Chapter 48, In Which Feemus Invokes Henry Kissinger
I think it was Henry Kissinger who said something along the lines of: "The reason academic disputes are so vicious is that there is so little at stake."
Word.
Like much ethnic conflict, some of the most vicious attacks are between groups that are largely indistinguishable from an outside perspective. Like the British and the Irish, the Hutus and the Tutsis, Lilliput and Blefuscu.
Certain academic departments are interdisciplinary by nature and must perforce acknowledge methodological difference. Departments like Classics and African-American studies are a melange of thinkers from a variety of disciplines: history, literature, linguistics, etc. These broad divisions don't seem to cause to much fuss.
It's the methodological differences within disciplines that cause the most aggressive and divisive conflicts. For historians, the broad dividing line is material versus intellectual history (this is, of course, greatly oversimplified). The parallel split for literary studies is historicist versus formalist.
The broad strokes of this debate are this: the formalists (as their name suggests) are interested in the particular shape of a text and how it is working as an aesthetic object. The historicists (as their name suggests) are concerned with the embeddedness of the text in its context and how it functions as an expression of ideology.
Of course, the formalists are often very interested in historical context and many historicists care deeply about form. The real terms of the debate are more subterranean: the formalists tends not to be suspicious about the aesthetic properties of a text. These aesthetic properties are very often the unproblematic object of study.
The historicists, on the other hand, want to see what the aesthetic properties are concealing, what cultural/historical conditions the text is (falsely) resolving by means of its beauty.
Each apporach is of value, I think, and the possibility for overlap is greater than the most strident advocates on either side are willing to admit. The formalists call the historicists reductive (and often there is an accusation of not having very good Latin, the reason for will have to wait for another boring work-related post--mark your calendars!) and the historicists call the formalists naive tools of cultural hegemony.
Here's what I have to say to both camps: Grow the fuck up already.
It's great to be passionate about one's work, but this rancor over a debate that to which 99% of, you know, EVERYONE is oblivious seems misplaced.
Go ladle soup in a homeless shelter or something. Then see how mad you are at your colleagues for how they read Shakespeare. Just see.
Whew. I was mad. Which makes the whole post desperately ironic, I suppose.
You know, for being angry about people being angry.
I'm metamad.
Word.
Like much ethnic conflict, some of the most vicious attacks are between groups that are largely indistinguishable from an outside perspective. Like the British and the Irish, the Hutus and the Tutsis, Lilliput and Blefuscu.
Certain academic departments are interdisciplinary by nature and must perforce acknowledge methodological difference. Departments like Classics and African-American studies are a melange of thinkers from a variety of disciplines: history, literature, linguistics, etc. These broad divisions don't seem to cause to much fuss.
It's the methodological differences within disciplines that cause the most aggressive and divisive conflicts. For historians, the broad dividing line is material versus intellectual history (this is, of course, greatly oversimplified). The parallel split for literary studies is historicist versus formalist.
The broad strokes of this debate are this: the formalists (as their name suggests) are interested in the particular shape of a text and how it is working as an aesthetic object. The historicists (as their name suggests) are concerned with the embeddedness of the text in its context and how it functions as an expression of ideology.
Of course, the formalists are often very interested in historical context and many historicists care deeply about form. The real terms of the debate are more subterranean: the formalists tends not to be suspicious about the aesthetic properties of a text. These aesthetic properties are very often the unproblematic object of study.
The historicists, on the other hand, want to see what the aesthetic properties are concealing, what cultural/historical conditions the text is (falsely) resolving by means of its beauty.
Each apporach is of value, I think, and the possibility for overlap is greater than the most strident advocates on either side are willing to admit. The formalists call the historicists reductive (and often there is an accusation of not having very good Latin, the reason for will have to wait for another boring work-related post--mark your calendars!) and the historicists call the formalists naive tools of cultural hegemony.
Here's what I have to say to both camps: Grow the fuck up already.
It's great to be passionate about one's work, but this rancor over a debate that to which 99% of, you know, EVERYONE is oblivious seems misplaced.
Go ladle soup in a homeless shelter or something. Then see how mad you are at your colleagues for how they read Shakespeare. Just see.
Whew. I was mad. Which makes the whole post desperately ironic, I suppose.
You know, for being angry about people being angry.
I'm metamad.
posted by Feemus at
5:27 PM
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