
citation as credible.
From where I sit (in rhetoric and composition by way of English lit.),
an
e-mail message does not need to be "reliable" or
"valid" but may be a claim
that I may use to advance my argument.  The 4th edition of the MLA
stylebook
(our citation "Bible") has a style for e-mail messages for
works cited pages.
E-mail is often indexed into files for those folks who like to check
out
previous months of listservs, for instance.  And in my discipline(s) an
e-mail
would be citable just as would a letter to the author.  I'm curious: do
some
of the many disciplines represented on this listserv disallow citations
to
e-mail in journal articles?
Dave Leight
Lehigh University and Lafayette College
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Date: 27 Feb 1997 10:47:16 -0800
From: "Mike Merrill" 
Subject: Re: question and comment
> I'm a couple of days late here (and new to the list).  Mike
writes:
>
> >Mike Merrill asks why we don't consider some sources, e-posts,
etc.
> > "'reliable [of]  citation.'  [though] many of us would
cite a single
> >*written* source without qualm.  Do we still
> >believe that  printing in and of itself gives validity to a
> >statement?"
>
> To which Bill responds:
>
> >Wrong question.  In a printed source one can be reasonably sure
that someone
> >else will find the same words or pictures in the same place. 
That's
> >referrability or citability, whether those words or pictures
are "reliable"
> >or "true" or not.  The relation of a text of any kind
to the "truth" or
> >"reality" is another thing entirely.  I should say
that the biggest index of
> >that kind of reliability is cultural - the ongoing reciprocal
testing done by
> >and through membership in professions and disciplines.  Mine's
history, which