Dreams and Plagiarism

With ‘friends’ who trick you into plagiarizing white supremacists, who needs enemies?

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Holbo. Michelle Dean already made this joke.

As regards scholarship, the worst of it is that (even on his own account) he’s giving a detailed description of the antisemitic content of a book he’s never read. Probably the book is exactly as described, but wouldn’t you want to check for yourself? What if his “friend” (or, more likely, the supremacist source from which he cribbed) was misrepresenting a perfectly innocent piece of work. As we’ve discussed here quite a few times, this happens a lot.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Holbo.

Yeah, for example there was that book I about hypnotism I tried to post about but it wouldn’t go through.

The dream thing is interesting. I’ve had dreams which seem to have been going on for half an hour or so when I’ve only been asleep for a minute or two – I think you dream the culminating scene and confabulate the back story. More eerily, on a few occasions (when a bit sleep-deprived) I’ve woken up with a complete, and entirely convincing, confabulated memory of the thing I was dreaming about – not “I’ve just dreamt I was having a coffee with Thomas Pynchon” but “I’ve just had a dream about that time I met Pynchon… let’s think, when was that again?” Reality dawned, but it did so slowly and reluctantly – those were good false memories…

(I did once dream I was friends with Thomas Pynchon. This wasn’t one of the false-memory dreams, although I did find I was thinking of him as ‘Tom Pynchon’ for several days afterwards. I think the source was Groucho’s letters, in which he says what fun he’d been having with his friend Tom Eliot.)

Plagiarism is such a capitalist, neoliberal concept, anyway. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs . . .

What gives with the strange animus against Zizek at CT?

Yeah, especially if it is criticism from the Right of Zizek’s position, as it usually seems to be.

I mean, JH, it isn’t the first time I’ve seen a hostile Zizek piece here. I don’t get what in Zizek’s weltanschaung would draw that much negativity from a nominally leftish site.

The trouble with real life is that nothing turns out it turns into and you just have to keep going, or not.

It’s the Folk Process.

What interests me is who is Zizek?

/Off to the googles!

“Given my known animus towards Zizek”

Wasn’t known to me. Is this because you’re a liberal?

Do you mean “bad comedy” in the sense of comedy that has bad moral and political consequences? If so, then of course I agree: bad things are bad and serious things are serious. I meant “bad jokes” precisely: bad qua jokes. Animus towards unfunniness is silly.

If I interpret you right, then the question is: does Zizek’s comedy have bad moral and political consequences? Note that if you grant me this much – that he’s problematic as a comedian – it already gives us reason to at least question your claim that he’s “a fake and fraud.” (I’ll never understand this common form of overdetermination in academic philosopher’s condemnations: it’s quite sufficient if Zizek’s work is worthless and his influence bad, he doesn’t also have to be charlatan secretly trying to pull the wool over our eyes in order for us to dismiss him or fight his influence. It has a “and your mamma too” quality to it.)

It’s far from clear that his comedy has significant moral and political consequences at all, much less harmful ones. As I’ve ready said, in the academy his power and influence is pretty insignificant.

Outside of the academy his popularity seems to be among “more radical than thou”, young political activist types (his association with OWS, e.g.). Most of these are not, let’s be frank, readers, and so his atrocious writing isn’t much of an influence, and they’ll use him mainly as a figurehead for whatever political tactics they find the most attractive anyway, so he’s not going to influence their real political practice.

They might head his non-academic political proclamations, but those tend to be quite different in style and tone. They are, first of all, often rather clear in meaning, without the Hegel-Lacanian jargon. They are, secondly, often uber-critical in a way that doesn’t promote any particular political agenda. They take an “everybody’s wrong” “the left is just as bad as the right” form that while not particularly fruitful can’t be very pernicious precisely because it doesn’t sway action in any direction, leaving people to do what they would have anyway.

So, I doubt he has any impact at all at the end of the day. If he does have a moral and political impact, it might even be a somewhat positive one, the one a lot of comedy, even comedy that’s mediocre in its funniness has: the feeling of relief produced when someone says what they’re not supposed to say, is contrary for the sake of contrariness, and makes us take ourselves a little less seriously.

But as I made clear, I don’t think highly of his comedic skill (so the Colbert point needn’t have been made, even though Colbert is also mediocre). One reason I don’t think his comedy is successful is because it should make us take ourselves less seriously, see the Zizek in us. Instead it does the opposite, it makes us all become more serious, more convinced we are the untainted true Knights of Knowledge, and declare moral crusades on the grave threat to truth and justice that this fat, sloppy clown somehow poses.

What MPAVictoria 33 said. And also: Stephen Colbert is NOT a sloppy journalist (re 24). He is actually both an excellent journalist and comedian and most everything he does is well researched. I have to take issue with the idea that comedians somehow can get away with sloppiness. If anything, the opposite is true: good political comedy or satire requires a great deal of hard-headed research. A good court jester doesn’t make up stuff. It is precisely in certain academic circles, as well as in conventional political punditry, that sloppiness is considered excusable as long as the lingo sounds right.

MPAVictoria,

By funny coincidence, like you, I also believe I’m 100% right. I often believe this about my beliefs. Strange how that works.

“Mediocre” isn’t bad. In fact, in a world where almost everything is immensely disappointing, mediocre’s pretty good. Colbert has had some great moments. I know them all, because I’ve watched every episode. I’m always amused. And I also usually disappointed. Primarily because, although he’s a great writer and performer, Colbert always plays it safe. Not as safe as John Stewart, but safe. He picks only easy targets, and makes only easy points. Every critical joke is one tailored to receive huge bursts of applause and shouts of “brilliant” from a very clearly defined audience.

My one strong exception to this is when he took the risk of directing his comedy to a different audience: his performance before Congress about undocumented workers was truly brilliant.

Holbo:

“…he’s the Elmer Gantry of Lacanianism. But that’s Lacan!”

Word.

“I could have chosen to love Zizek for his rather unique, buffo qualities. Instead, I obviously chose to be aggravated.”

At one point, I’d hoped he’d hone the buffo and become a truly good popular, critical comedian. He’s not as good a joke-writer or performer as Colbert, but I appreciate that he takes risks and he attacks unpopular targets, such as attacking the left from the left. But he instead he keeps cranking out utterly worthless books and continues to play to his own stupid sucking up audience.

So rather than appreciate his buffoonery, I’ve tried just not caring about him. It has worked well overall, except that I can’t not care about the fact that his critics care too much about him. The Zizek’s too much with us, wasting our powers.

In the course of 30+ years spent working in an academic library, I came to think of myself as a laborer in one of the last bastions of the last of the great Nineteenth Century taxonomies. In the early days, when I first realized the nature of the project I was contributing to, I was amused the way young people sometimes are when trapped in something with a great deal of etiquette but no visible horizons. Near the end of my career, I was much more ambivalent.

There’s no doubt that scholarship is something of a stiff-collar occupation, and sometimes more sensitive scholars bristle at the idea, when expressed by others, that their works are plodding, unimaginative, never manage to catch the iridescence of life in their well-considered nets…etc., etc. An unkind characterization this, if not always inaccurate. That unkindness is what irritates me about Zizek, as it irritated English philosophers about Nietzsche and Sartre. It’s not that he’s a parlor Stalinist — he’s far too capricious for that, or at least he’s far more capricious than any other parlor Stalinist I ever personally encountered — it’s that he’s disrespectful of things that ought to be respected, however plodding they may sometimes seem.

There really is something grand about, for example, the subject thesaurus of the Library of Congress, struggling mightily — in the days before computers — to keep up with the ever-changing map of human knowledge. The idea that once we get the last piece of evidence, the last chain of inference tested and nailed down, we’ll finally be fit to govern our divine inheritance ought sometimes to be mocked, but gently, never with the brutality our own impatience can tempt us to indulge in. The earnest striving of scholars is admirable, I think, even when a particular scholar forgets where he’s going.

@35 “It needn’t be either/or”

True, which is why I only questioned the charged, not claimed it was false. My “overdetermined condemnation” comment was meant to apply here, too.

MPAV,

The tone of that comment may not have gone through. I was being silly and jokingly trying to mimic what I (maybe falsely?) took to be your fragile feelings about poor Colbert. You’re welcome to continue repeating that I’m wrong and in what percentage. My feelings won’t be hurt.

100% wrong. 0% right.

Das Wahre ist das Ganze :)

“The tone of that comment may not have gone through. I was being silly and jokingly trying to mimic what I (maybe falsely?) took to be your fragile feelings about poor Colbert.”

I would have thought the “100% wrong, 0% right” would have made it clear I was joking. (Though I do disagree with you). I guess we both need our humorous intent meters recalabrated.

“I guess we both need our humorous intent meters recalabrated.”

I suppose, but it’s probably futile. Humorous Intent Meters are doomed to fail, since they must always calibrated to our own sense of humor, when they’re needed precisely when others don’t share our sense of humor. :)

Since theory with a capital T has been brought up, I can’t help trying to figure out something I’ve been curious about for ages. Could someone clarify more narrowly what people mean by that term? In philosophy the use of “theory” without any further specification means theory in the abstract, and so it would imply any kind of theory whatsoever, not the kind exclusive to humanities departments.

But when in other areas of the humanities people use it with the capital T it seems to indicate a paradoxically broad and specific class: broad because it might cover literary, philosophical, sociological, psychoanalytic, even mathematical and scientific theorists, but narrow because there’s pretty short list of usual suspects like Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, etc. Do all philosophers count as “Theory”? Do all theoreticians in the humanities and social sciences? If so, why is it so narrow in its focus on a few big names? What is theory in contrast to, since it’s not obvious that it designates the opposite of “praxis”?

I’m also curious if anyone knows where this usage came from. Who started it and when? What was the practical historical reason for repurposing such a generic term for such a narrow category in a narrow set of academic fields?

@52. We can but try.

Anon,
I think structure goes with praxis in the relationship that you seem to mean.

I think theory entered English in late Eluzabethan and Jacobean England, introduced from the Italian by John Florio. Florio’s use was broader, but commonest usage became more narrow in the more scientific sense you refer to. In history you tend to talk if historiography rather than theory. In anthropology you have ethnology (which is nomothetic theory if I remember rightly, and common to France because most French anthropologists of a degree in philosophy before going to anthropology), and ethnography (which is ideographic observations).

I think Karl Popper attempted to limit what the word ‘theory’ could apply to ie. Einstein’s work was legitimate theory but Marx’s work was not. The critical theorists obviously did not agree with this.

There are big names in theory who are generally associated with big almost all-encompassing theories, but there gas been criticism that there is too much distance between the big theories and the everyday observations most researcher’s work will generate. Something called Middle Range Theory is meant to fill the gap here I think.

John Holbo,
Thanks, will have a look.

“Since theory with a capital T has been brought up, I can’t help trying to figure out something I’ve been curious about for ages. Could someone clarify more narrowly what people mean by that term? In philosophy the use of “theory” without any further specification means theory in the abstract, and so it would imply any kind of theory whatsoever, not the kind exclusive to humanities departments.”

Well, there’s the inane semantic quibbling about the difference between “theories” and “hypotheses” that seems to come mostly from pedants latching on to a distinction they learned in their 6th grade science or math class or wherever and attaching some essential significance to a stipulated boundary between an axiom, a hypothesis, a theory, a conjecture, &etc; but that seems to be a different fight which has its roots in the reification of somethng Karl Popper or some other outdated philosophers of science once glommed on to. I think that’s different.

The “theory” vs “philosophy” split is also a sort of shibboleth for the so called “continental” vs “analytic” split and there reflects differences in canon, style, sociology, geography,discipline &etc. Those etceteras each have their own logic to them.

Canonically, you’ve got a sort of Kant/Hegel/Marx/Nietzsche/Freud vs Kant/Bentham/Mill/Russell or whatever thing going on, which seems sort of projected through something like the Frankfurt Institute vs the Vienna School. Different conceptions of the “history of philosophy” and what’s important (Russell or Popper or whomever on all those stupid illogical nonsense speakers vs Marx or Nietzsche or whomever on all those Bourgeois thinkers and English psychologists).

On that line the “theory” part comes from “Critical Theory” as the whole “eleventh thesis” approach to “philosophy” with the attached “Marxist” concern for history, sociology, &etc. WW1 liberal secularists as opposed to WW2 getting-to-be-post- Marxists.

But “Critical Theory” has its own ambiguity between “Frankfurt School” and “French Theory” or “Literary Theory,” with the Frankfurt School vs Paris ’68 as sort of separate organizing principles.

There’s also the institutional angle with “theory” being the in-discipline philosophy-of-insert-liberal-art-here vs “philosophy” being the out-discipline study. Political Theory vs Political Philosophy, Literary Theory vs Aesthetics, Historiography vs Philosophy of History, &etc.

“Theorists” are operate within the environment of their field and “philosophers” operate with the environment of mainline Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics (those are the “big three,” right?). “Theorists” are typically concerned more with mere texts like those simple “historians of philosophy” because their job is to reproduce knowledge of the foundational disciplinary canon while philosophers are much more like social scientists, doing “real” work and not just studying old books.

In-discipline “theory” each have their own histories. Cf. John Gunnell’s Descent of Political Theory, which tells a tale of Weimar German emigres vs 1950s behavioralists. or John(?) McCumber’s Philosophy in the Ditch, which has a similar something or other vs 1950s behavioralists thing going on. I don’t know where you find accounts of the decline of social theory in Sociology or Political Economy in Economics or the split between harder vs softer anthropology or however that gets divided up, but I assume they exist.

Those discipline specific kind of stories which situate the “ghettoization” of Political Theorists or Continental Philosophers of Social Theorists within their disciplines (intra-discipline divides) combine with the inter-disciplinary split. So “philosophy” aligns with “Political Science” and “Sociology” &etc proper with their serious veneer of scientificity (we use statistics and randomized experiments! It’s empirically sound!) while “theory” aligns aligns with “Political Theory” and “Social Theory” and “Literary Theory as the marginal subfields of the discipline proper (they just read books and make stuff up! But hey, somebody needs to teach “the classics” for our intro classes.)

So there’s a lot of stuff going on that all overlaps in ways that give the illusion of coherence but it’s really a big mess underneath, with “theory” meaning something like non-philosophers (but maybe some philosophers) who do philosophy but it’s not really philosophy – because it’s Marxian or is it Nietzschean or is it Derridian or is it German or is it French or is it History of Philosophy – and because it’s not Analytic or is it Scientific or is it Logical or is it English or is it just from someone not in a philosophy department…

crooked timber: come for the jokes, stay for the meta-deconstructionalist arguments about the jokes.

39: ““Mediocre” isn’t bad. In fact, in a world where almost everything is immensely disappointing, mediocre’s pretty good.”

Disagree. Mediocre is a relative assessment. What you are saying is that Colbert is one of very few comedians who don’t totally suck. That actually makes him an outstanding comedian, not a mediocre one.

Btw it is nowadays common (at least in the US) to claim excellence for everything. People don’t seem to realize that by definition, it’s impossible for everybody to be excellent. Closely related is the lack of understanding of the fact that only a minority can be “above average” (for a normally distributed trait). I hear these confusions a lot in the context of education (as in “we need more excellent teachers”, “merely average is not enough”, “all our faculty are excellent”).

John Holbo @ 67

We noticed, but thought it best to let you and your muse discuss it in private — in the hope, perhaps, that you might someday be willing grant us the same indulgence.

*I apologize for the redundant, “dinosaur that could not fly”. If I dreamt a fire-breathing reptilian that could fly, I would have classified it as a dragon.

*I apologize for the redundant, “dinosaur that could not fly”.

Ah, but “dinosaur that could not fly” is not actually redundant; it just means a non-avian dinosaur. (The dinosaurs which could fly are the only ones which survived the K-T extinction.)

Peter Erwin @73:
1. I suppose it would have been more understandable to say I apologize for the redundant, “fire-breathing…dinosaur that could not fly”, since none of the flying dinosaurs is known to have breathed fire. (I will not accept references to Duane Gish as a source of reliable information about dinosaurs.)

2. It was my dream. You do not get to define the parameters.

“because their job is to reproduce knowledge of the foundational disciplinary canon”

I have no idea how anyone thinks this is a definition of what “theorists” do.