Here is a brief description of a program for literary studies that has been forming in my mind over, say, the last year or so. This conceptualization is very much a work in progress.
I surmise that, in the future, literary studies will be organized around four foci: 1) description, 2) the newer psychologies, 3) object-oriented ontology, and 4) digital humanities. Do I KNOW this will happen? Of course not. I surmise that it is possible. I also think it would be a good thing, indeed.
1) Description: We need to develop richer descriptions of the texts we study. I’ve blogged about this hear and there, and I note that some folks at Arcade seem to be thinking about these lines. But mostly what I’ve been doing is working at honing my descriptive skills, with texts and with films. I’m working on an explicit justification of description. For now, see my postscript about a handbook for Heart of Darkness.
The primary texts constitute the treasure we study. Full and accurate descriptions of those texts are the key to that treasure. Everything else is built on those descriptions.
2) Newer Psychologies: By which I mean cognitive science, neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. I take this to be background knowledge, knowledge about the human mind. The first half of Brian Boyd’s On the Evolution of Stories is exemplary in this regard. Supplement it with material on the computational aspect of cognition and you have a synoptic précis of early 21st Century psychology.
3) Object-Oriented Ontology: Provides a philosophical framework in which aesthetic and ethical issues may be addressed. It’s only in the past two or three months that I’ve been pursuing this line of thought, and so I’ve relatively little to say about it. I note that OOO is grounded in the Continental philosophical tradition, which is where my own roots are. But I’m certainly not averse to contributions from the Anglo-American analytical tradition. But I know even less about that than I do about OOO.
4) Digital Humanities: The digital humanities can provide: 1) New tools for the description of literary phenomena, whether, e.g. through statistical studies of individual texts, or though ‘distant reading’ (in Franco Moretti’s phrase) of large numbers of texts over large periods of time and geographical extent. 2) Tools for richly presenting and annotating primary texts, organizing handbook material, and integrating them with the larger literature around those texts (again, see my postscript to the Heart of Darkness posts). 3) Ultimately the digital humanities may provide explanatory models, simulations, of how the mind encounters texts.* In this function the digital humanities would converge with the newer psychologies.
I do not see robust simulation of literary processes as something that is likely to happen soon. Nor do I have any idea when it is likely to happen. Thirty-five years ago I thought that it would take, perhaps, twenty years to reach that point. I was wrong.
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A Note on Description and the Newer Psychologies: In the past decade or so cognitive, neuro-, and evolutionary psychology have become increasingly visible within literary studies; I myself adopted them over three decades. They cannot, however, be front and center in a new literary studies because those psychologies have, as yet, relatively little to say directly about literature (or film).
On the other hand, literature and film present considerable challenges to these psychologies by virtue of the rock-bottom minimum of complexity presented by these texts. One cannot understand how these texts work in the mind by understanding low-level visual processing alone, or syntactic processing, alone, much less the neuropsychology of sexuality, romance, and attachment, alone. One needs to understand those psychological systems, and more, and how they interact with one another through the literary text.
All of which is to say that study of literary texts provide these psychologies with something they desperately need, though they may not yet know it: an ecologically valid (to use J.J. Gibson’s phrase) way to study the mind in its integrated fullness. It is all but impossible to obtained controlled observations of the mind at work as people go about their lives over hours, days, months, years. But it is just barely possible that we can obtain such observations about the reading of novels and poems or the watching of films—indeed, such investigation has already begun. The investigation of literary texts is perhaps psychology’s best shot at a full and integrated psychology.
Such investigation is possible only to the extent that one can describe the phenomenon under study. And so rich descriptions of texts become something of a precondition of full psychological study. By way of comparison I note that, within molecular biology, it was necessary to describe the DNA molecule as a double-helix prior to investigating how that molecule served its function, that of inheritance.
This example points up the fact that description is not an end itself, but a means to further investigation. While I believe that to be true of the descriptive practices I am urging on literary studies, I also believe that the amount of description required is so massive that it cannot be treated as a mere stepping stone to the real stuff. It is, in a deep and profound way, the REAL STUFF, NOW.
The key to the treasure is the treasure.
Again, I point to biology. During the early modern era thinkers asked a question:** These flora and fauna we read about in the ancient texts, are they the same as the flora and fauna about us? This immediately led to parallel questions: Are the flora and fauns in and around Rome the same as in Florence? What about Paris, London? Thus descriptive biology was born. Darwin’s achievement rests on those descriptions, thousands upon thousands of them. As objective knowledge these descriptions are a means to further, explanatory knowledge. In the small we have physiology; in the large, evolution.
That work would not have been done, however, if those patient investigators had thought of it as mere stepping stones. It some level they must have regarded it as an end in itself, perhaps as a form of meditation on the wonders of the natural world. And so we must come to regard the act of describing literary texts. If they are so rich as we have maintained, and they are, then let us create ways to systematically explore and share that richness.
The key to the treasure is the treasure.
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* See, e.g. the discussion of Prospero, a hypothetical program for computing Shakespeare, in William Benzon and David G. Hays, Computational Linguistics and the Humanist. Computers and the Humanities 10: 265 - 274, 1976.
** Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
"But it is just barely possible that we can obtain such observations about the reading of novels and poems or the watching of films"
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this form of study will just hit the same wall as that faced by ethnology.
The most important observations are made in the field when the machine is turned off.
This is also the material you do not have the formal permission required to directly cite and use.
Possibly. But getting much of anything at all gets us more than we have now.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I think ethnology when it started to turn it's eyes towards looking at Europe became I somewhat interesting subject and one filled with considerable potential as it's approach was drawn in large degree from the new sciences and new developments in biology in particular.
ReplyDeleteIts mistake was to confine itself exclusively to oral culture but that is slowly starting to change.
A number of the points you raise are also the core strengths of the subject and the reason why I find it exciting.
I've never paid much attention to the methods used in literary studies. But if it does move in the direction you suggest, that really would be something.
I certainly strongly share you're perspective with regard to the considerable potential of such an approach.
My whole program, as it were, amounts to looking at our own culture as through we were Martian ethnographers studying these strange earth folks.
ReplyDeleteTrain as an ethnologist, train as an artist.
ReplyDeleteBoth require the same perspective and skills.
Distance from you're subject and constant detailed observation.
The switch from art to science requires no movement or change of position.