Re: invincible ignorance

From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 12:16:47 EDT

Nah, I didn't feel I was that out of temper. I felt I identified the
problem.

Come on...read some of the sentences in the article closely. Look at this
one:

wait...wait...DANG...I deleted the link. Can you resend?

Thanks ;).

Off the top of my head, I would say that:

1. Undergraduates aren't generally expected to read Derrida or deconstruct
texts, unless they're in an upper division literary theory class (hardly
mandatory, even for English majors in most programs). Even then, the
actual theoretical writing they get is pretty sparse and spoon fed by the
instructor. So the article was factually incorrect at this point. It may
have been an accurate representation of a very few institutions, but
certainly not most.

2. Again, most critics I've read aren't in the deconstruction/postmodern
camp, so they wouldn't write from this POV or use this jargon. They may,
and probably have, read some of this material, but that doesn't mean they
necessarily agree with it -- even if they use some of the ideas.

3. Some of the most difficult critics to read -- like Harold Bloom (his
latest book on Shakespeare wasn't bad, though) -- aren't postmodern at
all. I suspect the author of the article would probably identify Bloom as
a postmodernist, though, even though Bloom criticizes this group as
"professional resenters."

4. I would like to add that I agreed with some of the article -- his point
about Freud and Marx, notably, being accepted as legitimate authorities on
human psychology and economic theory (respectively) by humanities scholars
when they're not accepted by professionals in the field.

I'd say this is partly due to the fact that Freud and Marx (and those after
them) used literature themselves in the development of their theories, and
partly because of the theoretical frameworks they constructed -- they
really do provide alternative mythological structures into which all of
human experience and history can be placed. But I'd say that Freud does
still haunt the psychological profession as well to some small extent,
doesn't he?

At any rate, while there is an entire anti-Freud industry out there, I'd
agree with the article when it says that humanities scholars generally give
psychoanalytic theory a bit too much credit...

Jim

PS I don't know if I ever followed up on my attempt to publish in PMLA. I
was, of course, shot down in flames, but I had the advantage of being shot
down by three different readers. The reader that recommended publication,
interestingly, understood the flaws in my article better than the next
reader, who was quite hostile. This may be a good lesson to apply to the
current topic...

Scottie Bowman wrote:

> '... being ignorance....ignorance is the real issue ...the ignorant
> pool together to disseminate ...their ignorance
>
> Tch, tch, Jim. Temper, temper.
>
> The only thing I ever encounter that might remotely be termed
> American lit crit is on Bananafish, Austen-L & Heming-L.
> And, by cripes, I can recognise what Morningstar is writing
> about.
>
> Scottie B.
>
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Received on Wed Oct 23 12:16:52 2002

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