Comments on: Academic blogging and literary studies

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 15:29:10 +0000

by the way, I should qualify: Writing style problems are not unique to literary studies. Philosophy is equally prone to unnecessary obfuscation (read Heidegger, understand that he’s basically having a conversation with Descartes, then read Descartes, and lament the fact that Heidegger didn’t write like he did!). And personally might very well be an academic if I could write… Steve

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 14:38:18 +0000

As a non academic, non—literary studies guy, I wonder if I could attempt to translate the above conversation into something resembling English: 1) One form of discourse is light, but pleasant. Think of cocktail party conversations. 2) A second form of discourse is more rigorous, but still pleasant. Think of book reviews, or critism in the form of articles in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Review of Books, etc. 3) A third form is theoretical, extremely rigorous, and extremely difficult: academic literary studies. The current problem in the field is that while respected work has to be of form 3), above, nobody wants to read it-you all went into the field to engage in 1) and 2). Thus, you are all professionally obligated to engage in 3) in spite of the fact that it (with a few brilliant exceptions) bores you. Perhaps blogs will fill in the gap, and open the field up to more 1) and 2), and due to more enthusiastic discourse, coincidently improve the quality of 3). If the above characterization is correct, then I can suggest one problem: very few of you can write very well-by that, I mean, very clearly. Lots of name dropping, lots of weird allusions, lots of strange indirect argumentation which makes it difficult to follow your argument. Your habits of writing in the style of 3) has poisoned your discourse on this blog (i.e. your activity in writing 1), and perhaps light 2)) enough that it is difficult to follow your (collective) point. If I have mischaracterized the conversation, then a thousand pardons-I am just an engineer ;)! On the other hand, if I am incorrect, doesn’t that support my thesis? I.e. if I am incorrect, then what exactly is the (collective) argument?

By: Raindream

Raindream — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 03:58:25 +0000

As a non-academic literary blogger, I kinda wish I could be more academic. That is, I wish I had more to say, more experience from which to draw, and more insight into literature.

By: Amardeep Singh

Amardeep Singh — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 20:38:04 +0000

I agree—this morning I felt compelled to do a short defense of Northrop Frye on my blog. Not that he really needs it.

By: Daniel Green

Daniel Green — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 15:25:19 +0000

The above comment illustrates exactly why literary study has come to a dead end and shows no signs of knowing how to get out of it.

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:17:02 +0000

“by this definition Leavis and Brooks and Frye and Burke and Fish and most other great literary scholars were also engaged in book chat.” Bleh. That was exactly what I was complaining about above; how anyone can feel nostalgia for that dreary, boring old nonsense I’ll never understand. As for Frye, he makes Lacan and Kristeva look sane.

By: Daniel Green

Daniel Green — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 01:33:24 +0000

I’d like to make just one point: if academic blogging simply recapitulates the current norms of academic literary scholarship, it will get nowhere. To the extent it rediscovers an actual interest in literature—and this is what you find in the lit blogs, a real, honest-to-goodness interest in literature—as opposed to a commitment to so-called “scholarly” agendas that most often don’t even interest scholars, it might just rediscover the purpose of literary study and have something to offer the readers of literature. You can call this “book chat,” if you wish, but by this definition Leavis and Brooks and Frye and Burke and Fish and most other great literary scholars were also engaged in book chat.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 22:36:26 +0000

“If Camille Paglia, taken pairwise or singly, is the type specimen of the literary academic, the whole discipline is doomed and I won’t shed a tear at its obliteration.” Difficult to answer without knowing precisely the nature of your objection to Paglia, but to the best of my knowledge, she is far from representative. Most academics in the humanities that I know have always spoken of Paglia with visceral loathing, while she has always gloried in her status as self-appointed pariah.

By: DJW

DJW — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:53:02 +0000

John, thanks very much for your reply. I eagerly await the unveiling of the definitive blog post on the ills of contemporary literary scholarship. Sometimes your blogging on this matter rubs me the wrong way, in large part becuase it reminds me of manifestly unfair broadside attacks on various subfields and scholarly trends in my own field (Political Science), which is hardly fair to you, except that in both cases the critics haven’t really made their case yet. But I’m now cautiously optimistic you may have something fairly worthwhile to say. Amardeep Singh: thanks for the link to your great blog, in particular that outstanding post about Indian Cinema! A Sonatine influenced Ghosh film is exciting indeed, although God knows if I’ll ever be able to see it.

By: chun the unavoidable

chun the unavoidable — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:09:05 +0000

I should point out that Michael Berube first made the Paglia comparison, but I agree that, when the most-read blog in the field aspires to her condition, then things are very bad indeed.

By: PZ Myers

PZ Myers — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:56:47 +0000

If Camille Paglia, taken pairwise or singly, is the type specimen of the literary academic, the whole discipline is doomed and I won’t shed a tear at its obliteration. (Before I get zapped with the death rays usually reserved for Chun, I’ll protest that I hope Paglia isn’t representative.)

By: Amardeep Singh

Amardeep Singh — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:18:15 +0000

I’m a literature professor, and I’ve been doing a blog for about a month. I think Holbo is absolutely right, both about the possibly productive nature of literary blogging, and about the currently moribund status of journals of literary criticism. I’m currently on sabbatical from my university, trying to write a book. One thing I’ve experienced this spring since starting my blog is that the sense of complete discursive isolation is less—I can talk about my ideas in bits and pieces, in progress. I can start discussions on things that might be tangential to my main research (still relevant), but which other people might be interested in nonetheless. I can communicate with non-academics, including friends and family all over the world, and give them a sense of what exactly it is I do everyday. I enjoy it, and I think it has been beneficial to my scholarly progress. If more people did it, it might potentially be beneficial to all of us.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:56:20 +0000

Ahem. Sorry, must remember to ignore error messages when positing in future..

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:55:25 +0000

I should also mention a point that Lawrence L. White likes to make: Not all scholarship easily expands into a published paper any more than all critical thoughts easily fit into a publishable review. The weblog and related forms are particularly well-suited for publication of such scholarship and criticism—not quite “chat,” but easily coexistant with it.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 18:42:39 +0000

“My point is that you can keep the standards just as high as they are now, or actually raise them, while producing something much more accessible and engaging.” Hmm. I must admit that I’ve often lamented the lack of excellent literature/arts weblogs. My conclusion has been that is that the problem originates with the subjectivity of the field. It’s perfectly possible for two advocates of differing works to disgree, not just on their respective merits but on the grounds for advancing those merits. One person’s merit can quite easily be another’s flaw, and such discussions typically tend to degenerate into one person shouting black while the other shouts white. While I’m sure this occurs in other humanities subjects I nonetheless suspect it is especially acute for arts subjects; and, frankly, is usually extremely tedious to read. This lack of a common ground is absolutely ideal for the kind of the balkanisation of literary studies that you seem concerned with. With that in mind, I’m not especially convinced that literary studies influenced criticism is as much a cause (assuming I have interpreted John’s comments correctly) of these problems as a symptom. (Which isn’t to say that I don’t have considerable reservations about theory.) From my perspective at least, the criticism that preceded the current theory vogue, though probably more accessible, was frankly even less engaging…