University Literature Departments Have It All Wrong
Brian Boyd writes this scathing yet interesting article concerning the current state of Western university literature departments.
We love stories, and we will continue to love them. But for more than 30 years, as Theory has established itself as “the new hegemony in literary studies” (to echo the title of Tony Hilfer’s cogent critique), university literature departments in the English-speaking world have often done their best to stifle this thoroughly human emotion.
He is especially hard on Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard English professor, Louis Menand, whose idea of reform for university literature departments draws this reaction from Professor Boyd:
The position you represent has neither the intellectual nor the moral high ground you are so sure it occupies. Until literature departments take into account that humans are not just cultural or textual phenomena but something more complex, English and related disciplines will continue to be the laughingstock of the academic world that they have been for years because of their obscurantist dogmatism and their coddled and preening pseudo-radicalism. Until they listen to searching criticism of their doctrine, rather than dismissing it as the language of the devil, literature will continue to be betrayed in academe, and academic literary departments will continue to lose students and to isolate themselves from the intellectual advances of our time.
Ouch.
I suppose his basic argument is that the literary elite believe that culture is separate from our biology; that somehow, human culture is beyond our natural, biological selves. They believe that empirical thinking somehow inhibits culture and creativity. It’s a common notion of anti-foundationalism. Boyd argues that culture is a product of our biology; nature if you will. That the empirical approach has enhanced culture and the humanities.
I, like others who think that humans need to be understood as more than cultural or textual entities, do not wish to affirm the status quo. But in the four decades since Menand’s “greatest generation,” science and technology have altered the status quo far more radically than anything literature professors have managed. By increasing the world’s food output dramatically, scientists have saved hundreds of millions of people from hunger.
Their labor-saving devices have freed scores of millions from domestic drudgery and allowed countless women into the paid work force. They have raised life expectancy around the world. And if knowledge is indeed power, as Michel Foucault says, then through the Internet, scientists have made possible the greatest democratization of power ever.
He’s right. In fact I’d go so far as to say that the current state of humanities could not exist without the empirical process; foundationalism if you will. Hell, you can believe all you want, but everything that we are, the universe in fact, does not operate on belief. How can one expect to fully realize and benefit from the life we live without an empirical approach? Those who espouse anti foundationalism are, in my opinion, simpletons who lack the imagination needed to view the world as it really is. Think about it, how silly and banal is I think, therefore I am? Yo, René, smoke another one ...
What strikes me is the sheer arrogance of some of the so-called culture elites.
Menand is sure that: (1) the “greatest generation” secured for its “disciples” (these are his terms) the intellectual and moral high ground; (2) the insights of anti-foundationalism would be accepted by all other disciplines, if only they would listen; and (3) the crusade made possible by an understanding of “difference” must continue.
Now, what kind of happy horse pucky is that?
And, alas, here is the money line:
The idea that there is no universal truth runs into crippling difficulties straightaway, since it claims to be a universal truth.
Yeah, this is a real shooting-war between science and the humanities.