Well, I confronted the crap out of a...uh, teenage kid. It turns out the slamming in the apartment below was indeed caused by the moving-in of new neighbors, now featuring kids (tm). Why they were up until 2:00am the other morning I have no idea. Anyway, this kid that looked like a chubby Harry Potter grunted at me while I talked to him about sound travelling and last night there were just a few minor bumps.
Either way, I drank a little too much 2-buck Chuck after dinner and left the bunny out all night (she was fine. She just pooped on the carpet a lot and was happy to see us this morning.)
My latest attempt to make a grad-school point: I started getting annoyed with the introduction to an anthology I'm presenting on in my World History training seminar next week. The editors were taking pot-shots at contributors for being insufficiently historical. "But there is no cultural essence! And "freedom" is historically constructed! And citizenship was contested!" I have read equivalent assertions ad naseum for the last three years and I'm getting tired of it...not because they're not true (OF COURSE abstract terms don't define concrete social phenomena; they're TERMS), but because it's the most pedantic, boring, predictable trope of academic historical writing to insist on greater specificity and greater historicity. When it's a corrective on an overly-crude summary, fine. But it seems like it's usually just problematizing-for-the-sake-of-problematizing-for-the-sake-of-getting-something-published.
The problem is that intelligibility hinges on abstract concepts. All of my friends, particularly at Oregon, who claimed to "hate theory" were, in a sense, in bad faith. We all use theory, explicitly or implicitly, to make sense of the cacophony of things going on around us or things that happened in the past. Likewise, we need to categorize things to make them comprehensible.
It was Adorno that insisted on the need of the most careful rhetoric in philosophy (and hey, kids, we're pursuing doctors-of-PHILOSOPHY degrees here [PhD], so bear with me...) because "constellations" of truth are all we get in a world without recourse to empirical standards and those constellations have to be built very carefully out of language. So I sympathize with historians who take issue with crude categorical language, and I regret dumbing-down Marx's problem with Hegel in class the other day. But I get sick of the use of deconstruction for purposes of making things less intelligible, especially in academia. If we aren't here to make MORE sense of things (albeit very carefully), why don't we all just go become performance artists?
1.18.2007
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5 comments:
Who on earth would ever say they hate theory? Why would they say such a thing?
So, the world history training seminar is training you to teach world history, right? That is, to teach a college level, introductory course?
It seems to me that some simplification is in order - either in terms of attention to historic detail or complexity of concepts or events. The world is pretty big chunk of history to contend with (it is, I believe, all of it). Has the seminar gotting to the point of determining (or at least debating) when it is best to simplify complexity for the sake of comprehension and when it is best to jump right in and get all messy with historical meanings and change over time?
okay, as a theory-hater (not really, but a lot of theory just seemed like gehirnwixen to me), I must say that the deconstructing the life out of concepts thing was vastly irritating. Why can't they just say what they want to say? And then the making up of fancy vocab just to make themselves seem smarter? Whatever happened to "elegance is simplicity?" Clearly, we need the tools of language to express abstract concepts; hopefully no one would go so far as to say we don't need theory at all. BUT - the BS where half the book is theory - and it's not even ON theory - is ridiculous.
Give me a nice microhistory any day. heh... I still remember the look on my advisor's face when I said that I much preferred reading microhistory and case studies than theory stuff because a lot of theory was essentially useless for what I wanted to learn. Probably not the best thing to say to someone who has a huge affection for theory. He was a case in point, though, because he didn't let the theory choke the life out of his point. He was able to harness the idea and make it work for him instead of how some use ideas/inpenetrably dense vocab to make them feel all smart.
Have to say for a world history book - unless you want to focus entirely on discrete case studies, you kind of have to gloss over complexities. Let go of the need to problematize! gack... I hate that word. Happy philosophizing!
I heart theory. But, I agree, I don't enjoy it in the service of mealy-mouthed whining about semantics in order to get published without saying anything actually original. Yuck.
Theory is a pain in the ass to most fields these days. I can say, as much as I love theory, it makes producing relevant and intellectually viable artwork a tad bit onerous. Gone are the days of relying on intuition and inspiration to guide your hand.
Sometimes one has to look past the problematic nature of language and unstable meaning to get at the real guts of the thing.
oh, and....
"mealy-mouthed whining about semantics"=Very nice.
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