tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post6272804795826549104..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: An untimely essay arrives just in timeCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-50436265653119923662007-03-20T10:59:00.000-04:002007-03-20T10:59:00.000-04:00For more on Harrisian affinities, see: Harris, Jon...For more on Harrisian affinities, see: Harris, Jonathan Gil. "Cleopatran Affinities: Hélène Cixous, Margaret Cavendish, and the Writing of Dialogic Matter." _The Impact of Feminism on English Renaissance Studies._ Ed. Dympna Callaghan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.<BR/><BR/>(Hi, Gil!)<BR/><BR/>Haven't read through the EMS yet -- mea culpa as an early modernist -- but will return later better read and better informed (a promise and a threat). At the moment, am taking a slight break from a morning of Anti-Oedipus and preparing myself to get back into it. (Hi, dogboy!) Will respond to desiring machines, and more, when I get a chance.Liza Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05105726464955172469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-3861233079126207242007-03-20T10:14:00.000-04:002007-03-20T10:14:00.000-04:00Good post, n50. Having looked over Harris's artic...Good post, n50. Having looked over Harris's article, though, it's clear he's critiquing not historians and archaeologists with shovels, but rather a certain kind of historicism and a (watered-down) Foucaultian archaeology of knowledge that he thinks has become dominant in early modern literary studies. <BR/><BR/>Whether he's right about that, I don't know. What I'm interested in is how, at the end of his article, Harris suggests "affinities" between models of anachronism in queer theory, post-colonial ethnography, and the history of science (he also refers to Michel Serres in the excerpted passage). And the trans-disciplinary affinities he teases out, it seems, are possible because all these models of anachronism are themselves theorizations of trans-temporal "affinity."<BR/><BR/>I'm rather drawn to this emphasis on affinity. But part of me wants to hear more about Harris's idea of "affinity" and how he theorizes it. Is "affinity" just a resemblance between two supposedly different entities? If so, that doesn't seem to do much more than licence a kind of arbitrary "oh, that reminds me" gesture on the part of the critic (Ghosh speaks about anachronism? oh, that reminds me, so does Serres!).<BR/><BR/>Or might "affinity" suggest - as it certainly does to me - an element of motion impelled by desire? What might that do to ideas of historical AND disciplinary difference? How might "affinity" allow us to reimagine both temporal and disciplinary identities not as fixed points, but as protean desiring machines that are perpetually becoming-other, even when they think they aren't?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-39352104538399119812007-03-20T08:42:00.000-04:002007-03-20T08:42:00.000-04:00n50, you have more than done your duty. Thanks for...n50, you have more than done your duty. Thanks for your comments.<BR/><BR/>In Gil Harris's defense I do think he is arguing against a certain, suddenly dominant strand in early modern literary studies that we just don't have dominating in medieval studies. I also think medievalists are a bit less prone to seeing other disciplines (history, archeology, etc) as ensconced in ways of perceiving the past (and past/present border) that are opposed. Not that we all form some kind of happy or monolithic amalgam, by any means.<BR/><BR/>But your point is well taken: we do out of convenience have this way of constructing a unity in Those We Argue Against when in fact no such unity -- or coherence -- often exists. But supposing such opposition does make our own arguments seem the more urgent. RE: early modern studies and time, though, I'm inclined to take Harris's word, since he does know the field so well. It seems to me that early modern studies is fighting battles about what "history" and "historicism" are that medieval studies laid to rest in the 1990s.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-36847697545226414332007-03-20T03:55:00.000-04:002007-03-20T03:55:00.000-04:00Wow, I suddenly get a little time to have a quick ...Wow, I suddenly get a little time to have a quick look at the blog while C2 gets ready for school and you have so much time you blog for the US! <BR/><BR/>From just reading the entry here (and not all the links) I cannot help but think that historians' and archaeologists' perceptions of time are being grossly oversimplified here. OK the text says <I>historicist</I> but that is just the poor woman's historian - no?<BR/><BR/>This brings me to my point. Why when an argument is being advanced about different perceptions of time are opposing arguements institutionalised by being associated with opposing disciplines or departments or institutions which are then seen in dichotomic opposition (as in history v literature). There is a lot of literature on this mode of argument (and admirably it is one that Dinshaw avoids almost totally).<BR/><BR/>Linking it to another of your recent posts - I would suggest this is a facet of the traditional academic desire for the heroic triumph of the ego which leaves us all wondering whether we are really as self-confident as we are supposed to be. In reality I suspect we are all a little bit confident and a little bit lost, just as historians do debate the nature of time and the value of anachronism (see many voices in the huge field of public history for example) as much as do some literary types. Dichotomies are useful heuristic devices for structuring ideas - but when those ideas get personified they decline into the modern academic equivalent of jousting (as in your real man piece).<BR/><BR/>OK - so I have managed to comment on 3 posts in one - have I done my duty as a de-lurking reader for a couple of days?<BR/>N50<BR/><BR/>n50Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com