From: abahn@comcast.net
Date: Sun Sep 14 2003 - 04:16:56 BST
David and Matt,
DMB says:
"A web search quickly revealed that Bloom's phrase "strong misreading" is a
way to think about art and literature, not philosophy. Perhaps you're strongly
misreading the concept of a strong misreading? But, seriously, here is some
interesting stuff by Richard Shusterman..."
Andy:
I think David is really searching here. I mean he is doing web-searches to
support his criticisms of Rorty. I am sure Matt can and will provide a point by
point counter to Shusterman's criticism's. But, I would like to suggest that he
does not need to. David's mistake is taking Matt's "strong misreading" of
Pirsig through a Rortian lense WAY too seriously. The point is not whether
Rorty has flubbed up some where and if there are holes in his philosophy. Like
all philosophies, there has to be many. In fact, I think this is the point of
his philosophy.
The point of Matt's interpretation of Pirsig is to offer another perspective to
view Pirsig through. Rorty works for Matt. From Matt's many posts I have found
many illuminating insights that have lead me to investigate Rorty. I don't
think I am alone in being influenced by Matt. From my investigation of Rorty I
have found a lot that I find inspiring. Now if you want to go on a crusade
against Matt and his use of Rorty--keep right on going, but I think it is a big
waste of energy. No one says you have to follow Matt. No one has even asked
you to read all of Rorty's work (ok, that is a lie--I did suggest to you once
that you would like Rorty if you read him...I am not so sure about that
anymore), but regardless, what is the point of your relentless attack on Matt
and his "strong misreadings?" Where is the threat? What or who are you trying
to save? Why question Matt's understandig of the MOQ? Why insist there is a
proper understanding? Why insist we might eventually arrive at a proper
understanding?
I really don't get it. Why does Matt get you so worked up?
Confused,
Andy
> Matt and all:
>
> dmb says:
> A web search quickly revealed that Bloom's phrase "strong misreading" is a
> way to think about art and literature, not philosophy. Perhaps you're
> strongly misreading the concept of a strong misreading? But, seriously, here
> is some interesting stuff by Richard Shusterman...
>
> Rorty rejects the very concept of experience as philosophically useless and
> dangerous, as misleading us into the myth of the given. But like the earlier
> pragmatists James and Dewey, I think the concept of experience is very
> important, so I have tried to defend it, paying particular care to
> rehabilitating the concept of aesthetic experience. Finally, to mark perhaps
> a fourth difference, Rorty, I think, exaggerates the pragmatist idea of
> contingency, giving it a sense of idiosyncratic arbitrariness or random
> accident rather than simply the sense of not being logically or
> ontologically necessary. By failing to distinguish between contingencies
> that are capricious or haphazard and those that are so deeply socially
> routinized and practically entrenched that they are indispensable
> ("contingent necessities" so to speak), Rorty is led to take an overly
> cavalier attitude toward social realities and the social sciences.
>
> I don't think Rorty pays enough attention to how social structures and the
> public sphere inform what he advocates for our private visions of
> perfection. His own ethical ideal of the liberal ironist in constant search
> for new vocabularies is an obvious echo of the consumer's quest for new
> commodities, and both are obviously framed by the master public framework of
> neo-liberal capitalism. Likewise, Rorty's definition of autonomy as
> original, distinctly individualist self-creation seems a clear echo of
> neoliberalist self-seeking and selfishness. So ambitiously voluntaristic,
> demanding, and elitist, it makes one ask how many people could really live
> that way and why should we morally expect them to?
>
>
> It should be obvious by now that I also take issue with Rorty's
> glorification of neoliberalism, his emphasis on negative liberty and the
> one-sided celebration of free-market capitalism. It is one of the great
> dangers of Rorty's influence in Eastern Europe that American pragmatism,
> which Dewey inspired with socialist ideals, can now be construed as an
> apology for free-market opportunism and selfishly private values.
>
>
> But let me finally get to literature and aesthetics. I reject Rorty's
> Bloomian view of interpretation as "strong misreading." When he asserts that
> the good critic "simply beats the text into a shape which will serve his own
> purpose" (1982, 151), I counter that such a policy is destructive of the
> very alterity that makes reading a dialogical hermeneutic project from which
> we can learn something new. This attitude also does not seem very helpful
> for (if indeed consistent with) Rorty's recent advocacy of the
> "inspirational value of great literature" (1998). His strategy of bullying
> the text into fitting one's purpose is, however, clearly connected to his
> demand that interpretations must be novel and that interpretation is (in
> Stanley Fish's words) "the only game in town" (355). I argue instead for the
> possibility and value of readings that are not original interpretations but
> more ordinary, traditional understandings of texts which can serve as a
> background or base for the more novel interpretations. I don't reject the
> value of novel interpretations or strong misreadings, only their exclusive
> claim to value in literary experience. I likewise reject Rorty's one-sided
> identification of the aesthetic life with singular genius and originality --
> not because I have something against original genius but again only because
> this unwisely excludes other rewarding modes of aesthetic living that are
> less demanding and more accessible.
>
>
> As you already noted, Rorty seems to me too narrowly concerned with poetics
> as the generation of new texts and vocabularies to enhance moral reflection,
> while failing to give enough attention to the aesthetics of pleasure and
> beauty. I think that the functions of meliorism (cognitive, ethical, and
> social) and pleasure must be emphasized (and seen as related), just as I
> also think that works of popular culture are useful for both functions. This
> brings out another important difference in our aesthetic theories. While
> Rorty ignores the popular arts as essentially unworthy, I pay them
> considerable attention. Indeed it seems to me that popular art, since it is
> understood by more people, can be more effective in sensitizing our society
> to moral and political injustice so that popular art has a pragmatic
> advantage in making real improvements to the ethical quality of our world.
> Could we compare Uncle Tom's Cabin to Henry James' Portrait of a Lady?
> Finally, not only does my aesthetics include popular culture, but I work on
> music, visual art, and also somatic art which Rorty simply ignores, through
> his exclusive textualism.
>
> dmb says:
> See? Even though they've poured out in a frustrated state of confusion, my
> objections and disagreements are not unique at all. And more importantly, I
> hope you see that these kinds of ideas can be expressed in a way that even I
> can understand.
>
> Thanks,
> dmb
>
>
> Previously...
>
>
>
> DMB asked Matt how a "strong misreading" is different than mere dishonesty.
>
> Matt answered:
> It has to do with intention. "A “strong misreading” is a stance taken
> towards a text. The critic asks neither the author nor the text about their
> intentions but simply beats the text into a shape which will serve his own
> purpose. ... He does this by imposing a vocabulary ... on the text which may
> have nothing to do with any vocabulary used in the text or by its author,
> and seeing what happens. The model here is not the curious collector of
> clever gadgets taking them apart to see what makes them work and carefully
> ignoring any extrinsic end they may have, but the psychoanalyst blithely
> interpreting a dream or a joke as a symptom of homicidal mania.”
>
> dmb says:
> Imposing a vocabulary which may have nothing to do with the text or its
> author just to see what happens? Why would one want to do that? What the
> point of doing such a thing? How could the product of such an exercise be
> anything other than a narcissistic fantasy of little of no value to anyone?
> How is such an exercise legitimate? I mean, how is it NOT just a profound,
> even if intentional, misinterpretaion? Seriously? These are NOT rhetorical
> questions. I really don't get it. Like I said, how is this different that
> mere dishonesty? You see what I'm asking, don't you?
>
> And you said that Pirsig does this? Why not show it to me?
>
>
>
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