Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 396.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2024-01-16 16:16:21+00:00
        From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.393: memorable achievements

I wonder why we have to argue for a "presumed rightness" for any one way of
reading? That rhetorical strategy is all part of the hype, of course: it
allows some people to claim innovation and align themselves against
"traditionalists" who are happy to take the opposite side. I think this
form of discourse is fundamentally degenerate, especially in terms of our
own real practices.

Everyone sufficiently educated should be able to read the same text any
number of different ways for different kinds of information. When I taught
literary theory, students were taught 13 different ways of reading a text
in a 15 week semester. Real innovations don't need to sell themselves: they
are validated by their insights. And what do we mean by "tradition"? The
most famous essay defining it did so by describing a constantly evolving
target. Remember that formalism was once called the "New Criticism"? Why
was the New Historicism called "new"?

And the virtues of non-linear reading? Within feminism, this kind of
reading originates in a depth psychology that substitutes the womb for the
phallus. It's a great response to Freud, one that dismantles his
particularly grotesque misogyny on his own terms, but who takes Freud or
psychoanalysis seriously anymore, or depth psychology -- especially among
people who actually know anything about the human brain? Wittgenstein said
psychoanalysis was a myth in 1927 because it is (but he praised it as a
myth). There is no empirical, scientific support for it, and there never
has been. What are we doing when we rely on depth psychology? No one using
it seems to ask that question.

We don't need psychoanalytic theory to benefit from non-linear reading
practices, so maybe we should consider the benefits of that reading
strategy instead?

All reading practices are different tools in our box. We are better off
thinking about what kind of information we want from a text, or group of
texts, and the best way to get to it. Formalism, distant reading, close
reading, deconstruction, etc. all yield their different insights. I think
we should drop the hype in favor of just doing work that produces valuable
results and then presenting our results: "I did this and discovered this."
I find that exciting every time if there's something really there.

Jim R

--
www.jamesrovira.com

   - *David Bowie and Romanticism,* Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
   https://jamesrovira.com/2022/09/02/david-bowie-and-romanticism/
   - *Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism*, Routledge, 2023
   https://www.routledge.com/Women-in-Rock-Women-in-Romanticism-The-
Emancipation-of-Female-Will/Rovira/p/book/9781032069845


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php