Old Email Archive

digest 1997-04-15 #001


11:25 PM 4/14/97 -0700
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 07:06:05 -0700
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
I'm pretty sure that's me Wayne Miller quotes in his post re: the
apotheosis of theory. I was trying to get at what feels like a division
within the culture group, not just at SLS and the like, but in general.
Some poets, especially, are distrustful of theory, though joe amato
seems to have made it his own. Certainly, I don't expect him to sign on
to the sentiments expressed by another fine poet, Bruce Weigl:
"Why I Hate Theory"
Kill the others is a theory.
(Someone's name was Charity.)
We are the better ones
is a theory.
We are stronger, samrter,
Whiter. (Take the doors
down from all the rooms
so the girl can't hide is a theory.)
She is pale as water. She is water.
She is water is a theory.
c. 1997 Bruce Weigl (From _Salt Hill Journal3_: Winter 1996-97)
I toss out this little incindery device, not because I want to ignite a
war on the list, but because it represents the feeling of many writers
that theory runs counter to the art they've undertaken to practice.
- --
__________________________________________________________________
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love
poetry
but never buy a book."
Kenneth Rexroth
"Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down
the
Grand Canyon
and waiting for the echo."
Don Marquis
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 07:56:31 -0700
From: wu10@cornell.edu (Ted Underwood)
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
Bruce Weigl's poem is indeed fairly incendiary.  I'm not especially fond
of
the diffuse object literary scholars mean to name when we say
"Theory," but
I wouldn't sign on to that way of criticizing it either.
Why accept the hasty equation between "theories of literature that
have
been popular in the last twenty-odd years" and "theory in
general"?
And -- if we're talking about theory in general -- why criticize it in
that
mode of guilt by association?  One might as well write a poem entitled
"Why
I Hate Men" and start off "Ronald Reagan was a man." 
Perhaps poems are
responsible to higher authorities than the authority of logic, but
surely
we owe the authority of logic a 10% sales tax?
There are lots of nice fuzzy theories.
Check to see how hot the
water is before you get in the shower
is a theory.
(Though maybe it's a heuristic based on a theory about the water
heater.)
Ted Underwood                   wu10@cornell.edu
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 08:43:01 -0700
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
Though I'm attracted by the rhetoric of the Weigl poem, and have a
sense
of what he's driving at, I think Ted Underwood's measured response is
appropriate. I especially like the 10% sales tax to logic--something I
try for in my own work. Still, it might be one of a poet's jobs to be a
tax resister.
- --
__________________________________________________________________
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love
poetry
but never buy a book."
Kenneth Rexroth
"Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down
the
Grand Canyon
and waiting for the echo."
Don Marquis
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 08:58:13 -0700
From: amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
oh i should say i guess that i don't "hate" "theory"
at all... i remain
convinced in fact of the necessity for theorizing one's claims... i
*do*
often fret over the way certain sorts of theories (and theorizing) gain
ascendancy... just went through this the other day in fact, when a
colleague told me that they thought so & so's way of handling things
was
not "properly" theoretical... this is usually a sure sign that
a specific
discursive orientation is being privileged over others... and as a poet,
i
feel this pinch at times from more celebrated theories of literary
production (pleez don't take this as an anti-theoretical claim!)... but
as
a poet, i feel too the pinch of competing poetries and poetics as
well!...
as i've tried to suggest in these regions, there are more options 'out
there' than are usually allowed for, and one way to ascertain same is
simply to change one's material orientation---have a look at what's
going
on in other parts of the (publishing) world... of course it might be
utopian to imagine that all theories and all theorizing will be given
equal
'voice'---same could be said to all poetries and all poetics... but this
is
no reason not to try to be open to same, and to offer one's claims with
corresponding awareness...
best,
joe
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 09:57:15 -0700
From: Stuart Peterfreund 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
speterfr@lynx.neu.edu
14 April 1997
Ted, Joe, others:
Let's bring Stephen Toulmin's chapter "The Death of the
Spectator" (in _The Return to Cosmology_ [UcalP, 1982]) into the
discussion.  He has a very nice take on the historical evolution of
_theoros_ and _theoria_ in that text.  Toulmin points out that the
_theoros_ (divicure) originally was charged with going to Delphi to
consult the oracle on matters of state policy and concern.  Gradually,
the term became watered down to mean something like `spectator.'  (The
film _Being There_ comes to mind at this juncture.)  Weigl's reaction
may be extreme, but it is not entirely misguided.  That reaction points
right to the problem of dissevering an epistemology from its sponsoring
ontology.
Those of us who first came to theory in the late sixties and
early seventies did so by moving out of thoroughly grounded historical
and/or philological training.  Theory was something that we did, for
the
most part, after graduate school, not during graduate school.Rather
than discarding the knowledge that that training gave us access to, we
built our theoretical positions on that knowledge.  Unfortunately,
given
the limited amount of time one spends taking classes in graduate
school,
subsequent generations were forced to give up some or all of the
historical training in order to get the theoretical training, with the
result that, all too often, those trained in theory exclusively tend to
reinvent history--badly--under the guise of the would-be synoptic
theoretical gaze.
Al que quiere.
Stuart Peterfreund
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 11:06:18 -0700
From: amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
stuart, i would observe too that the "sponsoring ontology" to
which you
refer is in so many ways a function of disciplinary and professional
exposure (and corresponding narratives of professional community)...
that
is, there's a social dimension to such ontologies, and poetic practice
in
this sense, even when situated squarely in the academic institution,
constitutes perhaps an unlegislated attempt to offer alternatively
enacted
versions of same...
by "unlegislated" i surely don't mean unmotivated---but i'm
talking in
general of the publicly rec'd status of the poet (even within circles
poetic) as both madwo/man and soothsayer... seems to me the question of
what to do with epistemic claims that emerge from poetic discourse
(which
seem, all told and within their own confines, to sabotage epistemic
certainty) has been complicated right along by more romantic notions of
art
as purely "expressive" or unrefined "experiential"
activity... yet at the
same time, this reflects perhaps a curiously symptomatic deformation
owing
to the relationship twixt madness and civilization...
should be clear in any case that poetry and politics can go
hand-in-hand,
as in the case of the late great allen ginsberg...
best,
joe
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Date: 14 Apr 1997 16:25:49 -0700
From: Matt Kirschenbaum 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science? (x litsci-l@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU)
Stuart Peterfreund, who I had the pleasure of meeting when he
moderated the panel I was on at the last SLS, writes:
[ . . .]
>       Those of us who first came to theory in the late sixties and
> early seventies did so by moving out of thoroughly grounded
historical
> and/or philological training.  Theory was something that we did,
for the
> most part, after graduate school, not during graduate
school.Rather
> than discarding the knowledge that that training gave us access to,
we
> built our theoretical positions on that knowledge.  Unfortunately,
given
> the limited amount of time one spends taking classes in graduate
school,
> subsequent generations were forced to give up some or all of the
> historical training in order to get the theoretical training, with
the
> result that, all too often, those trained in theory exclusively
tend to
> reinvent history--badly--under the guise of the would-be synoptic
> theoretical gaze.
Stuart, as someone who finished their coursework a few years
ago and who is now in the process of writing a dissertation,
this means nothing to me. I came away from my courses, as I
suspect most graduate students do, with several binders of
badly written notes, some seminar papers best forgotten, and a
long list of things I knew I wanted/needed to read: history,
literature, theory, and lots that I couldn't easily categorize.
Now it's true that the number of discourses (if you'll permit
me) that graduate students are expected to master has
proliferated; and these are developments which, as Joe Amato
has pointed out, are a part of broader
institutional/professional changes. But the point, to me, is
that my coursework does not/did not circumscribe my
"training."
And as for good and bad scholarship, this seems like a version
of a debate we're all on this list familiar with: the quality
of scholarship, either interdisciplinary, historical, or
otherwise, depends largely on the amount of homework one is
willing to do.
Best,
- --Matt
=================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum                    University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu                         Department of English
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/   Electronic Text Center