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lunadelcorvoOK, fair warning: this is going to be long, rambling, and likely really nerdish. You've been warned.
I have been in this theory class for half a semester now (egads! Half a semester - Ack! But I digress...) and I find that I have gone from enthused, to intimidated, to confused, to exasperated. I have two gripes here, and while this will make me few friends among Humanities folks, I know at least one prof who seems to agree with me. (And, no, it's not the one I am married to!)
One issue I have is all these theories, and I use the term VERY loosely. Now, some of them seem to be of sufficient weight and development to deserve the term. Like it or not (I happen to think it's largely malarky, myself), Freud's psychoanalytic theory qualifies as a 'theory.' Fair enough. Having trotted it out time and time again, it's obvious I think Foucault's theory of power structures also qualifies. Well and good. However, I am increasingly finding that there are a host of 'theories' being bandied about that frankly, to me, seem to be only so much ado about nothing.
Biography? Iconography? These need to be theories??? Folks, if we have gotten to a graduate level of study and we are not automatically looking for symbols and icons on the surface of the text we have far bigger problems here. If someone is not, as a matter of course, looking behind, around, and underneath a work, be it art or text, at the background, context and history of both the artist/author and the subject, they need to get the hell out of grad school, and go back to basics. WTF? These things are just the most elementary principles to scholarly reading! We need a theory for this?
The professor with whom I discussed this mentioned "textual liminality." I may sound like a temperamental old codger, but back in my day, we called that a transition, and it was just one of those things that you recognized as you went along, like plot, and character. Now it needs an incomprehensible buzzword, and volumes of analysis. It needs to be a whole literary theory. WTF is wrong with "transition?"
Said professor echoed my suspicions that this tendency in Humanities to get all buzzword-happy reflects a perceived need to keep up with the hard sciences. Somehow, I think the Humanities, not so much in the sense of the individual disciplines themselves, but the Interdisciplinary Humanities as an entity of itself, feels that it needs to play on the same field as physics, or chemistry, and therefore needs lots of theoretical models, rubrics, metrics, charts and graphs. Personally, I think this is idiotic, and serves to undermine one of the most salient points of the humanities: "human."
If the Humanities have a relevance (and I think they most certainly do) it is in that they contend with all the things that don't fit the metrics of the hard sciences. Humanities are not about metrics, and in times like these, making the humanities as remote, cold, clinical and incomprehensible as the hard sciences (whom I regularly hear decrying the lack of understanding and interest among the public), is doing nothing to further it as a field of study. By reaching so desperately for the same kind of legitimacy as the hard sciences, the Humanities fail not only in that arena, but they weaken themselves in their own arena.
Which brings me (sort of) to me second gripe. It's bad enough we have all these so-called theories being trotted out as though they were somehow revolutionary, esoteric or special, and not merely the natural approach of the thoughtful scholar. There seems to be, at this school, at least, an atmosphere of free-for-all with the application of said theories. It's rather like intellectual Garanimals, and it makes me insane.
There seems to be no rigor, no discipline, no thoughtfulness in what theories are applied to what. It's like some mix-and-match grab-bag, with no regard for whether some theoretical model actually HAS any applicability to a work, text, or event. No contemplation of whether this is a valid approach, whether this will produce something that is in some way useful, informative, helpful, or sound. And the consideration of the context? Unless that's the 'theory' de jour, context goes right out the window.
The results are, I think, the real reason that other fields look to the Humanities and chuckle. Hell, I'm IN the Humanities and I shake my head in bewilderment. Feminist reading of Giotto? Are you serious? Freudian analysis of the Heptameron? Er, OK.... And you wonder why other disciplines don't take you seriously? What's even worse than the anything-goes approach, is that anyone can do it. (And they do, all the time!) I can do a Freudian analysis of anything, whether I know a damned thing about it or not (in some cases it seems preferable that I *don't* know anything about it). But that doesn't mean it's sound scholarship, it just means I have given myself permission to blather on about something without knowing WTF I am really talking about. And to anyone who does know something about, say, Giotto, I look like an idiot (as did the poor gal who had to present a feminist reading of Giotto). But that's OK, because I applied a theory!
That may be the biggest problem with trying to set up all these theories - once you have them, and expound on them, and codify them, you're gonna want to use them. If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. If you give a scholar a theory, he's going to want to apply it to everything, and be taken seriously. And as we know, that way lies madness. Honestly, I don't think the Humanities PhD is for me. Certainly not at this school, anyway*. And if I am going to leave, I'm going to find a PhD in something that I agree with, like History.
*Don't even get me started on the linguistics professor talking about aliens building the pyramids, crop circles, and reading auras. The professor with whom I had this discussion confirmed at least that guy is a known loon. But his course is required for the Humanities PhD.... *facepalm*
(Edited with cut, because it got even longer than I expected!)
(Edited again to add This Article, which at least brings up much of what I am saying here... So I'm not alone in my frustration! Good to know!)
I have been in this theory class for half a semester now (egads! Half a semester - Ack! But I digress...) and I find that I have gone from enthused, to intimidated, to confused, to exasperated. I have two gripes here, and while this will make me few friends among Humanities folks, I know at least one prof who seems to agree with me. (And, no, it's not the one I am married to!)
One issue I have is all these theories, and I use the term VERY loosely. Now, some of them seem to be of sufficient weight and development to deserve the term. Like it or not (I happen to think it's largely malarky, myself), Freud's psychoanalytic theory qualifies as a 'theory.' Fair enough. Having trotted it out time and time again, it's obvious I think Foucault's theory of power structures also qualifies. Well and good. However, I am increasingly finding that there are a host of 'theories' being bandied about that frankly, to me, seem to be only so much ado about nothing.
Biography? Iconography? These need to be theories??? Folks, if we have gotten to a graduate level of study and we are not automatically looking for symbols and icons on the surface of the text we have far bigger problems here. If someone is not, as a matter of course, looking behind, around, and underneath a work, be it art or text, at the background, context and history of both the artist/author and the subject, they need to get the hell out of grad school, and go back to basics. WTF? These things are just the most elementary principles to scholarly reading! We need a theory for this?
The professor with whom I discussed this mentioned "textual liminality." I may sound like a temperamental old codger, but back in my day, we called that a transition, and it was just one of those things that you recognized as you went along, like plot, and character. Now it needs an incomprehensible buzzword, and volumes of analysis. It needs to be a whole literary theory. WTF is wrong with "transition?"
Said professor echoed my suspicions that this tendency in Humanities to get all buzzword-happy reflects a perceived need to keep up with the hard sciences. Somehow, I think the Humanities, not so much in the sense of the individual disciplines themselves, but the Interdisciplinary Humanities as an entity of itself, feels that it needs to play on the same field as physics, or chemistry, and therefore needs lots of theoretical models, rubrics, metrics, charts and graphs. Personally, I think this is idiotic, and serves to undermine one of the most salient points of the humanities: "human."
If the Humanities have a relevance (and I think they most certainly do) it is in that they contend with all the things that don't fit the metrics of the hard sciences. Humanities are not about metrics, and in times like these, making the humanities as remote, cold, clinical and incomprehensible as the hard sciences (whom I regularly hear decrying the lack of understanding and interest among the public), is doing nothing to further it as a field of study. By reaching so desperately for the same kind of legitimacy as the hard sciences, the Humanities fail not only in that arena, but they weaken themselves in their own arena.
Which brings me (sort of) to me second gripe. It's bad enough we have all these so-called theories being trotted out as though they were somehow revolutionary, esoteric or special, and not merely the natural approach of the thoughtful scholar. There seems to be, at this school, at least, an atmosphere of free-for-all with the application of said theories. It's rather like intellectual Garanimals, and it makes me insane.
There seems to be no rigor, no discipline, no thoughtfulness in what theories are applied to what. It's like some mix-and-match grab-bag, with no regard for whether some theoretical model actually HAS any applicability to a work, text, or event. No contemplation of whether this is a valid approach, whether this will produce something that is in some way useful, informative, helpful, or sound. And the consideration of the context? Unless that's the 'theory' de jour, context goes right out the window.
The results are, I think, the real reason that other fields look to the Humanities and chuckle. Hell, I'm IN the Humanities and I shake my head in bewilderment. Feminist reading of Giotto? Are you serious? Freudian analysis of the Heptameron? Er, OK.... And you wonder why other disciplines don't take you seriously? What's even worse than the anything-goes approach, is that anyone can do it. (And they do, all the time!) I can do a Freudian analysis of anything, whether I know a damned thing about it or not (in some cases it seems preferable that I *don't* know anything about it). But that doesn't mean it's sound scholarship, it just means I have given myself permission to blather on about something without knowing WTF I am really talking about. And to anyone who does know something about, say, Giotto, I look like an idiot (as did the poor gal who had to present a feminist reading of Giotto). But that's OK, because I applied a theory!
That may be the biggest problem with trying to set up all these theories - once you have them, and expound on them, and codify them, you're gonna want to use them. If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. If you give a scholar a theory, he's going to want to apply it to everything, and be taken seriously. And as we know, that way lies madness. Honestly, I don't think the Humanities PhD is for me. Certainly not at this school, anyway*. And if I am going to leave, I'm going to find a PhD in something that I agree with, like History.
*Don't even get me started on the linguistics professor talking about aliens building the pyramids, crop circles, and reading auras. The professor with whom I had this discussion confirmed at least that guy is a known loon. But his course is required for the Humanities PhD.... *facepalm*
(Edited with cut, because it got even longer than I expected!)
(Edited again to add This Article, which at least brings up much of what I am saying here... So I'm not alone in my frustration! Good to know!)
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no subject
Date: February 26th, 2009 03:01 am (UTC)What has to happen is some kind of discovery or event that changes the way the field is viewed. One example in the Documentary Hypothesis field in Biblical Source theory was the discover of an 8th Cent BCE Greek Historiograph that paralleled Penteuchal texts that were previously accredited to different sources. It was the first real challenge to the JEPD theory in 200 years.
Another example is a historical event that changes the dominant world perspective. After the grim horror of the Great War (WW1), many early 20th cent. liberalists and utopian viewpoints lost prominence. The field of Theology was shaken up, until neo-orthodoxy and Karl Bart came along.
Or, perhaps a better known example might be to point to the phenomenon of "Post-Modernism" that failed to coalesce. Post-colonialism was a reality that caused a major shift in Philosophy toward a post-modernist approach, but then came along Bush-Cheney that was determined to put America first with a Colonialist attitude above the second-world and third-world. Whether we see a rebirth of Post-Modernism remains to be seen.
Anyway, that's my response to the glut of theory and sloppy application you are seeing in your field. I hope my perspective helps put what you are seeing into a *context* of developments in any scholarly field.
I am glad to see that your voice, like Karl Bart's in Theology, is wanting to call Humanities theorists to their collective senses.
bb,
Cern