tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3618994008317021796..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: How We Ought to Say It: Style as Mood, Matrixial Smile, Frutiful Remainder, Generative Principle, and Historical MethodCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-50383420814181334502010-11-01T08:23:08.243-04:002010-11-01T08:23:08.243-04:00This last two-part comment makes me very angry, pa...This last two-part comment makes me very angry, partly because I have an anger problem but largely because of its thorough disingenuity. N.B. the last sentence. We like talking, but only if you talk about the things we're interested in, in the way we want to talk about them, and don't raise problematic issues questioning our cherished origin myths. <br /><br />The point that attacks on Centres for Medieval Studies (CsMS) are manifestations of post 9/11 neo-conservatism defies belief. My own experience of CsMS is very much that they have a pronounced tendency to be the most conservative, intellectually uninteresting, theoretically monoglot, neophobic places imaginable - precisely because of the meaninglessness of their form of 'interdisciplinarity' which is a smoke-screen for simple bog-standard cultural history. And you can't do that with any theoretical approach other than bland historicism. That is why we have allegedly 'moved on' from talking about it (in other words, 'be quiet already, we don't want to talk about that any more'; note the implicit truth claim - you are out of date). <br /><br />But I shall muse further on the issues raised in this post and its reponses on my own blog - including the two-parter above if I think I can do so without losing my job!Historian on the Edgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-7269517655726102812010-10-26T17:27:54.178-04:002010-10-26T17:27:54.178-04:00[continuing]
History and historicism are not the ...[continuing]<br /><br />History and historicism are not the same thing. Historicism can sometimes be ‘bad History’ – a kind of antiquarian collecting of historical facts slapped on to something else with little understanding of the conceptual frameworks and debates informing and generating those ‘facts’. Absolutely agree, 100%, with Guy Halsall there. But surely so much new historicism has moved well past that (Paul Strohm, Marion Turner and many others). History as a discipline is also often treated as oppressive and reactionary – not just by archaeologists (rejecting a role as the ‘handmaidens of History’) but also by literary scholars not wanting to be ‘fucked over’ by History (Sylvia Federico) – (and note the gendering of these arguments). Why is History regarded as the master narrative controlling, oppressing and defining all others? I find this absolutely the most fascinating question of all. I need Benjamin Owain Poore here. We need some Psychology – because my gut feeling is that our simultaneous desire for, and hatred of, History has deeply engrained roots. These are certainly not institutional … Literature has much more ancient standing in the Academy than History, and English (and Classics) Departments the world over are famed for their grandeur. There is something about the fact that we all have experienced histories, that we can never quite see the future, that makes History and historicism so compulsory, compulsive … or at least so much the easy way out…<br /><br />When teaching (as opposed to researching) in a discursive and interdisciplinary context it is difficult to balance theory and methodology and practice and the acquisition of basic knowledge and …. all in one two hour class! We try to do that by a structured combination of single-discipline, multi-discipline and finally interdisciplinary seminars – so that the different stages and approaches of dealing with (for example) an object, a text and bringing them together are explicitly (and indeed artificially) laid out as separate steps. The students are encouraged to criticise each step and their bringing together. They often balk at this. Familiar with interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary, undergraduate degrees (especially in the US) they don’t quite see why we don’t just lump everything together and get on with it. I sympathise, but I still think that theories, methodologies and practices are better learnt one by one and then combined. And this is not because they are bounded by disciplines so much as because – if you are dealing with say Marx – you need to give him some space and time before moving on to Weber. I will not say the results are perfect but there are some spectacular successes. A few alumni do indeed meet the criteria of being recognised as expert in two or more disciplines, but that that is not terribly important (to them or to others). Input does not have to have measurable equivalent output. Also nobody is forced to do any of this. We run single-subject MA programmes which are just as popular as the interdisciplinary one. Hybrid and constantly changing it is surely hard to define either the students or the staff at interdisciplinary centres by any collective scholarly stance other than a willingness to talk ….. and to move on ;-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-40067972553001144682010-10-26T17:00:04.063-04:002010-10-26T17:00:04.063-04:00[continuing]
History and historicism are not the ...[continuing]<br /><br />History and historicism are not the same thing. Historicism can sometimes be ‘bad History’ – a kind of antiquarian collecting of historical facts slapped on to something else with little understanding of the conceptual frameworks and debates informing and generating those ‘facts’. Absolutely agree, 100%, with Guy Halsall there. But surely so much new historicism has moved well past that (Paul Strohm, Marion Turner and many others). History as a discipline is also often treated as oppressive and reactionary – not just by archaeologists (rejecting a role as the ‘handmaidens of History’) but also by literary scholars not wanting to be ‘fucked over’ by History (Sylvia Federico) – (and note the gendering of these arguments). Why is History regarded as the master narrative controlling, oppressing and defining all others? I find this absolutely the most fascinating question of all. I need Benjamin Owain Poore here. We need some Psychology – because my gut feeling is that our simultaneous desire for, and hatred of, History has deeply engrained roots. These are certainly not institutional … Literature has much more ancient standing in the Academy than History, and English (and Classics) Departments the world over are famed for their grandeur. There is something about the fact that we all have experienced histories, that we can never quite see the future, that makes History and historicism so compulsory, compulsive … or at least so much the easy way out…<br /><br />When teaching (as opposed to researching) in a discursive and interdisciplinary context it is difficult to balance theory and methodology and practice and the acquisition of basic knowledge and …. all in one two hour class! We try to do that by a structured combination of single-discipline, multi-discipline and finally interdisciplinary seminars – so that the different stages and approaches of dealing with (for example) an object, a text and bringing them together are explicitly (and indeed artificially) laid out as separate steps. The students are encouraged to criticise each step and their bringing together. They often balk at this. Familiar with interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary, undergraduate degrees (especially in the US) they don’t quite see why we don’t just lump everything together and get on with it. I sympathise, but I still think that theories, methodologies and practices are better learnt one by one and then combined. And this is not because they are bounded by disciplines so much as because – if you are dealing with say Marx – you need to give him some space and time before moving on to Weber. I will not say the results are perfect but there are some spectacular successes. A few alumni do indeed meet the criteria of being recognised as expert in two or more disciplines, but that that is not terribly important (to them or to others). Input does not have to have measurable equivalent output. Also nobody is forced to do any of this. We run single-subject MA programmes which are just as popular as the interdisciplinary one. Hybrid and constantly changing it is surely hard to define either the students or the staff at interdisciplinary centres by any collective scholarly stance other than a willingness to talk ….. and to move on ;-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-59618548672369949842010-10-26T16:57:54.901-04:002010-10-26T16:57:54.901-04:00There are many ways of skinning a cat. Though cats...There are many ways of skinning a cat. Though cats are so dear to my heart I would never want to try.<br /><br />Interdisciplinarity, not multi-disciplinarity, is about inter-connectedness, interaction, interfaces and interchange. At its heart lies conversation and a willingness to be open to the ideas and practices of others, whether you agree with them or not, whether you understand them or not, whether you are expert in them or not. It is hard to agree with any one definition of interdisciplinarity, but particularly not a definition that centres it on one person and their skills and reputation. The whole point, I think, is that there is no right way of doing ‘it’, that it defies definition, that it is collaborative and iterative, that it exceeds and constantly crosses institutional boundaries. Some people enjoy such conversation, pilgrimage and movement, others do not. The difference is often personal as much as institutional. There are hedgehogs and foxes, raptors and prey in all disciplines and all walks of life. There are those who (knowing themselves) choose to stick to what they know and to become expert in it (to plough a straight and narrow furrough), and those who choose to confront what they see as their limitations. Then of course there are those who simply blindly stumble from day to day. Indeed we are all a little of each of those, aren’t we? Institutions can choose how they foster and reward these different attributes, but surely they can (or should) never define our sense of ourselves – intellectually or in other ways. But when we are talking of rewards my personal experience is quite the opposite of Halsall’s. Single-subject applications and single-authored publications are much easier to get public funding for and attract much higher kudos in the profession than interdisciplinary and collaborative ones. So – by a contrary route – I end up agreeing with him – the Academy pays lipservice to interdisciplinarity but rarely rewards or practices it. Conservatism is innate and widespread in our professions, and the contemporary climate is sympathetic to attacks on liberal interdisciplinarity. The recent attacks on Centres for Medieval Studies, for example, at the New Chaucer Society in New York could be read as just a faint reflection of the neo-conservatism that has swept the western world since 9/11 – let’s re-erect the boundaries, stick to what we know, keep ourselves safe, keep the other out, get back to basics. Conversely – it has to be said - Eileen Joy’s constantly reflective and questioning, future-oriented work, helps keep my dismay at such single-subject posturing at bay.<br /><br />Interdisciplinarity can and indeed should be theoretically informed. Halsall’s crie de coeur seems really to be a demand for practice which is more theoretically centred – and the History department at York where he is based and where he studied has traditionally been one of the more theoretically focussed in UK. Theory is essential to what we do. Whether made explicit or not, we cannot organise our thoughts or make an argument or sustain an interpretation of anything without some understanding of the conceptual framework we use. So theory is not opposed to interdisciplinarity, or any form of scholarship (even the narrowly descriptive) it has to be a part of it. As Judith Bennett has written, however, theory can be problematic (History Matters). It is problematic the way that theory, is so often presented as dominated by great white male gods whose words are treated as scriptural truths. Her middle range theory – theory which makes use of empirical practice – seems like a better, less hierarchical, more open and more scholarly way to go. Karl Steel’s willingness to criticise at least some great theoreticians (such as Zizek) seems entirely admirable to me. <br /><br />[to be continued]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-18274617849480132012010-10-26T09:26:35.139-04:002010-10-26T09:26:35.139-04:00Thanks for this rich post, Eileen, and for raising...Thanks for this rich post, Eileen, and for raising so many (intractable?) questions. <br /><br />A stumbling block for me is Halsall's argument that, on the one hand, disciplines are not all that unified in their methodologies and ambits, and on the other: <br /><br />"The true interdisciplinary scholar . . . actually works and publishes in two different disciplines, being recognised as a fellow-practitioner in both. This person is as rare as claims to interdisciplinarity are common but there are some."<br /><br />Working in two disciplines at once as the ideal of doing interdisciplinary work assumes that there are coherent disciplines in which to do this simultaneous labor, but if we take seriously the observation that disciplines lack an articulable internal coherence, what working in two at once might also yield is simply a demonstration of that inherent messiness, an overlap in fields that actually were never all that separate in their practice.<br /><br />Obviously one can make generalities about how history is practiced as opposed to literature or philosophy or archeology. But that's what they'll remain, generalities. They will never be true for how specific scholars conduct work. "The discipline" becomes a knotting together of disparate practices that often have very little to say to each other. In other words, it is conceivable to be interdisciplinary within a single discipline, isn't it?<br /><br />So maybe what we're faced with here is the insufficiency of disciplinary designations rather than a problem with interdisciplinarity per se. I know we're stuck with disciplines out of long habit, and they are comfortable, familiar; but when they are assumed to be self-evident and highly effective at differentiation of research modes, they become a problem. As Judith Butler never said, discipline is a performance more than a pregiven, immutable reality.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-7796483949943872542010-10-25T17:06:11.174-04:002010-10-25T17:06:11.174-04:00Jonathan: there may actually be no connection betw...Jonathan: there may actually be no connection between my comments on Guy Halsall's post and BABEL's panel on style at last May's Kalamazoo Congress--they were just both on my mind yesterday, and I was wondering how style might fit in to conversations about disciplinary concerns [including what we think we mean by "interdisciplinary"] vis-a-vis "proper" objects, genres, methodologies, theories, etc.<br /><br />I likely stand corrected on what I was saying about "primary" materials--I am not an historian, and I was mainly just trying to convey the point that a good historicist, like Halsall, works with documentary evidence, which I take to be an artifact from the period itself, whether charter or grave-goods. I get the point that charters or any cultural artifact have a certain amount of "literariness" built in to them: they are not unvarnished "facts." I invoked the term "primary" to mean something like: the historical artifact itself, the object, whatever that object might be. So, in literary studies, medieval text themselves are the primary objects [not matter how over-written, rhetorical, artificed, etc.] and any writing on those texts is secondary, including modern scholarship. So I obviously muddled things there a bit.<br /><br />More intriguing to me is what Halsall seemingly left out of his remarks: if he is interested, for example, in engagement at the level of the development of theory [more so than he is interested in so-called interdisciplinary work that always leads to cultural history of a certain stripe], then what kind of theory is he interested in seeing better engaged, better developed, etc.? I just wish he had fleshed out that point a bit more with some specific examples.<br /><br />I also think it's just been too easy over the past few years or so to bash interdisciplinarity--Halsall is not wrong that, in many instances, it operates as a sort of cover-term for work that just goes along in the same way it always has, especially within certain literary-historical paradigms for research within the humanities, and if your litmus test for "true" interdisciplinarity is a scholar who publishes in more than one distinct discipline [each of which has its own methodological protocols, intellectual histories, journals, and the like], then it's too easy to make the case that most people aren't really doing "real" interdisicplinary work, but that may be drawing the definition too narrowly and leaving out a whole lot of scholarship that, although it may be undertaken/written within the professional confines of one discipline primarily, it still bears the deep imprint of work and thought carried out in other disciplines and does not necessarily lead to disciplinary business as usual. Jeffrey's book "Medieval Identity Machines" is a good example of this vis-a-vis critical temporality studies, which move back and forth across multiple disciplines, humanistic and scientific. Another example might be something like Karen Barad's book "Meeting the Universe Halfway" [feminist studies meets physics], and there are lots of other examples. This partly gets at Halsall's point re: theoretical engagements because I think we should actually think of interdisciplinarity as operating in more than one way, from borrowing structures of thought/ways of seeing from other disciplines, to borrowing their actual objects, to two persons from two different fields actually conducting and writing up research together [a cultural geographer and a sociologist, for example, writing about community formation in alluvial areas in premodern China], and so on and so forth. I just don't think interdisciplinarity, as a term or practice, has just one [successful] model, but many, with different scholarly impacts. The sciences are actually better at this than the humanists, in some way--for example, the work undertaken in collaboration between chemists and cybernetic specialists to create biological nano-technologies. Etc. Etc.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-67501637909795593242010-10-25T15:35:06.262-04:002010-10-25T15:35:06.262-04:00I'm glad you responded to Guy, because he seem...I'm glad you responded to Guy, because he seems to have posted that in part due to my invoking you in my post about his original presentation of the paper in such a way as to make him think I'd misunderstood him... Now the circle is closed. I'm afraid I rather lose the connection between his piece and your session (although since Kathleen Biddick has also, I believe, worked with archaeological material I expect there could be several). I may have missed it because of having seen one thing that we still don't agree on come up again, though, which was where you write:<br /><br /><i>"primary," documentary-type evidence [grave-goods, other archaeological evidence, charters, letter collections, and the like] while also looking at items like literary texts...</i><br /><br />Charters and letters are IMO in the second category. Yes, an archaeological object was a statement when it was made, and continues to say something to us, but its message is material, and constructed in the most direct sense first. Charters (especially given my most recent paper, which I stuck up on academia.edu and will blog) are often narratives intended to, if not mislead at least adjust the truth, and letters, even more, present the writer as author. I can't draw a line between these and literary texts (especially when the scholarship that gets posted here so often has a determination towards literary style [ah! there we are!] itself) but I can draw one between them and archæological goods; the stuff in the ground is primary evidence, unprocessed, but the texts are already selected, rebuilt, processed, framed and directed, and thus inherently secondary (in terms of process, of course, not precedence). Don't you think so too? I guess not but I don't quite get why.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com