The Pen is Mightier than the Word
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: Of all the sad things in the world, none possess the poignant absurdity of self-described radicals defending the status quo. Like squeezing lemons over a razor cut: it’s just too stupid to be really painful.
Sorry guys, I know this is small fry stuff (compared to the latest fare), but… This is the newspaper I read.
Russell Smith, my favourite arts columnist at the Globe and Mail, has offered yet another defence of the literary status quo, this time on the societal value of “snarky snobs.”
We need snarky snobs, we love them, we look to them with interest even if we’re not going to slavishly follow their proclamations: We want at least to know what the snarky snob position is.
I actually agree with a great deal of what he says in this article, with a number of crucial provisos. So long as, for instance, you consider his ‘we’ in the above quote to be royal–or limited to his particular ingroup–I entirely concur. Russell Smith is nothing if not social display conscious: he also writes for the Fashion and Style section after all. Odds are, someone who’s keen on what people are wearing in Milan will also be keen on what people are reading in New York.
I also agree with his argument from analogy: literary critics are indeed like fountain pen geeks. They are a dedicated group of enthusiastic specialists who think their criteria are the criteria. Now if literature were just another commodity like fountain pens, one where the commodity virtues of reliability, ease-of-use, and stylishness (social display value) reigned supreme, then the argument would be a real zinger.
Of course, like an angry ex, he reaches for the tried and true buttons. He explicitly claims that those who rail against the ‘Gatekeepers’ are basically just jealous. He implies their ignorance and ingratitude at almost every turn. But, I can forgive him that. As a long time writer for the Globe and Mail, I imagine he finds spinning criticism into flattery almost effortless.
It’s his final statement that gets my goat: “I will continue to think the role of the educated critic is to pull the gates of art wide open.” Question-begging, anyone? The criticism is 1) that the ‘educated critic’ has actually forgotten what art is, that they use parochial ingroup yardsticks to measure the world; and 2) that they belong to a much larger societal apparatus that has monopolized several crucial institutional bottlenecks, perpetuating a set of values and exclusions that have a number of negative social and political consequences.
With reference to (1), what he should have said was that the present role of the educated critic is to pull open the gates of what they think is cool open. I’ll grant that they know what they think is cool better than I do any day. But to say that their present role is to pull the gates of art open, well then, I think we need to debate the changing nature of art in the information age, because what you call ‘art’ looks an awful lot like upscale Entertainment to me…
Or worse, fountain pens.
With reference to (2), what he should have acknowledged was that the ‘educated critic’s’ role is institutional through and through. His failure to do so makes me think he isn’t all that, well… educated. The literary critic’s role is to discharge numerous institutional requirements and obligations, including, securing ingroup prestige, conserving socio-institutional capital, reasserting identity claims, and the long, long list of dodgey things we all do all the bloody time. Since Russell seems to know next to nothing about the human animal, he takes the literary critics claims at face value. I imagine he thinks that self-righteousness and unconscious social agendas are something that only social conservatives suffer. But like Chomsky is quick to point out in his institutional critiques, the thing to remember is that slave-owners were generally nice people. Most everyone is generally nice. Most everyone ‘just’ wants to ‘help’ people. Yes, even God-fearing slave-owners had ‘good intentions.’
Parachute nice people into problematic institutions and no matter how innocuous their small sphere of activity seems, they simply become another cog in a socially pernicious machine. They assimilate their norms to the institution’s norms (toothless bitching is often one of them) because that’s what humans do in the quest for economic and social security. They also confuse agreement for intelligence, and so take pride for surrounding themselves with ‘intelligent’ people, those who only dare debate the details. And the next thing you know, they encounter agreement almost everywhere they turn, including in what they read. All those intelligent books!
Insofar as every formally organized institution in the history of the human race falls under this description, I’m not sure there’s much to debate. Even if you don’t agree with the specifics of my critique, I hope you can at least see that Russell is making a clear cut claim to institutional authority, saying that you should defer (with hip cynicism doubling as genuine skepticism, of course) to his definition of art. Thus the fountain pen analogy: no one has problems deferring to the authority of a fountain pen geek. By simply analogizing literary culture to the fountain pen industry, he implies that it is harmless and friendly. That the authority at stake is trivial.
And this drops us into the lap of the real dilemma: which is that literary culture has stopped asking what literature is supposed to do. Instead, it has circled its wagons around a family of historical resemblances and traditional exclusions, a covert literary essentialism. Never has the human communications environment changed so radically in such a short time, and yet the blithe, comforting, and privilege-conserving assumption is that the literary animal has no need to adapt to its crazy new habitat. There’s no need to look, let alone debate. The old modernist morphology need not worry about context to accomplish its goal. Which is… what? Alienate the larger outgroup community? Ornament itself with prizes and galas and trusts? Religiously avoid any baseline cultural appeal? Gratify the values and attitudes of its readership?
To make matters worse, literary culture has become ideologically defensive and conservative–as Russell typifies, I think. It seems to have lost the capacity to even honestly consider outgroup criticisms (‘they’re just a bunch of jealous manques’), let alone be anything remotely approaching the ‘self-critical institution’ it pretends to be. Too many mortgages. Too many privileges. Too many smiles in the mirror.
So, Russell… you… look… marvelous…
Three Pound Brain 
Well, your phrasing suggests he should have replied to your specific argument, which he is most likely unaware of. You also seem to be taking one literary journalist’s views as the voice of the whole of “literary culture” including literary academics, when in fact academic lit-crit books seem to do virtually nothing but worry about whether anyone has ever said anything worthwhile about literature at all. Plus, I think it’s fair to point out that your activist definition of art is still pretty contentious. I don’t think you ever did say if you still count Wordsworth as literature?
The argument that literary culture touts a problematic concept of literature is by no means specific to me! All the critics I’ve encountered argue this.
And in my experience, Smith is in fact quite representative of the ‘snark set.’ Jealousy. Ignorance. Ingratitude. I’ve encountered these ‘criticisms’ numerous times (though the arguments don’t tend to be so obviously bad). The academic lit-crit world tends to be monadic: you actually have to put yourself into contact with outgroup literary producers to address their frustrations. In my experience, they tend police their borders with diagnostic critiques consumer culture. If the masses are trained to be morons, then it becomes easier both to avoid being painted by your own brush (as would be the case if humans were born to be morons) and to view your classes as deprogramming (as opposed to reprogramming) sessions.
Is Wordsworth literature? Wordsworth was a poet, so of course not. He left us a pile of code that I’m sure has generated a great number of literary readings, which probably depends upon specialized contexts (classrooms, primarily) to do so reliably now.
Funny, huh? The way we want to essentialize. We want literature to be an essential property of texts that we claim authority over. For all the rhetoric you encounter in literary circles about context and social construction, they all seem to be literary essentialists at heart. And why not, when it allows them to secure the domain of their cognitive authority (expertise), to monopolize this so-special thing called literature. My definition let’s it run wild in the streets, where it’s always been anyways. All they’ve done is create a system that allows them to monopolize talent, the Wordsworths, those who have the knack for producing literary readings, and lock them into contexts where no one will be anything but confirmed and affirmed. You convince students of a false monopoly (literary essentialism plus a circumscribed canon of formal resemblances) in an attempt to create a real monopoly of talent, and so undermine the very thing you are claiming to preserve!
Sounds almost… human.
Well… yes… ok…. punchy rhetoic aside, though, if Wordsworth is not literature in your definition, then you’re not using the word in a way many people would recognise and this may account for some of the difficulty you’ve had when pitching the argument.
“When I say literature, I don’t mean any of the famous poems or works that the rest of the culture calls literature, I mean something else.” If poetry is not literature, ok, but it requires a specialised definition to exclude it, since most people would not. I believe Sartre agreed with you, if I remember rightly, but it hasn’t caught on yet.
It’s difficult to say how many teachers still consider themselves to be deprogramming, though after many decades of arguments within the field against the idea that literary studies can ever be “innocent”, I would guess it is less than you think. Which is not to say your points have no merit. Just that it might help if you specified which current academic critics you think are making this case. Otherwise we have the straw-man problem.
Just a general note because we seem to be heading down the same road as last time. This is all speculative guesswork, Murph – that just goes without saying. Contrary assumptions like Smith’s are also guesswork. I think my guesses are better (for a number of reasons) – but at the very least I think they’re good enough to warrant some bona fide, institution wide debate.
That said, let me try to get sense of your guesses: How many instructors do you think see themselves as indoctrinating their students? Are you a literary essentialist? That is, do you think that certain works are literary regardless of context?
No professor I know (and I move in these circles) would answer yes to either question. (And yet most all of them treat ‘literariness’ as an essential property all time).
Otherwise, I never said poetry is not literature, only that statements like these are crude heuristics – which, contrary to what you are suggesting, everyone would recognize upon reflection. Is an adolescent love poem literature? Of course not.
A little charity would ease both of our word counts!
This is true. Everything you say here is fair and I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but there are so many points I can’t say amen to. It hinges on the definition of literature, which I am wondering – definitely not asserting – might be too restrictive. Yours is a totally – I’m not sure of the word, would it be normative? – definition, rather than a descriptive one. I agree that these are the best types of definition for these kinds of discussion, but they need to be looked at carefully. You want literature to do certain things, and they might even be the same things I want it to do (I’m not sure). But I’m reluctant to make the next move, to say that literature which doesn’t do those things isn’t literature at all. Isn’t this unconvincing exclusion of works which aren’t to the critic’s taste one of the things you’re objecting to?
I’m not sure I understand. Literature is a normative concept.
I appreciate that you and others might want literature to do different things: for me it’s tied to a specific set of (very controversial) interpretations regarding our present and future social situation.
But I don’t think anyone would say: literature should preserve my institutional privileges and sense of exceptionalism.
Here’s a question: If I’m wrong, then why are so many forms of fiction systematically excluded from consideration as literature? What’s your theory?
Long draw of the bow, but I think that ‘Literature is as Literature does’ and ‘it’s not literature unless it does X’ seem incompatable? It’d be like ‘chess is as chess does’ so if the players start throwing the pieces at each other, that’s chess. Yet also trying to say ‘chess is only chess if you follow the written piece movement rules and not throw them’. It reminds me of an ouija board and trying to say ‘Hey, it’s X now, and lit is as lit does, so lit just is that’ as if no one moved the planchette?
Surely you can not define something in normative terms then set about trying to change the norm? It just seems to define it as one thng, then contradict the defintion shortly after with a new defintion to forfil? Which seems to be what Murphy is stumbling over too, if I’m reading aptly?
Your example actually makes my point Cal. Chess operates according to a defined set of rules.
Does that leave you able to say chess is as chess does? It doesn’t seem to? Are you trying to say something like each chess game, how it plays out within those rules is as chess does? I’m trying to read into it a workable reading and that seems (to me) workable. I might be a minor demographic in this though, but I don’t read ‘literature is as literature does’ that way? If everyone else reads it that way, cool, then I’m just playing catch up with the greater masses communication method here. If not, perhaps it’s too clever a phrase/too condensed for yokels like me?
What I’m saying is that literature as I describe it is more like benjuka than chess, as much a rule generation system as a rule following system. And that literature as the establishment practices it is more like chess than benjuka, though they rhetorically insist its the latter.
Assuming real rule generation, generated from following a prior set of rules, there is no difference between that and chess. ‘New’ rules are just pawns in new positions. Pawns that were always there. They just seem new when ‘evoked’ because of the limits of perception.
If your saying they are attempting play within a prior state of the gameboard, when in actuality the board has changed and there are a far different set of conditionals on it now, for what it’s worth that makes sense to me as an assessment. Essentially it’d be a kind of ghost play. Groping at pieces that are no longer there, and perhaps blaming the masses/the pieces for not being there. An ideal philistine pawn.
Maybe the lit set doesn’t want to hear it like that (a game/a cartoon) – so is “literature is as literature does” meant to be more palatable for them? It just confuses me and makes me think “Who’s particular perception of ‘does’?”. But I’d totally pay that it’s maybe not designed for my particular take.
Or TL;DR: I don’t see a difference between benjuka (assuming real rule generation) and chess. I’ll say in reading the novels, I assumed benjuka’s ‘shifting rules’ actually came from the poor technical reading skills of the participants and the mutual inability to see the inventions made by each. And that’s why Akka sucks at it, because doubtful bastard that he is he’s getting better at technical reading purely in not believing everything that comes to his mind, and so becoming worse at inventing new interpretations which just happen to benefit him the most. That, or it reminds me of adolescent arguing over the words in RPG’s and what the ‘intent’ or ‘the spirit’ of the game was.
It was just an analogy, Cal. I’m assuming certain works of fiction impact you more than others, even change the way you look at things. It’s laid out in more detail in the “Literature in the Age of Information” essay.
About this and that other article, up under “speculations”, I think that you should definitely reach out the specific public.
On this article I agree completely, even more deeply since it clarifies and explains so many other situations, being an human tendency in all fields. You can see that exact pattern repeating pretty much everywhere, and this also confirms how valid it is.
But as long you vent on this blog you’ll continue to have an handful (no matter how large or small this handful is) of readers that argue and agree with you. It’s not pointless but you should also try to reach and challenge that group you speak of directly. These ideas need to cross, crash against each other or join, and it needs to be done toward the large public as toward those that work in the inside. Otherwise you’re just making another group with its own “worldview”.
That’s why sometimes I feel limiting going to read Metzinger’s book, and then read Alva Noe’s book. It’s like looking into two bags and then deciding which one I like better? I’d rather watch them having a debate on those ideas, challenge each other, agreeing or disagreeing.
If those ideas do not cross then they are useless.
He should do something like write a sprawling fantasy epic that encapsulates many of his ideals; that would be a good form for conversation with a general/dissenting audience.
The Noe stuff is interesting, but not taken very seriously. All natural systems are ‘subsystems,’ so you can always make ‘watershed arguments’ for any given phenomena, which is what the ‘wide consciousness’ crowd does. It’s an easy way to be contrarian. But I view it the same as I do the quantum mechanics stuff: consciousness is so strange that even the apparently ‘flakey’ alternatives should be entertained.
Whether to dive in or not depends on whether you want to be a spectator or a contributor. Pretty much everything you read now is bound to be a mere historical curiosity in short order. Consciousness research is still more alchemy than chemistry at this point.
I think maybe what I should do is put out a call for collaborators. I’m an extreme idea guy. Always have been, always will be. I was urged to publish every paper I wrote for my PhD course work – and I thought, Yes! then set it aside chasing some other flashing lure. Look at this blog: all I do is bounce here and there, trying to make the preposterous look plausible.
Others are field guys. And a lucky few, like Metzinger, are both. I need to find some way to connect with field types to publish.
Totally agree that that Smith typifies the insular sort of thinking you get from literati–this nearly drove me crazy in college coming from my professors. There was always this whiff of hypocrisy when they’d hold up such-and-such a piece of literature as being incontestably superior to this-or-that sort of writing; meanwhile in the real world this ‘literature’ is largely ignored, something static and institutionalized, while all the real/imporant/mass audience challenging is happening on completely different fronts…usually the ones scorned as pulp or worse.
Anyone who’s encountered it is more than aware of the sort of pervasiveness of this attitude; which is what I think makes it easy to generalize it as a consensus per Murphy’s comment above. Which gets me thinking–how to pull back the curtains on this phenomenon to the sort who are *resistant* to models that pull the cultural soapbox out from under ‘literary’ fiction’s feet; those, maybe, dismissive of a lot of the cognitive science behind your arguments (if not aware of it at all). If modern institutions are largely re- instead of deprogramming…then how to achieve *actual* deprogramming–not necessarily even on mass scale. In a dialogue, say, with the Pretentious Literary Aspirant sort via a swift verbal exchange.
Anyway, man, keep it up–read ‘Prince of Nothing’ as a sophomore in college and it felt like waking up; haven’t been able to sleep again since. Convinced me to switch from an English major to Psychology with a minor in writing; now grad school looms and I can’t imagine being the same person without your books.
Luke,
I’m not disputing whether it’s easy to generalize a consensus. I’m disputing whether it’s accurate. And if your prof was ever stupid enough to say a work was “incontestably” superior, I hope you did contest it – that’s what students are for. But when you say hypocrisy, I wonder what you mean – that they actually preferred the works they thought were inferior? I’ve never had that impression – I think they do love the works they promote.
Cool, Luke (sorry, had to say that!). Remember, when it comes to grad school you’re applying to the person you want to work with, as much as the school!
Institutional insularity, where you have a largely closed system of norms, is so difficult to crack simply because of value attribution. There’s the famous story of Eugene Dubois and Java Man: if value attribution can be so powerful in a scientific institution, that is, one with agreed upon standards of evaluation, just imagine what it’s capable of in the humanities. It’ll have to be a death by a thousand cuts things… a process that I think is well underway.
This is the point behind Light, Time, and Gravity, by the way: to write something that rings the ingroup bells so hard that it cracks them.
“Funny, huh? The way we want to essentialize. We want literature to be an essential property of texts that we claim authority over. For all the rhetoric you encounter in literary circles about context and social construction, they all seem to be literary essentialists at heart. And why not, when it allows them to secure the domain of their cognitive authority (expertise), to monopolize this so-special thing called literature. My definition lets it run wild in the streets, where it’s always been anyways.”
Substitute ‘meaning’ for ‘literature’ and you have my argument regarding the nature of meaning. I may be wrong but I have the sense that you along with many others would like meaning to “be an essential property of” existence. Whereas I have contended that it “runs wild in the streets” and that it always has. Just like your argument does not deny the existence of literature, my argument does not deny meaning. Neither do either of the arguments drop us into pure relativism. Rather, they show literature and meaning to be moving targets, constantly evolving in a social context. No absolutes allowed or possible.
I’m not sure how this works, Terry – in several different respects. You certainly don’t have to be a meaning essentialist to believe there’s such a thing.
In other words, how does ‘meaning is misapprehension’ fit into this?
“I’m not sure how this works, Terry – in several different respects. You certainly don’t have to be a meaning essentialist to believe there’s such a thing.
In other words, how does ‘meaning is misapprehension’ fit into this?”
I didn’t mean to imply that you had to be a meaning essentialist to believe in meaning. I meaning essentialist would believe that meaning is inherent in existence. Such a person would assume that meaning was already in the universe waiting to be discovered. Which is what I said I thought you were might be hoping is the case.
The kind of meaning I’m talking about is “running wild in the streets” in the sense that it is not fixed and absolute but evolving and relative in context. Whether any current formulation of meaning is an misapprehension is beside the point. To judge a particular occurrence of meaning as a misapprehension requires the application of some standard by which it is to be judged. Depending on the choice of ever evolving standards used, a particular occurrence of meaning might be judged correct by one set of standards and incorrect according to another.
As I said before meaning is what makes a difference within some particular context. It is always context dependent.
So it makes no sense to ask whether meaning is real? Hmm. I think this is a clear sign you working with something suspect, Terry.
As someone who was a contextualist for many years, I know what you’re talking about. Context is an intentional term. You can’t use it to define meaning without begging the question.
I’m not talking about particular occurances or particular formulations: I’m talking about meaning the same way you are. You’re trying to say that it’s ”real’ in a different way,’ assuming that I’m buying into kinds of assumptions that contextualists are fond of foisting on their discursive foes (the way I foisted them on my discursive foes!). But contextualism simply begs the question: everything becomes a participant in (magical) ‘meaning formation.’ I abandoned it because I realized 1) that it’s a huge, unwarranted metaphysical assumption; and 2) one that was just so damned discursively convenient to its adherents. It becomes a kind of ‘performative first philosophy,’ which is why its adherents have such a hard time seeing their way past it.
Skeptic: “You seem to be using this word ‘context’ an awful lot. Can you tell me, without begging the question, what it means?”
Contextualist: “Well, it all depends on the context you use it in.”
Skeptic: “Ahem.”
“Context is an intentional term.”
Are you saying that context is intentional because it depends on what one attends to? If so I would agree.
“I abandoned it because I realized 1) that it’s a huge, unwarranted metaphysical assumption; and 2) one that was just so damned discursively convenient to its adherents.”
1) Again, I suspect that you would prefer some kind of absolute meaning and this preference leads you to characterize the contextualist view as a “huge, unwarranted metaphysical assumption”. I realize that I am saying meaning depends on context and context depends on what is attended to but I see no problem with this if one is okay with meaning being relative rather than absolute.
2) So discursive convenience makes it untenable? Maybe it’s “so damned convenient” because it is a way of looking at meaning that makes practical sense. Looking at meaning this way helps us understand the contingent nature of meaning and this is a good thing in terms of undermining dogmatism.
Context is an intentional concept because it presupposes meaning. Contexts are semantcally significant backgrounds or settings. To say meaning is real because it’s a function of contexts is to say that meaning is real because meaning is real.
So you think contextualism makes no assumptions? I just don’t know what to say. It assumes meaning realism for one. Meaning holism for another. Internal-relationality. Figure-field relationality. Nonlocality. And so on.
I understand that you have somehow got it in your head that I’m after some kind of meaning essentialism. But all you’ve done is assert as much. And I have to admit to shaking my head every time you repeat as much, just simply because I have spent so much time as a contextualist! There’s just something you’re not getting, and I can’t figure out what.
It’s theoretically convenient: it allows you to smuggle your yardstick into any criticism anyone might make. Everyone who criticizes you becomes a closet essentialist. I’ve probably written a half-dozen papers using this very tactic, but it began to seem more and more dishonest to me, so I started asking hard questions. Like the ones you haven’t been answering!
Let’s go back to the big one: Does it make sense to ask whether meaning is real?
If it does, then the follow up question becomes: What is the best way to determine whether meaning is real? Given that armchair cogitation or traditional authority have such checkered track records, the obvious answer is scientific inquiry.
Otherwise, Terry, you’re just taking it on faith. LIKE ME! The difference is you’ve confused a bunch of question-begging metaphysical guesswork (called contextualism) for rational justification.
“So you think contextualism makes no assumptions? I just don’t know what to say. It assumes meaning realism for one. Meaning holism for another. Internal-relationality. Figure-field relationality. Nonlocality. And so on.”
I don’t say it makes no assumptions just that it’s assumptions may be the best we make. Can you even say anything without making assumptions?
“Does it make sense to ask whether meaning is real? If it does, then the follow up question becomes: What is the best way to determine whether meaning is real? Given that armchair cogitation or traditional authority have such checkered track records, the obvious answer is scientific inquiry.”
If, as I am maintaining, meaning is context dependent and context (what is attended to) arises out of a dialectical computation in the brain, a scientific inquiry will need to involve the kind of approach taken by complexity (systems) theory.
“Otherwise, Terry, you’re just taking it on faith. LIKE ME! The difference is you’ve confused a bunch of question-begging metaphysical guesswork (called contextualism) for rational justification.”
Unless you think, as I do, that there is rational justification for contextualism.
Regarding contextualism, I was just trying to get you to bite the metaphysical bullet (which you were initially resistent to). Since everyone thinks their metaphysical approach is justified the question becomes one of how you arbitrate between them. Which has proven unanswerable thus far. After years of being a contextualism, I have come to think it’s assumptions are far from the ‘best.’ Thus my point: taking contextualism as ‘true’ is a leap of faith.
You need to explain what you mean context as ‘what is attended to,’ since that almost contradicts my understanding of it as the ‘background of what is attended to.’ We could just be speaking different languages here.
Thus my point: taking contextualism as ‘true’ is a leap of faith.
I agree. Part of seeing things from my version of a contextualist perspective is a sense of the subjective element that is necessary inherent in any claim I make.
“You need to explain what you mean context as ‘what is attended to,’ since that almost contradicts my understanding of it as the ‘background of what is attended to.’ We could just be speaking different languages here.”
What I mean by “what is attended to” is that context is that part of the world one I am ‘under the influence of’ as opposed to the whole world. It is only what is influencing me in a situation that constitutes context for me. The influences could be in awareness or unconscious forces. The context might include components of the physical environment, aspects of the cultural milieu, and so on. If there are, for example, aspects of my culture that I am not influenced by either consciously or unconsciously then those aspects are not part of the context within which I operate. In this sense, I see context as being essentially subjective in nature.
We mean the same thing by context, then. You do see that ‘significant background’ and ‘causal environment’ are quite distinctive things. There need be no ‘meaning’ in the latter. And if no meaning, then no subjectivity.
Context dependence is (part and parcel of) one way to understand ‘subjectivity,’ certainly. It’s the ‘necessarily inherent’ (essential) part where the faith comes in. You (understood as ‘subject’) might just be smoke and mirrors. And this is what the science seems to be showing us. The issue is far from resolved, however.
Yes, I do see that ‘necessarily inherent’ is statement of faith. I also recognize and agree with the insubstantiality of ‘self’. I can see no way to rescue any kind of independent agent. However, I do subscribe to what I call ’embodied individuality’ which I think serves the causal function of agency; agency without an agent if you will.
You mean the feeling of agency, right? I think something like what Wegner suggests is likely the case: that the ability to signal (to other brains and to itself) ownership of actions plays an incredibly important social role. But this is another of those tunnels that become downright phantasmagorical if you pursue it.
I’m actually talking about how physically embodied individuality (experiential conditioning + genetic makeup) has effects in the world. When a nervous system intra-acts with its environment influence goes both ways. The way in which the environment is influenced by an organism is a consequence of the organism’s embodied individuality. So, while there is no independent agent involved, the organism’s embodied individuality has impact in the world. An organism’s behaviour is influenced by its embodied individuality intra-acting with the world. This is what I mean by ‘agency without an agent’.
‘Agency’ is kind of a misnomer then, insofar as it assumes intentionality. How about ‘homeostatic homonunculus’!
I just ran across this article and thought others might be interested. It presents an argument for how an agential self could arise through deterministic processes (thus opening a possible basis for for free will).
Click to access DeaconHaagOgilvy_Self.pdf
I actually knew this would be a teleology paper before I clicked on it. Please don’t go down the teleology rabbit-hole.
Same with the computationalists (who thought mechanical symbol manipulation provided a means of naturalizing intentionality), the teleosemantics people think they can naturalize purpose, then branch out from there. In both cases, the insurmontable question is: Since we know humans are prone to anthropomorphize (project intentionality onto/take an intentional stance toward) the world, why shouldn’t we assume you are doing the same, only hiding your equivocations in discursive complexity?
Intelligent design uses some of these arguments.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this as just another teleological argument. I understand the problems inherent in typical teleological approaches. However, I think this paper takes a different approach. I didn’t detect an anthropomorphically tainted argument anywhere, and I was on the lookout for just this kind of thing.
When Deacon et. al. make reference to teleology it is grounded in the idea that an organism’s organization achieves an ‘end’ but that it does so without intent or purpose. The end is simply a consequence of the organizational structure of the organism. It is not inferred anywhere that this organization has a purpose or intent.
The authors define a self as “a system of self- perpetuating formal causes: a dynamical organization that includes the capacity to continuously maintain or reconstitute that form of organization in the face of intrinsic degradation and extrinsic disturbances.” There is no hint of anthropomorphism in this description nor, as far as I can tell, in the arguments that follow it.
I’ll take a real look and get back to you then.
I like it! Since we are replacing ‘agency’ perhaps it should be “homeostatic homonuncularity”?
Mindful of the word-count: There are various non-normative definitions of literature possible, the kind given by dictionaries. But as I say, they’re not necessarily useful ones here.
On the general point, it’s not that I’m against what you’re saying, far from it. And I don’t have a formulated theory of my own (consciously). What strikes me is that your definition is equally exclusionary. In practice, your definition flips which group of books are liked – modernism, realism and post-modernism become sub-literary and fantasy becomes literary. But it still systematically excludes. And I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I can’t see how it avoids the same accusations of arrogance or self-interest that you level against the existing, dominant approach. And if the answer is “both sides are self-interested and arrogant”, then it’s hard to get motivated about the debate.
‘Literature’ used to describe a body of related writings is non-normative, but that’s not the usage either of us are using. ‘Literature’ is to fiction as ‘murder’ is to kill – both are normative subcategories.
Exclusionary how? Social exclusion pertains to the maintenance of ingroup-outgroup boundaries, the very thing my theory contravenes. If you mean ‘exclusion’ in the larger, vague sense of semantic differentiation, then all concepts are exclusionary, and your point strikes me as, well, empty.
You misunderstand what I’m saying (and so reveal the difficulty we have throwing our essentialist intuitions): nothing is intrinsically literary, not fantasy, not modernism, save that some reading makes it so. When I say that literature is a property pertaining to events not formal resemblences, I’m saying the same work can be literary or non-literary, depending on the context. Intra-ingroup communication is not a context conducive to such readings. Since the brain is an economizing machine it always associates perceived frequencies with essential dispositions (as in racism, for instance), so when a book frequently engenders literary readings, the cognitive default it to attribute this effect to some property intrinsic to the book. This book is literature. Once essentialized, our default tendency to clump things according to resemblance takes over. This book resembles that book, therefore it is literature as well. Once we build a set of social institutions around this mistake, then we have created the situation I keep bitching and moaning about. Literature becomes a social identification, something that defines certain individuals over and against certain other individuals. It becomes political, the cornerstone of numerous bids and claims to various kinds of social authority. Thus a science fiction book that changes the lives of millions becomes ‘commercial pulp,’ while a work of esoteric literary fiction that does little more than tickle the intellectual vanity of millions becomes ‘high art.’
Charity typically refers to giving people the ‘semantic benefit of the doubt, Murph!
I’m extremely bad at benefit of the doubt! In all seriousness, I apologize if it drags the debate down. I have to go slowly with these things. To compare sci fi book X which “changes the lives of millions” with a book which only “tickles the vanity of millions” seems like such a loaded comparison to me. Put it like that, of course one is better – you haven’t semantically left me any choice. It’s just as easy for me to invent an opposite balance, but it feels like the debate takes place floating in air. Let me ask what I hope is a useful question: let’s take it as true that millions of lives are changed (in a good way, obviously) by this sci-fi novel. If these millions are not responding to a property in the book, what is it they are all responding to?
So I need to give examples of where the traditional concept falls short without making it an example of where the traditional concept falls short? Makes no sense Murph.
They’re not responding to a universal, essential property.
Ah, I think I got what was tripping up me – it was the impression that the scarf wanker in front of the mirror wont produce literature (ie, stuff that changes how people think). But that he wont, implies something else, some other category, will. I think I grasp this more if it’s simply taken as a bet that the scarf wankers methods has low odds of producing literature and a bet that other methods have a higher chance. Perhaps it’s my own psychology on reading, but I kept reading it that the scarf wanker will only ever humour other scarf wankers, every time, which along with it implies something else definately does do the trick every time. To easy to fall into definates.
I’ll take penis mightier for 800, Alex
What I mean is… we can agree Infinite Jest is unlikely to be life-changing for many people. But Joyce has been. Toni Morrison has been. Jane Austen has been. Norman Mailer has been. You may say, “no they haven’t.” Or, “not as many people as Robert Heinlein”. Or, “not in the right way.” Neither of us can prove it either way – the debate stalls. Or we dispute what life-changing means; we get into an argument about what has value in life! By putting the basis for evaluation in the hands of what other people think about it, which is something we can never really know, and saying it has to be on a certain scale to be meaningful, which we can also not know, the standard becomes meaningless. It’s even more guesswork than saying “it’s good because it uses some technical features skillfully.” How is using an even less provable standard moving the study of literature closer to science? I agree that formalism sacrifices a political element and that is a loss, but at least it’s vaguely manageable. It’s the application of your theory that I’m having difficulty imagining. Yes, IJ is a bauble and it does have some unpleasant class-voyeurism to it. This critique is well within traditional leftist lit-crit boundaries, though.
In any case, I’m happy to agree they’re not responding to a universal, essential property. Case by case basis, you’re saying?
Jesus. Literature is simply a generalization we make for those works of fiction that seem most prone to spark literary readings. Case by communicative case. But you don’t need to tally cases into some kind of database! You have the bad habit of gaming goalposts, Murph: to invoke epistemological standards that, frankly, exist nowhere outside natural science, that have the effect of rendering the possibility of the debate moot, that make ‘literature’ a chimera period, let alone kneecap any kind of political or cultural position. How many times do I have to acknowledge the criteria are messy and pragmatic? These aren’t criticisms Murph, they’re channel changers. It’s like condemning a hot-dog stand for not serving filet mignon.
When you find someone in the literary world who thinks ‘skilful use of technical form’ counts as ‘literature,’ you let me know. I’ve been plaguing people with these arguments and observations for years and not one has bitten the resemblance (formal) bullet. They want to have it both ways: the institutional conveniences (such as ease of identification) that pertain to standardization, and the belief that it’s what literature actually does that makes it socially significant. Thus the charge of hypocrisy.
What’s so hard to imagine about a literary culture that privileges reaching out over reaching in? About Man Booker prizes that include SF and noir titles? About academic literary research that uses sociology and psychology rather than French philosophy?
But I’ve responded to all this at least a couple times now. “It’s too uncertain!” Well, welcome to culture, kid. “It’s too difficult!” Huh? The conception I’m arguing is far, far easier to grasp than say, Foucault, or Barthes – or even Frye for that matter! It’s just new is all.
Alright. Thank you, Scott.
Sorry for getting so tetchy. Hangover.
No, I’ve been pedantic and you’ve been incredibly patient. I’ll reign it in, promise.
I think the better term would be ‘contrarian’ (at the risk of being contrarian myself!).
Why not use the term Literature as a pejorative, like I do.
So whenever I find myself clearing the letterbox of advertising circulars or campaign material (election here at the moment) I turn to my son and say “Go put this literature in the bin”.
That way, I am training a whole new generation to have the same prejudices that I have, just like how the Jesuits do.
Because as you’re well aware when it comes to reasoned argument versus conditioning certain behaviours and modes of thought into people, conditioning is the far more efficient and effective tool.
Then again, that sort of thing is after all…. Evil.
‘Culture’ as evolutionary neuroprogramming device? That’s the problem when take the ‘functional stance’: nuthin means nuthin.
It would be an interesting thought experiment though: a nihilistic interpretation of literature as a special kind of virality.
I guess my first knee-jerk response was to think of Literature the same way I think about High Art, as just an in-group brand. Just a collection of positive connotations spun out into a sort of an Ideal, and then used to legitimise a group, their existence and their actions. Sorta like Democracy.
That way, it can mean many things to many people, and yet avoid pesky things like set definitions. And all the while have an unchallenged legitimacy whilst meaning everything and anything.
Oh and as an aside, your books are both entertaining and thought provoking, I really enjoy them. And I refer to them as stories. Not Literature.
If you think that culture adapts itself to biology more than otherwise (as I do) then I think this pretty much has to be the primary function of ‘literature’ – as an ingroup artifact. This is what makes the formal institutionalization of ‘literature’ so problematic: the hardwired social dynamics are bound to cut against the ideal of literature (as difference bridging, life-changing), and to generate the kinds of hypocrisies we see. “This is literature!” “Well, yes, it only really speaks to us, but let me get you in a classroom (turn you into one of us) and you’ll see what I mean.”
Given the aphorism, I thought this post was going to be about supporting Occupy Wall Street.