Lecture 12: Theory and Sophistry

English 140
Summer Session B, 2012
UC Santa Barbara

Every time a student sits down to write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion — invent the university, that is, or a branch of it, like History or Anthropology or Economics or English. He has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community. Our perhaps I should say the various discourses of our community, since it is in the nature of a liberal arts education that a student, after the first year or two, must learn to try on a variety of voices and interpretive schemes — to write, for example, as a literary critic one day and an experimental psychologist the next […] I am continually impressed by the patience and good will of our students.

David Bartholomae, Inventing the University

To Reign in Hell: Tony Pescecane and Postmodern Moral Vacancy

The title was, and I quote, The Fuck Cares About Edmund Spenser? Unquote. The argument of this groundbreaking essay was, as I recall, that the new criterion for determining what is worth reading and what is not – God forbid the word literature should pass our chairman’s lips – the criterion for literary merit is something Anthony defines, and I quote again, as street cred. (112; ch. 6)
it wasn’t until Nelson saw the light in his eye and the smile playing about Pescecane’s lips that realized that the chair was enjoying this. A voice in Nelson’s head sad, Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain. (93; ch. 5)
To crush your enemies, Humboldt, said Pescecane, his voice wavering as he jogged in place, and hear the lamentation of their women. […] It pays to be my friend. (247; ch. 13)
What about the letters? Pescecane shrugged. Fuck the letters. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the letters. For all I know you’re writing them yourself; and you know what, Nelson? I don’t give a shit. (247)
the finest thing in life is to take an academic department and bend it to one’s will. (93; ch. 5)
Anthony believes in nothing, said Victorinix, except himself. He can talk the talk, he can play the role of the engaged academic, but ideology, social justice — they mean nothing to him. She smiled bitterly. He feels no obligation to be right, only an obligation to be interesting. What his subordinates do below him, who comes out on top, doesn’t matter to him, as long as he gets to be Il Padrone. This is his greatest flaw, but it is also what makes him dangerous. A man who believes in nothing is capable of anything. (281; ch. 14)

Power/Knowledge: Michel Foucault, 1926-1984

  • Rejected the poststructuralist label that became associated with him late in life; saw his large-scale project as being a critical history of modernity.
  • Mentioned in The Lecturer’s Tale as the author of the influential Discipline and Punish (1975; English translation 1977).
  • First well-known public figure in France to die of HIV-related illness.
Sketch of Michel Foucault by Arturo Espinosa. (Source.)

Nelson as Mediator

the fellowship at Midwest squared with his dream of bringing balm and sweet reason to the culture wars, of black, lesbian, queer theorists laughing uproariously at Alexander Pope, of sixty-year-old white men identifying with the heroine of Beloved. (103; ch. 6)
Don’t waste your sympathy on the Coogan, Nelson told himself. If he wrote the letters, he thought, certainly the Coogan deserves to go. You can’t have someone like that teaching young, impressionable minds. And he’s not even that good a poet anymore. (137; ch. 7)

Nelson’s Moral Standing

He trembled a little, ashamed at the pleasure it had given him to see all those people toppling on the bus. (105; ch. 6)
He [Nelson] ought to have leaped to the defense of Vita. But he didn’t know yet why Weissmann had invited him to lunch after all this time, and he wanted to find out. (109; ch. 6)
he had an opportunity for – what? Advancement? Professional salvation? He wasn’t even sure how far Pescecane’s gratitude would go. All Nelson had to do was destroy another man’s career. (137; ch. 7)
And why not? He thought. I have nothing to be ashamed of. If I benefit from my efforts on behalf of others, then my reward is commensurate with my service to the department, no more, no less. I live to serve. (184; ch. 11)
Nelson fretted over his evening out with Timothy Coogan the previous semester, and soon had himself convinced that even if Coogan turned out not to be the author of the poison pen letters, he had been a dangerous influence anyway. All that talk about sleeping with his students, all that self-pity. And he had, after all, ranted at some length about how the Jew Weissmann and the lesbian Victorinix were out to get him. Surely Nelson had done nothing wrong. (241; ch. 13)

Sophistry

… in her appearance before the university’s sexual harassment panel, Penelope had delivered a passionate explication of the erotics of pedagogy.

Teaching is seduction, she’d declared, climaxing her presentation with the argument that since sexual harassment was an instrumentality of the oppression of women, no woman could be guilty of it.

And ain’t I a woman? she had declared to the harassment panel in her posh accent, fingering the laces of her leather bustier. (165; ch. 10)

Media credits