Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 08:27:26 -0600
From: George Trail <gtrail-AT-UH.EDU>
Subject: Re: PLC: The Cross Roads






 1) the encounter with PS and Phen had provided me with a language
>for understanding it as a study of changing cultural/historical contexts,

[Are PS and Phen so used frequently? I ask because I don't get out much,
but even so have never seen to the terms so rendered}
>2) it was capable of explaining why contemporary
>culture wars took the shape they did with the humanities in such
>dire straights, and

[Sir. Mr Knopfler and I beg your pardon. "Straits," sir.]

3) why the native empiciricist, humanist varieties of
>literary discourse seemed blind or impotent in the face of the
>"industrialization" of higher education.  So it was frustration with the
>contemporary lit scene that pushed me into close, note-taking reading Kant
>and Marx and Derrida, with supporting courses in the history philosophy. I
>was not attracted becuase studying the labor theory of value was in itself
>fun and interesting.

[Precisely. One studies one thing to understand another, not because of an
interest in it.]
>
>(In one sense this has worked well for me since CS is supposed to involve
>interdisciplinarity.  In another it does not because both English and
>philosophy professors suspect my competence in their individual
>disciplines, and it is generally through one discipline that one applies
>for and gets a job.)

[As indeed they must. Interdisciplinarity, as Mr. Fish has pointed out
numerous times, is a name for an emerging discipline or the exercise of
dilettante.  The disciplines _are_ disciplines precisely because of what
they exclude. My interest in Freud, for instance was regarded as utterly
suspect as a mode of literary study. So, with Bloom, I learned to take him
as a writer of imaginative literature, not a scientist, and not, at least
to any greater degree than Shakespeare or Whitman, a psychologist. The
literature of "science" is thus assimilated to literary studies.]
>
> And, of course, the best way to
>> > learn something is to teach it.  Another consideration is that what we
>> > don't enjoy indicates in each of us an areas of deficiency.
>
>That is a good way to put it.  I didn't "enjoy" Sophocles the first time I
>read him.  But the deficiency was not his.  Humanities professors find
>this self-evident when the discussion turns around "classics."  But
>when the problem of "deficiency" arises in the context of contemporary
>literature or philosophy, it is generally the writer and not the reader
>who takes the blame--a phenomenon which has endlessly interested me.

>A final point regarding George's dislike of Whitman.  I disliked him
>until I had to teach him.  Then I started liking him a lot, probably
>because I learned to read him on his own terms. But now that
>I keep getting into flame wars with liberal humanists, I find I am liking
>him less and less, and must read him for clues to what seems wrong
>in contemporary lit studies.  (I am assuming here that W has been
>one of the strongest influences not only on American poetry but criticism
>as well.)

[Howard. You can't just say this and stop! I see Whitman, for instance, as
a huge influence on a lot people, but the voice that most have still not
accepted (nor read carefully).  Dilation, please ("we have had ducking and
deprecating just about enough!") What I emerged with re Whitman is some
familiarity with his huge complexity, and particularly in relation to the
question of the "personal," the lyric impulse.  The anxiety of the macho
braggadocio, _of which he was perfectly aware_, and to which he provided
"clues and indirections." Very seriously, I would like to hear your
reservations.]
>
>So I guess what I'm saying here (with George, I think) is that it is
>eventually some set of problems and irritations which become interesting
>to the budding scholar and ultimately define his/her study, not some
>static category like "Shakespeare" or "Modernism" or "the Novel"--though
>you will proabably have to represent your interests through such
>categories if you want to be an English professor.  But that won't be so
>difficult because your chosen problems will be relatable to
>Shakespeare, or modernism, or the novel.

[yes, yes, yes, yes. You have to willing to teach _any_ damned thing, and
learn from it. Unlike Howard I do not find the mind of the Beowulf poet
congenial, and I still find that I whole pile of Chaucer is padding, but at
least I can say I gave it a shot. Hwaet!]

So let your interests guide you
>to some problem and AFTER you've got that decide whether you are a
>medievalist or an 18th century man.
>
>
> hh

g




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