Theorizing Naïveté?
My friend Ken pointed me toward a piece in the on-line version of the New York Times that ran last Sunday, October 10. I don’t want to misrepresent him, and I trust he’ll weigh in here; but my impression was that Ken appreciated the piece because it articulated something that sounded right to him about reading.
It’s called “In Defense of Naïve Reading,” by Robert B. Pippin. I’ve not heard of him, but suppose I should have: he’s got a named chair at the University of Chicago. I’m not sure how long the Times will keep the essay up at the web site, but for now, it’s here.
Predictably—by which I mean, I suppose, Ken could have predicted this reaction—I disagree with Pippin almost entirely. Hoping that you’ve had a chance to read the piece, I’ll go through it and suggest the ways that it might strike an English professor differently.
And that last sentence would be my first point: Pippin is a professor of philosophy. Which is not to say, I hasten to add, that thoughtful commentators from outside the discipline of English should be disqualified from our debates—far from it. Indeed, English profs are (in-)famous for hauling in expert witnesses from other disciplines in support of their arguments, especially experts not recognized as such by their home disciplines. Jacques Derrida, to take the most obvious example, lionized in English departments, and all but ignored in philosophy.
No, the problem so often with writers from outside the discipline is that they’re working with badly dated information, or flat-out misinformation. So that much of Pippin’s argument smacks of “straw man.” He explains that “the latest [literary] theory is a broad social-science-like approach called ‘cultural studies’”; as a proponent of cultural studies myself, I wish he were right, but cultural studies hasn’t been the Latest Thing for more than two decades. He suggests that literary scholars are desperately seeking “something like a general ‘science of meaning’”; that movement was called variously semiotics or semiology, and it’s been dead as a doornail since the mid- to late-60s. And so on. Richard Rorty, distinguished philosopher at the University of Virginia, is another of those “outside experts” that English professors will often draw upon when making certain kinds of literary arguments: his work has proved very valuable to literary theory. But when he writes about literature itself, or about the internal debates in literary theory? Shudder.
Pippin does say a couple of things with which I heartily agree. He writes that the relative “instability” of literary theory “is in itself completely unremarkable,” and I believe he’s right; indeed, I think that this makes literary theory much closer to philosophy than he thinks—philosophy which, according to Pippin, “gets a pass on [methodological debates] since debates about what philosophy is have always been one of philosophy’s main topics.” Yep: so too literature. See, for instance, “What Is Literature?,” the opening chapter of Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction.
There’s more to say here, and I’ll try to finish saying it tomorrow. I guess the main point I want to make convincingly tomorrow is that this notion of “naïve reading” that Pippin puts forward—well, there’s nothing naïve about it.
I caught myself saying “Exactly!” after each sentence of your post.
Yes, you’re right, Kevin. The piece articulated a point of view that I’ve tried to state in these “pages” (?) in my own inchoate way. I obviously don’t have the theoretical background that you have or the philosophical background that Pippin has, so it’s hard for me to marshal external support for my view. That’s why I found the piece illuminating.
I’m not sure what your point will be in the next post, but on the surface of it, I agree entirely with your statement that there’s nothing naive about naive reading. I suspect Pippin might agree with you too. I took his position to be that a “naive” reading is one where you don’t bring an explicit theory or model to bear, but just go with what you can glean directly from the text and from your own experience. Which is a lot.
One of these days, you should write a post about some historical issue so I could feel less like the proverbial “unarmed man in a battle of wits!”
Ooh, I can’t wait for part 2 of this post!
This is just a little bit of U. of C. “inside baseball,” aka “flagrant pedantry,” but possibly worth chewing on: Pippin holds an appointment in the Committee on Social Thought, which has always promoted interdisciplinary research; many of the other folks on the Committee are literary critics. I believe Pippin’s BA was even in English and I think he’s published on Henry James. He’s definitely a philosopher, but he’s also not *so* far from literary critics as he might appear.
Sorry, like I said: pedantry. Can ya tell where I went to school?
That’s great: I appreciate the background. I’ve looked at his c.v., and if he studied literature it was a LONG time ago, which might explain his lack of familiarity with literary theory.
Interestingly, I agree with almost everything Pippin says. More to come…
Is the definition of a naive reader someone who’s gullible? Is the opposite of a naive reader someone who picks every story apart to the point of insulting everyone he talks to? “What you really mean is this:…”
Literature isn’t parasitic on language, it’s simply taking the game to the next level.
Academics these days are parasitic on culture, either as pedants or fop. Snobs and schoolmen condescending to the trades.
“Academics these days are parasitic on culture, either as pedants or fop. Snobs and schoolmen condescending to the trades.” Pretty cheap & easy, innit?