On 19 January Mike Palij wrote of Stanley Fish: >Perhaps, but it is also possible that he is being super ironic >or playing a game in which one moment he's is being literal >and other he's ironic or mocking what he's just said. I assume >some people in English/humanities like to play such language games.
[Paul Brandon] >>Internal consistency is all! >>Sounds like he's talking about himself. [Mike Palij] >Possibly. Clearly he likes the limelight but does he really want >to say that, hey, y'know, everything I've been doing is a waste of time. And Mike again: >On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:07:11 -0800, Rick Froman wrote: >>I think he is only decrying what we often commiserate about >>on this list: the business model of education that seems to have >>won the day. >Decrying it? I don't think so. He appears to be dismissing the >entire area of the humanities as a valid academic area. In another >article on his blog he says the following: [...] Mike: I don't think the passage you then quote demonstrates what you say it does. I think Rick is right that, on the contrary, he is saying that his approach to [humanities?] education during his teaching career is what it should be all about: "In previous columns and in a recent book I have argued that higher education, properly understood, is distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world." Incidentally, in his book *Postmodern Pooh* Frederick Crews has what is widely regarded as a parody of Fish in one of his wickedly barbed caricatures of conference talks by a variety of postmodern eminences and other purveyors of fashionable ideas that became (and probably remain) the mainstay of many University humanities departments in the States. Some of the cast of characters are identified here: "Crews satirical laser beam sweeps the contemporary academy. Among the characters we meet in addition to Gulag are N. Mack Hobbs (an exaggerated version of Stanley Fish), Orpheus Bruno (quite obviously Harold Bloom), Das Nuffa Dat (a postcolonialist), Dudley Cravat III (without a doubt, Bill Bennett), and Sisera Catheter (an arch-Feminist), and Biggloria3 (some sort of cybercritic, whose paper is titled "Virtual Bear") among others." http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~ganterg/sjureview/vol1-2/postmodern.html And more concisely here: http://dannyreviews.com/h/Postmodern_Pooh.html Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org ******************************************************** Subject: Re: The Fish Course (something fishy) From: "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:05:24 -0500 On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:44:30 -0800, Paul Brandon wrote: >I haven't read this article, but I do occasionally read him for >amusement. He's a philosopher, Well, no, I believe not. According to his Wikipedia entry (standard disclaimers apply), this is academic career: |Fish did his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania [1] |and earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1962. He taught English |at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University |before becoming Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor |of Law at Duke University from 1986 to 1998. From 1999 to 2004 |he was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the |University of Illinois at Chicago. He also held joint appointments |in the Departments of Political Science and Criminal Justice, and |was the chairman of the Religious Studies Committee [2]. During his |tenure there, he recruited professors well respected in the academic |community and garnered a lot of attention for the College [3]. After |resigning as dean in a high-level dispute with the state of Illinois over |funding UIC [4], Fish spent a year teaching in the Department of English. |The Institute for the Humanities at UIC named a lecture series in his |honor, which is still ongoing [5]. In June 2005, he accepted the position |of Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities |and Law at Florida International University, teaching in the FIU College |of Law. He is also identified as a "literary theorist" (?) and a legal scholar and one of the foremost John Milton scholars (which brings to mind Steve Carell's character in "Little Miss Sunshine" who kept saying that he was the world's second leading authority on Proust). >which means that he doesn't feel any need to tie his statements to >reality, and has no appreciation for systematic data collection. Perhaps, but it is also possible that he is being super ironic or playing a game in which one moment he's is being literal and other he's ironic or mocking what he's just said. I assume some people in English/humanities like to play such language games. >Internal consistency is all! >Sounds like he's talking about himself. Possibly. Clearly he likes the limelight but does he really want to say that, hey, y'know, everything I've been doing is a waste of time. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] Subject: RE: The Fish Course (something fishy) From: "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:15:13 -0500 On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:07:11 -0800, Rick Froman wrote: >I think he is only decrying what we often commiserate about on >this list: the business model of education that seems to have won >the day. Decrying it? I don't think so. He appears to be dismissing the entire area of the humanities as a valid academic area. In another article on his blog he says the following: |Note that what we're talking about here is the study, not the |production, of humanistic texts. The question I posed in the column |was not do works of literature, philosophy and history have instrumental |value, but does the academic analysis of works of literature, philosophy |and history have instrumental value. When Jeffrey Sachs says that |"in the real world" the distinction between the humanities and the |sciences on the basis of utility does not hold because "philosophers |have made important contributions to the sciences" and "the hard |sciences have had a profound impact on the humanities," he doesn't |come within 100 miles of refuting anything I say. http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/the-uses-of-the-humanities-part-tw o/ It sounds like Fish is willing to cut the sciences some slack though he may not realize that the criticisms he raises may well apply there as well. >Basic research is no longer valued and, if it can't show a practical (or at >least politically pragmatic) purpose, it is unlikely to be funded. Universities >have become vocational training centers with only a touch of the liberal >arts left. His tone is intentionally provocative in saying that we are past the >time when anything can be done about it but he is happy to have lived in a >time before the current revolution wiped out the niche that he inhabited: >a place where the liberal arts could be studied for their own sake and not >to serve some more pragmatic purpose. >From some other sources I've read, it seems to me that Fish would be satisfied to leave the humanities alone if they focused on things like the actual writing of plays, stories, novels, etc., because these are products that go beyond the academic context (or at least attempt to). As long as the humanities focus on critically analyzing what it produces seems to be what he is complaining about. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
