1) This is a thread on what has been confusing to me (at least): the tendency to rope literary studies into this collection of ‘postmodern’ disciplines allegedly making ‘social’ claims over and above scientific discovery. I’m looking for reading suggestions about what follows.
2) It’s becoming clear to me that when Rationalists (an identity category based on ideology, which denies its ideology as a basis of the identity) talk about the ‘postmodern humanities,’ etc., they mostly mean debates in anthropology & sociology over evolutionary psychology.
3) First, I acknowledge that there are humanistic approaches in sociology & anthro, though I wouldn’t consider either a branch of the humanities. Nor do I think literary studies research resembles research in those disciplines.
4) Second, I think this accounts for a lot of confusion in this debate, because however (debatably) influential ‘postmodernism’ has been in literary studies, literature scholars do not—unlike sociology & anthro—make claims about human biology or the natural world...
5) Note in this vein that philosophical claims about eg language (to which Chomsky responded) have been largely about the unknown & unsettled questions of how the brain works. And when not, properly refuted by scientific evidence.
6) When such claims about language find their way into literature scholarship, then, the work their doing isn’t scientific, nor is it meant to be. ‘Deconstruction’ becomes a way of reading text, not claiming a truth of the natural world above and beyond science....
7) ‘Psychoanalysis’ becomes a way of thinking analogically about a character, not a way of claiming a truth about neuroanatomy.
8) So when ppl respond to lit scholars with critiques of ‘postmodernism,’ asking us to ‘falsify’ our premises about literature, it’s like asking a cardiologist to ‘interpret’ a coronary blockage. The question of whether Quixote knows he is mad isn’t falsifiable. That’s the point!
9) I’m aware, of course, of evolutionary interventions into literary studies, reading characters according to principles of evo psych just like we have according to Freud in the past. That’s all great. Interesting. But we are taking about *fictional characters*. Which is to say..
10)...Whether it’s scientific evo psych or unscientific Freud, in lit studies, THE APPLICATION IS STILL ANALOGICAL, not a direct claim about the truth of the natural world.
11) For the Rationalists, the epistemological bait and switch happens by mistaking fools of interpretation for claims pretending to be falsifiable but without being tested or falsified. But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of even scholarship that relies heavily on Theory.
12) *tools of interpretation (above). Not a Freudian slip, just autocorrect, I promise!
13) I think furthermore it’s not a coincidence that the people leading the charge against ‘postmodernism’ are coming from the borderline social sciences and psychology, which suffers a very public replication crisis. They see ‘humanities’ at large as low-hanging fruit to pick on.
14) But I think the call is coming from inside the house. This pomo debate looks increasingly like a rift in anthro, sociology, psychology, over how ‘scientific’ these disciplines really are. That’s a worthy discussion. But leave English out of it. We’re not your straw man.
15) If anyone has suggested readings on the evo psych debate—all sides—please send them my way. I want to read it all. Thank you! /end
