There is a fold in the fabric of reality. (Traditional) literary criticism is written on one side of it. I went around the bend years ago.

I’ve been trying to write this post for over a year now, maybe two. It seems to me that the idea is simple enough. But as soon as I get into it, it grows and grows and eludes me.

Reset.

But there it us, up there in the title. All of it. Really.

And, yes, I know that “fold” is in use as a term of philosophical/critical art. I believe Lacan uses it. I’ve read a little Lacan, very little and years ago. Any resemblance between his use of the term and my current use is incidental.

I suppose that’s one reason it’s taken so long for me to plunge in. I really like the word, and in the use I propose. I just don’t want any Lacanian cross-talk.

So, reality is folded, at least once, but who knows how many times. The point of course is that the whole sheet is real. All of it. But what’s on different sides of the fold, very different.

On one side we have the meaning of it all. That’s where we find literature (and the arts). Literary criticism seeks to explicate that meaning. On the other side is...what? It all, all of it? How it’s constructed. Is this where we find science, but engineering as well?

Philosophical reminders: The Living Cosmos, and also Matter, Life, and Culture (so far).

The position that academic literary criticism held in the third decade of the previous century comes from its attempt, I suppose, to straddle the fold. To explicate the meaning of it all while still remaining in touch with the constructedness of, well, the text, of it all.

The attempt collapsed, failed. So here we are. On one side of the fold, speech, conversation. On the other side, the hunt, tracking, map-making.

Recent post: Is that it, do humanists (really) want to speak with the dead?

And that’s as far as I dare go, as I’ve ever gone. And this is what happened the last time I stepped out on this path:

On the defenestration of literary study and the existence of chaos in the universe

When I was young, and an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins, literary study was a powerful and prestigious discipline, with no lack for undergraduate majors or fellowship money to support graduate students. These days the discipline fears for its life. Undergraduate enrollment is way down, most of the teaching is done by temporary workers of one sort or another, and there is a widespread feeling that things just aren’t clicking intellectually anymore. This feeling is way more than a defensive reaction to ridicule heaped on the discipline in various quarters–for this is, after all, an old story. Rather, this dis-ease is being generated from within the discipline itself: Where do we go?

That’s what I mean by the defenestration of literary study. As for chaos in the universe, I’m thinking of a strange, but interesting, article by Noson Yanofsky, Chaos Makes the Multiverse Unnecessary. I’m not at all sure that I agree with the article, but agreement is not the same as interest, is it? Yanofsky says

Rather than saying that the universe is very structured, say that the universe is mostly chaotic and for the most part lacks structure. The reason why we see the structure we do is that scientists act like a sieve and focus only on those phenomena that have structure and are predictable. They do not take into account all phenomena; rather, they select those phenomena they can deal with.

That’s what I mean by chaos, lacking structure, which is not, by the way, the mathematical definition, though Yanofsky is a mathematician. And I dislike his sieve metaphor, as it is too passive. Sieve let things flow; some make it through, others do not. But we actively construe the world and, over time, outstrip our previous constraints so that our capacity for understanding embraces more and more of the world, including chaos (which I now mean in the mathematical sense).

But what does chaos, in whatever sense, have to do with the defenestration of literary study? While I can just barely see my way to a coherent step by step argument on that score, I fear that starting down that road might be that first step on one of those long, too long, journeys of 1609 kilometers. So I’m going to leap around.

First leap: The meanings literary critics seek in texts are inherently subjective phenomena. Given that people can share and through sharing elaborate upon subjective awareness, this does not consign literary criticism to relentless solipsism. But it does place limits on what the discipline can do. It means that, though literary critics may natter on about literary language, they cannot tolerate much actually study of and attention to language as such. No linguists allowed! It means as well that, however much they natter on about form and formalism, they could care less about actually describing literary form and forms. Why? Because that would require them to attend to language as such, to assume the stance of a linguist, if you will. And that has been ruled out of court (sometime in the mid 1970s).

That ruling has lead, in time, to literary study as the study of Everything, albeit, under the rubric of The Text. All the world is a text and literary critics will tell us the meaning of it all or, more likely, explain what’s wrong with it. The world caught on to the game decided it was silly, and kicked the discipline out the window. On the way down, critics began to wonder: Hmmmmm...?

Second leap: THIS IS ABOUT FECUNDITY AND IMPLEMENTATION but also about LIFE AND ITS OWN ORDER, MIND AND ITS OWN ORDER

Third leap: THIS IS ABOUT LIT CRITICISM AND SUBJECTIVITY VS. SCIENCE AND OBJECTIVITY

Fourth leap: THE STUDY OF LITERATURE COULD TURN FROM THE MEANING OF IT ALL TO THE EXAMINATION OF LITERARY FORM. But that would imply a LIMITATION OF SCOPE TO THE MIND AS IT TAKES FORM THROUGH LITERATURE (some limitation! Ha!)