Why Not Just Teach The Contest Of Interpretations Between Formalist And Political

By Author: Alex Lee
Total Articles: 365
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What of all those who do How are we to evaluate their quality Or are they to be banned from English studies Fish was a Yale grad student in the days of Cleanth Brooks & Company, and I've always thought his multiple theoretical phases were basically variations on the New Criticism, with all its blind spots—for example, toward literary realism, romantic-transcendentalist poetic theory ("Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world"),and existentialist litterature engages. Thomas Sabo Bracelets Why not just teach "the contest of interpretations" between formalist and political or moral approaches without pre-judgment.

In another formulation, Fish says, "The only advocacy that goes on in the classroom is the advocacy of what James Murphy has identified as the intellectual virtues, 'thoroughness, perseverance, intellectual honesty,' components of the cardinal academic virtue of being 'conscientious in the pursuit of truth.' If you're not in the pursuit-of-truth business, you should not be in the university". Leaving aside Fish's voluminous ...
... writings on the problematic nature of truth and its pursuit, let's again pursue the consequences of his arguments here. Suppose we take as a subject of academic study the obstacles posed to the pursuit of truth in a society in which public opinion is manipulated by political and corporate forces spending billions of dollars annually to produce propaganda, deception, outright lies, and other more-or-less toxic forms of "spin." (When Fish and other theoretical deep thinkers like Barbara Herrnstein Smith address the subject of truth, it is almost invariably on an abstract epistemological level, avoiding the epistemology of deliberate lying or propaganda.) Shouldn't those of us in the pursuit-of-truth business devote a major part of our teaching and scholarship to dissecting and assessing all these sources of fallacious argument, as a purely academic enterprise! Shouldn't we also perhaps take an advocacy position—opposing the systematic stupefaction of the entire American polity and culture, with the same fervor Fish recommends for opposing cuts in spending for liberal education In other words, might not the advocacy of "intellectual honesty" take on the force of the kind of moral imperative that Fish claims to eschew, in the manner of Emerson's exhortation to the American Scholar: "See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow", or Chomsky's "Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of government, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions"

Also suppose, just hypothetically, that "the superiority of one analysis or description or prescription over its (intellectual) rivals"—say, the intellectual superiority of one political party or ideology in America over others— Thomas Sabo Jewellery can be established by "argument and evidence" Suppose further that one party not only constantly flaunts its anti-intellectualism but is expressly committed to the following view, attributed by journalist Ron Suskind to an "unnamed [Bush] administration official".