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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

theory blogging: what's the fuss? « Previous | |Next »
February 5, 2007

Over at The Valve John Hoblo has a post on what he calls theory blogging, which I assume is substream of intellectual blogging. This picks up on an article by Jodi Dean entitled Blogging Theory at Bad Subjects which explores their practice of critical conversation beyond and through existing institutional frameworks. I had mentioned Dean's post here. Hoblo says:

There is such a thing as a ‘theory blog’, which will be marked by a distinctive style of appropriation of, and attitude towards, a more or less specifiable set of (mostly European) thinkers. Dean herself clearly takes it to be obvious and not in need of much explanation, let alone conceptual defense, that ‘theory blogging’ will not include most philosophy blogs, of which there are, of course, scores and scores; let alone other academic blogs, including academic blogs about politics and culture and so forth. It won’t include Michael Bérubé because, even though he is sympathetic in many ways, he doesn’t clearly ‘do theory’. The piece drops the heavy hint that there is not just something importantly distinctive but distinctively good about theory blogging. But how could this be due to anything but the distinctive, good character of theory? And if it makes sense to assert it is distinctively good, can it really be nonsense to consider that it might be distinctively bad?

Well, philosophical conversations is both philosophy and theory in that it is orientated to European texts and it is part of a constellation of weblogs that form a loose network. There is no assumption that this makes me more intellectually sophisticated than others, or that those who don't do theory cannot understand the deep thoughts of extremely difficult texts; are anti-Theory or anti-intellectual. I'm reading these texts because they are interesting: they critically address some of my philosophical assumptions and open up new ways of thinking.

This concern with continental texts emerged in a particular historical context--the 1980s in Australia as a critical reaction to analytic philosophy, and it has continued to develop within and outside the academy. It initially had its roots in Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, was initially a hermeneutics of suspicion but become poststructuralism and it was cross disciplinary (English, French, Philosophy departments) within the Humanities. Marx dropped away in favour of feminism, Derrida and Foucault, Freud gave way to Lacan, and Derrida and Foucault gave way to Deleuze. The background to the cultural academic scene can be found at Mark Bauerlein’s Butterflies and Wheels essay on “Theory’s Empire.” The institutional standing of Theory as opposed to its intellectual content is important for many.

Dean characterises these theory blogs in terms of being both a conversation/discussion spreading over half a dozen or more blogs over the course of weeks, like some kind of long running seminar; and as an experiment in writing. So I guess that I would interpret Holbo's comment that Dean 'drops the heavy hint that there is not just something importantly distinctive but distinctively good about theory blogging' in terms of their difference from other kinds of blogging, rather than it being due to the distinctive good character of Theory.

As Holbo points out in the comments to the Valve post that this ongoing conversation spread over different blogs for a couple of weeks is not just a special characteristic of theory blogs --it also happens on The Valve. This kind of conversation is one way that the ivory tower does connect with the public sphere, and there are different flows of conversations that have their feet in, say cultural studies and literary theory.

Do I discern the old conflict between literature and philosophy briefly surfacing here? Possibly. But probably not. Is it conflict within culture between a specific kind of literary theory and cultural studies/critical left theory? Possibly. There is a resistance (briefly explored in this ) to specific continental texts in the Anglo-American academy and amongst cultural conservatives in the review pages of the broadsheet press (where 'Theory' means 'postmodernism' and left politics in terms of the culture wars). It is hard to engage with the broad sweep of Theory (a monolith) as a cultural phenomenon, as opposed to specific arguments in specific texts.

I guess we need to return to the debates around Theory's Empire; to undersatand why the word 'empire' is used to imply a stranglehold on the study of literature. In his initial post John Holbo says:

'Theory' is a name for an academic movement, or school or style of thought, or cluster of them. As such, it is prima facie reasonable to consider that a different school or style might be superior, or at least might be worthy of consideration as a competitor.The problem is that defenders of Theory have gotten into the bad habit of foiling the formulation of this thought.The easy, one-step procedure: misinterpret anti-Theory arguments as if the target were theory in a lower case sense.

Let's accept that this happens.
Holbo adds:
In practice, Theory is appallingly imperial. Well, it's not so bad as that. Apart from a few celebrity Theorists who really do seem to think they are entitled to unlimited deference, ordinary practitioners are willing to be set right now and again, by others within the circle of those who 'do Theory'. But they still assume those outside their little circle, 'antitheory' types, must be wrong. Bog-standard dogmatism of our species, in short.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:40 PM |