From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Sep 14 2003 - 02:05:26 BST
Matt and all:
dmb says:
A web search quickly revealed that Bloom's phrase "strong misreading" is a
way to think about art and literature, not philosophy. Perhaps you're
strongly misreading the concept of a strong misreading? But, seriously, here
is some interesting stuff by Richard Shusterman...
Rorty rejects the very concept of experience as philosophically useless and
dangerous, as misleading us into the myth of the given. But like the earlier
pragmatists James and Dewey, I think the concept of experience is very
important, so I have tried to defend it, paying particular care to
rehabilitating the concept of aesthetic experience. Finally, to mark perhaps
a fourth difference, Rorty, I think, exaggerates the pragmatist idea of
contingency, giving it a sense of idiosyncratic arbitrariness or random
accident rather than simply the sense of not being logically or
ontologically necessary. By failing to distinguish between contingencies
that are capricious or haphazard and those that are so deeply socially
routinized and practically entrenched that they are indispensable
("contingent necessities" so to speak), Rorty is led to take an overly
cavalier attitude toward social realities and the social sciences.
I don't think Rorty pays enough attention to how social structures and the
public sphere inform what he advocates for our private visions of
perfection. His own ethical ideal of the liberal ironist in constant search
for new vocabularies is an obvious echo of the consumer's quest for new
commodities, and both are obviously framed by the master public framework of
neo-liberal capitalism. Likewise, Rorty's definition of autonomy as
original, distinctly individualist self-creation seems a clear echo of
neoliberalist self-seeking and selfishness. So ambitiously voluntaristic,
demanding, and elitist, it makes one ask how many people could really live
that way and why should we morally expect them to?
It should be obvious by now that I also take issue with Rorty's
glorification of neoliberalism, his emphasis on negative liberty and the
one-sided celebration of free-market capitalism. It is one of the great
dangers of Rorty's influence in Eastern Europe that American pragmatism,
which Dewey inspired with socialist ideals, can now be construed as an
apology for free-market opportunism and selfishly private values.
But let me finally get to literature and aesthetics. I reject Rorty's
Bloomian view of interpretation as "strong misreading." When he asserts that
the good critic "simply beats the text into a shape which will serve his own
purpose" (1982, 151), I counter that such a policy is destructive of the
very alterity that makes reading a dialogical hermeneutic project from which
we can learn something new. This attitude also does not seem very helpful
for (if indeed consistent with) Rorty's recent advocacy of the
"inspirational value of great literature" (1998). His strategy of bullying
the text into fitting one's purpose is, however, clearly connected to his
demand that interpretations must be novel and that interpretation is (in
Stanley Fish's words) "the only game in town" (355). I argue instead for the
possibility and value of readings that are not original interpretations but
more ordinary, traditional understandings of texts which can serve as a
background or base for the more novel interpretations. I don't reject the
value of novel interpretations or strong misreadings, only their exclusive
claim to value in literary experience. I likewise reject Rorty's one-sided
identification of the aesthetic life with singular genius and originality --
not because I have something against original genius but again only because
this unwisely excludes other rewarding modes of aesthetic living that are
less demanding and more accessible.
As you already noted, Rorty seems to me too narrowly concerned with poetics
as the generation of new texts and vocabularies to enhance moral reflection,
while failing to give enough attention to the aesthetics of pleasure and
beauty. I think that the functions of meliorism (cognitive, ethical, and
social) and pleasure must be emphasized (and seen as related), just as I
also think that works of popular culture are useful for both functions. This
brings out another important difference in our aesthetic theories. While
Rorty ignores the popular arts as essentially unworthy, I pay them
considerable attention. Indeed it seems to me that popular art, since it is
understood by more people, can be more effective in sensitizing our society
to moral and political injustice so that popular art has a pragmatic
advantage in making real improvements to the ethical quality of our world.
Could we compare Uncle Tom's Cabin to Henry James' Portrait of a Lady?
Finally, not only does my aesthetics include popular culture, but I work on
music, visual art, and also somatic art which Rorty simply ignores, through
his exclusive textualism.
dmb says:
See? Even though they've poured out in a frustrated state of confusion, my
objections and disagreements are not unique at all. And more importantly, I
hope you see that these kinds of ideas can be expressed in a way that even I
can understand.
Thanks,
dmb
Previously...
DMB asked Matt how a "strong misreading" is different than mere dishonesty.
Matt answered:
It has to do with intention. "A “strong misreading” is a stance taken
towards a text. The critic asks neither the author nor the text about their
intentions but simply beats the text into a shape which will serve his own
purpose. ... He does this by imposing a vocabulary ... on the text which may
have nothing to do with any vocabulary used in the text or by its author,
and seeing what happens. The model here is not the curious collector of
clever gadgets taking them apart to see what makes them work and carefully
ignoring any extrinsic end they may have, but the psychoanalyst blithely
interpreting a dream or a joke as a symptom of homicidal mania.”
dmb says:
Imposing a vocabulary which may have nothing to do with the text or its
author just to see what happens? Why would one want to do that? What the
point of doing such a thing? How could the product of such an exercise be
anything other than a narcissistic fantasy of little of no value to anyone?
How is such an exercise legitimate? I mean, how is it NOT just a profound,
even if intentional, misinterpretaion? Seriously? These are NOT rhetorical
questions. I really don't get it. Like I said, how is this different that
mere dishonesty? You see what I'm asking, don't you?
And you said that Pirsig does this? Why not show it to me?
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