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> In the late 20th century, however, there was a sustained assault from within the profession of literary studies on the very idea of common humanity I'm surpr
by romaniv 11y ago
> In the late 20th century, however, there was a sustained assault from within the profession of literary studies on the very idea of common humanity
I'm surprised someone at New Statesman admits this. Very often I feel that the very purpose of modern literary studies is to establish "credentials" that allow the holder to shut down discussion of books by using jargon and appeal to authority. In those disciplines, there is very little effort applied to improve the actual understanding of literature. Constructs, constructs, constructs. In the end, you end up spending most of your time dealing with linguistic constructs of the field itself and very little time thinking about the ideas of whatever author you study.
Noam Chomsky commented on this when speaking about post-structuralism. He noted that it's mostly an attempt to present "scientific" front for something that is inherently not a scientific field.
Of course, the response from the field was that he just doesn't understand what they're doing. Just like everyone else outside of the field.
- zenogais 11y agoI devoted a several years to studying continental / post-structuralist philosophy (Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Irigary, et al), and while I can't claim any authoritative knowledge I'd say I've at least done my homework, and I have to agree with Chomsky. Post-structuralism essentially begins from the feeling that the rigor of modernism/structuralism is stuffy and oppressive. Post-structuralism's main project, then, is to deny the kind of stuffy rigor typical of the sciences any privileged position - that is, to deny that it is more correct than any other type of analysis. This is done through a variety of means, but you can find a good summary in [1]. The works in this area employ a dauntingly huge set of concepts that often serve as a barrier to entry and mystifier for outsiders. Science/mathematics is typically only donned to give a philosophers work an intimidating edifice to the non-mathematically inclined - see Badiou for a great example of this with set/category theory. Overall, it's a questionable project that seems to contribute little - see [2] for a good summary of this. Overall, skip it if you can. [1]: http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf [2]: https://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/rostrumlib/SchwartzmanMar'00.pdf https://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/rostrumlib/SchwartzmanMar'00.pdf