My initial reaction to the reading for this week was somewhat similar to what Klay said in his blog entry (at least it started out that way). I struggled to turn my reading experience into some sort of topic to write about in this blog. I find that as I do the reading for this class, I tend to pay attention more to myself than to the text; in other words, I give precedence to my stray thoughts and the manner in which I read instead of thinking critically about the text. Part of this stems from my rush to finish reading every week (an incessant battle I always lose every semester for some reason) and part from my weird tendency to make everything I do as efficient a process as possible. When I realize this as I read, I tend to try and refocus more on the text. Then, I tend to take for granted the scholarship I am reading. Not that I don't understand the argument that Cathy N. Davidson is making, but the actual act of making the scholarship tends to fade into the background.
The study of literature is truly one of humanity's greatest endeavors. In order to begin to understand the place of novels in the early Republic, Davidson must transcend the divisions of discipline and become an economist, a scholar of law, a sociologist, a historian, an archaeologist, a literary theorist, a translator, and a reader. Short of a Unified Field Theory, there are few disciplines that require knowledge of seemingly disparate fields of study. Every day we do this to varying degrees of severity; often we incorporate different disciplines into our areas of interest, but we all do it. The nature of our discipline is naturally interdisciplinary. We offer more than esoteric theories and interpretations of texts too hard for most to read. We offer a better understanding of who are as humans by looking at who we have been in order to help us become better. I'm preaching to the choir, I know. We can keep telling people this until we are blue in the face. Art is important, art is valuable, art is insert adjective, etc. We can all keep going and listing off what we think art is and why it should never assume a subordinate role in society, but we are better served if we show everyone why art is valuable. However, the methods by which the humanities operates (and has operated) should change along with the humans we propose to study. We must imbed ourselves in society and makes ourselves truly indispensable instead of simply saying that we are. The cultural capital we are trying to cash in is no longer accepted. We must adapt or die (figuratively speaking, of course).
Well, P.A.S., I think you've hit the nail on the head with your call for interdisciplinarity in the humanities. If we want to retain our place at the core of the American university system -- and I think we do -- then we must continue to emphasize the ways in which our work both enables and builds upon the work of our colleagues in other disciplines. Cultural and/or institutional status cannot be assumed a priori; as much as we might decry a system in which we must constantly "prove our existence," it's the only system we have, and if we fail to recognize the material demands placed upon us, we're destined to get left behind.
ReplyDeleteTo be perfectly honest, I'm not sure your Darwinian language ("adapt or die") is figurative. I think institutional death is a very real possibility for English studies in the coming years, and our refusal to adapt to the changing socioeconomic structure(s) of academia in the 21st century could certainly doom us to extinction.
Maybe Davidson isn't writing a history of the novel in America but, instead, a eulogy for the study of the novel in America...
Touché Tom (and Peter for starting the conversation),
ReplyDeleteIf there's one thing I've been thinking a lot about over the course of this semester it's that we're experiencing an age almost indirect opposition to the one Starr and Davidson are studying.
I think of it this way: reading in the early republic was somewhat of a cultural phenomena. People were not only learning how to read, but they were also discovering the endless possibilities in literature that Peter references. Today, it's almost like we're "over" that nostalgia, and reading means something entirely different.
But I'll remain optimistic in the meantime, with the hope that the novels we still have today will continue to provide us with invaluable information about where we've come from and where we're going as a society.