Author: Ophelia Benson

This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is hilarious. Oh, Theory is so over, what empire, it’s all fragmented, what a silly fuss everyone is making, it says. Then it offers a comment backing up the claim.

First, theory has become so much part of the literary profession that one needs to have some familiarity with the “isms,” no matter which (if any) one embraces most closely. Being labeled a theorist does not advance a career the way it might have 10 or 15 years ago, but theoretical naïveté is a luxury that few aspiring professors can afford. James F. English, chairman and professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in an e-mail message that while “it’s become very rare for literature departments to hire so-called pure theorists,” the theoretical movements of the past four decades have “created an intellectual climate in which a whole range of writers (from Kant and Hegel to Lacan and Kristeva) is now part of the conversation within literary study as such.” It is almost impossible to imagine a newly minted Ph.D. going on the job market without some grasp of structuralism as well as of Shakespeare.

Understand? It’s over, but you’re not allowed to not have it – you’re not allowed to wonder what is meant by a ‘range of writers’ that includes Kant – and Lacan and Kristeva. You’re not allowed to have theoretical naïveté – oh god no! But it’s over, you know, so there’s nothing to see here, go home.

Then the article offers example after example after example of how over Theory is.

When she plans her graduate-level classes, Lynn Enterline, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, tends to “organize the course around texts and problems they might raise.” If Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is on the syllabus, for instance, she’ll draw on “theories of the performative” in the work of such thinkers as Derrida and the feminist-psychoanalytic critics Barbara Johnson and Shoshana Felman. “Since I’m interested in questions of gender, sexuality, and the body,” she says, “I tend to work mostly with rhetorical and psychoanalytic theory.”

Ooh! Wish I could take that class! Questions of the body – I do love those. Especially when they got psychoanalytic theory, and the performative, and rhetoric – I can almost hear Judy Butler off in the distance. No theory here, folks.

Her colleagues in the Vanderbilt English department employ a similar strategy in the classroom, she says, even though their research interests vary widely in topic and theoretical affinity. “They’re all deeply theoretically informed,” she says, “but the choices they would make depend on the problems they’re addressing.”

Deeply. Deeply. Because they’re a deep crowd, you know. And informed. Deeply.

Jeffrey J. Williams…calls himself “very topic oriented” when it comes to teaching. Carnegie Mellon has what he describes as a fairly heavy emphasis on theory, and “the students kept coming to me and complaining that they weren’t reading any literature,” he says. His solution? “Now I try to teach hybrid courses.” In a recent course on “narratives of profession,” for instance, he mixed sociology and theories of professionalism with half a dozen novels, and taught Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Thorne alongside a history of the medical profession.

His solution? He declared himself a sociologist pro tem by way of giving the students the more literature they wanted. Of course he did! Because Theorists are all so Deeply Informed that they are experts on all subjects and can teach anything and everything the moment they decide to. Remember Judith Halberstam? Like that.

But those charged with introducing students to theory don’t appear to be trying to throw out Conrad and company. The University of California at Santa Cruz is not known for its aversion to theory. Even there, theory “is never taught in the absence of literary texts, and it’s never taught as if it’s gospel,” says Richard Terdiman, a professor of literature and the history of consciousness. “What we try to do when we teach it is demystify it. Everyone who teaches the intro-theory course required for undergraduates in the major chooses a focus, whether it’s Marxism or queer theory or whatever it is, and tries to get students to see the relevance of the interpretative strategy for their own reading.”

What empire? What empire? Do you see any empire? I don’t see any empire around here. Do you? All I see is a lot of people quietly and omnisciently teaching Theory and sociology and politics and Theory, so where’s the empire?

God, it’s a riot, and it goes on and on like that. I’m out of time, I have to go, but I’ll have to make more fun of it tomorrow. It’s the silliest thing I’ve seen in awhile.

Annals of Thought-crime. Orhan Pamuk goes on trial on Friday.

My crime is to have “publicly denigrated Turkish identity.”…Last February, in an interview published in a Swiss newspaper, I said that “a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds had been killed in Turkey”; I went on to complain that it was taboo to discuss these matters in my country…If the state is prepared to go to such lengths to keep the Turkish people from knowing what happened to the Ottoman Armenians, that qualifies as a taboo. And my words caused a furor worthy of a taboo: various newspapers launched hate campaigns against me, with some right-wing (but not necessarily Islamist) columnists going as far as to say that I should be “silenced” for good; groups of nationalist extremists organized meetings and demonstrations to protest my treachery; there were public burnings of my books.

Most of the ingredients, brought together in one nasty brew. Stupid idea piling on stupid idea until you end up with a great stack of nonsensical absurd hollow pseudoideas. The idea that there is such a thing as Turkish ‘identity,’ the idea that it shouldn’t be ‘denigrated,’ the idea that it shouldn’t be denigrated publically, the idea that doing so is a crime worth three years in prison, the idea that Pamuk should be ‘silenced’ for committing such a crime, the idea that he should be permanently silenced for doing so, the idea that what he did is ‘treachery.’

My detractors were not motivated just by personal animosity, nor were they expressing hostility to me alone; I already knew that my case was a matter worthy of discussion in both Turkey and the outside world. This was partly because I believed that what stained a country’s “honor” was not the discussion of the black spots in its history but the impossibility of any discussion at all. But it was also because I believed that in today’s Turkey the prohibition against discussing the Ottoman Armenians was a prohibition against freedom of expression, and that the two matters were inextricably linked.

Well, yes. What Turkey did some ninety years ago was done by an entirely different set of people (which is one reason ‘identity’ is such a bad idea: it leaves the impression that in fact it’s the same people, but it isn’t), but the people forbidding discussion of it now are the people who are alive now, and if they think they’re buffing up Turkey’s current ‘identity’ by doing so, they’re delusional. If they think preventing freedom of expression in order to suppress discussion of a part of Turkey’s history is a sensible, useful, productive idea, they’re infatuated.

What am I to make of a country that insists that the Turks, unlike their Western neighbors, are a compassionate people, incapable of genocide, while nationalist political groups are pelting me with death threats? What is the logic behind a state that complains that its enemies spread false reports about the Ottoman legacy all over the globe while it prosecutes and imprisons one writer after another, thus propagating the image of the Terrible Turk worldwide?…Last May, in Korea, when I met the great Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe, I heard that he, too, had been attacked by nationalist extremists after stating that the ugly crimes committed by his country’s armies during the invasions of Korea and China should be openly discussed in Tokyo.

They must all have offended someone. Never, never offend anyone – or else.

And another thing about the Akyol piece and all the similar strains of thought. It’s such an impoverished, pinched, narrow, trivial view of what matters, of what morality should be, of what people should fret about.

…soulless, skirt-and-money-chasing men drinking whiskey…selfish, lonely creatures in a soulless society where little is worshipped beyond money and sex…The America that people see is one represented by Hollywood and MTV…extremely hedonistic and degenerate elements that turn life into meaningless profligacy…a lifestyle based on hedonism…the masses live, earn, spend, and have relationships according to this supposition. A popular MTV hit summarizes this presumption bluntly: “You and me baby ain’t nuthin’ but mammals; so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Humping and consumerism, is what it boils down to. Well – I’m not crazy about consumerism myself, but it’s not the worst thing there could be. I’m not crazy about consumerism, but I don’t think it’s nearly as much of an evil as systematic inequality, exploitation, coercion, bullying, deprivation, persecution. Why doesn’t Akyol fret more about that? Why isn’t he more repelled by the way a lot of very godfull societies treat women, people in lower castes, infidels, apostates, poor people from foreign countries, and the like? Why doesn’t he have a better sense of proportion? Why doesn’t he ask himself what is more important than what, and then write accordingly? Why doesn’t he stop to realize that this God who guarantees his moral absolutes is the god cited by people who put women under house arrest for life? Why doesn’t he worry about terrible, stunted, deformed lives under some Islamic regimes at least as much as he worries about sex and whiskey in ‘the West’? Why is his thinking so very small?

It’s touching when obscurantists band together and discover how much they have in common. Mustafa Akyol gives us an example.

Little does he realize that if there is any view on the origin of life that might seriously offend other faiths – including mine, Islam – it is the materialist dogma: the assumptions that God, by definition, is a superstition, and that rationality is inherently atheistic. That offense is no minor issue. In fact, in the last two centuries, it has been the major source of the Muslim contempt for the West. And it deserves careful consideration.

That offense is no minor issue. So it’s an ‘offense’ to try to give the best natural explanation of the world that one can discover – one we should all be soundly scolded for, no doubt (otherwise the word ‘offense’ would not have been used – it implies rudeness, moral wrongdoing).

Sadly, it was secularist Europe – and especially, theophobic France – rather than the religious United States that the Islamic world encountered as “the West.” No wonder, then, that the West eventually became synonymous with godlessness. Moreover, within Muslim societies, Europeanized elites grew in number and were seen – with a lot of justification – as soulless, skirt-and-money-chasing men drinking whiskey while looking down upon traditional believers as ignoramuses.

Yes, terrible pity about secularist Europe. (And there were probably one or two women in those elites, but never mind.) It’s the ‘ignoramus’ thing that is probably the real pea under the mattress, as it so often is with truculent Xian fundamentalists too. Believers suspect that non-believers think believers are credulous, and it really pisses them off – it is an offense. Thou shalt not think a believer is a credulous fool, lest my foot shall be moved.

Yet, despite these political conflicts, the perception of the West in the minds of devout Muslims remains the greatest underlying problem. Although they admire its freedom, they detest its materialism…A recent poll in Turkey revealed that 37 percent of Turks define Americans as “materialistic” while a mere 8 percent define them as “religious.”…Yes, but what exactly is materialism? Isn’t it more obviously represented by the extravagance of pop stars than by the sophisticated theories of atheist scientists and scholars? Isn’t the cultural materialism of, say, Madonna, quite different from the philosophical materialism of Richard Dawkins?…Cultural materialism means living as if there were no God or moral absolutes, and all that matters is matter. Philosophical materialism means to argue that there is no God to establish any moral absolutes, and matter is all there is. The former worldview finds its justification in the latter. Actually, in the modern world, philosophical materialists act as the secular priesthood of a lifestyle based on hedonism and moral relativism.

Therefore philosophical materialism is wrong, God exists, we have to do what he says and not do what he doesn’t say. Powerful argument.

I still don’t get it. I don’t see how ID fans and Anthony Flew get past the first, obvious objection.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

But how can that be a good explanation? How can it be an explanation at all? How can it be anything other than just an ‘I don’t know’ translated into something that sounds more impressive? Other than hand-waving? I don’t get it. Because if the origin of life and the complexity of nature require explanation – which of course they do – why doesn’t or wouldn’t any possible ‘super-intelligence’ one could come up with also require explanation? Other than by stipulation. But that’s no good – that’s just a cheat. Just adding on ‘that doesn’t require further explanation’ isn’t explanation (let alone good explanation), it’s just arranging the deck ahead of time. Origin of life, complexity of nature, require explanation; good; let’s say a super-intelligence designed and created them; very well; but then what is the explanation of the super-intelligence then?

I don’t understand why this problem doesn’t just stop the whole ridiculous fuss in its tracks. There must be a reason, I must be missing something, but nobody’s told me what it is yet.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife. Yet biologists’ investigation of DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved,” Flew says in the new video, “Has Science Discovered God?”

But if almost unbelievable complexity of arrangments means that intelligence must have been involved, and necessarily an intelligence that designed this complexity has to be more complex than whatever it is designing, then what explains the intelligence? Where did it come from, what (or who) made it so complex and so intelligent? And where is it now?

I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why this argument has legs.

There was this interview with Alister McGrath last spring, all about how wrong Richard Dawkins is and how weak his arguments are. It’s rather puzzling.

But by the time you get to A Devil’s Chaplain, what we have is a very crude religious propagandist, only loosely connected with the whole scientific culture…It seems to me, he has a real animus against religion, but I’m unable to identify any single factor that seems to be a legitimate explanation of that hostility.

That’s puzzling, because, one, Dawkins (of course) is not a religious propagandist, that’s just the usual silly – and crude – religious rhetoric that pretends religion and non-religion are both religion, theism and non-theism are both theism. Two, because I would say McGrath is the crude one, based on what I’ve read of him, which tends to be short on argument and very long on assertion. Third, what is the nonsense about being unable to identify any single factor that would explain Dawkins’ dislike of religion? Well I suppose it’s that McGrath is so convinced that there’s no good reason to be hostile to religion that he can’t recognize reasons when he sees them. Which is a pretty crude way to think, frankly.

Dawkins seems to assume that his audience is completely ignorant of religion and, therefore, will accept his inadequate characterizations of religion as being accurate…And really, one of the things I find so distressing and so puzzling in reading him was that his actual knowledge of religion is very slight. He knows he doesn’t like it, but he seems to have a very shallow understanding, for example, of what religious people mean by the word “faith.”

Okay – what do they mean then? Go on, explain it to us – give us the deep version. Go on.

But he doesn’t do that.

The reason that Richard Dawkins has become so influential is that his rather strident, rather aggressive views resonate with what quite a lot of people hope is indeed the case.

Oh right! And your views don’t! Religion has nothing whatever to do with wishful thinking! Puh-leeze.

Altogether, not a very impressive performance.

An article by Bruce Bawer in Reason raises some very basic issues.

For many Europeans, the murder of one of the Netherlands’ most outspoken public figures underscored the importance of protecting freedom of expression…Many members of Europe’s fast-growing Muslim communities, however – along with more than a few non-Muslims eager to keep the peace in an increasingly anxious and divided continent – draw a very different lesson: the need to curb freedom of expression out of respect for Muslim sensitivities…Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain agreed. “Is freedom of expression without bounds?” he asked. “Muslims are not alone in saying ‘No’ and in calling for safeguards against vilification of dearly cherished beliefs.”

Safeguards against vilification of dearly cherished beliefs – that puts the problem about as clearly as it can be put. There are difficulties with free speech absolutism, because speech can invoke and indeed create hatred and rage (can do it in minutes), and hatred and rage can all too easily lead to persecution, violence, murder, genocide. That’s not a secret. But that’s not the issue Sacranie is worrying about – he’s worrying about a different one. He’s worrying about the issue or pseudo-issue of ‘vilification’ of ‘dearly cherished beliefs’ – and that is indeed a very different issue and a different kind of issue. And, frankly, I’m having a hard time thinking of a good argument for his view. I can think of bad ones, but no good one. I think beliefs are just the kind of thing that need to be able to withstand challenge of all kinds, because the alternative is pure dogmatism, authority, revelation, fiat, assertion, because God said so, because the priest/mullah/rabbi said so, because the leader said so, because I said so. Well the hell with that.

Sacranie probably thinks and would probably like us to think that beliefs that are ‘dearly cherished’ – in the way a dear little baby is cherished, in the way a sainted mother is cherished, in the way a loyal loving friend is cherished – ought to be protected from putative vilification in the same way that cherished people ought to be protected. But that’s exactly wrong. Beliefs aren’t people, they can’t be hurt either physically or emotionally. People who hold them can, of course, but that is – surely – a necessary part of thinking at all. We grow attached to our own beliefs, of course, but the more we try to make them immune, the less worth loving they will be, because they will become rigid, dogmatic and stupid. In that sense, nobody does anyone a favour by treating beliefs as sacrosanct and immune from criticism or mockery.

I didn’t know this –

In April, after virtually no public discussion, Norway’s Parliament passed a law that punishes offensive remarks about any religion with up to three years’ imprisonment – and places the burden of proof on the accused.

Godalmighty – really? That’s grotesque. B&W clearly badly needs a correspondent in Norway.

Bawer gets the next one slightly wrong though.

Three months later, Britain’s House of Commons approved a bill that would criminalize “words or behavior” that might “stir up racial or religious hatred.” (On October 25, the bill’s most restrictive provisions were rejected by the House of Lords—an ironic example of a non-democratically elected body standing up for democracy by rebuking a democratically elected body.)

But that’s not right – because it’s not democracy that the lords stood up for. That’s rather the point. They stood up for rights or freedoms (or both, or the two seen as one thing) as distinct from democracy. That’s why mechanisms for protecting basic rights and freedoms are needed: because majorities (so, democracy) are perfectly capable of voting to take away rights and freedoms – and that is the objection to the religious hatred bill, that it would do exactly that.

Bawer concludes with the Jyllands-Posten cartoons – perhaps a little too optimistically in the light of what Louise Arbour has just said on the subject.

Artists and editors received death threats; the embassies of several Muslim countries lodged a complaint with Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen (who refused to meet with them “because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so”); and 5,000 Muslims protested in the streets of Copenhagen. Jyllands-Posten’s besieged editors, however, stood firm, writing, “Our right to say, write, photograph and draw what we want to within the framework of the law exists and must endure – unconditionally!”

Danish prime minister (possibly also muddling democracy and freedom, but never mind) and editors, well done; embassies of ‘Muslim countries’ (what is a ‘Muslim country’ anyway – can there be such a thing?), grow up.