Reading Resina's article "Cold War Hispanism"--he says something to the effect that the role of the humanities is to justify themselves: "Could it be that the perennial crisis of the humanities is a trope for the inherent insecurity of this bundle of disciplines that exist, precisely, in and through the never-ending effort to legitimate themselves?" (emphasis added). This makes sense. Just as the "canon" only comes into view when it is a problem, the humanities only thrive in crisis mode, because they are the disciplines whose primary function is to confer value on their own subject matter, to certify and credentialize forms of cultural capital. "Prove that what you are studying is worth while." "Justify your own existence." No wonder we are so defensive! Now I am understanding why nationalism is so strong in the humanities. That is a default justification.
This also explains why the default mode of the humanities is the weak leftism of cultural exceptionalism. That requires a whole 'nother post to explain. Briefly, we are the dominated part of the dominating class, as Bourdieu points out.
***
I can argue for Lorca's relevance through Spicer or O'Hara, Ginsberg or Duncan, or even Billy Strayhorn. But of course that is already assuming the value of these American figures.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Self-plagiarism
Self-plagiarism, discussed here in a post from language log, is something that I have to avoid, since I am the type of scholar who returns to the same ideas and authors repeatedly. Since people only read all of what I write when I am up for promotion (something that will never happen again) I think it's fine to duplicate ideas in different contexts, as long as I cite myself amply. I have eight work of JM in my current bibliography for my project. Looking at it now I see I need to include at least two or three additional books and articles. Instead of seeing that as a sign of egotism, it could be a sign of a certain honesty in revealing that I draw from my own previous ideas and obsessions.
I often feel there is more duplication than there really is. For example, I could think that three chapters of my book Twilight are ways of saying the same thing in different ways: "The Avant-Garde and Its Discontents," "Three Apologies for Poetry," and "Poetry, Politics, and Power." But really, they represent distinct analyses. The same goes for my two essays on Valente and his precursors: one looks at Celan, the other at Beckett. The structure of the argument is very similar, but I think writing both was justifiable.
Whenever you find someone who has published a lot, you will find some duplication of intellectual frameworks and ideas, modes of analysis. Often I stop reading a book when I feel I've gotten all that it offers, even at the expense of some additional information or analysis. I wouldn't be surprised or unhappy if others treated my work like that.
I could go back and publish a book out of my remnants, articles that never became book chapters, but I don't think it's worth it. I like the fact I have articles that never found a home in a book. I do think there is enough for a book there, though. I just went back and counted 17 articles. The problem, paradoxically, is that they aren't either coherent or miscellaneous enough. Any way of grouping them would reveal too many connections, but there would be too many things that did not fit.
I often feel there is more duplication than there really is. For example, I could think that three chapters of my book Twilight are ways of saying the same thing in different ways: "The Avant-Garde and Its Discontents," "Three Apologies for Poetry," and "Poetry, Politics, and Power." But really, they represent distinct analyses. The same goes for my two essays on Valente and his precursors: one looks at Celan, the other at Beckett. The structure of the argument is very similar, but I think writing both was justifiable.
Whenever you find someone who has published a lot, you will find some duplication of intellectual frameworks and ideas, modes of analysis. Often I stop reading a book when I feel I've gotten all that it offers, even at the expense of some additional information or analysis. I wouldn't be surprised or unhappy if others treated my work like that.
I could go back and publish a book out of my remnants, articles that never became book chapters, but I don't think it's worth it. I like the fact I have articles that never found a home in a book. I do think there is enough for a book there, though. I just went back and counted 17 articles. The problem, paradoxically, is that they aren't either coherent or miscellaneous enough. Any way of grouping them would reveal too many connections, but there would be too many things that did not fit.
Exceptionalism
(I am postdating this post to when the search should be over.)
The last campus visit for the Portuguese position featured someone giving a talk on narratives of cultural confluence. I was really well prepared to listen to this talk (which was very good, by the way), because I had been studying forms of cultural exceptionalism for several months. All the language about zone of contact, transculturalism, or whatever, was very familiar to me. I recognized all the moves, the reference to Doris Sommer and Brazilianness, mestizaje.
The last campus visit for the Portuguese position featured someone giving a talk on narratives of cultural confluence. I was really well prepared to listen to this talk (which was very good, by the way), because I had been studying forms of cultural exceptionalism for several months. All the language about zone of contact, transculturalism, or whatever, was very familiar to me. I recognized all the moves, the reference to Doris Sommer and Brazilianness, mestizaje.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Mito del carácter nacional
The anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja, the nephew of the novelist Pío B., wrote a book with this title (1971) reviewed here in the ABC, the Monarquist newspaper, in 2004. Although ABC is right-wing more than left, and this review appeals to the notion of Spain's normality, I still find myself agreeing with Caro Baroja's skepticism. A book I will have to read for myself in any case. I also found an article by Juaristi on Menéndez Pidal.
Nov-March
From November 8 until now, I have been extremely productive even by my own inescapably high standards and have come up with ideas that surprise me. The book What Lorca Knew snowballed and now contains several completed chapters; it might even be done by the end of 2013. I even feel my writing improving. It will be a very polished book. I'm giving myself a month to finish each chapter, and then making sure I schedule additional time to make sure all the footnotes and references are complete and accurate.
The preface, introduction, and first two chapters (4 separate items) form a coherent whole devoted to the duende, mostly. Next, I have one essay on Lorca's influence in Spain, Chapter four which is a follow up to Apocryphal Lorca, and a chapter on "Queering Lorca." Finally, an epilogue with the title "Elegy for Modernism." The main intellectual heavy lifting and additional research will be the chapter on cultural exceptionalism and the chapter on Queering Lorca. I have a month by month work plan, which I change virtually every day.
My idea for the day is to link "exceptionalism" with "queering." Structurally, they obey a very similar logic. How to have an identity politics based on pure difference, with no attackable essentialism? Don't expect me to work it out today, because I only just thought of it. When I first thought of the queering chapter, two or three incarnations of this project ago, I had not yet developed my ideas about cultural exceptionalism.
The preface, introduction, and first two chapters (4 separate items) form a coherent whole devoted to the duende, mostly. Next, I have one essay on Lorca's influence in Spain, Chapter four which is a follow up to Apocryphal Lorca, and a chapter on "Queering Lorca." Finally, an epilogue with the title "Elegy for Modernism." The main intellectual heavy lifting and additional research will be the chapter on cultural exceptionalism and the chapter on Queering Lorca. I have a month by month work plan, which I change virtually every day.
My idea for the day is to link "exceptionalism" with "queering." Structurally, they obey a very similar logic. How to have an identity politics based on pure difference, with no attackable essentialism? Don't expect me to work it out today, because I only just thought of it. When I first thought of the queering chapter, two or three incarnations of this project ago, I had not yet developed my ideas about cultural exceptionalism.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Commentary on my poem
I guess I can interpret my own poem, right?
The speaker in a typical poem nowadays is like an idealized version of the self. My speaker is like a de-idealized Mayhew, kind of peevish. I have those peevish impulses, like everyone else, but I try to rise above them sometimes. The complaint is a trivial one, that people use the word "surreal" when they really mean "unreal." You surely shouldn't hate people who do this, even if you wouldn't use the word this way yourself!
There is an expectation that the speaker will also be sincere. An idealized self seems insincere, if too idealized, but so is a de-idealized self. The self always positions itself at a particular angle, there is no "straight-on" self. I gain some sincerity points, though, by making the self a little more petty than it needs to be, anxious about trivial stuff.
A second expectation is that for anecdotal material to lead to epiphany. Here, the anecdote reveals only peevish annoyance at moths in the pantry.
The speaker also resists a third expectation, for metaphor and symbolism. A simile would have totally ruined this poem, because it insists on things as they are, not things as they are as changed by the blue guitar.
At the same time, there is a metaphorical warning against metaphor: if things are not allowed to be what they are, and nothing more, then there will be no room for the tomato paste in the pantry. The poem says yes, feel these things for their emotional weight, but don't overinterpret them. The pantry moth doesn't symbolize a thing, it is just an example of a trivial domestic problem. The tomato paste just returns us to that immanent situation.
A fourth expectation, for rhythmic recurrence, is fulfilled but ironically so, in the trivial refrain, hate them with a passion. There are a lot of 'p' sounds, but not so many as to be obtrusive.
By frustrating all these expectations, the poem fulfills expectations of another kind of reader, one who generally hates conventional poems with an idealized speaker, an anecdote leading to an epiphany, and a couple of similes that serve to show off the poet's poetry-writing chops. It doesn't just frustrate those expectations by not fulfilling them, but by gesturing toward them and mocking them, in a way that aims for an understated wit.
Such a reader might also recognize, in herself, the prejudice against the supposed mis-use of the word "surreal." He is likely to know that there was a surrealist movement, and relate the non-sequiturs in the poem to a kind of "surreal" feeling. A reader could see the absurdity of the linguistic peeve, or say yes, I hate that too. Either way.
The poem also fulfills an expectation for statistically unfamiliar combination of words, like "Los Angeles with its petulant physicality." Post-avant garde poetry tends toward this kind of off-beat phrasing. Someone who liked this style might like my poem, or else recognize it as being in a style sh/e likes in genearl, but think it falls short.
The speaker in a typical poem nowadays is like an idealized version of the self. My speaker is like a de-idealized Mayhew, kind of peevish. I have those peevish impulses, like everyone else, but I try to rise above them sometimes. The complaint is a trivial one, that people use the word "surreal" when they really mean "unreal." You surely shouldn't hate people who do this, even if you wouldn't use the word this way yourself!
There is an expectation that the speaker will also be sincere. An idealized self seems insincere, if too idealized, but so is a de-idealized self. The self always positions itself at a particular angle, there is no "straight-on" self. I gain some sincerity points, though, by making the self a little more petty than it needs to be, anxious about trivial stuff.
A second expectation is that for anecdotal material to lead to epiphany. Here, the anecdote reveals only peevish annoyance at moths in the pantry.
The speaker also resists a third expectation, for metaphor and symbolism. A simile would have totally ruined this poem, because it insists on things as they are, not things as they are as changed by the blue guitar.
At the same time, there is a metaphorical warning against metaphor: if things are not allowed to be what they are, and nothing more, then there will be no room for the tomato paste in the pantry. The poem says yes, feel these things for their emotional weight, but don't overinterpret them. The pantry moth doesn't symbolize a thing, it is just an example of a trivial domestic problem. The tomato paste just returns us to that immanent situation.
A fourth expectation, for rhythmic recurrence, is fulfilled but ironically so, in the trivial refrain, hate them with a passion. There are a lot of 'p' sounds, but not so many as to be obtrusive.
By frustrating all these expectations, the poem fulfills expectations of another kind of reader, one who generally hates conventional poems with an idealized speaker, an anecdote leading to an epiphany, and a couple of similes that serve to show off the poet's poetry-writing chops. It doesn't just frustrate those expectations by not fulfilling them, but by gesturing toward them and mocking them, in a way that aims for an understated wit.
Such a reader might also recognize, in herself, the prejudice against the supposed mis-use of the word "surreal." He is likely to know that there was a surrealist movement, and relate the non-sequiturs in the poem to a kind of "surreal" feeling. A reader could see the absurdity of the linguistic peeve, or say yes, I hate that too. Either way.
The poem also fulfills an expectation for statistically unfamiliar combination of words, like "Los Angeles with its petulant physicality." Post-avant garde poetry tends toward this kind of off-beat phrasing. Someone who liked this style might like my poem, or else recognize it as being in a style sh/e likes in genearl, but think it falls short.
Over subtle
I used the worry that my ideas were rarefied and over-subtle. But not really. You have to work up to your full potential. I noticed yesterday in class when students were trying to come up with Althusserian examples (of ideology), a tendency to fall back on a sort of easy denunciation of right-wing ideas, that almost anyone could come up with. It was hard for them to distinguish between examples that really illustrates Althusser's ideas, versus simple examples of right-wing ideas they found objectionable. Only a few students could really do it.
I remember very vividly in Grad school, taking my first theory course, and having a student in the class make the statement that scientific ideas in a capitalist society were produced in the same way that products were. When I asked for an example, she said that science was used to justify racism, or something like that. Not at all an example of the generalization she had made. But nobody seemed to notice! I didn't argue that point because I didn't want to be a jerk and I felt a bit humiliated, in fact. Of course I knew about misuse of science for nefarious ends! That wasn't my question at all.
I remember very vividly in Grad school, taking my first theory course, and having a student in the class make the statement that scientific ideas in a capitalist society were produced in the same way that products were. When I asked for an example, she said that science was used to justify racism, or something like that. Not at all an example of the generalization she had made. But nobody seemed to notice! I didn't argue that point because I didn't want to be a jerk and I felt a bit humiliated, in fact. Of course I knew about misuse of science for nefarious ends! That wasn't my question at all.
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