Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 08:57:00 -0500
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: A theory about theory [was Anyone get Gass?]


George Trail wrote:

> 
> 1. Theories are never _a priori_. Phenomena are observed. Phenomena are
> grouped in a certain way by the observer. How that observer groups the
> phenomena constitutes a theory. You complain that Freud knew nothing about
> art. In order to say this you must have a theory, which theory allows you
> to use the word "art" as if it were somehow referential. You use the word
> artist in the same way. An artist is, presumably one who produces art, the
> which you claim to know from experience with "it."

	OK. The 'circle' of art-artist-artwork must be lept into somehow.  Yeah, every
perception is informed by a theory, and ...


> 
> 2. Freud was a psychologist, he catagorized human production as symptomatic
> of psychological states. How he defined art relates to this view, which is
> hardly a priori. It, like any other theory proceeded from the observation
> of phenomena and the grouping of them according to certain criteria.

	Freud was perceiving artistic phenomenon not as an art theorist, but as a
psychologist -- same 'data', different 'informings'.


> 
> 3. Your comments on Eliot and Yeats "commentary" seem to assume that it is
> monlithic and (somehow) theory free. That is, that the Yeats "expert" can
> read that poet as a poet without being encumbered by "theory." Yet,
> presumably one would have to know, in the first place, what a poet was to
> know if Yeats was one.


	But I think Pat's objection wasn't just against (all) theory, but against
'general' theory.  Though difficult to detail this distinction, it strikes me as
a good one.  Foucault makes a similar distinction toward the end of his life
between the philosopher and the specific intellectual, the former, a la Sartre,
was for him bankrupt.


> 5. Critics and theorists now and always have determined what "art" is, and
> what constitutes the canon, and what  body of folk comprise the important
> artists. It cannot be otherwise.
> 
> 6. You then have the notion that there is some theory free corpus knowledge
> of which constitutes knowledge of "art history," again as if that were
> monolithic and existed without psychological/political/economic parameters.
> There is, without theory, no "art," let alone "art history."


	I'm not sure about Pat, but as someone who works in the philosophy of music,
I've 
found the state of the philosophy of music pretty abysmall.  Sure there's plenty
of music theories -- eg. Schenker, post-Schenkerian, Schoenbergian, Hindemith,
etc., -- but most philosophers of music seem to have never taken a course in
music theory, and that's one reason, I think, why people who work in and
theorize about musical materials generally don't pay any attention to what
philosophers have to say about it.
	Cood theoretizing/criticism incorporates the object of art into itself, and its
fairly easy to do this in lit-crit (cite a bunch of passages) or art theory
(where one can easily indicate/reproduce figures) but its damn hard to talk
about music at all, much less critically incorporate it into one's criticism
unless one has some 'ground level' facility with music theory.  So, it's not so
much a matter of being theory-free or encumbered, etc., as it is (I think for
Pat and for me) with have a certain 'critical proximity' to the critical object.

Ciao,
Reg


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