Against theory : literary studies and the new pragmatism

152 Pages·1985·2.394 MB·English

by  W J T Mitchell (ed.)

AgainstTheory
Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism
Edlted by W.J.T. Mitchell
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
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The articles in this volume originally appeared in the following issues of Critical Inquiry:
Summer 1982, Volume 8, no. 4; June 1983, Volume 9, no. 4; and March 1985, Volume
l . 1,_,.
ll, no. 3.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd. London
© 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 by The University of Chicago
Ali rights reserved. Published 1985
Printed in the United States of America
94 93 92 91 90 89 88 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Against theory.
Articles which originally appeared in Critical
inquiry from 1982 to 1985.
"These essays were written in response to the essay
Against theory, by Stephen Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels,
first published in Critical inquiry in summer of 1982"-
Introd.
Bibliography: p.
l. Criticism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Litera
ture-History and criticism-Theory, etc.-Addresses,
essays, lectures. 3. Knapp, Stephen. Against theory
Addresses, essays, lectures. 1. Mitchell, W. ]. Thomas,
l942-
PN85.A35 1985 801'.95 84-29127
ISBN 0-226-53226-7
ISBN 0-226-53227-5 (pbk.)
Contents
1 Introduction: Pragmatic Theory
Steven Knapp and 11 Against Theory
Walter Benn Michaels
Daniel T O'Hara 31 Revisionary Madness: The Prospects
of American Literary Theory at the
Present Time
E. D. Hirsch, Jr. 48 Against Theory?
Jonathan Crewe 53 Toward Uncritical Practice
Steven Mailloux 65 Truth or Consequences: On Being
Against Theory
Hershel Parker 72 Lost Authority: Non-sense, Skewed
Meanings, and Intentionless
Meanings
Adena Rosmarin 80 On the Theory of "Against Theory"
William C. Dowling 89 Intentionless Meaning
Steven Knapp and 95 A Reply to Our Critics
Walter Benn Michaels
Stanley Fish 106 Consequences
Richard Rorty 132 Philosophy without Principles
Steven Knapp and 139 A Reply to Richard Rorty: What Is
Walter Benn Michaels Pragmatism?
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Introduction: Pragmatic Theory
The following collection of essays might as well be entitled A Defense of
Theory as Against Theory. Most of the contributors defend some version
of literary theory, either as a mode of critical practice or as a body of
thought which stands outside critical practice and provides it with basic
principles, methods, and investigative problems. The reason for the po
tentially misleading title is that ail these essays were written in response
to Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels' essay "Against Theory," first
published in Critical Inquiry in summer 1982. Seven responses, as well as
Knapp and Michaels' rejoinder, appeared in the June 1983 issue of
Critical Inquiry, and are ail reprinted here, along with two new statements
by Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish and a final reply by Knapp and
Michaels. The controversy has drawn so much attention among literary
critics that it seemed appropriate to collect it in a single volume where
the course of the debate can be followed from start to finish.
As in most debates, part of the controversy is over the question of
just what is at issue. What is theory, in the study of literature or in other
disciplines? What is at stake in being "for" or "against" theory? What
sorts of values and interests are being challenged (and endorsed) by the
antitheoretical arguments of those who are sometimes called the "New
Pragmatists" (Fish, Knapp, Michaels, and Rorty) in literary study? One
thing that will quickly become apparent to the reader of this collection
is that the sicles in this debate do not sertie into two clearly defined camps.
Those who defend theory against Knapp and Michaels do so for ail sorts
of different reasons, and they represent a wide range of theoretical positions,
from the interpretive realism and historicism of E. D. Hirsch, Jr., to the
textual objectivism of Hershel Parker, to the deconstructionist orientation
of Jonathan Crewe. The pragmatic, antitheoretical camp is not completely
unified either: Knapp and Michaels chide Fish for occasional lapses into
the theoretical mode, and Rorty finds himself at odds with a movement
that, some would say, he largely helped to create with his efforts to revive
the American pragmatist tradition and ally it with certain antitheoretical
tendencies in European philosophy.
What is the importance of ail this fuss over theory in literary studies?
A gross oversimplification of the controversy might go this way: in the
last twenty years, theory has, for a variety of reasons, become one of the
I
2 W]. T Mitchell
"glamour" fields in academic literary study. Structuralism, semiotics, her
meneutics, deconstruction, speech-act theory, reception theory, psy
choanalytic theory, feminism, Marxism, and various philosophical "ap
proaches" have become a familiar part of the professional structure of
literary study. Any literature department that does not have a "theorist"
of some sort on its faculty is clearly out of step. More important, any
specialist trained in one of the traditional historical fields in literary
history is likely to be asked what sort of theory he or she subscribes to.
The general assumption is that everyone has a theory that governs his
or her practice, and the only issue is whether one is self-conscious about
that theory. Not to be aware of one's theoretical assumptions is to be a
mere practitioner, slogging along in the routines of scholarship and
interpretation.
Given the dominance of theory in contemporary literary study, it
was inevitable that someone would issue a challenge toit. We might say,
in fact, that the antitheoretical polemic is one of the characteristic genres
of theoretical discourse: the philosophy of science has Paul Feyerabend's
Against Method; Marxist criticism has E. P. Thompson's Poverty of Theory.
And one of the most influential branches of modern theory in literature
and philosophy Î'S called "antifoundationalism," a thoroùghgoing skepticism
that calls into question ail daims to ground discourse in fondamental
principles, "facts," or logical procedures. From a very broad perspective,
then, "Against Theory" may be seen as an inevitable dialectical moment
within theoretical discourse, the moment when theory's constructive,
positive tendency generates its own negation. From a narrower professional
perspective, it should be clear why Knapp and Michaels' antitheoretical
arguments, whatever their particular merits, strike many critics as scan
dalous. The challenge is notjust to a way of thinking and writing but to
a way of making a living. If Knapp and Michaels are right, then it looks
as though a whole generation of scholars is out of work: "If accepted,
our arguments would indeed eliminate the 'career option' of writing and
teaching theory" (p. 105).
Not surprisingly, then, most of those who respond to "Against Theory"
think Knapp and Michaels are wrong. Sorne (like Crewe and Daniel
O'Hara) define their "error" in political and moral terms, characterizing
the "New Pragmatism" as a "petty theodicy of the guild," a cynical nihilism
that "comforts the champions of the status quo" (pp. 60, 37). Others (the
majority) are more dispassionate. They find various particular problems
in "Against Theory" that are more or Jess damaging to its argument,
while acknowledging that the essay raises important questions. Ali would
agree, 1 think, that "Against Theory" is a tour de force, whether for good
or ill: it is absolutely sure of its position, rarely hedging or qualifying its
attack on literary theory; it is disconcertingly ingenious in its rhetorical
and argumentative strategies, an ingenuity that continues unabated in
Knapp and Michaels' replies to their critics; it is undeniably witty in its
Introduction 3
mustering of examples (Crewe notes, somewhat ruefully, that the example
of the wave-poem is "destined no doubt to become famous" [p. 60)).
Probably the most fascinating feature of the essay is its spare, laconic,
almost enigmatic style. The crisp declarative sentences of "Against Theory"
contain none of the notorious jargon of literary theory; no special expertise
is needed to read it. But the clarity of Knapp and Michaels' argument
against theory is accompanied by a studious reserve about motives. The
essay gives the impression that its authors are in the grip of an insight
that is quite indifferent to questions of value, interest, or power. They
declare insouciantly that their argument has "no consequences" and that
it is "indifferent" to the existence of professional literary study (p. 105).
It is hardly surprising that these tacit denials of political or self- interest
have provoked charges that the essay is a sort of careerist exercise which
promotes a reactionary politics. Perhaps the most paradoxical and intriguing
feature of "Against Theory" is that an essay which argues that meaning
and intention are essentially the same thing should be so clear about its
meaning while remaining so inscrutable about its intentions.
The essential value of "Against Theory," then, aside from its merits
as a piece of writing in itself, is its function as a catalyst, a provocation
to dialogue. Even if Knapp and Michaels are wrong both in their general
daims about the function of theory and in their specific argument about
meaning and intention, their "error" has the sort of clarity and definition
that encourages the articulation of unsuspected insights. "Against Theory"
has provided an ideal test case for Critical Inquiry's central editorial principle,
the notion of what I have elsewhere called "dialectical pluralism."1 This
principle suggests that certain kinds of "errors," ably and vigorously de
fended, are far more interesting than a host of truths universally ac
knowledged and (for that reason) left unexamined. Knapp and Michaels
help us to see theory's need to defend, not merely assume, its value for
critical practice, and they provide the occasion for this defense on a very
broad front, one that does not (in the usual fashion) pit one theory against
another but asks us to see the project of literary theory as a coherent
whole, united by certain fundamental problems of commun concern.
Ali the defenses of theory in this collection of essays would have to
be called "pragmatic." O'Hara and Crewe suggest that theory is a goad
to critical progress and reform, providing models for practice and for
the evaluation of practice. Steven Mailloux proposes that theory be regarded
as a distinct kind of rhetorical practice, one that has had far-reaching
consequences for other modes of critical practice. Adena Rosmarin and
Rorty see literary theory as a place for a fruitful conversation between
literature and philosophy. Hirsch, Parker, and William Dowling use
"Against Theory" as an occasion to clarify specific problems in the notion
1. W. J. T. Mitchell, "Critical lnquiry and the Ideology of Pluralism," Critical Inquii)' 8
(Summer 1982): 613.
4 W]. T Mitchell
oftextual meaning, particularly the relation between "authorial" meaning
and "textual" or "formai" conditions of meaning-the choice between
grounding a text's meaning in "its" author or "an" author.
None of these defenses, it should be noted, take up the challenge
to defend theory in what Fish calls the "strong" sense, the "dream of
Baconian method" which would (in the manner of Noam Chomsky's
linguistics), provide a "general hermeneutics," a mode! of "a general
rationality" that would be "independent" of "contingencies," "contextual
circumstances," and "interested judgments" (pp. 120, 110, 111, 110).
Perhaps it is simply too late in the day for such a defense: since Wittgenstein,
or perhaps since Stanley Cavell's reading of Wittgenstein, the temptation
to refute skepticism (and reinstate the strongest daims of philosophical
reason) has seemed less and less attractive. The main devotees of strong,
nontrivial theory these days are its skeptical opponents, who require the
presence of a priggish, authoritarian positivist in order to have something
to oppose. This may explain why the closest we corne in these pages to
a theory in the strong, old-fashioned sense is in the writing of Knapp
and Michaels. As they say in their first reply to their critics: "Our account
of interpretation, if true, describes the way interpretation always works,
irrespective of its relation to any institution" (p. 105 ). If this sounds
suspiciously like Fish's description of a "general hermeneutics" that would
be free of "interested judgments," the resemblance becomes even more
striking when Knapp and Michaels address directly the question of interests
and motives:
Nothing in "Against Theory" tells you whether programs in women's
studies are a good thing, whether teachers should be tenured, or
whether graduate programs should be maintained or eut back in
response to the currentjob crisis. This is not to deny that we ourselves
have views on these questions, just as we have views on the relative
merits of historical scholarship and close reading; it is only to insist
that such views have no relation to our account of interpretation.
[P. 105]
The only difference bet\\·een Knapp and Michaels and the strong theorists
they oppose is their renunciation of power, their recurrent daim that
thPir account of interpretation has no consequences for practice (since it
just describes what we always must do) and only one consequence for
theory: "Theory should stop" (p. 105).
One could reply, of course, that theory in the strong sense has
already stopped. When it does rear its head (as in Chomsky's linguistics),
its strongest daims are generally regarded as a form of what Fish calls
"theory hope," the temporary euphoria that often accompanies an in
tellectual breakthrough. The countertradition of "theory fear" (skepticism
and antifoundationalism) seems strong enough, however, to prevent our
Introduction 5
being taken in by false hopes (p. 112). Since the skeptical tradition seems
to dominate current Iiterary theory, the challenge at the present time
would seem to be a defense of theory hope. Knapp and Michaels set the
stage for such a defense in two ways, one highly general, the other quite
specific. The general result of their argument is to provoke a pragmatic
and historically self-conscious understanding of theory. Their more specific
contribution is to a "special project"-the theory of literary meaning
which has dominated Iiterary criticism at least since the New Critics (p.
11 ).
Knapp and Michaels stake out a position on the problem of intention
that, while it may strike some as counterintuitive or philosophically naive,
has something like the tonie effect that W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe
Beardsley's classic essay "The Intentional Fallacy" had on a generation
of critics.2 Wimsatt and Beardsley argued that the only intention worthy
of critical interest would be one that was fully realized in the text; the
need to discuss any other intention, to ask the author what he or she
really meant, for instance, would simply be evidence of artistic failure.
Knapp and Michaels, by contrast, seem quite indifferent to the question
of where the intention is discovered (in "the work itself," in ancillary
documents, or in the author's testimony). Their only daim is that inter
pretation, the finding of meaning, just is the finding of intention. To
look for one is to look for the other, because they are just the same thing.
The fall into theory occurs when we begin to think that meaning and
intention are something different and devise a method for finding one
by looking for the other. Historicists like Hirsch think that we find meaning
by ascertaining intention; formalists like Wimsatt and Beardsley (and,
more recently, Paul de Man) think that meaning will take care of itself
if we "subtract" extrinsic intention and let the language of the text work
on us.
What, aside from the startling rhetorical effect of outflanking ail the
major theories of literary intention, does this conflation of meaning and
intention accomplish? It certainly will not accomplish what Wimsatt and
Beardsley did: it will not produce a school of followers who will set about
discovering the perfect embodiment of meaning in the formai qualities
of texts. "Against Theory" deliberately renounces any such ambitions to
redirect the activity of practical criticism. But it just might (as it has
already, in this volume) produce a loosely defined "school" ofantagonists
who will take up the challenge to formulate a pragmatic account of
theory, one that would identify theory as a genre of writing, a type of
1
discourse.
This view of theory might take up Mailloux's suggestion that theory
be understood rhetorically. Such a view would redescribe the opposition
2. See W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," The Verbal
!con: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington, Ky., 1954), pp. 3-18.
6 W ]. T. Mitchell
between theory and practice as a system of figurative contrasts and not
as a metaphysical <livide that situates theory (in Fish's strong sense) beyond
contingency. The outlines of this rhetorical account of theory might take
the following form:
THEORY IS THEORY IS NOT
reftection immediate perception
fundamental principles surface phenomena
.1 models, schemes, systems things in themselves
1
large-scale guesswork small-scale certainty
metaphysics physics
speculation traditional wisdom
intuition discursive reasoning
abstract thought concrete experience
deductive or inductive adductive:1
a priori, a posteriori in between
These two columns of terms display some of the contrasts we make
between the theoretical and the nontheoretical in practice. Sorne of them
take the form of antitheses (abstract/concrete, guess/certainty) that involve
associated figurative contrasts (large/small, high/low, depth/surface, con
tainer/contained, representation/represented). Of particular interest is
the connection between theory and its Greek roots in visual terminology.
Theory, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a looking at, viewing,
contemplation, speculation; also a sight, spectacle." There is a tacit con
trast here between the visual as the "noblest" sense and the lower, more
practical senses, particularly hearing, the conduit of the oral tradition,
of stories rather than systems, sententiae rather than schematisms. Theory
3. ln correspondence about this essay, Richard Rorty questioned my use of the term
"adductive" (as contrasted with "deductive" and "inductive") to characterize what "theory
is not" in contrast to what "theory is." What I had in mind was the practice of citation and
exemplification, the "adducing" of precedents as a ground or justification for a present
judgment. Adduction may proceed with reference to a general prinçiple, perhaps even a
full-blown theory, but it seems tome that what Nelson Goodman would call the "route"
of this sort of reference is different from that of deduction and induction. Deduction
proceeds from generals to particulars; induction, from particulars to generals; and adduction,
from particulars to particulars. These particulars may illustrate or exemplify general principles,
but the process of adduction itself always remains at the level of concrete particulars. If I
want to show that a rule applies in this particular case, I cite a previous case where it
applied, or I adduce some hypothetical example. A lawyer adduces precedents (which are
always particular cases and judgments) or evidence in support of the application of the
law to a present case; a literary cri tic, similarly, adduces a set of canonicat examples to
identify the tradition, genre, or convention that fits some text that has not yet been "placed"
in the literary universe. There's no question that theory and gen~ral principles fonction
throughout adductive procedures, but they stand, as it were, off to the sicle of the·process,
taken for granted, not themselves in question. Adduction doesn't ask, What is pastoral?
but, rather, ls this a pastoral? Adductive proofs rely, therefore, quite heavily on authority
and tradition.