[Vwoolf] "The triumph of theory"

Wed Jul 17 08:02:25 EDT 2013

Amen!

Kathy

From: vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Stuart N. Clarke
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 8:00 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: [Vwoolf] "The triumph of theory"

Theory seems to come from the Continent.  Trouble with these Continentals is that they can’t write English.  Why do we have to learn a foreign language to discuss literature?

See, e.g., Denise Delorey, "Parsing the Female Sentence: The Paradox of Containment in Virginia Woolf's Narratives" in "Ambiguous Discourse", ed. MEZEI, Kathy (Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Pr, 1996): “the narrator is not simply strategically heterodiegetic” (p. 97).

I want to know what “heterodiegetic” means, so I look up my dictionary – no good.  So I turn to Wikipedia, and I find it’s some bloody word invented by one Gérard Genette.

Wikipedia says:
“A writer's choice in the narrator is crucial for the way a work of fiction is perceived by the reader. There is a distinction between first-person<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_narrative> and third-person narrative<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_narrative>, which Gérard Genette<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Genette> refers to as homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrative, respectively. A homodiegetic narrator describes own personal experiences as a character in the story.”

I do not see how the terms, homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrative, are an improvement on first-person<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_narrative> and third-person narrative<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_narrative>.

Stuart

From: Danell Jones<mailto:danelljones at bresnan.net>
Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2013 12:24 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] "The triumph of theory"

I think theory can be useful when it is used with precision.  However, there is an unfortunate amount of scholarly work in which theory substitutes for clear thinking and ends up producing sloppy ideas and mangled prose. Moreover, to suggest that theory alone offers challenging thought creates a false dichotomy.

Why do you suppose these enormously gifted writers are so adverse to theory?  I believe that question is worth thoughtful consideration.

Danell

On 7/12/2013 4:03 PM, Laurie Reiche wrote:
But Derrida is delicious! Although I understand it is soooo uncool to think so. And sooooooo uncool nowadays to suggest that being an "intellectual" might be a good and adventurous thing to be!---and that one can be compassionate and a doer of good deeds even if she/he loves crazy/wild/ weird Derridean-Cixousian-(?) Celanesque, etc. words and the wonder-full labyrinthian land of philosophy and theory. Oh dear, it is so easy to make fun of the extreme-literates while the world aorund us becomes a place where no one reads a book…etc. etc….I'd rather go to a party where the colorful confetti of theory is raining down on my head than be in a dull room of ---well, of unchallenging thought…? I'm too sleepy to articulate my own thoughts at the moment! Cheers, laurie
On Jul 12, 2013, at 10:18 PM, Stuart N. Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at BTINTERNET.COM<mailto:stuart.n.clarke at BTINTERNET.COM>> wrote:

Theorists are still in triumphalist mode, cocky, bandwagoning along, a surging band, confident in job security and intellectual prestige – THES

Get to the staff-graduate seminar last night?
Oh yeah. Very tasty.
Really?
We had this bleeder from some old and ancient university talking about what he called 'the incidence of poverty in North-East England'.
Not another toss-pot empiricist?
Right down to the charts and correlations.
So you let him have some?
Oh yeah. Soon as it was question time, up jumps Big Stan and asks how he managed to speak for a whole hour about power in the postmodern world without one mention of Foucault.
Nice one
And when he said he couldn't see what Foucault had to do with the 'basic facts of poverty', Knuckles Paul comes straight in with 'what precisely do you mean by "basic"? How "basic" is "basic"? Is it more "basic" than "fundamental"'?
Gave him a real going over then?
Not half. He started blustering about ‘basic' having something to do with minimal nutritional standards as laid down by some agency or other. But absolutely no critical analysis.
Essential crap.
Basically. And so bang on cue up gets Mad Ralph and smacks him round the head with a Derridean metaphysics of presence.
Ooh - Aah - Derri - Dah!
Right on. And then while he's still picking himself up from that one, Razor Kathy nips in sharpish with her usual trope on Kristevan heterogeneity.
And it's all over bar the shouting?
Oh yeah. A vote of thanks from the chairperson. Brief round of applause. And then our lot all go down the boozer for some brand name lager and a few ironic choruses of 'Ere We Go.
Typical sort of academic evening then?
You could say that.

(Laurie Taylor)

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