Memory, History, Poetry, and the Nature of Nature

A couple of weeks ago, I heard Lawrence Buell, ecocritc extraordinaire, give a talk on what he calls “environmental memory” in literature. The argument is still developing (unlike some “big names,” he didn’t just read from an already-published book), and is sort of perspectival and descriptive, rather than anaylitical and critical. In any event, it seemed to me that “memory” was being used as a kind of ahistorical, psychologized category – an individualized version of history.

That’s a consummately American approach. Europeans can see history for the succession of tragedies that it is (b/c it has been more so, over there). Americans need to boil history down for their own personal use. If Europeans philosophize, Americans psychologize. This tendency is especially problematic for environmental discourse, as there is already a penchant for organicist tropes (and essentialist thinking).

I asked what to me was the obvious question: What is history? He was obviously quite tired (halfway through a two-week intensive graduate seminar), and the response kind of rambled, but I think he understood what I was getting at. I do hope that he thinks some more re: the relation of history to memory (and how each gets represented). That’s crucial.

I also hope that he branches out generically. “Literature” meant “novels.” This conflation is typical, esp. amongst Americanists. Moreover, he did not talk about the form or structure of novels – that is, how the shape and texture of the text might interact with the way it represents memory or the environment.

The grand theories of American literature from the 50s and 60s dealt with motifs in novels. Those were the days of structuralism and psychologistic readings. Nowadays, not many people presume to account for all of American lit – and increasingly, monographs limit themselves to one or two genres (in the titles, even). But Buell is the generation just after the Theories of American Literature (Novel) crowd, and while he has branched out in dramatically new directions, this basic assumption – and approach – remains in place. It is a criticism that takes “content” for granted.

It is a pivotal assumption, since, it seems to me, the nature of representations of nature is what is at stake – not simply the semantic, hypotactic meanings, but the syntactic, material nature of the text as well.

I recommend that Prof. Buell read poets who deal with memory and history: Susan Howe, Adrienne Rich, Charles Olson, Nathaniel Mackey, et al. They may or may not deal with the environment as well. But one needs to think about the medium in order to understand the message. And to do that, one cannot accept genres as natural phenomena. To do so means to misunderstand “nature.”

Lost at Midnight

I still don't quite get what Susan Howe was doing in The Midnight. I mean, it hits on a lot of her major themes - legibility, lostness and discovery, textual mediation, margins v. center, etc. And there are the small, double-spaced poems in the middle of the page. But this book seems very different.

In many (most?) of Howe's books, we get a short prose introduction/explanation/narrative detailing what motivates the poems - and where some of the lines come from. This is a very useful and clever method, insofar as it preremps the "What's it about?" question. The prose bit gives you some notion of what the poems are alluding to, what the tone is to be, and what's prompting the feeling (and leaps of thought). In The Midnight by contrast, we get a series of poems, then a section of prose snippets, poems, prose, poems. The final set of poems, "Kidnapped," clearly pick up on themes and even texts that the prose parts introduce. But the relation between the other poems, "Bedhangings," which were originally collected as a chapbook of that name, and the prose sections that divide them, is rather cryptic.

Moreover, the relation of the prose pieces (each titled) to one another is often a bit mystifying. How does the early life of Frederic Law Olmstead relate to the origin of starching in fabrics relate to Howe's aunt and uncle? These sections are rendered in prose that is more-or-less linear and representational: it's clear how one person relates to another, or one object relates to those persons, and usually how one sentence relates to the next - which maybe leads me to expect more connections between the titled sections. One of the themes of the book is relationality - what's created when one thing is set next to another. That's OK until the relationality looks like that between the strands of spaghetti stuck to the wall. I mean, if I sent this to a publisher - even your friendly neighborhood avant publisher - they'd tell me to get lost. Granted, the writing wouldn't be as good, or the family stories as interesting. But even if they were, the form of the text offers so little purchase for the reader, that the reader has to be motivated already. You keep reading b/c it's by Susan Howe. 

So, I read Marjorie Perloff's article, which gave excellent close readings of individual sections, but not much sense of why all of these disparate elements are in the same book. Then I read John Palattella's review, which told me that "Howe catalogues details in an almost forensic way" and does so by "cracking the looking glass and making the incongruous appear even more so." Moreover, "The prose sections . . . . present a collage of brief narratives, with coincidence and synchronicity being the only means offered for aligning and organizing them." Reading these lines made me feel like I wasn't losing my mind after all. But in other books by Howe I always had a sense of how each section w/in a book hung together (loosely, anyway), and I saw the thematic filaments that led me from one to another and back.

Then I read Stephen Collis' review, and that helped. The "Bedhangings" poems relate text and textile, and the obssession w/the interleaves of books deals with another kind of "curtain," which in turn "is also the false front we present to the world," which Howe's actress-mother certainly did (when the curtain went up). "The curtain protects . . . but it also excludes." All of which rhymes with the account of trying to get into the Houghton Library at Harvard, and then trying to "get at" the books behind the "locked glass." Or how "while one voice excludes ('Go away') another includes."

That's really the issue: why these fragments? Why not that one - the one that was left out?

In any case, I had been suspecting what Collis says in as many words: that The Midnight is not so much about Howe's mother (as Palattella holds) as about Howe herself - or at least her work. It's almost like reading a "greatest hits," at least in terms of her intellectual concerns, tropes, forms: "she notes how 'you must turn Uncle John's books around and upside down to read the clippings and other insertions pasted and carerfully folded inside.' Again one is struck by the similarity between this and Howe's own books, where upside-down and off-kilter lines cause one to constantly turn her books about inthe midst of reading."

So, yes, noone but Howe could have published a book like this, but noone but Howe would have written it. And perhaps noone but Howe fans would be interested in reading it. If this were the first book of hers you read, it would be a disaster. But if you read it in the context of the rest of her oeuvre, you can see how one part of the book might "rhyme" with another. The family history/memoir is in a sense just another path into the woods - albeit a particularly treacherous and overgrown one.

All of which makes me wonder if one should read each of Howe's books as a chapter of a larger, yet-to-be-collected work.

All of which is, of course, my own anxieties about my writing projected onto Howe's book.

Blogger v. Facebook

It's old hat to say that Facebook has replaced Blogger and Twitter has replaced Facebook. The latter replacement surely has to do with the prevalence of mobile devices (and the difficulty of "typing" on them), esp. among young people. But what about the former? Both blogs and FB are mostly old farts like me.

If Twitter is also about reduced attention spans, perhaps FB is about reduced patience and time. People post and respond to posts more frequently, because it doesn't take as long - or at least you're not expected to be as smart and eloquent (or prolix). By the same token, one can "keep up with" more people in less time; if Blogger is like a virtual public sphere, FB is a virtual cocktail party (emphasis on "virtual," in both cases).

There are some folks who have done good things with "microblogging" on FB. Ben Friedlander is the first person who comes to mind - pithy posts arising directly from his research and thinking about poetics; the responses tend to be equally good. Sure, it's like overhearing snippets of conversation, but a really good conversation.

The rest of us just make wise-cracks.

In one respect, FB is head-and-shoulders above Blogger: you can SEE the comments to the original post (well, several, anyway). It's like a digest of bulletin boards delivered to your computer. So the dialogic aspect is always in front of your face - unlike Blogger, which seems to think the Comments are the Footnotes. (In Word Press, you can make the comments part of the "main page" of the blog - but the print is so damn tiny!).

Please comment!

What Would Walter Benjamin Have Said About the Voice Synthesizer?

Reading the Arcades Project, I have to wonder what would have caught Benjamin's eye (and other senses) had he been working on the 21st c. US instead of 19th c. Paris. I have to think that the ubiquitous voice synthesizer would be one item on his list. Why is it so pervasive in pop music? Is it the desire to have the natural fed back in distorted form? In order to denature the voice (and, by implication, the body), or to hear the natural distorted by the machine, so that it corresponds to the experience of everyday life in capitalist society, blah blah blah? I have to think it would be more original than all that. Or maybe that's the problem - the New, the desire for novelty, which relapses into spleen afterwards.

What are some other things WB might fix upon? Vitual reality of all sorts, surely. Environmental bumper stickers. The NBA playoffs in the summer. Facebook, of course.

Jeez, I'm behind!

. . . my last post was JUNE 30! And here it's the Fourth of July. You have to WORK to PRODUCE, Joe.

Actually, I have been blogging on Dale Smith's blog Possum Ego - responding to his and Boyd Nelson's posts - and responding to their responses.

Oh and happy 4th. I guess.

Rethinking (Reality-checking) Poetics

I have been reading (w/some degree of amusement, I admit) the reports from last month’s “Rethinking Poetics” conference at Columbia University in NYC. All of the (first) name dropping and who-said-what makes it more entertaining than Rolling Stone and the E! network rolled into one. Ditto for the anti-academism coming from tenured academics (are we not supposed to notice? . . . ).

I especially liked John Keene’s fast-forward time-lapse quasi-versified précis of the whole thing – well worth reading through to the end. Frankly, it sounded like it was another (above-average) professional academic conference that went onto a lot of c.v.’s. Which is fine.

As I commented after that post, it also sounds to me like there was a lot of liberal hand-wringing going on – over the state of the world, and over poets’ inability to effect change qua poets (or qua academics). This is, of course, a very old sport, as any student of Anglophone poetry in the 1930s knows. The difference now, of course, is that there is not an over-arching, semi-numinous ideology to redeem it all – and no Uncle Joe to tell us we’re doing our part and it will all work out in the end. In fact, it’s looking less and less likely that it will all work out (has the bottom of the ocean dropped out yet?).

Those of us still clinging to (or dreaming of squeezing into) the comforts of lower-middle-class existence don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it and are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenges. We want to fight the Man, but we want to do so by doing things that will also advance our careers (which involve working for the Man). One can retreat into the belief that cultural change will lead to political and economic change (“it may take a very long time, of course” . . . the problem is that there isn’t a long time. Read The Iron Heel, by Jack London, to see how discomfiting this time-scale can be).

Unfortunately, social movements require leadership, leadership requires enormous amounts of time and energy, and if one is leading a movement against People with Money, they don’t pay you for it (which, in the era of neoliberalism, means you don’t get paid) – until you get coopted or sell out, which requires you to work at it long enough and successfully enough (w/o money) to have something to sell. You have to eke out a living doing something tedious and exhausting, and then, “after hours,” do your organizing work (and there actually are people who do this). This is why poets generally aren’t organizers. They spend “after hours” writing poems and arguing with one another. Academics have to grade papers, prep class, do committee work, get published, etc.; we call this "burrowing from within."

It’s no wonder social movements are often composed of mostly young people w/o kids – they have the energy, resilience, lack of other commitments, and naivite necessary to achieve goals that are far short of what they had desired.

Rebecca Wolff wrote a pretty good piece on the relation of poetry to “social change.” She ends up sounding a bit like John Crowe Ransom (“Poetry butters no parsnips and delays the eating of them,” or something to that effect), with one big difference – Ransom thinks one shouldn’t write poetry that touches on political and social issues at all – which is true of some (unlikely) poet-critics today, as well. But Wolff doesn’t care about that, one way or the other. She does care about being dictated to, especially on the authority of grandiose and unfair claims for poetry. She gets exercised where I get amused.

how did I get mixed up in this? . . .

. . . or rather, mashed up. It's Mad Bashers, a joint issue of the neo-dadaish Mad Hatters Review and the humor magazine Bunk. I "mashed" Lyn Lifshin and Patricia Carragon (b/c her piece contained the word "dwarf") - 20 ways til Sunday (or at least 4).

Did anyone at the "Rethinking Poetics" conference mention fun?

This is a joke, right? . . . Yeah . . . it's a joke . . .

boundary 2 intends to publish "only materials that identify and analyze the tyrranies of thought and action spreading around the world and that suggest alternatives to these emerging configurations of power. To this end, we wish to inform our readers that, until further notice, the journal will not accept unsolicited manuscripts."

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - Orwell

The Case Against Courtesy

Academic politics is not electoral politics. It is court politics.

The term “professional courtesy” can be taken two ways. If taken ironically, we are returned to the original meaning of courtesie: that is, the manner in which professional courtiers behaved at the Court of the monarch. They bowed and simpered at one another, danced rondels with each other, spoke lovely, flowery words to one another, all the time scheming about how to stab each other in the back. When the king or queen was around, they did not say crude things like “Why, Your Majesty, that fellow’s plotting against you – you shouldn't trust him any farther than you can throw him!” No, no, no. They dropped hints. They circumlocuted. They made passing references designed to pique the interest (or fear) of the ruler. They told half-truths, raised eyebrows, exchanged glances. And next thing you know, somebody got their head chopped off, and nobody could understand why. And then you had a war. That’s “professional courtesy” for you.

This is, of course, the opposite of democratic politics – indeed, it’s why the latter was invented. That which is courteous is by definition the opposite of demotic: these categories are defined over-against one another. Those to the manor born are not part of the rabble in the street. Likewise, the lace knickers (and garrotes) of the Court are not the rags (and brickbats) of the street. But a democratic regime is designed precisely to allow for conflict that can have an outcome other than bloodshed. It is, for that reason, often verbally rough-and-tumble. People say inflammatory, even scurrilous things; and usually there’s an equal and opposite reaction, if it’s done clumsily.

But the point is not to eliminate conflict. The point is (as Chantal Mouffe puts it) to replace antagonism with agonism. Antagonism means brickbats (or civil war). Agonism means skillful rhetoric; forming alliances (ex. political parties); placing pressure at vulnerable points by presenting the right information at the right time to large groups or individuals. It means using the public (in all its senses) to attain political and social ends.

This is a big part of “civility.” “Civility” is the way that citizens are supposed to behave in civil society (i.e., the civitas, the city). That way is different than courtesy. A civilian citizen can (and indeed should) publically express dissatisfaction; openly form political networks; even tell people exactly what s/he thinks of the opponent. Caning your colleagues on the Senate floor is uncivil. But denouncing them for their policies or methods is not.

It is, however, the height of discourtesy. It is the manner of the court to maintain the façade of tranquility, stability, harmony – because that is how the monarch (the state) wishes to be seen. Conflict amongst the courtiers = conflict in the state. If l’etat c’est moi, then chez moi had better look pretty damn placid. Needless to say it’s not in fact – it’s just breeding conspiracies.

The problem in the US academy (and indeed, in US culture generally) is that its denizens confuse civility with courtesy. The belief seems to be that one is either courteous or one is uncivil. You are either minueting or you are caning somebody. Either you’re sitting with your hands folded in your lap like Pollyanna, or there’s the danger that, at any moment, you’ll start screaming at the top of your lungs (and, indeed, it's a culture that breeds such polarized responses). You’d think otherwise smart people (some of them are even historians of the absolutist state, or public-sphere theorists) would recognize this kind of “category creep.” But not so.

However, it is precisely because everyone is expected to sit quietly with hands in lap that they end up whacking each other. The repressed returns. People mistake conflict for violence and try to quash it. Everybody’s going to get along just fine. And, of course, this is how things had to be at Court.

But Members of Congress from different parties can denounce each other’s policies (and sometimes each other) on the floor, and then go out for drinks afterwards and kid each other about it. Why aren’t they caning each other instead? Because the conflict is already in the open, within the space of the legislature. They know and acknowledge that they have different political philosophies and aims, and sometimes they can leave them at the office. They are colleagues, and they are not on the same side.

What if we had political parties amongst faculty? There are certainly differing interests: between multiculturalists and cultural conservatives; between sciences and humanities; between those who make a lot of money and those who make less; between those who believe in top-down control and those who believe in power-sharing. But to lobby your colleagues openly about a particular policy; or to address such conflicts directly in a departmental meeting or faculty senate is considered unbecoming – unprofessional – dangerous to the body (not to mention one’s career). It does not evince Professional Courtesy. And people are surprised that we have the simultaneous simpering and backstabbing that characterize so many departments – or departments that seem to be getting along just fine until they suddenly disintegrate into lawsuits, defections, and receivership.

So, the model of the professional academic is in some ways the model of the professional courtier: the one who can gain the ear of the chief – and who can keep a plot secret – while making everyone think that nothing is going on. Maybe this is a legacy of the origins of the university as an outgrowth of the monarchy (which is why we have boards of “regents”). Maybe academics like to think of their departments as one, big, happy family, instead of a sometimes-agonistic polis.

I wouldn’t argue for political parties (not necessarily) in English departments. But what if it were OK to (for instance) approach a colleague and say, “I really don’t like the way Jane is handling the department. I know for a fact that she’s lied to my face. And I’d like you to sign this petition to ask her to step down.” This direct approach is very honest; it is, indeed, civil, in the truest sense of the word. It is how a citizen should conduct herself. But to do so within the culture of academia is considered – well, if not treasonous, then certainly discourteous. And, since we mistake courtesy for civility, it is termed (inaccurately) as “uncivil” – when precisely the opposite is the case. Maintaining “a culture of civility” thus becomes, effectively, maintaining the status quo – which was precisely the function of courtesie.

Perhaps this is all another way of acknowledging that the university is not a republic. “Shared governance” is not the same thing as shop democracy. In part, that’s because of the hierarchy (those regents and all). But in part, it’s because the faculty have internalized the ethos of the hierarchy. We are all professionally courteous.