Your quote is attempting to describe how those concepts work in the narrative, it’s taking a very broad overview of what’s happening narratively, and saying that “in this fictional world, this is how things play out for the characters” - it uses terms like Will and Truth to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the world as it happens to the characters
Given this understanding, the argument/counter-argument structure of (only a small subset of) analytic philosophy essay writing wouldn’t work, the same way it wouldn’t work if I was trying to describe the conceptual structure of Quine’s naturalism to you and you kept insisting I give arguments why it’s true, even if I myself am not a Quinean or naturalist
That all sounds reasonable. I'm not expecting a back-and-forth or anticipated objections section or anything from the author. But I would settle for some clarity. A clear exposition of what the terms mean and the logic by which he's making his inferences from one assertion to the next would do a world of good.
Traditionally, in the written style of literary criticism which has held for a very long time, these inferences are embedded in close readings of a particular passage of the text and judgements expressed about the progression of the narrative, as well as contextualisation within a particular theoretical approach to the nature of texts, the history of the text, or the history of the actual world in which the text was written.
Some terms will go unexplained or only peremptorily explained, the same way that I might write a paper on laws of nature which uses the word “nomological” without commenting further.
If you’re struggling to pick up on that, it’s to do with your being a novice reader of academic writing, not an essential fault with the academic endeavour - or you’re just reading a bad example of criticism.
Sorry, but this is a standard piece of current scholarship, at least in English studies.
And you’re just talking about terminological definitions, but not about unitary wholes, so to speak.
Thus Chef is definitely not struggling by asking for clarity. It should go without saying that we're all allowed to ask for that all the time, even if the discourse has become 'extraordinary'. (We are here to learn, right?) You can ask Hawkins and you can ask Quine, and so on. They don't have to answer, or they can tell you that you're a 'novice', but if by that they mean they have achieved philosophical superiority, then they are coming from a place of dogmatism. All they have achieved, if anything, is a level of sophistication. They have not achieved profundity if they can’t explain ‘extraordinary’ in slightly more ‘ordinary’ ways.
Second, there is no 'style of literary criticism', because it doesn't exist any more (if it ever did).
Here’s what happened in English studies in the past several decades:
First, there was traditional criticism, which involved evaluation, a la Leavis, and the forming of canons.
Then there was something like literary criticism, a la Frye, which said, Forget evaluation of the canon and look at style (like irony, meter, &c.) in it.
Next, this literary criticism started to border closely on literary theory, and so not actual criticism (i.e., your ‘close reading’), when someone like Barthes decided texts were just 'galaxies of signifiers', and so no need to bother with evaluation (and by extension, canons).
And last, nowadays, because of current fashion, literary theory has become merely political theory glommed onto the texts, or really just theory, full stop. Canons are back in, but new ones with texts that promote a certain brand of politics. Close reading of texts as wholes is not required to get A’s or be published.
Now—and this is why Chef is right to ask for clarity—in these four stages of literary studies (admittedly sketched roughly here), the final two—lit. theory and then pure theory—are why Chef is in particular allowed to ask.
The academic writings on these lines take doctrines from philosophers and social scientists and apply them to fictional texts. So the scholarship relies on non-fictional work from the outset, rather than just the fictional text itself.
Hawkins has borrowed from one discourse (‘extraordinary’, or ‘philosophical’) and crammed it into a second type of discourse (also ‘extraordinary’, but ‘poetic’ or ‘literary’). Nothing in anything McCarthy has written, however, requires or affects any kind of metaphysical views outside fiction, unless you the reader want it to.
To riff off of Tallis (In Defence of Realism, p. 144): if Hawkins is going to make his audience ‘pass[ ] through a large ante-room of theory’ to ‘understand’ the novel it has read, then he damn well better be able to explain what that theory is, where it came from, why it bears a necessary and not just an incidental relation to the novel...
I’m afraid that the phrase “so to speak” doesn’t help me understand what your comment about unitary wholes says at all. I simply don’t know what the difference between terminological definitions and unitary wholes is supposed to say about anything I wrote. In fact there’s a lot about your comment I don’t understand, you say things like “we’re allowed to ask for [clarity] all the time” (did I remotely suggest otherwise?), you put the word “extraordinary” in quotation marks, and yet you are the one introduces the word without, explaining what you mean, and to describe “the discourse” (what discourse?) as having “become” extraordinary - all of this in some way meant as a riposte (I think?) to some bad attitude I have, though it is rarely clear what that is, or where you get the idea it’s my attitude; you seem, for example, to think I’m criticising Chef for asking, which is just false, and a paranoid reading of what I said.
There are other things I just disagree with: having had plenty of training in lit crit, I just disagree there isn’t a house style that carries across all four of your periodisations. I also disagree that it doesn’t exist anymore. The fact you treat this as an obvious point of ignorance on my part on which I need educating is vaguely insulting.
I also disagree about your periodisations. That Leavis and Frye’s approaches co-existed is only one thing, that Leavis himself is celebrated for his close readings of the Romantics is another, quite in contrast to your claim that this approach arrived with Barthes and (I’m guessing) reader response theorists. Barthes, notably, does not think that evaluation should be abandoned - indeed he explicitly expands the scope of evaluation to a remarkable variety of cultural objects - he thinks that that authorism should be abandoned and that a particular species of moralism should be abandoned, which is a completely different project.
I also don’t happen to think that literary criticism has become political theory glommed onto texts. I think that certainly looks true from some populist angles. I don’t think it’s true from the inside at all.
You sign off with a defence of reader response theory. Fine by me! But such a response also requires giving Hawkins the same opportunity to read the metaphysics into the text as you do to refuse to do so.
We’re too far off the main subject of Chef’s post, which seems somewhat unfair. So let me just ask you two questions, since I don’t think you’ve addressed them fully yet.
Then it’s over to you for the last word if you want it.
1. Do you claim that a novel and a piece of teaching are the same types of discourse? (I say that they are not; that they have different purposes; and that if your goal is to teach (non-esoterically), then you must do better than to answer clarity-related questions with, “That’s just the style of the profession; try to keep up, or shut up.”)
2. Do you think people require theory to read and understand a novel properly? (I say that they don’t; that a subtle reader, who views the novel as a whole, is the best type of reader; and that there isn’t a clear way to teach subtlety. I don’t say you can’t do any kind of theory you like, however, esp. professionally.)
If you want to continue any of this, and if Chef prefers we do it elsewhere, hit me up at jesse.d.tatum@gmail.com.
Well I replied to Chef’s post and then to Chef’s reply, I’ve only continued on the subject because *you* intervened to take me to task for opinions I don’t think I hold. I have no interest in taking this intensely one-sided non-debate to your email account. What a bizarre suggestion.
As to your questions:
1. No I don’t, and I didn’t tell anybody to shut up. I also think you have to be paranoid in the extreme to think telling anyone to shut up is what I was doing. I object as strenuously as it is possible to object to a random stranger in a substack comment section making this kind of accusation at me.
2. No, I absolutely do not think people require theory to read and understand a novel properly. Even if you’re deliberately trolling: what a sad way to spend your time.
Your quote is attempting to describe how those concepts work in the narrative, it’s taking a very broad overview of what’s happening narratively, and saying that “in this fictional world, this is how things play out for the characters” - it uses terms like Will and Truth to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the world as it happens to the characters
Given this understanding, the argument/counter-argument structure of (only a small subset of) analytic philosophy essay writing wouldn’t work, the same way it wouldn’t work if I was trying to describe the conceptual structure of Quine’s naturalism to you and you kept insisting I give arguments why it’s true, even if I myself am not a Quinean or naturalist
That all sounds reasonable. I'm not expecting a back-and-forth or anticipated objections section or anything from the author. But I would settle for some clarity. A clear exposition of what the terms mean and the logic by which he's making his inferences from one assertion to the next would do a world of good.
Traditionally, in the written style of literary criticism which has held for a very long time, these inferences are embedded in close readings of a particular passage of the text and judgements expressed about the progression of the narrative, as well as contextualisation within a particular theoretical approach to the nature of texts, the history of the text, or the history of the actual world in which the text was written.
Some terms will go unexplained or only peremptorily explained, the same way that I might write a paper on laws of nature which uses the word “nomological” without commenting further.
If you’re struggling to pick up on that, it’s to do with your being a novice reader of academic writing, not an essential fault with the academic endeavour - or you’re just reading a bad example of criticism.
Gorki -
Sorry, but this is a standard piece of current scholarship, at least in English studies.
And you’re just talking about terminological definitions, but not about unitary wholes, so to speak.
Thus Chef is definitely not struggling by asking for clarity. It should go without saying that we're all allowed to ask for that all the time, even if the discourse has become 'extraordinary'. (We are here to learn, right?) You can ask Hawkins and you can ask Quine, and so on. They don't have to answer, or they can tell you that you're a 'novice', but if by that they mean they have achieved philosophical superiority, then they are coming from a place of dogmatism. All they have achieved, if anything, is a level of sophistication. They have not achieved profundity if they can’t explain ‘extraordinary’ in slightly more ‘ordinary’ ways.
Second, there is no 'style of literary criticism', because it doesn't exist any more (if it ever did).
Here’s what happened in English studies in the past several decades:
First, there was traditional criticism, which involved evaluation, a la Leavis, and the forming of canons.
Then there was something like literary criticism, a la Frye, which said, Forget evaluation of the canon and look at style (like irony, meter, &c.) in it.
Next, this literary criticism started to border closely on literary theory, and so not actual criticism (i.e., your ‘close reading’), when someone like Barthes decided texts were just 'galaxies of signifiers', and so no need to bother with evaluation (and by extension, canons).
And last, nowadays, because of current fashion, literary theory has become merely political theory glommed onto the texts, or really just theory, full stop. Canons are back in, but new ones with texts that promote a certain brand of politics. Close reading of texts as wholes is not required to get A’s or be published.
Now—and this is why Chef is right to ask for clarity—in these four stages of literary studies (admittedly sketched roughly here), the final two—lit. theory and then pure theory—are why Chef is in particular allowed to ask.
The academic writings on these lines take doctrines from philosophers and social scientists and apply them to fictional texts. So the scholarship relies on non-fictional work from the outset, rather than just the fictional text itself.
Hawkins has borrowed from one discourse (‘extraordinary’, or ‘philosophical’) and crammed it into a second type of discourse (also ‘extraordinary’, but ‘poetic’ or ‘literary’). Nothing in anything McCarthy has written, however, requires or affects any kind of metaphysical views outside fiction, unless you the reader want it to.
To riff off of Tallis (In Defence of Realism, p. 144): if Hawkins is going to make his audience ‘pass[ ] through a large ante-room of theory’ to ‘understand’ the novel it has read, then he damn well better be able to explain what that theory is, where it came from, why it bears a necessary and not just an incidental relation to the novel...
I’m afraid that the phrase “so to speak” doesn’t help me understand what your comment about unitary wholes says at all. I simply don’t know what the difference between terminological definitions and unitary wholes is supposed to say about anything I wrote. In fact there’s a lot about your comment I don’t understand, you say things like “we’re allowed to ask for [clarity] all the time” (did I remotely suggest otherwise?), you put the word “extraordinary” in quotation marks, and yet you are the one introduces the word without, explaining what you mean, and to describe “the discourse” (what discourse?) as having “become” extraordinary - all of this in some way meant as a riposte (I think?) to some bad attitude I have, though it is rarely clear what that is, or where you get the idea it’s my attitude; you seem, for example, to think I’m criticising Chef for asking, which is just false, and a paranoid reading of what I said.
There are other things I just disagree with: having had plenty of training in lit crit, I just disagree there isn’t a house style that carries across all four of your periodisations. I also disagree that it doesn’t exist anymore. The fact you treat this as an obvious point of ignorance on my part on which I need educating is vaguely insulting.
I also disagree about your periodisations. That Leavis and Frye’s approaches co-existed is only one thing, that Leavis himself is celebrated for his close readings of the Romantics is another, quite in contrast to your claim that this approach arrived with Barthes and (I’m guessing) reader response theorists. Barthes, notably, does not think that evaluation should be abandoned - indeed he explicitly expands the scope of evaluation to a remarkable variety of cultural objects - he thinks that that authorism should be abandoned and that a particular species of moralism should be abandoned, which is a completely different project.
I also don’t happen to think that literary criticism has become political theory glommed onto texts. I think that certainly looks true from some populist angles. I don’t think it’s true from the inside at all.
You sign off with a defence of reader response theory. Fine by me! But such a response also requires giving Hawkins the same opportunity to read the metaphysics into the text as you do to refuse to do so.
Thanks for your reply, Gorki.
We’re too far off the main subject of Chef’s post, which seems somewhat unfair. So let me just ask you two questions, since I don’t think you’ve addressed them fully yet.
Then it’s over to you for the last word if you want it.
1. Do you claim that a novel and a piece of teaching are the same types of discourse? (I say that they are not; that they have different purposes; and that if your goal is to teach (non-esoterically), then you must do better than to answer clarity-related questions with, “That’s just the style of the profession; try to keep up, or shut up.”)
2. Do you think people require theory to read and understand a novel properly? (I say that they don’t; that a subtle reader, who views the novel as a whole, is the best type of reader; and that there isn’t a clear way to teach subtlety. I don’t say you can’t do any kind of theory you like, however, esp. professionally.)
If you want to continue any of this, and if Chef prefers we do it elsewhere, hit me up at jesse.d.tatum@gmail.com.
Cheers!
Well I replied to Chef’s post and then to Chef’s reply, I’ve only continued on the subject because *you* intervened to take me to task for opinions I don’t think I hold. I have no interest in taking this intensely one-sided non-debate to your email account. What a bizarre suggestion.
As to your questions:
1. No I don’t, and I didn’t tell anybody to shut up. I also think you have to be paranoid in the extreme to think telling anyone to shut up is what I was doing. I object as strenuously as it is possible to object to a random stranger in a substack comment section making this kind of accusation at me.
2. No, I absolutely do not think people require theory to read and understand a novel properly. Even if you’re deliberately trolling: what a sad way to spend your time.
this is some incel shit fr grow up
Which part is incel shit?