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A
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short studies
JK
Manifesto for Literary Studies, writes Marjorie Garber,
“is
an attempt to remind us of the specificity of what
means
to
it
ask literary questions, and the pleasure of
thinking through and with literature.
the sense that
it
It
is
invites strong declarations
a manifesto
in
and big ideas,
rather than impeccable small contributions to edifices
long under construction.”
to the preconceptions
Known
for her timely challenges
and often unquestioned boundaries
16
LIBRARY
021 Square
that circumscribe our culture, Garber's beautifully crafted
arguments situate “big public questions of intellectual
PUBLIC
importance”-such as those of human nature and historical
MA Copley Boston.
correctness-within the practice of literary historians and BOSTOIM
critics.
This manifesto revives the ancient craft
ultimate focus
is
language
in action. In this
whose
book, Garber
passionately concludes that “the future importance of literary studies-and,
intellectual
disciplines
if
we
care about such things,
its
and cultural prestige both among the other and
in
the world-will
and not from playing it safe.”
come from taking
risks,
Short Studies from the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities The Center of
Humanities
at the University
Washington was established
mandate in
for the
in
1987 with a
encourage interdisciplinary
to
activities
the humanities. Supported by the University
initiative
name
Fund and endowed
in
1997
in
the
of Walter Chapin Simpson, the Center
is
dedicated to fostering innovative teaching and research
in
the humanities, and to stimulating
exchange and debate on cultural and educational issues, both
on and
Washington campus.
Its
off the University of
broader goal
is
to knit
the academic and civic communities through a shared fostering of education and culture.
The Simpson Center sponsors a wide range of activities, including interdisciplinary
courses and
collaborative research groups, public lectures,
symposia, arts events, publications, and a fellowship program for University of Washington faculty
and students.
The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway Slavoj Zizek
Semiotic Flesh: Information and the
Human Body
Edited by Phillip Thurtle and Robert Mitchell
A Manifesto for Literary Studies Marjorie Garber
fl
manifesto for Literary Studies
Marjorie Garber
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
I
University of Washington, Seattle
Copyright
© 2003 by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the
Humanities
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garber, Marjorie B.
A manifesto
for literary studies
/
Marjorie Garber.
cm. — (Short studies from the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities)
p.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-295-98344-2 1.
English literature
criticism— Theory, etc.
PR21.G36
paper)
(alk.
— History and
Literature
3.
T. S. Eliot.
— History and
820.9 — dc22
2003
Excerpt from “Burnt Norton”
1964 by
criticism— Theory, etc.
in
2.
American
literature
criticism— Theory, etc.
1.
— History and
Title,
ll.
Series.
2003062196
Four Quartets, by
T. S. Eliot,
copyright 1936 by Harcourt,
Inc.,
and renewed
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
“The Coming of Wisdom with Time,” by William Butler Yeats, from The Collected Works ofW. B. Yeats, Volume 1: The Poems, Revised, edited by Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 1997). Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. Printed
in
the United States of America
Distributed by the University of Washington Press
PO Box 50096 Seattle,
Washington 98145-5096
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Series Editor
Kathleen
Woodward
Series Designer
Christopher Ozubko
The paper used for Information
in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1984.
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
All rights
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vi/ithout
permission
in
writing from the publisher.
Contents
Introduc HON
Asking Literary Questioris
Who Owns “Human
Nature”?
15
Historical Correctness:
The Use and Abuse of History
for Literature
4
:M-
“k
.•
•
•>
a
f
f
manifesto for
Literary
Studies
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2017 with funding from
China-America
Digital
Academic
Library
(CADAL)
https://archive.org/details/manifestoforliteOOgarb
Introduction
The
title
of
this
volume
risks being regarded as
aggrandizing on the other. need a manifesto? last century, the
Why
And why
vieux jeu on
the one hand,
and
does something as staid as ''literary studies'^
mobilize that quintessentially political form of the
ardent advocacy of the manifesto, in support of a discipline
well established within the
academy?
3
— Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
down during
fortunes of literary studies have gone up and
The
twenty-first centuries with the
same
market.
volatility as the stock
the twentieth and
And like
the stock
market, the market in literary studies can be charted with confidence only with the benefit of hindsight.
English studies held the comfortable middle ground ot the humanities in U.S. and Anglophile/Anglophone universities through the middle part ot the twentieth a
century The combined heritage of belletnsm and the
certain gloss of creativity
poems, novels,
works
like
plays,
and
“little
artiness to the practice ot reading
and what was then often described
Robert Burton’s
magazines” imparted
Aiiatoifiy of Melancholy, for
and writing about
as “intellectual
prose”
example, or Samuel Johnson’s
Lipcs of the Poets. Practices like textual explication, often
cognate with, or imported
from, the study of religious texts, were partnered with literary history, thematic criticism,
and the study of images,
tropes,
and what was called
indebtedness and echoes of one literary
was deemed serene or “anxious.”
work
to another
Iiitertextuality, a
literary influence
— whether such
—
the
influence
term borrowed from French, oflered
an adjustment to the question of influence by seeing
it
as a
two-way
street,
and
also
by emphasizing the agency of the text over that of the controlling “author.” Texts could converse with one another whether or not the author was consciously speaking
—
or listening.
The conscious/unconscious
tor scholars steeped in the heritage
borderline was a natural topic
of romanticism, whether or not they acknowl-
edged the pervasive influence of Sigmund Freud’s writings on the development of twentieth- century art and culture.
An
infusion ot exciting and provocative theoretical writing, again largely
continental in origin,
U.K.,
and
made
also in
coming
“literary studies”
some views
to the
—
or,
United
more properly
way
critics
from France, Germany, and the
then, “literary theory”
the bad child, of humanistic
Intellectual practices such as semiotics,
the
States
and scholars read
work
in the 1970s
—
the
star,
and 1980s.
phenomenology, and structuralism changed
literature,
and “literature”
itself
changed with the
onset ot lively debates about the literary canon, cultural inclusiveness, and popular culture.
Whether described under
postniodernity, the
4
work
ot
the heading ot poststnicturalisni, deconstruction, or
European writers
like
Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu,
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
Marjorie Garber
Asking Literary Questions
I
Raymond Williams, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault shifted attention to issues of text
and agency.
A phrase like “the linguistic turn” signaled a high-water
mark
the late twentieth century.
duction to Beyond
Hayden White’s
of
for the prestige
transformed into “the cultural turn”)
this particular
Metaliistory:
The
in their intro-
Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century
Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays
—
for a
deep structure of thought that organized
level,
working with categories derived from the
like trope
Europe
established the
literary studies for the disciplines
and cultural anthropology.^ White’s book uses terms
of history
and emplotment to argue
historical research at the linguistic literary scholars
Kenneth Burke and
Frye. Geertz’s idea of a “thick description” of cultures presented
bols, artifacts, social
arrangements, and
or “interpretation”
sistent story,
in
Turn (1999), the publication of two key works in 1973
importance of techniques derived from
Northrop
mode of literariness
As Lynn Hunt and Victoria Bonnell note
the Cultural
and Clilford Geertz’s The
(later
—
a
rituals as “texts” that
word
grounded
itself
sym-
as a
con-
in literary study.
The
could be read
powerful influence of Geertz has naturalized the phrase “interpretation of cultures” so that
it
no longer
offers
any hint of the jostling of
White introduced
his study
with
history to language that established the
theory the
I
treat the historical
form of
a narrative
structural content
which cal’
work
as
a strong claim
first as
what
disciplines.^
it
about the relationship of
dependent upon the second: “In
most manifestly
is:
this
a verbal structure in
prose discourse.” Histories, he maintained, “contain a deep
which
is
generally poetic, and specifically linguistic, in nature, and
serves as the precritically accepted
paradigm of what
a distinctively ‘histori-
explanation should be.”^ His table of contents was explicitly indebted to Frye’s
structuralist
account of genre, with chapters such Historical Realism as
Romance,” “Ranke:
as
Tragedy,” and “Burckhardt: Historical Realism culture of a people
is
“Michelet: Historical Realism
Comedy,” “Tocqueville:
as
“The
as
Historical Realism
as Satire.”
an ensemble of texts,” wrote Geertz in his cel-
ebrated essay on the Balinese cockfight:
Such an extension of the notion of a text beyond written material, and even beyond verbal, is, though metaphorical, not of course, all that novel.
^
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
The
interpretatio naturae tradition
of the middle ages, which, culminating in
Spinoza, attempted to read nature value systems
them
as glosses
as glosses
on the
on property
Short Studies
as Scripture,
power
will to
relations),
the Nietszchean effort to treat
(or the
Marxian one
to treat
and the Freudian replacement of the
enigmatic text of the manifest dream with the plain one of the latent,
recommendable
precedents, if not equally cally is
concerned, that cultural forms can be treated
sion of the notion of the text
which
generally poetic,
is
beyond written
White and Geertz found the models of
of their
as
as texts, as
anthropology
imaginative works
and specifically
“An
exten-
and even beyond verbal.” Both
material,
linguistic
linguistic”;
and
literary analysis instrumental
they grappled with fresh ways of understanding the methodologies
own disciplines.
scholars
far as
of social materials, has yet to be systematically exploited.
structural content
and clarifying
offer
But the idea remains theoreti-
undeveloped; and the more profound corollary, so
built out
“A deep
ones.
all
would come
Indeed,
as
such passages from their work make evident, these
and anthropology were, in
to argue that history
a way,
modes
of reading and writing. “As in more familiar exercises in close reading,” Geertz writes in his concluding paragraph to the cockfight essay, ture’s repertoire
sum
this
up
of forms and end up anywhere
new
start
anywhere
else.” In later writings,
in the phrase “the Text analogy,” which,
tive theory,” allows for
The
“one can
when
in a cul-
he would
linked with “interpre-
reconfigurations of social thought.^
idea of a “master discourse” has long fallen into disuse and even into
disrepute, but if there
is
any discourse that holds the mastery in these excerpts from
two groundbreaking works of
cultural theory
it is
literary studies.
How
quickly
we
forget.
In the years that followed these brilliant appropriations from literary studies, the appropriators were themselves re-appropriated by literary the rhetorical position of mastery.
New
historicists
critics
and established in
Steven Mullaney and Stephen
Greenblatt both invoke Geertz’s methodology: “Employing a kind of ‘thick description’ in Clifford Geertz’s sense
sources and events, cultural
as
within the larger symbolic
of the phrase,” Mullaney writes,
well
as literary, in
economy of
“I
examine diverse
an effort to situate the popular stage
Elizabethan and Jacobean England.”^
Greenblatt cites a passage from Geertz comparing Elizabethan and Majapahit royal progresses at a key turning point in his
6
own
essay
on Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays.
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
Literary critic lists
White
“The
tive.
as
I
Marjorie Garber
Asking Literary Questions
Hillis Miller, a specialist in the British
J.
nineteenth-century novel,
an important figure in the development of modern theories of narra-
inclusion of
Hayden White,” he
recent years history writing
as
well
writes, “is testimony to the fact that in
as fictional narratives
have been addressed by nar-
rative theorists.”^
Authority in
literary critical
from such
increasingly, to derive
pologist
Mary Douglas
voices.
literary theorical
Not only White and
(Purity and Danger), sociologist Pierre
torian Robert Darnton, and others
vocabulary became the
were cited
common medium
truth, discourse, narrative, microhistory,
were
— and
in general use across
in
—writings
began,
Geertz, but anthro-
Bourdieu, cultural his-
argument and epigraph, and
of exchange:
new
a
''Culture, practice, relativism,
and various other terms,” note Hunt and Bonnell,
many of
the social science disciplines.^ But these same
terms became words to conjure with in literary studies
as well,
together with others
that also originated in social-scientific or scientific disciplines: genealogy, archaeology, agency, paradigm.
Not long
after their eager
engagement with “the
drew back, themselves returning
ans and others
linguistic turn,” histori-
to an emphasis
on empirical
data,
sometimes in conjunction with theoretical arguments, and sometimes to trump them. In a
book pointedly
called Telling the Truth about History, Joyce Appleby,
and Margaret Jacob noted the
difficulties
Lynn Hunt,
of aligning postmodern theory with
historical
practice:
If
postmodern
cultural anthropology
oping causal explanations and modernist history with construction: IS
focus
any guide, the concern with devel-
would be replaced in a poston self-reflexivity and on problems of literary
social theories
does the historian
as
author construct
his
or her text,
how
the illusion of authenticity produced, what creates a sense of truthfulness
to the facts as
how
a
is
it is
fact
and
a
sometimes
warranty of closeness to past called)?
The
implication
is
reality (or the “truth-effect”
that the historian does not in
capture the past in faithful fashion but rather, like the novelist, gives the
appearance of doing so.^°
The
authors were
ernist thinkers,
at
pains to say that they did not reject
all
the ideas of
postmod-
noting that the text analogy and various cultural and linguistic
approaches had helped to disengage historians from models such
as
Marxism and
7
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
Other economic and social determinisms, while also “puncturing the shield of sci-
ence behind which reductionism often hid.” But “linguistic determinism” also presents a
problem, they argued.
And
since
postmodernism “throws into question the mod-
ern narrative form,” key methodologies for writing history, including historiography, narrative, stories,
and
were
storytelling,
all
make
they claimed, in order to
subject to critique. Yet historians have to
sense of the past, as well as to reach toward
practical political solutions for the future.
that there
was
a point at
energized by the
tially
to rejoin the referent
tell
So these authors,
which members of the
all
historians, suggested
historical profession,
however
ini-
of Derrida and Foucault, had to part company with them,
likes
and leave the play of the
signifier,
or to leave the “text” and
rejoin the “world.” In fact, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob wrote in 1994, “a similar kind
of
crisis that
foreshadows
a
turning away from the postmodern view can be seen in
almost every field of knowledge or learning today.”^^
A •
few key observations might be made about these
They
ideas:
“the linguistic turn” (quickly broadened, to
tie
accommodate
anthropology, into “the cultural turn”) to postmodern theory, thus
and the
eliding the linguistic, the literary, the cultural-anthropological,
philosophical. •
They
postmodernism
ultimately set aside
character, history
and
individuality, perhaps
thoroughgoing postmodernists would
offer
out meaning,’ a form of writing closer to
•
They
and thus
pose questions rather than seek solutions. (“In place of plot and
likely to
modern
antifoundationalist
as
even meaning
itself,
the most
an ‘interminable pattern with-
modern music and
certain post-
novels.”
generalize a “crisis”
humanities”
—
— supplementary
that led, or
would
ticipants “in almost every field
lead, or
to the fabled “crisis in the
was then currently leading par-
of knowledge or learning” to turn away
from the postmodern view, and thus from the temporary hegemony of humanistic and literary
The theoretical
8
critical studies.
return of the “empirical” after the heady attractions of the
had
its
effects
upon
literary scholars as well as
upon
ungrounded
historians, anthro-
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
pologists,
and
I
Asking Literary Questions
Marjorie Garber
sociologists. Inevitably, perhaps, chroniclers
The
historic turn.”
editor of a
noted that there had been
volume on The
a proliferation
began to contemplate “the Turn
Historic
Human
in the
of historical emphases across the
Sciences
disciplines:
“the ‘new historicism’ in literary and legal theory, a revived interest in ‘history in philosophy,’ a historically oriented ‘new institutionalism’ and other historical
approaches in political science and economics, ‘ethnohistory’ in anthropology,” and so on.^^ Literary critic Steven
view of the place of
literary study that
might have been presumed
The
literary
is
Mullaney offered in
to
conveyed
his
contribution to the volume a
a sharp difference
from where
it
be in the 1970s and 1980s:
thus conceived neither as a separate and separable aesthetic
—
mere product of culture a reflection of ideas and ideologies produced elsewhere but as one realm among many for the negotiation realm nor
as a
—
and production of social meaning, of historical of power that
Manifest in
at
once enable and constrain those
compact
this
the “separable aesthetic” and the erature
and the
subjects,
texts that
were
its
assertion
was
were
demotion
of,
culture”; the profession of
lit-
and
a
to be players in social change.
on the
the Telling the Truth historians had reflected
subjects.
a suspicion of,
“mere product of objects
and of the systems
potential disappearance of
Where “mean-
ing itself” under the lens of the kind of postmodern theory that had once, and recently,
dominated literary study, Mullaney,
a new-historicist critic
of the early-modern period,
declared literary study’s newly rediscovered investment in “the negotiation and pro-
duction of social meaning.”
“The eyes.
“The
literary”
had changed, and changed
substantially, at least in historicist
literary” in this avatar also considered itself
“one realm among many,”
not in any privileged place of influence or taste-making. As the century drew to close, the
question of literary study’s place in the intellectual and academic hierar-
chy was an unsettled matter. Even
where
(to
a
literally.
Suddenly the word “material” was every-
be contrasted, presumably, with
its
antonym “formal,” but
complicatedly intellectual and highly verbal playing ture” and “the material
book” were
fields
also
with the
of theory). “Material cul-
phrases to conjure with, as
book
series
on
“art
and material culture,” “design and material culture,” “American material culture and
9
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
and “gender and material culture”
folklore,”
Short Studies
proliferated.
Books on The Body as Material
Culture, Children
and Material Culture, Chimpanzee Material Culture, and Cognition and
Material Culture
crowded the bookshops
from the Bs and Cs. Literary
selections
— and
critics,
these
titles
are only the briefest
once to be styled by preference
of
“lit
-
erary theorists,” were now, increasingly, scholars of material culture.
Furthermore, the
and
to social
rise
of cultural studies and other interdiscipHnary approaches
cultural practice caught the eye,
some now transformed
former, retired, or disgruntled academics,
government
officials,
who
New Criticism, was parodied as a plot of the Left.
deconstructive critic Paul de
past involving possible collaboration
struction also
became
into journalists or
unilaterally declared a “culture war.” Deconstruction, a
reading practice akin to American
When
and the disapproving glance, of many
Man
was discovered to have had
a
complicated
with the Germans during World War
a “fascist” plot.
II,
decon-
Race-class-and-gender, or race-class-gender-
and- sexuality, were deemed unworthy “political” objects of humanistic attention,
and attention to “colonialism” (even for
emerged missed
as a
a discipline like
university subject at the height of the British Empire) was likewise dis-
as irrelevant political
What was most
who would
meddling by scholars
ing their activities to the library, the archive, the classroom.
English studies, which
museum
be better off restrict-
— and
the (undergraduate)
disturbing about these attacks was their mean-spiritedness
and the shoddiness of the “research” that produced them, often consisting of in
on
a single class
by
a
given professor, or
many
or of conference papers,
mocked them. But
there
since those attacked
evidence their I
which
I
a
10
no doubt
critics
of courses
that this strategy
was
effective,
who
and doubly
so,
had wished into being.
conscious here of reporting old news and chronicling old battles to
hostilities,
mention those developments
all
belittling the titles
began to attack back, providing precisely the kind of partisan
resumption of
for particular
and
never read in their entirety by the journalists
myself have no desire to return; few
welcome I
am
is
listing
sitting
opprobrium
of them, professors of
in
who
lived
through
this
period would
which now seem both fevered and
distant.
But
for a reason: to point out that the scholars singled out
books of the
literary studies.
late
1980s and early 1990s were, almost
Roger Kimball’s grumpy but highly suc-
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
1
Asking Literary Questions
Marjorie Garber
cessful diatribe, Tenured Radicals, begins in the spirit
that the
academic study of the humanities in
m the second paragraph
then goes on,
of
this
his
of
a manifesto; “It
country
is
is
no
secret
He
in a state of crisis.”
book, to name some of the principal
“Princeton University’s Elaine Showalter” (gender), “University of
culprits:
Pennsylvania’s
Houston Baker”
and “Duke University’s Fredric Jameson”
(race),
(Marxist politics). All three are professors of literature. Other humanistic disciplines also sustained periodic swipes, especially those that led to a
popular culture
(as
in the
But the “academics” the
concern with
work of philosophers Richard Rorty and
critics
loved to hate were
more
politics or
Stanley Cavell).
often than not those trained
as literary critics.
As
I
have noted,
this strategy
was
successful.
Not only
did the country take
notice that the sky was falling, so too did the critics and scholars mentioned.
those scholars watching the debates from the sidelines (not the “margins,”
were
now
very
difficult
at
the center) began to feel the pressure.
indeed to uproot
it;
Once
“tenured radicals,”
changed the way the academy regarded
itself.
a suspicion
is
Even
which
planted,
spiffy phrase that
it
it is
was, had
Like the insinuations of lago (“taken
together with the other proofs”) these proofs of nothing multiplied to produce
firm conviction that something had gone wrong. And, partially
as a result,
of literary studies in the pantheon of the humanities came under both critiques.
Younger
— and
older
—
tacit
the place
and
scholars of literature shifted their interests,
a
explicit
whether
consciously or (more likely) unconsciously, away from the play of language, the
ambivalent ambiguities of the that
the tive
had marked the most 1
signifier,
and the modes of counterintuitive argument
brilliant literary
940s and the 1950s), toward
less
work of the 1970s and 1980s
controversial terrain
(and, indeed,
and more supposedly objec-
(and even “scientific”) methodologies like history, the “sociology of knowledge,”
and cognitive theory. Literary study was in the process of disowning
itself.
Genteelly, professionally, persuasively, and without an apparent consciousness
of what might be
lost in the process,
departments of literature and
have shifted their emphasis. This return to history evasion. Trends
m intellectual work tend to be
text to context,
from author or
is
in fact a return,
cyclical,
literary study
not
a leap or
an
with attention shifting from
artist to historical-cultural
surround, from theory to
11
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
and from micro-
practice,
narratives).
and almost that are
is
to macro-analysis (in literary study, close reading vs.
A great deal of the most recent work in literary studies
much of
ative,
Short Studies
all
represents
it
of it
is
what used
to
is
meta-
deeply inform-
be called “a contribution to knowledge,”
professionally honed, if not glossy. If little
is
provocative, perhaps
of decades of high-profile contestation. There
to be expected after a couple
many ways of doing inventive scholarship, and painstaking literary-historical work,
like the
kind of literary work that admires and imitates the scientism of cognitive
theory, can at
Some
its
best also be imaginatively interesting.
literary historians
and
historicist critics
within departments of
ary study are in danger of forgetting, or devaluing, the history of their
which
practice,
is
own
liter-
craft
and
based not only on the contextual understanding of literary works
but also on the words on the page. Counterintuitive interpretation, reading that understands the adjacency of literature, fantasy,
words through patterns of sound or ideas, the
tics
and dream, the subliminal association of
of meaning, the serendipity of images and
sometimes unintended echoes of other writers, the powerful formal scaffold-
ing of rhetoric or of genre
—
all
these are as richly transgressive as any political inter-
preter might desire, and as elusively evocative as any archive-trained researcher could
wish to unearth or detect.
way
The
specific contribution
it differs
from other disciplines
in the
way it
resembles
them.
of literary studies to intellectual
—
in
its
methodology and
What literary scholars
(not just those explicitly certified as “literature”)
not that literary studies
is
is
a
uninterested in the
adjacent disciplines like history and social science.
as
of
social
and
political
also intrinsic structural
assonance and echo.
12
is
a matter
context
aim
—
way of
it
means, or even why.
whose models
But
literariness,
of style, form, genre, and verbal
— not only
rather than
asking literary questions:
what and the why
recent years such questions have preoccupied scholars
heart of literary studies,
its
inheres in the
can offer to the readers of all texts
questions about the way something means, rather than what It is
in
life
—
are
indeed, in
drawn from
which
lies at
the
interplay, as well
the realm of reference and context but
elements like grammar, rhetoric, and syntax; tropes and figures;
A manifesto for literary studies will claim an unapologetic free-
A Manifesto
for Literary
Standing
power
what
is
latent,
Studies
to
I
change the world by reading: by reading what
within and through the language of the
The present volume, ifestos
of the
Marjorie Garber
Asking Literary Questions
past,
is
text.
appropriately published in booklet
form like many man-
an attempt to remind us of the specificity of what
ask literary questions, and the pleasure of thinking through a
manifesto in the sense that
invites strong declarations
it
and with
and big
and honorable sense used by Sidney and by
or an apology for poetry. literature,
best
language, and culture
do what we do to address
The
way
as a
it
means
literature. It
ideas, rather
impeccable small contributions to edifices long under construction. in the old
manifest, and
is
And
Shelley, a defense
it is
them by using the
than also,
of poetry,
for literary scholars to reinstate the study of
key player
among
tools
of our
trade,
the academic humanities
which include not only material
ture but also theory, interpretation, linguistic analysis,
is
its
1
The
and
a close
and passionate atten-
—
will
Victoria E. Bonnell
and
cultural prestige
come from
and Lynn Hunt,
taking
eds.,
risks,
Beyond
—
is
we
care about
both among the other
disciplines
future importance of literary studies
intellectual
and in the world
to
cul-
tion to the rich allusiveness, deep ambivalence, and powerful slipperiness that
such things,
is
engage in big public questions of intellectual importance and
best, to
language in action.
to
and, if
and not from playing
it
safe.
the Cultural Turn (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1999), 2.
2
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). ix.
3
ibid.
4
Clifford Geertz,
5
Clifford Geertz, “Blurred
The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 452, 448-49. Genres: The Reconfiguration of Social Thought,”
in
Local Knowledge:
Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 30.
6
Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), x.
7
Stephen Greenblatt, Energy in
in
Renaissance England
Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Renaissance England (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), “invisible Bullets,” in
65.
23
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
8
9 10
Short Studies
Terms for Literary Study, id ed., ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 69. J.
Hillis Miller,
“Narrative,”
Bonnell and Hunt, eds..
in Critical
Beyond
the Cultural Turn, 25. Italics
in original.
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York and
London: W. W. Norton, 1994), 231. 11
Ibid,,
231-36.
12
Ibid.,
232-33, quoting Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, Sequel
to History:
Postmodernism and the
Crisis
of Representational Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 212. 13
Terence
J.
McDonald,
ed..
Michigan Press, 1996), 14
in the
Human
Sciences (Ann Arbor: University of
1.
Steven Mullaney, “Discursive Forums, Cultural Practices: History and Anthropology Study,”
15
The Historic Turn
in
The Historic Turn
in
the
Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: Harper and Row, 1990),
xi.
Human
in Literary
Sciences, ed, McDonald, 163.
How Politics Has
Corrupted Our Higher Education (New York:
The proper study of mankind
is
man.
Alexander Pope, “Essay on Man”
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
I
events of September ii, 2001, people around the world strug-
wake of the
In the
what the
gled to understand
Pentagon could possibly gested that
“we
tell
terrorist attacks
“human
us about
Newsday remarked
Trade Center showed that nature,
which
is
greed and
—
nature:
When
everyone
by rescue workers
and put the needs of
began with
seemed “almost
person is
who
“human
“It’s just
political,
And what
we can win the lottery;
true love. (Thus
it is
human
nature, but so
human
violence.
is
And
silence
it is
not just
but
human
nature.” Reality television
human
nature.
is
is
Los
And
an
nature that the
What
assess it?
a
“get involved”
affair
of the heart
“the triumph of
Kew
Gardens,
passion for team sports.
by
human
New York,
in
was dead) was attributed to human
accounts of
art, that is
said
as
It is
of the thirty-eight witnesses to the
many journalistic
“life,”
The
recipient does not.”'^
second marriage
a quiet street in
kindness to animals, and
nature” turns up in
a
until after she
production of The Nutcracker ballet
16
human
human nature not to want to
Samuel Johnson defined
1964 (none of whom called police
of
quirk of
nature to believe that our current
murder of Kitty Genovese on
can
often say with a shrug about cultural, social,
it is
hope over experience.”) The shameful
human
World Trade Center
kind of measure can define and
human nature,” people
in reporting a crime;
rape and
a
World
it
it.”^
and moral actions from greed to optimism to studied indifference.
nature to think
is
is
may forget it, but the
does an act of kindness
nature”?
“It
it,
antithetical to
from danger, they run toward
else flees
poignant observation:
a
the
a civilization first,
obituary notice for one of the thousands of victims lost in the attack
at
sober assessment was a high school senior.)
Angeles Times observed that the job of a firefighter
human
sug-
new dimension of evil.”^
required of people to disregard basic
it is
selfishness, this
The London Guardian
to incorporate a
that the actions taken
“when
be done.”^ (The author of
nature.”
our perception of the world, our safety in
are struggling to adapt
and our understanding of human nature
A letter to
on the World Trade Center and the
The “dark
mayhem,
trickery,
side
and
periodically called to witness.
a critic to
plumb
A
the “tragic side of
said to cast a “bleakly pessimistic light ...
on
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
“Human
I
Who Owns “Human
nature”
and the bad behavior of ing during the it
is” in
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
praised, or blamed, for the
is
politicians. Journalists use
Monica Lewinsky
scandal
good behavior of Samaritans
it all
announced
that
the case of male politicians and female interns,
before attaining equality between the sexes. ^
The
the time.
“human
we
A
reporter writ-
nature being what
have a long way to go
idea that Americans could quickly
forget the irregularities of the presidential election “contradicts whatever
have observed about ter
human
of human nature” that
Clinton’s
The
nature,”^ wrote Francine Prose.
wanted
political contributors
new house for a fund-raiser,
It
was simply “a mat-
go to Senator Hillary
to
observed Democratic
we might
strategist James CarviUe.^
national debate about stem cell research suggested to conservative columnist
George Will
that “the parties represent different sensibilities
human
nature, including
What
in the
much
world
“human
is
and
nature”?
And few
scientists.
disinformation, or so
scenery. William
different stances
toward
nature.”^
Few
phrases are used so confidently
and promiscuously, by parents and children, religious pessimists, humanists
—
much
that
it
of the French Revolution. Karl Marx called
and
laity,
optimists and
phrases have been responsible for so
attitudinizing.
Wordsworth exulted
figures
John Keats thought
it
finer than
had been born again in the early years it
an “aesthetic delusion.”
Journalist
turned fiction writer Anna Quindlen, disclaiming any right to be considered an ethicist
or a philosopher, announced with
human
nature. Real
life is really all I
mock
modesty, “I’m a novelist.
My work
know.”^^
But where thinkers from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries William Shakespeare to David the right to offer opinions
on
Hume this
is
to Virginia
key phrase and
—
Woolf its
felt
—from
both the necessity and
ramifications, studies of
human
nature in the latter years have focused, symptomatically, on science: evolutionary biol-
ogy and psychology, gene theory, behaviorism, and gestive fact about
human
nature that
it
was once the
philosophers, and political theorists and
“Genome
Project Can’t Explain
is
now
scientific teams.
The
intellectual
largely the
Human Nature,”
Boston Globe letter to the editor responding to the
by two
cultural evolution.
letter writer,
It is
a
sug-
property of poets,
domain of
scientists.
declared the caption of
a
mapping of the human genome
voicing an opinion shared by
many com-
27
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
mentators
after the reports disclosed that
believed, observes that
fruit
many more
thousand genes, not
The news
questions about yet this
In a
is
just
book
Fukuyama warns
a
beings had only
mouse, raised what the media persistently called “humbling”
what
is
At
stake
answer that science alone entitled
is
some
quarters
(2002), political scientist Francis
developments in biotechnology
against recent
— an answer
thought, these days, to provide.
Our Posthuman Future
—
—from cloning
that threaten to
and the good
life,”
and
that
is
to
modify human
was the view, strongly championed by Fukuyama, that an
and unchanging theory of human nature morality,
and what it means to be human.
so ardently desired, at least in
Prozac, from plastic surgery to genetic engineering
lose
human
than go into the making of a roundworm, a
how to explain “human complexity”
to the question, an
nature.
that
or a plant, and that only about three hundred of those genes are different
fly,
from the genome of
And
humans had fewer genes than formerly
absurd to expect “that the answers science provides can
it is
explain the unique nature of humanity.” thirty
Short Studies
essential
“fundamental to our notions of justice,
tampering with the genome may cause us “to
our humanity. Is
stand, or
“human nature”
fixed or mutable, something that science helps us to under-
something that science
once powerfully described by realm of science?
How
did
itself has
literature
“human
the capacity to change, something that was
and philosophy, but has
nature,” once
mankind, get to be the privileged territory of
deemed
geneticists
now become
the
the proper study of
and biologists?
II
The term human trasted
be inflected on the
first
word {human
with that of animals, angels, or God) or the second (human
intrinsic rather
modes
nature can
than eccentric or acculturated for
suggests a difference between
itly asserts
the
human
humankind and other
commonality of human experience
nature,
The
first
what
is
of these
beings, and thus implic-
in contrast
(The paradoxical phrase “the human nature of Christ,”
18
beings).
nature, as con-
with that of others.
common
in
many works of
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
I
Who Owns “Human
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
Christian theology, points up the issue,
as
does the section of Jared Diamond’s evo-
lutionary study. The Third Chimpanzee, that focuses
“uniquely human”: language, IS
humans
particular to
them from
tiates
And
may be
of
he
activities
calls
and substance addiction/^) That which
human
nature
Western thought
is,
ordinarily,
what
differen-
been associated with
this has
Cham of Being,” derived from Hellenic philosophy and adapted
“What
the eighth Psalm,
is
man,
early
that
(Ps. 8
:
4
- 5 ),
its
modern
thou
the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast
than the angels”
of
a quartet
and neo-Platonic use in the medieval and
for Christian
here
in this concept of
beasts or gods. In
the so-called “Great
fir-text
agriculture,
art,
on
art
The
periods.
mindful of him?
made him
lower
a little
passionate adaptation in Hamlet’s famous speech
existential despair:
What
of work
a piece
ulty! In
a
is
man!
How noble
in reason!
How infinite
how express and admirable, in apprehension, how like a god;. And yet,
form and moving
an angel, in
.
.
.
action,
to
in fac-
how
like
me, what
this
is
quintessence of dust? (Hamlet 2.2.303—
If
(human
we change we
nature),
emphasized
and what
is
is
the inflection to stress the second term rather than the
alter the field
what could be
of interpretation considerably, since what
called a difference within.
What
is
“natural” to
“learned,” “cultural,” “adapted,” or even “unnatural”?
disciplines
the age-old question,
“What is man?” Yet in fact it is
Humanists have, by and
is
large,
most interesting of problems, tending
for
all
too often
nalistic
mode of fuzzy
human
opinion pieces)
of character. literature or
If the
m
telling effects
the
a
question not frequently posed,
conundrum that has provoked my inquiry.
abandoned
their claims to an interest in this
in recent years to regard the phrase
thinking. This skepticism
is
human
frequently justified,
nature turns up (on student papers, for example, or in jouras
an answer,
explanation for
life, is
humans
of the humanities have understood their relation to
these days, within the humanities. This
nature as a reductive
now
Both of these
emphases are operative in the history of the phrase, and both have had
on how the various
is
first
simply
a solution
human
“human
or explanation for a quirk or
action, or
human
a
kink
behavior, whether in
nature,” then analysis and interpretation have
19
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
been replaced by tautology. In addition, for twentieth- and twenty-first- century
word human
humanists the
“essentializing”
—
that
itself
often seems like a version of
a refusal to
is,
acknowledge both
what
has
been
cultural dilference
called
and the
formative influence of history, economics, regionalism, personal biography, and other social
and
elements that go into the “construction” of a person in the world.
political
Feminists and other cultural theorists have also called into question the troublesome
word man, which seemed
we conclude
Before
subject.
day
separatists,
the
end of
we might
that
you seem
to erase
“Man
—
a
in a gesture
a peculiarity
is
Hamlet
recall that
parses the
speech
that,
toward the universal
of ideologues and latter-
word
in a similar fashion at
though often misremembered
addressed to his mischievous schoolfellows, Rosencrantz and
delights not
to say so,”
woman
that this gesture
same famous speech
as a soliloquy, is in fact
Guildenstern.
some
to
he
me
— nor woman
them, making the
tells
though by your smiling
neither,
artful shift (no
one does
this better
than Shakespeare) from the general to the particular, and thus exposing the intrinambiguities and doubleness implicit in the grandest of ideas {Hamlet 2.2.309—10).
sic
Is
man
term
a
ble? In
any
mere gender, or is
that transcends
case,
man
like
we and
name
that produces
us,
leaving the field of
“human
Thus Cliflbrd Geertz could refer parenthetically,
used, in a simpler day, to be called
But
a
gender trou-
has fallen out of favor in literary and cultural studies, together
with universal pronouns to other disciplines.
it
this shift in
‘human
in
1
nature” open
973 to “(what ,
nature’).
the disciplinary custody of
“human
nature” has serious con-
sequences for the value of that amorphous enterprise called “the humanities.” For if
the place to investigate
“human
of the humanistic disciplines? to the point,
what
“Human
is
nature”
What
else gives
is
most
for
it
is
both
nature”
a political
fascinating to
has
not “the humanities,” what
them
cultural authority?
is
the use
And, equally
the use of funding, supporting, studying, and teaching them? is
an
artifact
jection. In other words, the very idea
essence
is
and
me
a
of culture and language, of fantasy and pro-
of human nature
as a
normative, identifiable
psychological wish, with important side
about the concept of
become a self-fulfiUing dream,
a lure
human
nature
is
the
of fuU self-knowledge,
effects.
way
a ruse
What
the quest
of research
paradigms and protocols from the theological to the anthropological, from behav-
20
— A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
I
Who Owns “Human
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
iorism to genomics. During the Enlightenment the nineteenth century
today
it is
scientists
it
was religious
working
it
was
political philosophers;
believers, psychologists,
during
and anthropologists;
the level of the gene.
at
Ill
The migration of “human nature” from moral philosophy Darwinists,
to religion, psychology,
a fascinating history,
is
Human Nature and Railroads
as
and Management (1929);
represented in
Human
Human Nature
in Its
nature in
(1920);
Human Nature
Human
Human
Nature
as early as
Nature at
the
Thomas Boston’s resoundingly titled
Fourfold State of Primitive Integrity, Entire Depravity, Begun Recovery
and Consummate Happiness
a certain
hundreds of works such
Nature and Christian Marriage (1958);
Millennium (1997) and so on. Starting
“human
literally
Human Nature in Business
(1915);
hundred years,
Freud and Freudianism, and the new
(1977); Hum.an Nature and Predictability (1981);
Politics
in
across disciplines in the last several
or
Misery (1729), phrases like
...” or “the human nature of ...
kind of cultural advice,
analysis,
”
“human
nature and ...” or
became
the watchwords of
and wisdom. “Suffering,” “the gospel,”
“the nature of evil,” “the peace problem,” “world disorder,” and “selling goods” all
have been linked with
The books on
“human
business and
nature” in the
titles
of books in the
last
management, and indeed some of the books on
Christianity, are boosterist in spirit: “America,” as well as “Christianity,” a
consequence
of,
or a fulfillment
Eighteenth-century the nature of
of
human
Darwin trolled
“human
of,
the best in
“human
political theorists like
David
seems to be
nature.”
Hume
had speculated on
nature” in quest of a theory of the individual, of reason, and
agency. But later accounts by thinkers from
radically altered the question
“human
century.
nature”?
Sigmund Freud
of control and mastery.
Was man indeed a rational
Who
to Charles
or what con-
animal, or rather a creature
dom-
inated by the unconscious or by heredity and evolution? Karl Marx’s skepticism about
the development of
human
nature
as
an ideology by political theorists
is still
a
cogent
argument today: “The prophets of the eighteenth century,” Marx contended, “saw
21
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
this individual
not
as
an historical
but
result,
Short Studies
the starting-point of history; not as
as
something evolving in the course of history, but posited by nature, because for them this
individual was in conformity with nature, in keeping with their idea of
nature. This delusion has
Whether delusory or to
dominate
cerned with In
a
been
some
social, cultural, political,
cases
It
by
J.
Types of
Human
future,” thought
is
human
A
Study of
the
a
New System
Glands of Internal Secretion
to the biochemist” since the glands
human
Thus “the answer
“The
raising
to the question
of the general
mean
judicious use of endocrine extracts will
a
and whoever controls
nature,
regulated by his Glands of Internal Secretion.’”
glandular social betterment:
human
Nature (1921) by Louis Berman, a doctor of medi-
Berman, “belongs
nature.”
as if
Stanley Grimes, a professor of medical jurispru-
are really in charge: “In short, they control
‘Man
came
was the nerves, or the glands, that held the
dence, or The Glands Regulating Personality:
them, controls
nature
and religious writings con-
The Mysteries of Human Nature Explained by
of Nervous Physiology (1857),
“The
human
medical science seemed to offer specific answers,
key, in scientific studies like
cine.
hitherto.”
betterment.
nature were a pathological symptom.
in Relation to the
new epoch
of every
not, the relationship of the individual to
whole range of
human
characteristic
human
good
‘What
The upshot was level
is
a
Man?’
is
theory of
of intelligence by the
deal to the sincere statesmen”
and may thus help to prevent war.^° This focus on the operation of lar
system, to explain everything about
a particular internal
human
body
part, the
glandu-
nature, runs counter to the lofty
and
seemingly timeless generalizations of philosophy. But the borderline between the timeless
and the
local or situational
is
offered by the surprising itinerary of influential
work of
social
constantly being crossed.
Dewey,
a
good example
is
John Dewey’s Human Nature and Gonduct, an
psychology written in 1918,
and published in 1922. Addressing issues such nature,”
A
as
at
the end of
World War
I,
“habit” and the “alterability of human
philosopher and educational reformer, pointed out that
warfare operates on quite a different basis from that of the
Iliad,
modern
the “classic expres-
sion of war’s traditional psychology as well as the source of the literary tradition
regarding
22
its
motives and glories.” Idealized figures like Helen, Hector, and Achilles
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
1
Who Owns “Human
were long gone, he noted. “The
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
activities that
evoke and incorporate
own
longer personal love, love of glory, or the soldier’s love of his booty, but are of a collective, prosaic political and
was the very reason
why literature is
a
war
are
no
privately amassed
economic nature.” This, indeed,
invoked to glorify the “mass movements of
sol-
diery” deployed by “a depersonalized general staff”:
The more
war becomes, the more necessary it is to find universal ideal motives to justify it. Love of Helen of Troy has become a burning love for all humanity, and hatred of the foe symhorrible a depersonalized scientific mass
bolizes a hatred of all the unrighteousness
and
injustice
and oppression which
he embodies. The more prosaic the actual causes, the more necessary
it is
to
find glowingly sublime motives.
“Such considerations,” Dewey continues, “destroy sary continuance
which
human
He
at
the
nature.”^ ^
argument
for [war’s] neces-
based on the immutability of specified forces in original
is
wrote
end of World War
that
I.
this
dark account of the “alterability of
But
his sentiments
human
would be invoked by
nature”
the U.S.
Gov-
ernment in 1 944, when Human Nature and Conduct was reprinted by the War Depart-
ment
as
War Department Education Manual
educational activities of the
armed
EM 618,
forces.
“an aid in instruction in certain
Thus by the end of World War
Dewey’s ironic and trenchant account of human nature fare
had become part of the curriculum of the United
setting out a
timeless
program
been more
for the manipulation
in ancient
States
II,
John
and modern war-
Armed Forces
Institute
of public perception. Seldom has the
directly placed in the service
of the times. To
century reader, Dewey’s resounding phrases about “depersonalized
war” and the instrumental rhetoric of “unrighteousness,”
a twenty-first-
scientific
“injustice,”
mass
and “oppres-
sion” will carry yet another set of local meanings.
As Dewey’s reading of been completely shut out and the
scientific.
Homer
in the gradual
will suggest, poetry
move of “human
and
literature
have not
nature” toward the social
Following the emergence of the phrase in eighteenth-century phi-
losophy, the romantic poets adopted the term with enthusiasm, and by the begin-
ning of the twentieth century “human nature” had become both ubiquitous and
commonplace
in literary language,
—
of all kinds. Virginia Woolf
a
appearing regularly in the writings of
belletrists
writer with a distinctly unromantic sensibility
— seems 25
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
matter of course. Reviewing an edition of Montaigne’s Essays,
to have
employed
Woolf
observes that he “never ceases to pour scorn
it
as a
human
the vanity of
upon
Defoe
nature.” She congratulates
the misery, the weakness,
work
belongs ... to the school of the great plain writers, whose
what
is
most
that Jane
and we
persistent,
though not most seductive,
Austen was the doyenne of the
know
George Eliot, “she gathers
for
upon
precisely where,
field
the
(“Her gaze
map of human
To illuminate human nature
is,
in
(“He
founded upon
is
nature”) and suggests
passes straight to the
mark
nature, that
a tolerant
of these
all
it
mark,
is”).
As
bunch of the main elements
in her large grasp a great
of human nature and groups them together with standing.”^^
human
in
with
for dealing
and wholesome undercases,
something to be
sought, and praised.
Woolf
found some authorial
utility in the
ness of creating characters
and fellow- essayist
of
human
in
essayist,
—
a
and
But
in the
was
and was
1
is
best portrayed
of self-dramatization” into some of
93 os,
when
itself alive
and well
in the
—
the term also sur-
by Moliere” and of William
human
human nature.
were written, “human nature” minds of major writers of
By
nature.”
how
a
throwback.
could there be one
The term
“human
itself
is
Plainly in the 1920s as a
general category
fiction, essays, poetry,
its
assumption of
something of
nature”?
new
on Shakespeare
as
the inventor
claim for Shakespeare studies, was startling in
“human” point of
view, as
embodied
in
Bloom’s
free-
wheeling use of the word we to mean
I:
Shakespeare?” he asks rhetorically. And,
“Our ideas as to what makes the self authen-
tically
24
a single
a
is
and
suspect. In a multicultural world,
Literary critic Harold Bloom’s insistence
of “the human,” while hardly
building “an
thought, Shakespeare
drama. Yet the appearance of the concept today in literary discourse
an anomaly and
into the busi-
works of her contemporary
his heroes, Eliot
or unconsciously,
these pieces
as it plays
that she
Likewise Eliot speaks easily of “that dolorous aspect
comedy
“illustrating, consciously
may be imagined
very different kind of writer
Blake’s “capacity for considerable understanding of attitude
it
concept of human nature
social dramas.
regularity.
which
nature
and
T. S. Eliot
with surprising
faces
an
a novelist as well as
is
human owe more
“Can we conceive of
to Shakespeare than
ought to be
ourselves without
possible.
It is this
mag-
— A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
I
Who Owns “Human
and unquestioning
isterial
ive
that
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
marks the problem for some modern
and makes Bloom’s approach so comforting for some readers. This we tant to the book’s success as
its
effusive lionization
of Shakespeare
—
theorists as
is
impor-
a return to
an
older fashion of speaking.
What do we mean when we “they”?
Who
is
when
speaking
“we”? or “I”?
say
What
say “I”?
I
is
or, for that matter,
“the
human”
“you” or
And
in this sense?
how is it counterpoised to more theoretical notions of the “inhuman” and the “posthuman,” with technology,
human
“the
as
condition”?
well
as
with what philosophers in the
Hannah Arendt
contrasts “the
with the “conditions of human existence
—
and the earth,” which “can never
liness, plurality,
the question of
who we
what
were is
“[W]hat
in the process of, constrained into,
‘proper’ to
problem of human nature”
natality
humankind were
Condition?^^
been
Or
asserted,
are
we
we
what we
‘explain’
if
human
are or
answer
to be inhabited
“electrical,” as
by the inhuman?”
—
if
a question
modern technology and
claimed by a book called The Post-Human
is
in fact relentlessly
beings, in humanism’s
becoming inhuman,” and “what
increasingly asked, as well, by cybertheorists and students of
communication.^^ Are
and mortality, world-
are for the simple reason that they never condition us
absolutely.”^^ Jean-Fran^ois Lyotard asks, sense,
life itself,
century called
last
and deterministically “biological,”
as
has
it
has
with authority, by sociobiologist E. O. Wilson?^^
IV
I
want now
to turn directly to an examination of the
term human
nature as
appeared in the writings of late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century principally in the
books and
work of E. O. Wilson and
their claims has
been very
great,
diminished) role of the humanities in a
commonplace appear ogy,
m
for
human
nature
—
his followers.
The
scientists,
and
influence of these
and the implications for the (apparently
modern world
are far reaching.
the term, the concept, and the
book
It is
title
now
—
to
conjunction with arguments concerning genetics, evolutionary psychol-
and biological mating
strategies
of the human animal. Yet,
as will
become
clear.
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
the articulation of these arguments depends, both explicitly and implicitly,
upon
from the long
use of categories, texts, and questions that have been inherited
a
his-
tory of the humanities.
Wilson begins
E. O. (1978),
On Human
Prize-winning book.
his Pulitzer
Nature
with an epigraph from Hume’s Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748),
one of the grandest achievements of eighteenth-century philosophy:
What though difficult
these reasonings concerning
comprehension,
contrary,
it
this affords
human
no presumption of their
in point
to
Wilson’s
cost us,
we may
own
tells us,
How
way and not
if,
by
that
means,
we
this
these
can
make any
addition
quotation, and paraphrasing the
“the great philosopher David
does the
Hume
mind work, and beyond
another, and from these last
that
An acknowledgment
Without
it
human
does
it
together,
work
in
what
is
is
“We
“the essential
are biological,” first
he
hypothesis for
condition”:
the humanities and social sciences are the limited descriptors
of surface phenomena,
like
astronomy without physics, biology without
chemistry, and mathematics without algebra. laid
why
of unspeak-
century of scientific inquiry, since Darwin,
of natural selection
any serious consideration of the
said are
two considerations
has altered expectations for any answers to these questions:
be
wise and
And whatever pains
easy.
the
think ourselves sufficiently rewarded, not only
ruminations begin by taking up
man’s ultimate nature?” For Wilson the
asserts.
many
On
our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance.
able importance: a
may
of profit but of pleasure,
questions that, he
such
falsehood.
seems impossible that what has hitherto escaped so
profound philosophers can be very obvious and researches
nature seem abstract and of
open
as
With
it,
human
nature can
an object of fully empirical research, biology can be put to
the service of liberal education, and our self-conception can be enormously
and
The
truthfully enriched.
chapters of Wilson’s
prise a
map of human
book
nature: Heredity,
Altruism, Religion, and Hope. eralization that displays
Here
is
him com-
Development, Emergence, Aggression, Sex,
a characteristically brilliant
Wilson comfortably
in a chapter entitled “Altruism”:
26
address in turn a series of topics that for
crescendo of gen-
astride his sociobiological
hobbyhorse
^
A Manifesto
Studies
for Literary
Can
Who Owns “Human
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
the cultural evolution of higher ethical values gain a direction and
momentum not.
I
own and
of its
The genes hold
completely replace genetic evolution?
culture
on
The
a leash.
leash
is
very long, but inevitably
on the human gene
values will be constrained in accordance with their effects
The
pool.
brain
is
Human
product of evolution.
a
capacities for emotional response
human
technique by which
which
think
I
— —
behavior
drive and guide
it
is
like the deepest
the circuitous
genetic material has been and will be kept intact.
Morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function.^ Ethics and morality are byproducts of biological development, essentially defense
anisms for keeping
“human
strable ultimate function.”
indebted to our “lowest”
adaptation to
Philosophy
is
—
to the body, to
glossary of terms
Z for
genes located
at a
appended
its
on
site
[a]
self-preservation
to Wilson’s book,
and
chromosome
fully
circulation.
A
for
“when
the
which runs from
H (between homozygous,
and hymenoptera, “the insect order that contains
human
our “highest” functions are
are
zoology, pauses at the letter
given
no other demon-
thus something like an optical illusion, as are
and aphorism. What we think
poetry, fable,
The
genetic material” intact. “Morality has
mech-
pair are identical to each other,” bees, wasps,
all
and
ants”) to define
nature in a single pithy sentence:
Human
nature. In the
broader sense, the
sitions that characterize the
human
full set
species;
of innate behavioral predispo-
and in the narrower
sense, those
predispositions that affect social behavior.^^
The key words can act against istic
sense
here are
innate, behavioral, social,
his predisposition
— but
social,
— biology
is
and
predisposition.
not destiny in
a
a
being
completely determin-
moral, and ethical practices have their underlying basis in the
“nature” side of human nature. In a section called “Hope,” Wilson
opment of what he
A human
calls a
calls for
the devel-
“biology of ethics,” which will enable “the selection of
more deeply understood and enduring code of moral
values.” If dinosaurs
had
grasped the concept of “nobility,” he suggests, “they might have survived. They might
have been us.”^^
This
is
eloquent, and
it is
also troubling.
music, and poetry in Wilson’s concept of
mental figures,
illustrative
human
What
is
the place of things like
art,
nature? Simply put, they are orna-
metaphors deployed by
a
writer
who
has had a broad lib-
27
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
“The
eral education.
Short Studies
processes of sexual pairbonding vary greatly
among
cultures,
but they are everywhere steeped in emotional feeling,” he writes. “In cultures with a
romantic tradition, the attachment can be rapid and profound, creating love beyond
sex which, once experienced, permanently alters the adolescent mind. Description
of
of human ethology
this part
the refined specialty of poets,
is
remarkable expression by James Joyce.” a
long passage from Joyce’s
Daedalus sees a
girl
And
not surprising that the
is
that invokes,
and uses
as its
who
erences,
this passage,
naturalist’s eye
although he
On Human Nature is
Sometimes quoting
1980
example, from
clear in the fact that
literature
all
are genteelly banished to the
a piece
a discussion
is
careful to provide notes to
is
stream reader, not an insider text for
a telling
caught by a figure of speech
is
point of reference, an image from the natural world.
however glancing. (The notes
signifying that
Young Man, in which Stephen
looks like a “strange and beautiful
purely decorative role Wilson assigns to literature
footnote
see in the
point in his text Wilson quotes
Portrait of the Artist as a
standing in the water
seabird.”^"^ It
at this
we
as
The
he does not
his scientific ref-
back of the book,
of “philosophical” writing for the main-
scientists.)
out of context has inadvertent
effects.
Here
is
of “Group Selection and Altruism” in Wilson’s
classic. Sociobiology:
Selection will discriminate against the individual if cheating has later adverse effects
on
and reproduction
his life
that
outweigh the momentary advantage
gained. lago stated the essence in Othello;
dear
There
is
my
lord,
no mention of
lago’s position as the
own contempt for “good name”
as
compared
and vengeful rewards. Arguably “cheating” by lago himself has
on
his life, since
which
at
once
rather appears to
machinations are discovered he
aim
which
The literary more
his
the play’s close, but this does not
the bad faith with
man and woman,
most arrant hypocrite
rial
tortured
28
in
the immediate jewel of their souls.
is
Shakespeare, nor of his
“Good name
at
it is
seem
to
is
later
to
in
all
of
more mate-
adverse effects
led off in chains to be
be the intent of the
citation,
an endorsement of the sentiment expressed, despite
offered, in context, to the credulous Othello.
references in
On Human Nature tend to be less
frequent. William Butler Yeats
is
invoked to support the
startling,
but also
belief, ascribed to
“the
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
Who Owns “Human
I
reflective person,” that “his life a biological
ontogeny.
.
.
.
He
is
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
some incomprehensible manner guided through
in
senses that with
all
the drive, wit, love, pride, anger,
hope, and anxiety that characterize the species he will in the end be sure only of helping to perpetuate the same cycle. Poets have defined called
the
it
coming of wisdom.” Here Wilson
“The Coming of Wisdom with Time,” upon within
The poetry
the text.
is
this truth as tragedy. Yeats
poem from Yeats,
inserts a four-line
commented
in this case footnoted, but not
there to reinforce the cultural generalization.
Again, and not surprisingly, the metaphors are drawn from the physical world,
as if
“truth” were a botanical effect:
Though Through swayed
I
leaves are all
many, the root
one;
the lying days of my youth
my
leaves
and flowers in the sun;
Now may wither into I
Yeats
is
the truth.
makes another brief appearance
in Wilson’s text (“what Yeats called
poem by
the artifice of eternity”) as do Pilgrim's Progress and a
Sappho, the
again introduced with a now-familiar formula: “Poets have noted
calm phrasing of Mary Barnard’s 1
want here
to call attention to the repetition
“Description of
•
[translation of]
of poets.
this part
Sappho.”^^The
of
this
is
the refined specialty
.
•
“Poets have noted
it
well.
as tragedy.”
.” .
.
not only because of the supporting or cameo role in which relationship to the quest for
gauntlet that Wilson throws sage in
which he
decries the absence of
1978, this peroration
Wilson’s
own
ence and
scientists that
is
is
successes,
“human
down toward
distinguished cultural conversations.
Here
poem is then quoted.
.” .
“Poets have defined this truth
its
well, as in the
move:
of human ethology
•
erature in
it
latter
Of
all
On Human
science and
his students
now dominate
imaginative
lit-
Nature, in a pas-
modern
scientists
from
the assertions in his book, published in
perhaps the most surprising, since
and those of
casts
nature,” but also because of the
the end of
modern
it
and
—
in large part
disciplines
—
it is
the public conversation about
due
to
precisely sci-
human
nature.
Wilson’s long, passionate, and beautifully written conclusion:
29
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
In the
United
mode of the
social sciences
and humanities. Their
devoid of the idioms of chemistry and biology,
were
of The
some
in
still
New
who work
States intellectuals are virtually defined as those
the prevailing are
Short Studies
sense a
numinous
as
in
reflections
though humankind
spectator of physical reality. In the pages
New
York Review of Books, Commentary, The
Republic, Daedalus,
National Review, Saturday Review, and other literary journals articles dominate that read as if most
of basic science had halted during the nineteenth century.
Their content consists largely of historical anecdotes, diachronic collating of outdated, verbalized theories of human behavior, and judgments of current events according to personal ideology frustrating techniques a
is
to
enlivened by the pleasant but is
as
expert witnesses and sometimes
It is
true that
be viewed by their hosts guage.
They
are
Very few of the
tame
as a
barbaric culture stiU ungraced
degraded by the label they accept too
who
This
is
the nature of the challenge?^
on
its
the success and esteem of this tious attempt at synthesis, a
all, is
both
book and
book
its
a “great
human
readily: popularizers.
own
author
may
as
move
terms.
at
Do
the deeper
they
the end be looking as
In a later and equally ambi-
attest.
“jumping together,”
entitled Consilience (literally
nature can be viewed
a written lan-
writer” and a “popularizer,”
or “concurrence,” a term from the history of science), search for
must
^
appropriately fierce, even though Wilson himself
sideways in the mirror; he, after
by
can trouble and
reaches of the mind, ever address real science
know
With
the token emissaries of what
scientists,
great writers, the ones
many
aspiring authors, but
as
they almost never close the gap between the two worlds of discourse. rare exceptions they are the
as
materialism to participate in the
scientists step outside scientific
sometimes
regarded
stiU
of technical marvels, the importance of
a set
be evaluated in an ethos extraneous to science.
“humanistic” culture,
all
of eflervescence. Modern science
problem-solving activity and
which
—
he wiU say
explicitly,
“The
the archaeology of the epigenetic rules.”
In other words, fields that appear to be distinct from one another, like economics
and
aesthetics, will
be unified under
this
umbrella of genetic understanding. Science
will explain the humanities.
Many subsequent filling
accounts of
“human
nature” have followed Wilson’s lead,
the gap he lamented. In the years since Wilson’s
ology” in the 1970s dozens of books and hundreds of for,
or to rebut, the claim that
Consider the
title
Can and Cannot
Tell
science. Science
of
a
human
announcement of “sociobiarticles
have tried to account
nature can be described,
book by Kenan Malik: Man,
Us about Human NatureN
One
if
not explained, by
Beast and Zombie:
What
of the most successful
new
A Manifesto
for Literary
books on
Studies
this topic,
Prospect, stresses
I
Who Owns “Human
Paul Ehrlich’s
Human
Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the
what Ehrlich, an evolutionary
His book begins by asking
why
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
“What
is
human
the term needs to be put in the plural:
embodies the erroneous notion
biologist, calls “cultural evolution.”
He
nature?”
“‘Human
that people possess a
flexibility
and diversity in
then goes on to explain
nature’ as a singular concept
common
cally specified behavioral predilections that are unlikely to
But the study of human evolution
of
set
rigid, geneti-
be altered by circumstances.”
in recent decades has taken account of behavioral
and
areas “as different as sexual preferences
political sys-
tems.” Thus he resolves, “in light of this scientific progress,” to “highlight natures: the diverse
and evolving behaviors,
Ehrlich writes
determinism that
as a scientist,
infests
Human
much of the
beliefs,
and
of
attitudes
Homo
human
sapiens
but he writes against “the extreme hereditary current discussion of
human
behavior” and in
favor of the ideas that biology has to be considered in the context of culture, and that
of
“our culture
as history.”'^^
is
changing through an evolutionary process
that
is
generally thought
Yet his book’s references to philosophers (Immanuel Kant, Jurgen
Habermas, Martin Heidegger, Charles Sanders
Peirce,
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
J.
Richard Rorty) and poets
W. von Goethe) appear
almost
exclusively in the footnotes, not in the text: humanities, literature, and the arts
underpin
but they are clearly secondary to his argument.
scientific observations
Ehrlich’s notion of “cultural evolution,”
however politically
progressive,
emphasizes a theory of natural selection. (Characteristically, liant
and powerful paradigm, the
to Ehrlich’s
even
as it
more
may
shift
this
still
strongly
softening of
from Wilson’s uncompromising singular
affable plural, natures, robs the original insight
renders the evolutionary claims of sociobiology
of some of
more
its
a bril-
nature force,
acceptable to criti-
cal audiences.)
Of nature,
the host of other recent books by biologists on
most address questions of
enthusiastic blurbs
genetics, heredity,
by E. O. Wilson. Designed to
books have deliberately catchy
titles.
Our Primal
Instincts.
Burnham and
subtitled
Phelan,
and evolution
aspect of
human
— and many bear
cross over into the mainstream, these
''Mean Genes
book by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan
some
who
is
brilliant,”
From Sex have
to
Wilson writes of
Money
to
a
Food: Tamitiyf
become talk-show
favorites.
32
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
on such eye-catching
take
infidelity, family,
standing of
and friends and
human
of the book
is
topics as debt,
evolutionary
fat,
drugs, risk, greed, gender, beauty,
''Mean Genes seeks to foster a deep under-
foes.
existence,” they
Short Studies
announce
in the introduction.
We Hardwired?
In Are
biology.”'*''^
Clark and Michael Grunstein address “the role of genes in
authors William R.
human
lowing in the controversial path of Richard Dawkins’s The
that
made
asserts
on
us
human?” "The Third Ghimpanzee
the jacket
prise. In fact,
flap,
both
is
Diamond,
that
point a moral. Thus Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” a
whose
statue lies dismantled
the end of a chapter
at
—
a “colossal
on golden
ages.
The
Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on
These
are the
books
my
is
become
best-sellers.
of Wilson
a
literary enter-
warning,
as
is
clear
Progress Overnight.”
—
a literary text to
in a desert wasteland,
inscription
it
Animal,
poem about a once-omnipotent king
on
works, ye mighty, and
at a
What is most striking to me,
to
is
quoted
the ruin’s pedestal offers
too promises to “endure”:
those by “tame scientists.” All are clearly aimed
have
Our
Wilson wants
that E. O.
and
a history
wreck”
an inadvertently ironic commentary, since is
Human
Jared
those few key ingredients
Wilson, occasionally uses
like
GeneW
will endure,” the voice
section, entitled “Reversing
might note
the
adding an evolutionary happy ending to the
though. Diamond’s book
from the concluding I
“What were
asks,
behavior,” fol-
Selfish
Diamond’s The Third Ghimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of another Pulitzer Prize— winning study,
“The foundation
“My name
despair!”"^*^
promote
in the place of
general readership, and as
I
many
have already briefly noted,
how completely the dominance in this discussion of human nature has swung around
from the humanities
to the sciences.
V “Books,” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “do serve some purpose. Culture doesn’t save anything or anyone,
32
it
doesn’t justify. But
it,
he recognizes himself in
to
be
human nature to
it;
it’s
that critical
believe in
a
product of man: he projects himself into
image alone
offers
him his image.
It
seems
human nature, whatever those terms are taken to mean.
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
I
Who Owns “Human
In point of fact,
have produced
“human
mal that
(e.g.,
.
.
“man
is
“man
is
which devours
the only animal
what
human
constitutes the nature of
Let me, then, return to
“man
is
the ani-
is
arguable
it is
nature,” and that the
any forensic tracing of cause and
as
arts that
a social animal”;
own kind”)
his
upon human
the animal that speculates endlessly
much
as it
game of “Man
a tool-using animal”; Spinoza’s
history of that speculation, as
now,
and the history of the imaginative
nature.” In the intellectual parlor
Thomas Jefierson’s “man is that
literature
it is
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
effect,
is
nature for our time.
my fundamental
question:
Why is “human nature”
seems, firmly in the custody of biologists and evolutionary psychologists,
on the one hand, and journalists, on the other? on “human nature” take whether of the hard,
as their
soft,
do
so
many of
these books
subject politics, or social theory, or psychology,
How can we
or pop variety?
away from such questions by
Why
literary scholars
and
account for the strong
theorists,
drift
and by humanistic cul-
tural critics?
The answers
and they
are not far to seek,
are reasonable
enough: multiculof the
turalism, diversity, a respect for cultural difference, a suspicion
homogenization,
a
worry about coercive
universalism. All of these critiques and dis-
placements are worth taking very seriously, politics, religious intolerance,
vated by sophistication (there cultural), or sheer
scenario, in
is
on
any history of race
this topic
no “we”),
weariness with what had
produced some unwelcome
as
and patterns of immigration
reluctance of humanists to generalize
of
politics
—whether
politics (the
become an
effects. In fact this
will
may be
which humanists write themselves out of the
make
clear.
their reluctance
world
inert
relations,
is
gender
But the is
global and multi-
and flabby cliche
a classic
moti-
—
has
baby-and-bathwater
story of who gets to describe
and analyze “human nature.”
There
ment between
are,
I
want
to suggest, three important reasons for the current estrange-
the humanities and
human
nature that deserve to be addressed. These
reasons derive directly from the appropriation of the term by science and scientists,
and before that by behaviorists and
social scientists,
three clunky words: pluralization, verbalization, and
them one by
one.
and they can be interdisciplinarity.
summed up Let
me
in
address
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Pluralization, or the
The
Short Studies
Fear of the Universal
defensive pluralization of analytic concepts has
become
a
hallmark of modern-
day work, and speaks in part to commendable political concerns.
book
Ehrlich’s
is
Human
and scholars of
Natures, in the plural,
pology, and cultural studies will
all
recall the
move from
The
title
of Paul anthro-
literature,
“culture” to “cultures,”
as
well as that from “history” to “histories,” or indeed from “feminism” to “feminisms.”
But such welcome reminders about ing
One
effects.
cultural difference are not
without their inhibit-
does not need to hanker after Bloom’s magisterial we in order to
recognize the value of structural analysis, generalization, and transhistorical analogy in the production of intellectually challenging theory
find
human
there
a
is
way of moving beyond
Some the only
theories.
a
whole formal mode of one
insights in fact require
way
fully to inhabit a culture.
certain global overview.
To speak
literary
to be a
There
and imagistic
are
some
things
It
disciplines, tacitly
elite,
emphasizes historical context
the work.
It
at
analysis.
one cannot
comes
may be good
at
that
from
see
the cost of a
politics,
acknowledging
overspecialized, or without
if
has effectively
dupe of universalism, because
plainly: pluralization
produces undue deference to other kinds of humanistic inquiry are
which
the impasse of pluralization
the outside, but only from within, even if that “within-ness”
value.
who
Humanists
nature either banal or imperialist should take another look, and see
blocked the way for
is
— or
but
it
that certain
redeeming
social
the expense of synchronic relations within
renders the specificity of language and the formal properties of art sec-
ondary, or ancillary, to local meaning.
The opportunity
for the humanities to lead
rather than to remain secondary to the worlds of databases, experiments, and statistics is tied
to the
essarily involves
power
to generalize
be
left
“human
34
life.”
and write
inside
fully inhabiting a partial perspective
much
their collaboration.
cross- culturally.
less
It
nec-
and outside. The experience
This act of intellectual projection
to the scientists,
welcome
to speak
combining the perspectives of
of the blindness produced by ence of
and
is
is still
the experi-
too important a task to
the social scientists, although humanists should
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
we
return for a
remarks
as
Who Owns “Human
moment
powerful
fectly justifiable
as
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
Verbalization, or the Fear
•
If
I
of Taking Language Seriously
to E. O. Wilson’s final remarks in
they are provocative
—we can
put-down of journahstic attempts
human
I
want
to bear a lot of negative weight:
take another look at his per-
of outdated,
to
to single out the
verbalize in this
from one language, the language of
word
verbalized theories
context
verbalized,
is
intellectualize
and
rationalize
—words
ond-order phenomenon,
a stage
in language
its
is its
beauty,
which seems
to translate,
and
is
cognate to terms like
that suggest that the activity in question
is
a sec-
removed from the thing itself. What Wilson admires
decorative capacity. In another telling phrase, he
without taking biology into account “the humanities and
limited descriptors of surface
trans-
science, into another language, the
language of journalism and popular discourse. Verbalize here
that
—
behavior, and judgments of current events according to personal ideol-
ogy” (emphasis added). Flere
late badly,
Nature
to talk science: “their content consists
largely of historical anecdotes, diachronic collating
of
On Human
phenomena,”
like
insists
social sciences are the
astronomy without physics, biology
without chemistry, and mathematics without algebra. “Limited descriptors of surface phenomena” genteelly its
own
damning phrase. But the phrase
itself
is
—
a “limited descriptor,”
which
a
more
betrays
bias.
For humanists, verbalization cannot be so simple the object of our analysis, the thing
itself,
and
it is
make up
for
many
instabilities
language
is
itself
of meaning, that
humanistic scholars and writers the core material out of which
any interesting theory of “human nature” might derive. has befallen the
a process:
the inherent (neither “natural”
nor “unnatural”) tensions within language, the powerful
such
hard to think of
it is
word
— transformed — and “moral
literacy,
as “cultural literacy”
which
literacy”
A
similar fate, incidentally,
into social-betterment formulas
has lost
its
direct
connection with
the difficult and dangerous act of reading.
“What
shall
we
call
human
in
humans,”
asks Lyotard, “the initial
their childhood, or their capacity to acquire a ‘second’ nature
misery of
which, thanks to lan-
35
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
guage, makes
them
communal
to share in
fit
Short Studies
life,
That the second depends on and presupposes the question
is
only that of knowing whether
•
the
first is
this dialectic,
and reason?
agreed by everyone.
whatever name
years a
number of new
history of science
and technology, cognitive theory and the
method and in scope,
pology, are interdisciplinary both in
and among the humanities, the
one example,
grown
interdisciplinary fields have
and others previously in existence have expanded and prospered. Such
film,
grace
it
or the Return of Human Nature
Interdisciplinarity,
last several
ogy, to use
we
The
no remainder.
with, leaves
Over
adult consciousness
social sciences,
arts,
and
areas as the
visual anthro-
crossing boundaries
and the
up,
between
sciences. Visual anthropol-
takes as material for analysis elements like ethnographic
photography, mass media, and other anthropological “ways of seeing.” Fields like this attract
areas are increasing.
younger scholars in great numbers: majors in these
So many interdisciplinary
interdisciplinary courses being taught
department
is
—
that
being written
dissertations are
it is
sometimes
difficult to guess
— and which
the host of a course in, for example. Fraud and Intellectual Property
(History of Science); Eighteenth-Century Ethical
and Literatures) Culture, ;
Politics,
and Media (Anthropology); or Literature, Science,
and Technology in the Nineteenth Century at
Harvard College
is
a pretty fair glossary
Dilemmas (Romance Languages
(English).
These
are
today. Fraud, ethics, games, media, science
of terms for “human nature.”
And
all
courses taught
and technology:
this
these are just courses
randomly picked from one college course catalogue, where dozens of other course catalogues might
Of nents and
its
course,
the same story.
by
skeptics,
sional training, or
upon
tell
this
time “interdisciplinarity”
and the
even
latter
a degree,
research in a field.
is
We may
include
not news.
many people who
a necessary passport for
of
art,
from saying wise things about poetry en
It
has
its
propo-
believe that a profes-
anyone seeking
note that the absence of such
erature, philosophy, or the history
36
is
a
degree
to
embark
in, say, lit-
has not deterred physicists and biologists passant. This lack
of equity between the
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
I
Who Owns “Human
sciences and the humanities
—
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
we
the idea that
can
all
speak about literature, and that,
work
in fact, a professional discourse about literary studies renders the
arcane and obstructive
—
is
part of the
in that field
problem about the current custody of “human
nature”; for the very existence and prominence of interdisciplinary studies in the narrative fields suggests that an interest in in those fields. it
be laughed
It
oflf
has,
the platform. But this
nature approached, ally
of course, staged
as it
human
comeback
its
is
nature has survived, and returned,
human
was necessary,
stealthily, as
nature with a difference
lest
— human
were, from within and from below, rather than magisteri-
from above. Interdisciplinarity,
we
could say
and another from contemporary political Or, to speak
more
plainly,
— borrowing one term from O. Wilson philosophy — without E.
is
hegemony.
consilience
among the
mutually respectful collaborative work
it is
and narrative
ciplines (largely but not exclusively the discursive
dis-
disciplines, the
humanities, and the less-quantitative branches of science and social science). Interdisciplinarity, in short,
questions about
makes perfect
“human
is
the space, or the
nature” are now,
mode of
—
is
not in
itself sufficient to
old-fashioned questions about
ple,
in
new
places
the release of a
and
new
guises
The
and morality, idealization and
nature, ethics
accom-
expression, and humankind’s reaching close to the angels and the beasts are
modated
human
arguably a natural
explain this explosion of integrated interests.
human
this
with the boundaries of
sense. It explains, in part, the dissatisfaction
—
where
And
being investigated.
at present,
the present-day disciplines, for breaching boundaries desire
collective inquiry,
by interdisciplinary
new film version of Planet of the Apes
inquiry. Thus, for
exam-
(2000) provoked a discussion
of the relationship of humans and chimpanzees, orangutans,
gorillas,
and bonobos,
and led to an interesting exchange of views among animal behaviorists, theoretical biologists, anthropologists,
and lawyers on the question of
But the humanities have
a single, easy-to-forget
over in these intellectual investigations. Language constituent of
Language tive role,
is
human
nature, whatever
may
is
rights for
apes."^'-^
point to repeat over and
not a secondary but
a
primary
turn out to be the case in other spheres.
not transparent, though fantasies of
its
have always attracted and misled some of
transparency, its
users,
its
merely denota-
both writers and read-
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Language
ers.
is
not only
requiring a handle It is
— and
a
window
form and re-form. The humanities sometimes play
But
by appearing to pose
this
this
is
human
tion. ists
who
is
nature, even
illusions that science
can
though he had no
access to
modern
informa-
scientific
or uncomprehending, about the
work of human-
question the sources, the sincerity, and the consistency of a “Shakespeare”
of
to a certain extent the creation
after his time. Far
write
of framing
demonstrating that William Shakespeare was right
They are frequently impatient,
who
a set
true only from the perspective of the humanities themselves.
Scientists often take pleasure in
about
a barrier as well as a portal,
no one kind of inquiry holds the key to “human nature”
that interdisciplinary groupings
demystify.
but also a door,
a key.
precisely because
an ironic role in
Short Studies
as if
editors, poets,
from demystifying categories
the humanities could
as
critics
who
and beauty,
lived long
scientists often
be relied upon to be the quaint but lovable
still
guardians of such notions. In this sense
notion of the humanities, even
like truth
and
many
scientists retain a
nineteenth-century
they suggest that humanists cling to a nineteenth-
century notion of science.
When ence
is still
a leading scientist like E.
regarded
as a
importance of which
worth asking him istic
study
tic tricks,
is all
is
O. Wilson could aver that “[nijodern
problem-solving activity and
a set
of technical marvels, the
to be valuated in an ethos extraneous to science,”
to consider the obverse of this proposition: that
too often regarded
the importance of
as a
which
it is
well
modern human-
style-enhancing activity and a to
is
sci-
set
of linguis-
be evaluated in an ethos extraneous to the
humanities.
As the popularity of programs gests, science itself has a history,
issue rant.
when he
wrote, “Science
is
a
teaches, above
ideas,
all,
to
even though
doubt and
a his-
to
life
it
may
be igno-
the Ptolemaic universe (the sun rotates around the earth) to phlogis-
ton (the hypothetical substance supposed to be the “matter of
was affirmed through
35
it is
The philosopher Miguel de Unamuno put
cemetery of dead
from them,” and, “True science
From
of science and technology sug-
and, in the very nature of such things,
tory of falsehoods in pursuit of truth. clearly
in the history
much of the
fire,”
whose
existence
eighteenth century only to be rejected and aban-
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
doned by
1
all
Who Owns “Human
The
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
proceeded by hypothesis, by theory, and by inspired acci-
800), science has
dent and guess. lies.
I
become
“beautiful theories” of the past have
Will today’s answers be any
more
ahistorical, transcendent,
either facts or fol-
and permanent than
those that have gone before? It is
efforts
striking that the
on the
part of
struct their notions
term “science wars” has been coined
some nonscience
of truth. The term
scholars to understand itself
to describe the
how
has been highly contestatory, produc-
ing heated exchanges and a good deal of willful misunderstanding on I
con-
scientists
all sides.
What
have been describing here might perhaps have been called “humanities wars,” save
for the fact that the humanities are regarded not as specialized a research field,
but rather
as
the
ground of our
knowledge or even
common knowledge
and
as
common
inheritance, accessible to scientists, social scientists, and humanists alike. Instead of
“humanities wars,” then,
we have the far more aversive
of scholarship in the humanities was
art.
I
share with Ian
intellectual debates.
Hacking
As he
“Freud wars” suggest terminology
“war”
against, as well as for
and touchstones that are thought to be enshrined
certain cultural values
and
itself a
“culture wars,” as if the progress
says,
a dislike
of the
to “the
of,
in literature
of “war” to describe these
expressions like “culture wars,” “science wars,” and
gladiatorial contests, in
— belongs
facile use
custody
bemused
which the
spectators.”^ ^
pleasure
— and
the “war”
But somewhat obscured by
the inflammatory rhetoric, fanned by the flames of cultural journalists,
is
a
funda-
mental dissymmetry in the way “scientific knowledge” and “humanistic knowledge” are
weighed, valued, and Is it
serve
human
assessed.
really necessary to
nature
as a
ban
all
scientific
experimentation in order to pre-
constant and unchanging essence? Francis Fukuyama’s con-
cern that contemporary biotechnology will “alter
human
nature and thereby
move
us into a ‘posthuman’ stage of history,” with “possibly malign consequences for liberal
democracy and the nature of
plated, sans alarm,
and
is
not
a scare
it is
one
that has in fact
in various
word but an
aesthetic speculation. Perhaps
precisely because
is
by many thoughtful scholars
where “posthuman” ethical,
politics,
been contem-
branches of the humanities,
interesting field for philosophical,
we need
the humanities
more than
so obvious that scientific progress cannot be stopped.
ever
Here
is
39
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
where humanists can do themselves, and the world,
which
all
knowledge
is
an aspect of rhetoric
as
well
a favor,
as
by
stressing the
ways in
an aspect of logic. Increasingly,
speak in metaphors and linguistic coinages in order to explain their work.
scientists
Relativity; quark; revolution;
game
theory; prisoner's dilemma: these appropriations
becoming
guage, analogy, and neologism enrich understanding by
ing out that the reality of the world
itself
is
voiced
a
by point-
figural,
reality, a reality
of lan-
of
figure.
Humanists might reasonably point out the rhetorical and “poetic” nature of these
But
terms, the impossibility of science without image and figure. these humanists also to the
might return the
most underrated and
and the
serve,
of these
overliteralized
favor,
the same time
at
by laying claim once again
figures: the
metaphor of human
nature.
So, to restate the question
human
write about
scientists
least in part,
is
human
nature
is
— not
what they
became both
truisms, often inflected with religion
explanation a
it
that today’s
My answer,
at
(“it’s just
human
nature
to
mention
are doing.
stale
their critics
Somewhere along
and saccharine:
and frequently invoked .
.
.
”)
—have been
a set
as a
will-
the way, the
of bromides or
“so there” pseudo-
rather than explored as a
conundrum
or
puzzlement. I
as
why is
do not?
nature, while today’s humanists
readers
ing to acknowledge that that
concept of
have been wrestling:
that humanists do write about this question, constantly, but that nei-
many of their
ther they nor
we
with which
am
eager here
—
deploring the present
back, wistfully, to a time ists
cared about
talgic
human
or, to
be franker about
moment
am
in humanistic writing
anxious
— not
to be heard
and research, and harking
when men were men, women were women, and human-
nature.
My point
and retrogressive thought: what
humanists are asking
it, I
“human
is
really close to the opposite
I
have been contending
nature” questions
all
the time,
when
is
of
this
nos-
that today’s
they talk about
psychic violence, or material culture, or epistemic breaks, or the history of the book, or the counterintuitive. last fifty
and
40
Many
of the theoretical explorations and innovations of the
years of humanistic scholarship have
positivistic sense
been aimed
at
demystifying a unitary
of “human nature.” But to aim to demystify something
is
tac-
A Manifesto
itly to
for Literary Studies
acknowledge
I
Who Owns “Human
its
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
mystified status, and not only for others; also for oneself.
Avoiding the topic of “human nature” intellectual ramifications
—
is
a mistake,
one
that has political as well as
how we
based on underestimating what and
a mistake
read and write today Like Edgar Allan Poe’s famous image of the continental map,
with
letters so large that
we cannot read the most overarching words
and focus instead on the legible terms in smaller print (Geneva,
on which we work, the
rain
unreadable to
us.
Yet
terrain inscribed
“human
be solely the concern of
nature,” as a
by
all
of
New Jersey), the ter-
own name and
term and
social conservatives or
and however well placed. In debunking
its
as a field
scientists,
(Europe, Africa)
ours,
is
bizarrely
of inquiry, need not
however well meaning
the illusions fostered under this ubiqui-
tous term, contemporary humanistic scholars have sometimes failed to see in
ways
we
are
working within
When
it.
suggest that to discard a big and baggy idea like
I
political mistake,
what
I
mean
we
ics
of the humanities.
ily
be able to demonstrate that
women’s
If
is
Who Am
What Lies in the Future
that
it
I
fields like cultural
— than they
and
critically,
questions, the
questions that
all
What
Am
Doing Here
I
questions, the
attach themselves to the heritage of
more
pressing
2
Joelle
Kennedy High School, Bellmore,
News,” Newsday (Long
4
“human
— nor
Madeleine Bunting, “The Morning After,” Guardian (London), 12 September 2001, F.
more
Island, N.Y.), 4
N.Y.,
14.
“Student Briefing Page on the
October 2001, A24.
Mimi Avins and Cara Mia DiMassa, “Amid Disaster, Heroes Ran toward Danger, Not from Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2001, sec. 5, p. 1. Nicholas M. Christian, Glenn Collins, Jim Dwyer, Joseph
P. Fried,
it,”
Jan Hoffman, Mireya Nvarro,
Maria Newman, Mirta Ojito, Barbara Stewart, and Joyce Wadler, “A Nation Challenged: The Missing,” 5
New
York Times, 2 October 2001, B9.
Madeleine Bunting, “The Launch of a TV (London), 21
May
2001, 20.
a
and posthumanism are indeed addressing the Big
are today.
Sumner, John
is
we will read-
1
3
nature
anthropology, structural linguistics,
nature.” These questions, indeed, have never been
“human”
human
has given aid and comfort to unthinking crit-
are willing to reflect seriously
studies, cybertheory,
Questions: the
what
Game
that Trades on our Dark Side,” Guardian
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
Same Sad
New
6
Joyce Purnick, “Intern’s Role Appears to Be
7
Francine Prose, “The Big Surprise? Our Surprise,” Washington Post, 18 February 2001, Bi.
8
Quoted
in Ellen
9
George
F.
10
Will,
Gamerman,
Cell
Karl Marx, “Introduction to a Critique of Political
ed. C.
J.
York Times, 12 July 2001, Bi.
“Hillary Clinton, Fund-raiser,” Baltimore Sun, 25 April 2001, lA.
“A Principled Solution to Stem
German Ideology,
Tale,”
Dilemma,” Baltimore Sun, 16
Economy,”
in
April 2001, 19A.
Marx and Frederick Engels, The
Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1974), 124.
Happy Life (New York: Random House, 2000),
11
Anna Quindlen, A Short Guide
12
Ken Karnofsky, “Genome Project Can’t Explain Human Nature,” Letters to the
to a
124.
Editor,
Boston
Globe, 16 February 2001, A18.
“Mysteries of the Genes,”
New
York Times, 17 February 2001, A30.
13
Editorial,
14
Francis
15
Jared Diamond, The Third
16
From the Arden Shakespeare edition (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). Shakespeare citations are from this edition.
17
Clifford Geertz,
18
Marx, “introduction to a Critique of Political Economy,” 124.
19
J.
Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future (New York:
Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2002), 83.
Chimpanzee (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 137. All further
The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 67.
Stanley Grimes, The Mysteries of Human Nature Explained by a
New System
of Nervous
Added, a Review of the Errors of Spiritualism, and Instructions for Developing or Refining the Influence by Which Subjects and Mediums Are Made (Buffalo:
Physiology, To Which
Is
M. Wanzer, 1857); Louis Berman, The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature (New York: Macmillan, 1921), viii. R.
20
Berman, The Glands Regulating Personality,
21
John Dewey,
22
ibid.
23
Virginia Woolf, The
Human
21, 23, 26, 329,
Nature and Conduct (Madison, Wise.: Henry Holt, 1944), 113-14.
Common Reader (1925;
reprint.
New York:
Harcourt, Brace and
Company,
1984), 63, 93, 137, 167.
24
T. S. Eliot,
Selected Essays 1917-1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932),
111,
158, 279.
25
Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the 1,
Riverhead Books, 1998),
17.
26
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2d
27
Jean-Frangois Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel
Bowlby (Cambridge:
42
Human (New York:
ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998),
Polity Press, 1991), 2.
28
Robert Pepperell, The Post-Human Condition (Oxford:
29
E.
30
ibid.
31
Ibid.,
167.
32
Ibid.,
281.
33
Ibid.,
196, 197.
0
.
Wilson,
Intellect, 1995),
On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
i.
University Press, 1978), 2.
11.
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
34
Ibid.,
35
E.
I
Who Owns “Human
Marjorie Garber
Nature”?
69.
0. Wilson, Sociobiology (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980),
58.
36
Quoted by Wilson, On Human Nature, 3. Reprinted with permission from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 92.
37
Wilson,
38
Ibid.,
39
William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 6, part L. L.
On Human
Nature, 200.
203.
Sauden (London: Frank Cass and Co.
Ltd.,
2, ed. G.
Buchdahl and
1967), 65 (originally published 1840): “[T]he cases
which inductions from classes of facts altogether or different have thus jumped together, belong only to the best established theories that the history of science contains [I] will term
in
it
the Consilience of Inductions
”
40
Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot (New York: Weidenfeld, 2000).
41
Paul Ehrlich,
42
Ibid., X.
43
Even these footnotes are of the most perfunctory and summary kind: a “romantic response”
Human
Natures (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000),
Tell
Us about
Human
ix.
to Enlightenment science, representing “a preference for feeling, intuition, imagination,
self-expression over rational analysis and intellect,”
is
Nature
and
said to be “associated with such writers
and thinkers as German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling and johann von Goethe, Johann von
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley” (426
Schiller,
one finds
in
n. 73).
This
is
the sort of thing
readers’ encyclopedias and school texts; a generalization this un-nuanced from a
literary critic
speaking about science would surely evoke protests from
scientific theorists
and
practitioners.
Burnham and
44
Terry
45
William
jay Phelan,
Mean Genes
(Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000),
We Hardwired? (New York:
R.
Clark and Michael Grunstein, Are
in
Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee, 338.
8.
Oxford University Press,
2000).
46
Quoted
47
jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots (The Words), trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: G. Braziller, 1964), 254.
48
Lyotard, The Inhuman, 3.
49
Rowan
Taylor of the Great
Brother,”
50
New
Ape
Project,
quoted
in
York Times, 12 August 2001, sec.
Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life, trans.
Seth Mydans, “He’s Not Hairy, He’s
My
4, p. 5.
j.
E.
Crawford
Fitch
(New York: Dover
Publications, 1954), 90, 93.
51
Ian Hacking,
The Social Construction of What? {Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1999), 4-
52
Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future,
7.
43
The
unhistorical
and
the historical are necessary in equal measure
for the health of an individual, of a people and of a culture.
“On
What
Friedrich Nietzsche, the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”
useful discovery did Socrates learn from
Dialectic,
Xanthippe?
Stephen answered.
James Joyce, Ulysses
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
I
We who
profess literary studies have
This
is
not the
first
infatuations,
it
carries
with
history.
to
know
to
know, and to
and footnotes about Macbeth
articles
Gunpowder Plot and
time of infatuation with
a
it is
the lineage of James
I.
An
offer “answers” to
of
Sir Philip
ill-fated rebellion
but also of
—
all
Sidney and
in service
lay
emphasis on the
facts
entire mini-industry in
his sister the
his marital
this
of the
what might connection
Countess of Pembroke, and
of readings, not only of Shakespeare’s history
unhappy
Roderigo Lopez, and, informed by
a
story of
growing
Queen
his
plays,
Elizabeth’s Jewish doctor,
interest in race, analyses
numbers and social occupations of Moors and Africans
detail the
knotty textual
comedies, and romances. Readings of The Merchant of Venice
his tragedies,
routinely incorporate the
still
like all
and indeed meaning. Earlier in
be called “Essex Studies” grew up around the Earl of Essex, to the circle
And
heady one.
a
overestimation of the object. History seems
a certain
it
questions: questions of context, interpretation,
century
through
living
such crush, to be sure, but
we want
everything that
been
of Othello
in sixteenth- century
London. But where these inquiries focused on early
modern
literature
and culture are more
manuals, and medical and rhetorical
ers’
political history, today’s scholars
likely to turn to
treatises.
We
of
conduct books, moth-
have seen in recent years an
intense interest in court culture, literacy and reading practices, the printing house, sexuality rial
and
and the
stage,
and witchcraft and colonial encounters,
social determinants.”^
This
is
all
“grounded
strenuously disavowed, like so
historians to study
it
many
other love
their
rather than simply to look at the past through
by the
task
it,
—
on
a passion
gone wrong. Whereas
affairs
were once struck by the nontransparency of
are fascinated
mate-
the counterpart of the earlier infatuation
the part of historians for literary theory, the so-called “linguistic turn”
now
in
medium and
the need
today’s literary scholars
of reconstructing “the real” that must he behind any of
its
representations.
My
topic
is
the
way
that “history” has
kind of truth-claim in literary studies.
46
New
emerged
as a
byword
for a certain
Historicism, nourished and nurtured
— A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
I
Historical Correctness:
The Use and Abuse
by interdisciplinary work, by historians and ics,
literature in the late twentieth century.
Historicism tried to
stress
—
literary crit-
been eroded by
its
social energy.
for causation.
cultural effects
success.
but
a text,
created, despite
it
its
wake of postmodernism and find causality
back to
—
preferred words such
its
very avoidances
more
as
New Historicism tried
as resonance, circulation, poet-
this strategy
whetted the appetite
New Historicism began by
reading history
as
best efforts, a desire for history as a ground. In the
the general questioning of foundations, a longing to as
explanation
strongly than before. For
— seems
many
come
to have
scholars of literature,
the unfulfilled desire, the projected or introjected fantasy, the prohib-
is
ited wish.
it
the priority of history, history
literary study
causality
as
Spawned by postmodernism.
another way.
it
New
complex networks of
But through
To put
that
be understood
to avoid or complicate causality:
and
But the very point
that history, or histories, could not
determinative or lineal causes but rather
ics,
by
art historians as well as
had an enormous impact upon the way emerging younger scholars taught and
wrote about
has
Marjorie Garber
of History for Literature
The
question these scholars ask
is
why
often a version of
— not
a version
of how. Indeed, recent critiques of
being historical enough: tory;
its
ment; put Its
faulted for “its anecdotal notion of
when
analogies;
its
tendency to adduce
a Zeitgeist
from an accident,”
In other words, precisely
interest in “the literary,” has
ary scholars It
—
to
be
occurs to
its
what
seemed
me
that
distinguishes to
some
some
its
Times:
“We Happy Many,
a
to causal argu-
one friendly
critic has
from
historians
by
a
title
of
and
he made with
his
liter-
The
New
many modern artists and writers,
Tim
York
point of that did manip-
more nuanced, complex, and learned way of doing
approached history with depth and
history.
this essay to refer
headline in the
Playing Fast and Loose with History.” like
as his-
strength.
for example, director Oliver Stone, or actor-director
tract that
as
to task for not
what counts
comes
— both
readers might take the
was that although Shakespeare,
he had
it
it
New Historicism
scholars
for “historical correctness,” as implied
need
ulate history,
evasiveness
weakness rather than
to the
article
Historicism have taken
dependence on loose
its
it.^
it is
New
so than,
Robbins. “Shakespeare
integrity,” insists the Times reviewer.
“The con-
viewers was that they were witnessing an interpretation
47
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
of
history,
Short Studies
not an exact reproduction of events. Most historical movies, by contrast,
not only reduce history to a simple situation but also that they are reconstructing this distinction
are
history
—
it
does
many modern
that
all
— and
it is
not in
what
happened.”^ Whatever the truth value of
really
become muddier as time goes nonhistorians
fact precisely
impression
strive to give the
know
what I mean by
on,
Shakespeare’s plays
as
about English or even
“historical correctness.”
Roman
For I intend
here to invoke the cognate phrase “political correctness,” one of the most denigrated
and
vilified imperatives in
contemporary journalism and academic
Political correctness in today’s
insensitive attack
on
insensitivity.
With
1947 Vladimir Nabokov could
early as
popular parlance its
its
own
excesses,
mock it in
the Right,
persons
rather tired
news
in the
left as a
it
to
the phrase
kind of amused
its initials as
States,
and used
irony,
begin with.^
United
Sinister"^)
a sign
(as
of
reality
this
rue-
Perhaps inevitably, the term was picked up by
denuded of any soup^on of
who had ironized
novel Bend
his
and often abbreviated by
fully affectionate self-estrangement.
understood to mean an
roots in old-style totalitarian discourse
was used in the 1970s with heavy self-irony by the check on
is
life.
as a
club to beat those very
“Political correctness”
where
is
rather old
and
tends to be employed principally by
it
diehard cultural conservatives and the authors of novels and plays about academic life.
A
review of The Winter’s Tale
at
the
American Repertory Theater scolded the
director for adding “a politically correct ending,” noting that “it
is
political correctness
to disallow Shakespeare’s forgiveness.”^
European commentators often consider both American puritanism and feminist
excess.
political correctness a
Thus
of flirting deplores the “return to puritanism” and the nothing politically incorrect in
French book on the history
rise
of sexual harassment laws,
a little
ambiguous banter between
insisting that “there
is
men and women.”
In Britain “political correctness” has been decried in the press as
having “some of the characteristics of
Old
Bailey stepped
down from
that inveighed against a
the
a religious sect.”
bench he did
new conduct book
When a popular judge at the
so in a highly publicized speech
forjudges on
tion of racial bias and against “political correctness in
or not, political correctness has been regarded
4S
a
symptom of
as a
how
all its
to avoid the percep-
horrid forms.
Florrid
tendency to turn critique into
a
A Manifesto
for Literary
new orthodoxy and
Studies
Historical Correctness:
The Use and Abuse of History
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
or orthopedic thinking, framing and shaping what can be thought
said.
What, then, tion, either
and
I
“historical correctness”?
is
might
say that
the sugges-
it is
implied or explicit, on the part of literary scholars, that history grounds
the truth about literature.
tells
We
Walter Benjamin’s remark
at
The
critique of this idea
is
superbly well
made by
the end of an essay called “Literary History and the
Study of Literature”:
What
at stake is
is
not to portray literary works in the context of their age,
but to represent the age that perceives them
which they
arose.
and to achieve is
It is
this,
this that
makes
and not to reduce
— our age—
literature into
in the age during
an organon of history;
literature to the material
of history,
the task of the literary historian.^
II
The most cally or
specifically literary charge offered against those
who
deliberately
of anachronism for
—
and joyously
flout
itself
had
a
chequered
vulgar error.
is
the charge
Anachronism, from the Greek
history.
cation of chronological relation, whether intentional or not, as a
not read histori-
chronology and sequence
in effect, historical mcorrectness.
“back” and “time,” has
who do
As the neglect or it is
falsifi-
often regarded merely
A clock strikes in the Rome of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. An atten-
dant to the Pharaoh in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments appears in tennis shoes. In the canonical history of art
some have been
brings together the
artist’s
anachronisms are frequent, and
literature
naturalized over the years in the service of “timeless” art or the dou-
of revealed truth. The
ble time
and
sacra conversazione
Madonna, Christ
time in
child, angels, saints,
a single transhistorical space. In
encounter Joseph hard
at
work
of Renaissance religious painting
and contemporary donors from
northern European
in a fifteenth-century shop, or the Virgin
Netherlandish burgher’s daughter. In Florence or in Naples she girl.
The
art
is
you may
Mary
as a
an Italian peasant
Belgian painter James Ensor depicts, in 1880, Christ’s entry into Brussels.
In literature
we
find similar “errors,” often deliberately contrived for effect.
49
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Dido and Aeneas
Short Studies
made contemporaries by
are
dred years apart. Shakespeare famously
King Duncan of Scotland as an
elderly
though they
Virgil,
from time
alters history
Chronicles.
“wrinkled deep in time.” In Titus Andronicus, a
a
depicts
generation apart.
mere twenty-nine years old when
describes the historical Cleopatra, a
He
He makes his two Harrys,
Harry Percy and Harry Monmouth, age-mates rather than
Empire pauses “to gaze upon
to time.
hun-
and beloved monarch, rather than the younger
and feebler ruler described in Raphael Holinshed’s
as
lived three
a
Goth from
He
his play opens,
the time of the
Roman
ruinous monastery” (5.1.121), thus invoking the
Reformation context and Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.^ Mark Twain places a Connecticut Yankee in gle set
court.
Thornton Wilder moves
a sin-
of characters through a variety of geological and historical periods from pale-
olithic to
modern
The Skin of Our
in his play
being made about the present Yet often
Gothic novehst
artists
ical,
or
up such inadvertent
as different in
knowing hard to
error
tell
time and place.
a clever point;
kind is
as
is
In these instances anachro-
speciality
known
as
“continuity”
is
meant
to
errors. Forgeries in films are often detected, or detectable,
in dress or hair, a telephone in the
make
point
sloppiness or ignorance rather than with aesthetic, polit-
by unwitting anachronisms: too many
its
a
are criticized for their anachronisms, like the
The Hollywood
satirical effect.
position to
each of these cases
Ann Radcliffe or the Roman historian Sallust.
becomes conflated with
nology out of
Teeth. In
day.
and writers
nism
clean
King Arthur’s
well
as
a cleverness,
stars
on the U.S.
“Old West”
The two
faces
flag,
the
wrong period fashion
saloon, a piece of advanced tech-
of anachronism (deliberate juxta-
awkward and revealing error of fact) degree.
It is
the bugbear of “intentionality” again; a
an unknowing error
the difference. DeMille’s Ten
are often regarded
is
a betise.
Commandments
But
it is
sometimes
stages a Passover celebration
that vastly postdates the time of the Biblical event, presenting a
modern-looking
rabbinic seder rather than a lamb sacrifice. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s version of
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1953) features portrait busts that closely resemble the
Emperor Hadrian, who was born about Sternberg’s 1934
Catherine the Great.
50
The
Scarlet
a
century and
a half later.
Joseph von
Empress offers Marlene Dietrich in the role of
The soundtrack of
this film
about eighteenth-century Russia
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
I
The Use and Abuse of History
Historical Correctness:
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
included the music of Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky (including the 1812 Overture),
Rimsky-Korsakov, and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
Such anachronisms could
be inadvertent or deliberate: whether intended or not, they the
moment of
term
production and consumption. Anachronism in
this sense
is
another
for bricolage.
Kathleen Coleman, hired
something about
us
tell
as a
a professor
of Latin and an expert on Roman games, was
consultant to the film Gladiator (2000), and found
No
ultimately disillusioning experience.” straight, she
sooner did she
it
set
“an interesting but
the historical record
noted, than “a whole range of fresh inaccuracies and anachronisms”
crept in and were immortalized
on
film, including fictive inscriptions in
bad Latin
engraved upon the public buildings. Misunderstanding Juvenal’s phrase “bread and circuses,” the placating
of the hungry and discontented masses with public specta-
cles like chariot races, the
filmmakers invented a slew of imperial caterers tossing
bread into the stadium stands. tily in
''Gladiator ain’t history,”
the London Times. “Its account of Roman politics
never dreamt of restoring power to the people.
with republican dreams in the film
is
enjoyed” was
Maximus praying
to keep his heels stirrup
down when
from the Goths,
this
into their
fists.
a
riding. “Since the
as
is
nonsense. Marcus Aurelius
The
down
heroic general
fantasy.
The
Maximus
Senate gave up any
“the anachronism [he] most
murdered
and advising him
son,
Romans had not
was seriously foolish advice.”
yet cribbed the
And modern
“When
culture,
it
crowd
in the
popular gladiator to be spared they turned their thumbs
down
gesture backward.
the
Thumbs up meant ‘Cut his throat,”’ Howard explained.
ing corroboration for this point
Nonetheless,
.
Howard found
to the shade of his
seems, has the thumbs up/thumbs
Colosseum wanted
.
John Wayne
a
republican inclinations long before.”
.
wrote Philip Howard jaun-
Howard
may
liked the film,
consult Montaigne’s essay
(Readers seek-
“Of Thumbs.
which he thought embodied modern
as
well
ancient tastes for blood sport, from boxing to professional football. As he noted,
“We
continually reinvent the past to match our present concerns, causes and
totems.”
Nor is
the allure of anachronism a
ern or postmodern
life.
The fashion
new development, a mere artifact of mod-
for dialogues with the dead,
modeled
after Lucian,
52
— Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
provided the opportunity for explicitly anachronistic interchange: Fontanelle’s Dialogues of the
Dead {Nouveaux
dialogues des morts,
1683—1684) offered dialogues
between Socrates and Montaigne, Seneca and Scarron. Fenelon’s Dialogues (1700—1718) followed the same pattern,
as
New
des morts
did English writers like Walter Savage
Landor, whose Imaginary Conversations (1824) included colloquies between Achilles
Edmund
and Helen, Galileo and John Milton, the Earl of Essex and
Spenser, Joan
of Arc and Agnes Sorel.
A memorable instance Steve Allen’s television
of
once-popular genre was offered by comedian
this
show Meeting
of Minds,
On
American Public Broadcasting System.
which ran
one occasion
on the
for four years
Aristotle,
Sun Yat-Sen,
Niccolo Machiavelli, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning debated; on another
a lively
argument developed among Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Aquinas, Cleopatra, and
Thomas Paine;
a third panel featured Florence Nightingale, Plato, Voltaire,
Euther; a fourth, Attila the (Steve Allen to Galileo:
and Dr. Darwin
all
was no bargain.” Ulysses
S.
had
Or
Hun, Emily Dickinson,
“You know,
difficulty
Karl
Marx
.
to
.
interesting.
.
and Charles Darwin.
You
with domineering fathers.”
Marie Antoinette, from
Grant, Marie Antoinette,
your mind. Your Majesty, that
most
it’s
Galileo,
Miss Dickinson,
sir.
Attila:
a
“My father,
rituals
too,
panel discussion with
Thomas More, and Marx: “Did
empty
and Martin
ever enter
it
and customs would in time destroy
the people’s respect for the monarchy?” Marie: “Nonsense, Dr. Marx, the people
adored the
rituals
and customs!” Thomas More: “Yes, Dr. Marx,
ners aided the people to express their respect for royalty.
Marxist nations there
is still
room
for
pomp and
I
.
.
.
and man-
understand that in today’s
circumstance.”)^"^
seances; actors played the parts. Allen’s wife Jayne
rituals
These were not
Meadows performed
almost
all
the female roles.
The pleasure opened up by such
deliberate violations of history seems
some-
how old-fashioned today. But why should that be? What was being disregarded then or
now? Are we simply too conscious of
something about the
name? Or
is
interest in history
and
anachronism simply returning in
problem can be found
52
history to be playful in this way? politics that gives a
new form? A
Is
anachronism
there a
bad
useful analogue to this
in the current “antichronology” debates
among
art histori-
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
and
ans, curators,
Historical Correctness:
1
art critics
—
The Use and Abuse of History
debates inflamed by the thematic, nonchronological
such high-profile museums
installations at
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
as
the Tate
Modern,
the Tate Britain, the
Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. As art historian Linda Nochlin has noted, “[T]here
tendency to use chronology
a
is
logical hang,” she suggested, can “break
But other ence.
Thus
for
example British
A
“nonchrono-
up the idea of an uninterrupted
have objected, perceiving the
critics
as teleology.”
loss
of chronology
as a loss
flow.”^*^
of coher-
David Sylvester thought the Tate Modern’s
art critic
decision to follow themes rather than periods was a mistake; chronology, he argued,
was “an objective
reality, built
into the fabric of the work,” not “a tool of art-historical
which can be used
interpretation
What was
at stake
at
one moment and discarded
at
another.”
here? Chronology implied evolution and a certain kind
of progress narrative, privileging some works and movements above others. History
was
a history
of aesthetic forms: their development and evolution was the ground
of meaningful
art history.
correctness because
merely looking.
It
it
shifted the focus
as political
away from “masterpieces”) drew attention
to
invited pleasure and irresponsibility, not the accuracy of any story.
Antichronology, then, historical
Antichronology (dismissed in some quarters
is
both old and new: both
sequence and development and
a resistance to
a rediscovery
an older notion of
of familiar categories
like
genre, theme, and structure. These categories were not simply resurrected; they were substantially altered, as for
rather than one.^^
But
tion that might have
Mark Rothko
or a
example
in the notion of
their chief effect
many
alternative
was to open up some kinds of interpreta-
been closed off by chronology. Placing
Norman Rockwell
modernisms
raises issues
and mood, which neither chronology nor
a
Rembrandt next
to a
of similarity and difference, form
historical context will address or
ground.
This suggests another sense in which the word anachronism has been used to criticize
and control
a
development
in literary studies: the
the text itself but within the framework used to read
question of history’s value for literature called
“Anachronism
in
is
it.
In
some ways, of
course, the
an old and familiar debate. In a 1910 essay
Shakespeare Criticism,” the literary scholar Elmer Edgar
lamented that “Criticism forgets that Shakespeare wrote turning him instead into
anachronism not within
a
Stoll
in the sixteenth century,”
“twentieth-century symbolist.” (The tension here was partly
— Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
one between “scholars” and tlemen of
and
taste
Short Studies
excoriated
“critics,” the latter
not to mention a horde of the
leisure,
as
“poets, essayists, gen-
tasteless
and
leisureless
propagandists and blatherskites.”) Stoll’s chief culprit was character criticism and
psychology, which he thought wildly inappropriate for the discussion of Elizabethan
The
literature.
issue, in short,
was one of what
I
have called respect: respect for six-
teenth-century ideas about the preeminence of story and plot, in contrast with “our
modern
ideas” of character It
in “the inal
and
was anachronistic,
social
problems.
Stoll said, to regard
Shakespeare
newer psychology concerning subconscious
and morbid types.” Ghosts and witches were
sonifications of conscience.” to politics.
The
the politics
left
Here was
out.”
rectness.
“Ours
what he
called the “cult”
More
is
a gauntlet
signs
Roman
of superstition, not “per-
read
as
having any relevance
plays “are political plays
thrown down on behalf of
recently,
of Shakespeare]
is all
the century, stitch up
when Terry Eagleton’s book on on what they
called
its
new costumes,
ing.” “Rather ingeniously, Venice,’'
Shakespeare was published
New York
of the
this
also
sometimes “madden-
had become
play. “Inevitably,
a fairly
organizations
.
.
.
would accept Lady Macbeth (Little
did he
the 1990S.) by,
two
politicians’
When Eagleton it is
tainly familiar
difficult to
is
doubtful
as a role
if
model.
know what a goldmine Hillary
Clinton was going to be for Lady Macbeth hunters in the daily ison between these
common
Mr. Eagleton turns to Lady
to interpret militant feminists,” he observes, adding that “it
The parallel is too narrow and strained.”
come
Times, “change
but preserve the story-Hne and language.” Herbert
he notes, although by 1986
women’s
[sic;
Mr. Eagleton united Freud and Marx in discussing The
starting point for discussions
to
historical cor-
“anachronisms.” “Mr. Eagleton
Mitgang found Eagleton “bold” and “courageous” but
present-day
with
that stands in the way.”^^
does in print what directors regularly do on stage,” said the
Macbeth
crim-
the day of the historical method,” Stoll declared. “Fetichism
in 1986, reviewers zeroed in
Merchant of
having any interest
states, racial distinctions,
Nor should Shakespeare be
English history plays and the
as
press.
The compar-
wives became a standard trope of journalism in
alleges slyly that
“Though
conclusive evidence
is
hard
read Shakespeare without feeling that he was almost cer-
with the writings of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein and
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
1
Historical Correctness:
Derrida,” Mitgang regards
The Use and Abuse of History
more
this as
playful than persuasive.
something exciting about anachronism, then, and
What
does
this
for Literature
at
Marjorie Garber
There seems
the same time something
to
be
illicit.
have to do with the relations between history and literature?
Ill
Let
me
alarm lay.
A
offer an
bells,
example of the seductiveness of history
me
reminding
of where
young teacher of
gifted
my own
me
that also rang
some
and textual predilections
resistances
American
colonial
for
literature
and culture recently
explained a technique he had developed for teaching the seventeenth-century
American poet Anne
Bradstreet,
young
distant to his presentist
Bradstreet’s law,
“The Author
students.
Her Book.”
without her knowledge, brought
them published under the beginning of the
ing
to
whose work, he
it
as
the
title
poem,
in
a
suspected, might
The poem he wanted Bradstreet wrote
it
after
seem temporally to discuss
was
her brother-in-
manuscript of her verses to London and had
The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up
which Bradstreet
in
America.
Here
is
addresses her pirated book, describ-
the victim of a kidnapping:
Thou
Who Till
ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain. after birth didst
by
my
side remain.
snatched from thence by friends,
Who
less
wise than true.
thee abroad, exposed to public view.
Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge. Where errors were not lessened (all may judge). At thy return
My 1
rambling brat
cast thee
Thy
my
visage
by
as
blushing was not small. (in print)
one
should mother
call,
unfit for light.
was so irksome
in
my
sight:
Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: 1
washed thy
face,
but more defects
I
saw.
made a flaw, stretched thy joints to make thee even Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than
And I
rubbing off a spot
still
feet. is
meet
^° .
.
.
.
55
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
The poem The
clearly
is
Short Studies
imagined in the genre of the
title,
“the author to her book.”
phrase “even feet” denotes “regular metrics,” the “rags” suggest rag paper, and
so forth.
My acquaintance, a scholar of puritan America, knowing the social and medical
history of the period,
and mindful of another poem by Bradstreet, “Before the
Birth of One of Her Children,” in which the poet anticipated the possibility of dying in childbirth,
and her cles
handed out
historical
to his students, as a
predicament
way of making Bradstreet’s words
photocopies of early-seventeenth-century
clear,
and woodcuts of deformed children and monstrous
pation of recent early
modern
scholarship.
When
births, a familiar
his students
had
defamiliarize their
deformed children fear
own
literary scholar
preoccu-
upon
child-
historical grid to
itself a sign
— and here
is
my
mother had consorted with the of religious, not just medical,
point
—
devil.
Thus the
history.
For
this
the cause or ground of interpretation was
the historical situation: the historical fact and the historical framework through
which
was viewed. Bradstreet’s references to the “ill-formed offspring” were troped on
it
a
put
sense of corporeal vulnerability. In puritan America,
signified that the
and fascination was
them another
arti-
sufficiently
themselves in the place of a mother contemplating anxieties attendant birth in a medically rudimentary context, he gave
vivid
mother’s hopes and
But Anne
fears.
Bradstreet,
who
wrote in the mid-seventeenth century, was well
read in sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century English literature, including the
works of Sir Walter Raleigh, William Camden, and Sir Philip Sidney, Sylvester’s
Du Bartas’s
Divine Weeks
.
of deformed children in the colonies, to
Her Book” It
Imagine
if,
as
well as Joshua
instead of contemplating the fate
we were to juxtapose to her poem “The Author
the following passage:
had been
a thing,
we
confesse, worthie to
haue bene wished, that the
Author himselfe had liv’d to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings; But since it hath bin ordain’d otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to haue collected & publish’d them; and so to have publish’d them, tious
56
where (before) you were abus’d with diuerse stolne, and surrepticopies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious as
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
I
Historical Correctness:
The Use and Abuse of History
impostors, that expos’ci them: euen those, are
and perfect of their limbes; and as he conceived themd^
cur’d, bers,
This
offer’d to
rest,
absolute in their
your view
num-
the letter “To the great Variety of Readers,” Shakespeare’s friends and fellow-
is
players,
The
now
the
all
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
John Heminge and Henry Condell,
similarities are so striking as to
see the publication
of
affixed to the First Folio
who
be obvious: the parent
of
his plays.
was unable to over-
(consequent) maiming and deformation of
his writings, the
the text, the need in particular to regularize the meter (Bradstreet’s “even feet,”
Heminge’s and Condell’s “absolute attention that this text, too,
period. tury.
It is
not
.
.
from the
numbers”) and so on. past
—
now
want only
I
Bradstreet’s
famous textual passage and
“Author” referred to in the Bradstreet’s
poem)
seventeenth cen-
promote the use of anachro-
in childbirth
to be,
between what
his writings,
illu-
images of “real”
one kind of reading.
of speech
a familiar figure
“conceived”
is
To
legitimate or illegitimate
itself, a
First Folio’s prefatory letter
said to have
thieves just as Bradstreet’s
Which
the history of the
poem “To Her Book” by framing it with
To examine the same poem by considering it offspring of a
embedded in
historical literary scholarship.
deformed children and information about death
your
will not escape
to point out a difference
might be called the vehicle and the tenor of
Anne
is,
quite willing to defend and indeed
nism for reading, but for
minate
that
It
a late-twentieth- century product, juxtaposed to the
would be
I
is
.
is
another.
is
also (like the speaker in
which were “expos’d” by
works were “snatched” and “exposed
to public view.”
the “ground” here? Literary trope or social condition? Text or
is
The
life?
Figure of speech or historical fact? Every piece of writing inhabits these various worlds,
and every ence. a
text offers a
as
much
texts.
as
real
or
more
naturally literal
m
frames of refer-
this case
—
But might not the intertextual references have shaped
the medical realities?
urgent in the case of a
more
its
We have perhaps overcorrected earlier literary histories that confined texts within
world of other
poem
dilemma, or an opportunity, in terms of
woman
literal
less
poet.
It
Why
seems that
this
question
is
the
more
are anxieties about reproduction seen as
here than anxieties about authorship? Are
involved with literary history
the desire to have a
all
this
more complete
women more
— than men? And could
it
be that
picture of history impedes, rather
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
than brings out, the female poet in whose
my
essary to
argument
Short Studies
name
it is
for Bradstreet actually to
or even half-remembering, the Folio
letter. If
often undertaken?
be referring
she were,
we
to,
And do I
I
do not
not want,
now, whether
care, at least right
either, to dismiss or
impugn
could perhaps allege that
this
as
successor to
the (historical) case.
is
the usefulness of historical context
and the power of contemporary images of childhood and deformity. This either/or issue.
It is,
instead, a question
practitioners of that discipline.
not nec-
or remembering,
her modest demurral was in fact a bold claim in disguise: Bradstreet Shakespeare. But
It is
of the goals sought by
is
not an
a discipline, or the
Why do we read literature? Wliy do we teach it? WTiat
do we teach?
IV The
defense of Shakespearean anachronism has a long and distinguished history.
German romantic
critic
August Wilhelm Schlegel observes
sidered himself entitled to the greatest liberties.
age like ours, which
critical
his
is
do with
a petty
hyper-
always seeking in poetry for something else than poetry;
but to witness a vivid exhibition.
anachronisms ation.
nistic
are, for
the most part,
undertake to prove that Shakespeare’s
committed purposely, and
ground of time, quite near
rather than of his ignorance:
could be more
suitable.
“He makes him
a sign
study
ten there shortly before, and the very in thinking.”
it
of the his-
Wittenberg, and no selection
at
as
story of Dr. Faustus
.
.
.
Luther had taught and writ-
name must immediately have
Concerning Richard
Schlegel “cannot even consider
in the age
of the playwright’s wisdom
The name was very popular from the
was of particular celebrity in Protestant England,
freedom
“though
at a university,
Hamlet there was not yet any university,” was
idea of
after great consider-
to us.”^"^ For Schlegel, Shakespeare’s anachro-
mention of Hamlet’s education
torical
I
was frequently of importance to him to bring the subject exhibited, from
It
the back
5S
He had not to
“con-
audience entered the theatre, not to learn true chronology, geography, natural
history,
it
that Shakespeare
The
Ill’s
suggested the
mention of Machiavelli,
an anachronism,” since the word
is
used “alto-
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
I
Historical Correctness: The Use and
gether proverbially.” Anachronism, he tion, as
when
Patriarchs
insists, is
and Apostles
mode of
an intelligent
generaliza-
in an ideal dress,” but the subordinate actors or spectators
own
nation and age,” or
shows the funeral procession of Hector, the
As with Shakespeare, so
also
with these
versal prevalency
and the
conviction that
has always so
it
power of
crucial to the
Marjorie Garber
of History for Literature
early Christian painters dressed “the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, the
of the action in “the dresses of their script
Abuse
artists:
solid consistency
their
been and
when
coffin carried into a
an old manu-
Gothic church.
“a powerful consciousness of the uni-
of their manner of being, an undoubted
be in the world” were
will continue so to
work.
Perhaps anachronism
— playing
something that sometimes happens to
found way. Suppose we return for
a
and loose with history
fast
literature,
moment
but
is
connected to
it
—
is
in a
not just
more pro-
to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, not
by
accident the locus classicus of some favorite literary anachronisms. That striking clock,
Arden Shakespeare
for instance.
editor
David Daniell reminds
us,
citing Sigurd
Burckhardt’s important essay on the topic, that the warring systems of the calendars
were very much an Julius Caesar
had himself sorted out an
Julian calendar,
while the
of contention in late-sixteenth-century Europe, and that
issue
named
“New Style”
out Catholic Europe. tated eighteenth-
in his honor,
earlier set
was the
official
Gregorian calendar, named
The
of calendrical discrepancies. The calendar of Protestant England,
after the
Pope, reigned through-
striking clock, which, as Daniell notes,
and nineteenth-century commentators
for
“amused and its
irri-
anachronistic
ignorance,”^^ was in fact a powerful sign. Caesar had not only set the date with his
reforms of the calendar, but also “set the clocks of Rome,” and are full
of
his
concern for timekeeping. The clock and
its
his
commentaries
striking are thus reminders
within the play text of Caesar’s power over and against Brutus’s. Julius Caesar contains a
some of them
sartorial: a reference to “hats,” for
tors before the
faces buried
m
he printed the
some
number of other celebrated
anachronistic references,
example, describing the conspira-
murder: “Their hats are pluck’d about their ears their cloaks” (2.1.73).
line “their
—
Alexander Pope found
are pluckt about their ears”
obscenity,” observes Daniell,
who
adds,
—
this so
“as if the
/
And
half their
unhistoncal that
word
[hat|
were
“Quite apart from the fine dramatic
59
,
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
furtiveness of Shakespeare’s image, the
reader to the previous
Arden
edition,
gear: “the petasus, a
broad-brimmed
brimless hat or cap,
worn
hood
The same “leaf” in Brutus’s
We
are told the particulars
criticism
festivals,
Pope was
it is
The
leaves.
Wales are
in literature have their purposes as
all
down
the leaf of a
and their
effects.
We
see this very clearly
where the tension between
the frequent target of theatrical reviews.
(also
only occasional anachronisms
—
a
vation.”^^ Peter Sellars has staged
King Lear in a “kingmobile”
known
as
and obviso-called
“museum
IV (parts
and
i
.
.
.
is
2) as surprisingly
the production has
TV or telephone thrown in to drive home a motiAntony and Cleopatra in
(aka a Lincoln Continental).
in Julie Taymor’s Titus (a film version
a
swimming pool and put
The scheming villain Aaron
of Titus Andronicus
set in
ancient
Rome)
seals
in a ziplock plastic bag.
Charles Spencer, assessing Michael Boyd’s Royal Shakespeare Troilus
Company pro-
and Cressida in 1998, began by declaring that he was “not one of
those arch conservatives
who
believes that Shakespeare should always be staged in
period costume,” but went on to speculate about the
60
falls
Thus the director JoAnne
conventional: “performed in predominantly period costumes
duction of
she
chances she takes with Shakespeare,
described in a review of her production of Henry
hand
as
dissonances are admired or scorned, anachronisms
Akalaitis, often criticized (or lauded) for the
Titus’s
book
to Cymbeline, ancient Britain,
“modernization” and equally so-called “period costume” is
in another of
nicely mingled in a transhistorical stew.
well in the history of performance,
Shakespeare”)
Imogen
sleeping
/
a point.
Whether such temporal
ously
down
a
and
not a mistake;
to the turned- down
Rome, Brutus would properly be reading from
Rome, modern is
to cap (Cor. 2.3.95, 164).^^
I
But of course by the time we get
This
cap or
“similarly unv/illing to
not the leaf turned
Cymbeline, also folds
rural
a
Where
“is
asleep (Cymb. 2.2.4). Italy,
and the cucuUus,
might be made of the reference
book (JC 4.3.271—72:
Roman plays,
of that head-
traveling hat or cap, the pilleus, a close-fitting,
also learn that
not a codex, a book with
Shakespeare’s
where we
did wear headgear,” and sends the
where he emends the word
reading?”). Living in ancient
scroll,
Romans
entertainments and
fastened to a garment.”
accept hat” in Coriolanus,
left
at
Short Studies
setting: the
scene opened with
— A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
I
Historical Correctness: The Use and
sepia photographs that
seemed
Irish,
like a
“Why then,”
the Greeks were British.
own
star?”
interpretation: “WTaat
Some people love on the Baz Lurhmann
Boyd
this
clear that
ring Ethan
Hawke,
Hamlet
is
king. (Elsinore
is
film
Romeo and Juliet with
Opinion was divided
it.
by fax machine; Ophelia wears and Guildenstern
1
a hotel.
Denmark
is
Claudius
a corporation.
metaphor
this via
theatrical anachronism, as
costume, mingling
we
like
it,
have to
we its
have
on the
a limousine,
engraving of Mrs. Siddons is
in
it
CEO. So
and
runs the
—
life,
or striving, like
that
is,
classical dress,
multitimeli-
Nazi uniforms,
through cross-casting, mixing
as
become accustomed
more moderate and
ern dress and rehearsal clothes. Indeed even
if
we
Lady Macbeth on the
“modern
dress,”
and not
to this
mode of
“straight” avatars,
mod-
cherish the old ways, and hang an
m
wall,
we
will have to
acknowl-
authentic “period costume”
whatever that would be: authentic Jacobean costume
— or
authentic medieval
As Eric Hobsbawn and others have argued about “the invention of
tradition,” authenticity
Using
are heard
and accents.
Whether or not we
Scottish garb?
wiretap to
function by destabi-
to devastatingly literal
970s punk- and 1930s gangster- wear. Others do
nations, races, genders,
a
is
startling,
the postmodern version of timelessness
productions do
edge that she too
a
indie video film of The Mousetrap to catch the conscience of the
Troilus, for
Some
any modern,
In Michael Almereyda’s film Hamlet (2000), star-
letters are delivered
lizing juxtaposition: bringing a
ness.
is
black drag queen Mercutio and
its
world away.) But these uses of anachronism, however
Boyd
dim
vile actions.
speakerphone in Gertrude’s bedroom; the prayer scene happens in
the
while the Trojans
presumably trying to suggest
in the lobby scene; Rosencrantz
Hamlet makes an
but
he wondered, “does Achilles look
kind of thing, and others hate
CNN talking-head prologues.
entrap
became
I,
Spencer admired the production, with reservations, and offered
war-torn territory in which fine words cover
its
World War
present-day Serbian war-crimes thug, and Ajax resemble a particularly
heavy metal rock his
eventually
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
to evoke the western front during
many characters had Irish accents, and it were
Abuse of History
is
itself a cultural effect.
historical data anachronistically
is
different,
anachronistic use of theoretical ideas. But the reviewer
who
of course, from the
accused Terry Eagleton
61
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
Short Studies
of anachronism seems himself to have conflicting notions of history and chronol-
ogy as they
aflect literary interpretation.
He subscribes to two inconsistent, but widely and the fantasy of univer-
held, fantasies: the fantasy of historical determination,
Thus he can
sality
history”
—
say
both that Eagleton’s “strongest arguments are backed by
for example, the information “that inflation in the 1590s led to debased
coinage and speculation” and also that political analysis of the plays
is
misguided: “Is
not the range of [Shakespeare’s] characters neither conservative nor even neoconservative but universal?”^^ is
I
want here
data and that “universality”
is
to contest
both of these views
—
something different from the theories
that history
opposes,
it
rather than being yet another theory.
There
is
a great deal that history
of Shakespeare and
contemporaries.
his
timeless transcendence.
bound thing of timeless type.
is
am
not urging a return to the old days of
criterion for “timelessness”
since there
is
no
real
evidence for
what has stopped being considered
But there
insist, at
all,
The
I
can do for literary study, and for the study
are
some
a
is
it
the most historically time-
other than consensus.
The
theory and has passed into stereo-
things history cannot do,
and those things
are,
want
I
to
the core of the literary enterprise.
V I
will illustrate this claim in
my own
anachronistic and unhistorical fashion by cit-
ing a well-known passage of literary criticism that addresses not a Renaissance text
but a nineteenth-century one. The writer the kind called a “search.” (The same.)
Here he
We
discusses a search
are spared
is
discussing a particular kind of “research,”
two words search and research
are version
of the
of the premises undertaken by detectives:
nothing concerning the procedures used in searching the area
submitted to their investigation: from the division of that space into compart-
ments from which the
slightest
bulk could not escape detection, to needles
probing upholstery, and, in the impossibility of sounding to a
microscope exposing the waste of any
indeed the infinitesimal gaping of the
62
wood
drilling at the surface
slightest abyss.
with
a tap,
of its hollow,
As the network tightens
A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
Historical Correctness:
I
to the point that, not satisfied
we
counting them, do
to
The Use and Abuse of History
with shaking the pages of books, the police take
not see space
But the detectives have
so
itself
shed
immutable
a
to notice that their search tends to transform
fail
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
leaves like a letter?
its
notion of the it
into
its
real that
object.
A
they
by
trait
which they would be able to distinguish that object from all others. This would no doubt be too much to ask them, not because of their lack of insight but rather because of ours. For their imbecility
individual nor of the corporative variety;
its
source
subjective.
is
neither of the
is
It is
the real-
which does not pause to observe that what is hidden is never but what is missing from its place, as the call slip puts it when speaking of a volume lost in a library. And even if the book be on an adjacent shelf or in the next slot, it would be hidden there, however visibly it may appear. For imbecility,
ist’s
it
can
literally
change
always in it
The
real
from
is
be
its
realist
does not find.
real
what
The Allan Poe’s
seem
next to
is
this
its
heel, ignorant
literature,
passage
I
The
we
subject
it
to,
is
of what might exile
belief that the real can be exhaustively
form of blindness. The
a
not “the world,”
have just quoted
real
is
what escapes
that
mapping.
hiding.
is
taken from Jacques Lacan’s reading of Edgar
is
“The Purloined Letter,” and it is conceivable
removed from the study of
far
place only of what can
it.^°
what the
is
it
its
.
whatever upheaval
glued to
it
carries
missing from
is
real,
place;
measured and mapped
The
something
said that
the symbolic. For the
it:
.
.
that Lacan’s
either Shakespeare or history.
view of Poe may So
let
me
place
an uncannily similar passage from the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
“Shakspeare; Or,
The Poet.”
Men, Emerson had
this to say
In that
essay,
published in the 1850 volume Representative
about “the researches of antiquaries, and the Shakspeare
Society”:
no book-stall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and wonns, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, his wife .... [T]hey have
left
The Shakspeare the missing
facts,
and with what erty,
result?
and dealings
year to year, he
bought an Stratford;
offered .
.
Society have inquired
money .
for
all
directions, advertised
any information that
they have gleaned
m regard to property,
owned
m
a
few
facts
of the poet.
was intrusted by
his
.
.
.
that
he lived
touching the prop-
appears that, from
It
a larger share in the Blackfnars’
estate in his native village
will lead to proof;
Theatre
.
in the best
.
.
that
house
he
in
neighbors with their commissions in London,
63
— Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
as
of borrowing money, and the
Short Studies
.... About the time
like
when he was
writ-
ing Macbeth, he sues Philip Rogers, in the borough-court of Stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, for corn delivered to
importance of this information. taken to procure
It
him ....
was well worth the pains
admit the
I
have been
that
it.
For Emerson, “we are very clumsy writers of history.” The questions are the
wrong
this that
questions, our real
is
the
wrong
Emerson
real.
he claims to prefer knowing nothing of the
the case of Shakespeare,
lest that
we
about
feels so strongly
specifically historical as
ask
affects
it
knowledge impinge upon imagination and poetic
genius:
Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night’s Dream admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate
The
creation?
of Portia’s
where
is
us,
letter, that
offers his
he
of Scone Castle, the moonlight
“the antres vast and desarts idle” of Othello’s captivity
villa,
has kept
is
famous and paradoxical
the one person, in
ing Shakespeare’s history
is
what
file
one word of those transcendent
only biographer of Shakspeare,” and that “So
known to
air
the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor’s
or private
Thus Emerson
of Arden, the noble
forest
all
gives
far
assertions: that
secrets?
“Shakspeare
is
from Shakspeare’s being the
modern history, known Emerson
of accounts,
to us.”^^
the
least
Not know-
his Shakespeare.
This rhetorically framed either/or choice, between the historical/archival and the imaginative/poetic (“Can any biography shed light the
Midsummer
Night’s
Dream admits me?
vate letter, that has kept
ical
.
.
where
is
is
localities into
secrets?”)
is
just
what
in late-twentieth-century literary scholarship.
no methodological
which
the third cousin ... or pri-
one word of those transcendent
been debunked and analyzed temporary scholars there
.
on the
contradiction,
no doubt
has
To con-
that histor-
research can and does illuminate imaginative writing, enriching rather than
impoverishing aesthetic response. Far from supplying a text’s ground, historical study can
new way. ings
64
unground
it
in a
Productions of The Merchant of Venice have been used both to inflame feel-
of anti-Semitism and to critique them, depending upon the
director’s
and actor’s
— A Manifesto
for Literary Studies
I
The Use and Abuse of History
Historical Correctness:
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
interpretation and (“always historicize”) the culture and circumstances of produc-
Notice that the word production here has two equal and adjacent meanings.
tion.
But
as
the example of Merchant suggests, once they are written, plays and
novels take
own
on
—what
is
poems and
of their own, and even an “intention” or intentionality of their
a life
sometimes called the “unconscious” of the
with their writing and reading,
is
Their history
text.
starts
never completed, and can never been completely
known. It is
dialectical.
worth remembering
Thus
that the history
of
been
literary analysis has itself
in the course of the past century of literary study, philology
way
editing have given
to literary history; then to “character criticism”
and
and psy-
chology; then to close reading and the pursuit of images and themes; then to archetypal criticism; then to philosophical
and an emphasis on der,
and
sexuality;
of the book”)
known
as
and
socially
and
well
as “ethics”).
now
as to
The
and psychoanalytic theory; then to historicism
culturally
produced categories
once again to philology and editing (and “the history
appreciation (also
return of these
last
known two
and value
as “aesthetics”)
categories, aesthetics
was in retrospect virtually guaranteed by their previous abjection, just tion was virtually guaranteed
The
critique of
what
by is
their
enormous
The
it
way
to the rigors,
what
is
most
striking
and powerful about
Our Contemporary
(also
ethics,
as that
abjec-
prestige.
a failure
of
mod-
historical
a literary text.
have, to a certain extent,
and longeurs, of Shakespeare Not Our Contemporary. But
seems equally crucial to acknowledge that some kinds of
questions about “what repeats” ical
and
often called “presentism” by scholars of early
days of Jan Kott’s frisky Shakespeare
given
and
earlier success
ern literature and culture has been a necessary corrective for specificity that can obscure
gen-
like race, class,
— cannot be posed through
a
literary questions
predominantly histor-
approach.
Furthermore, there
is
yet another pertinent paradox for us to note;
the best literary historicists look for sciously historical but fantasy,
which seems
when he
is
or she
not the is
moments when
the author
is
What con-
unconsciously historical. Anachronism or
to escape historical determination,
is
intimately connected to
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
it
in
Short Studies
ways that escape the author’s conscious perception. Thus, in neglecting the ahis-
torical, literal-minded literary historicists are in reality it is
neglecting the historical.
And
the analysis of the historicity of the present that prevents “presentism.”
VI “The injunction
to practise intellectual honesty usually
Adorno with
thought,” writes Theodor
The
writer
urged to show
is
amounts
characteristic acerbity.
explicitly
all
He
to sabotage of
continues:
the steps that have led
him
to his
conclusion, so enabling every reader to follow the process through and, possible
—
in the
academic industry
—
to duplicate
it.
This
where
demand not only
invokes the liberal fiction of the universal communicability of each and every
thought
.
.
.
but
is
also
the value of a thought
is
in itself as a principle
measured by
omission inevitably
are asking literature to do. Literature, in fact,
edge of the discontinuity of thought intellectual
honesty
is
itself
ways in which knowledge
is
made
is
actually acquired
always manifest themselves
as
“mere
“through
repetition,
of categorical forms,” something crucial
is,
as it
he adduces an image of
a
man
is
can dimly make out what
the discourse in
dishonest,” he writes, since
is
we
substance.
fleetingly available.
ions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions
naivete,
own
induced in the reader, but to their
In Adorno’s critique of demands for intellectual honesty,
we
from the continuity of the
distance
its
of representation. For
which anxiously undertake to record every step without succumb to banality, and to a monotony related not only
familiar .... Texts
to the tension
wrong
“The demand
for
it
ignores or rejects the messier
a
network of prejudices, opin-
and exaggerations.”
If
“honest ideas”
whether of what was there before or
missing in intellectual
dying
which the knowl-
life.
To
satisfied that his life has all
illustrate this
added up.
It
happens, an image that carries a strong, though indirect, whiff of Shakespeare:
Anyone who dies old and in the consciousness of seemingly blameless success, would secretly be the model schoolboy who reels off all life’s stages without gaps or omissions, an invisible satchel on
At
first
recollection,
of course, Shakespeare’s schoolboy in As You Like
model, that “whining schoolboy with
66
his back.
his satchel /
It is
scarcely a
And shining morning face,
creeping
— A Manifesto
for Literary
like snail /
Studies
Unwillingly to school” (2.7.144—46).
Shakespeare
Why
at all?
of associative thinking
Adorno? There
the one
is
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
Why then
associate this passage
with
modern German gymnasium
not think instead only of the
student seemingly directly evoked by rect line
The Use and Abuse of History
Historical Correctness:
I
are
two
reasons:
first,
Adorno himself recommends
the indi-
in this pas-
sage (“a wavering, deviating line”; a kind of thought “which, for the sake of its relation to
Its
object, forgoes the full transparency
repetition” of “categorical forms”
is
life’s
stages
who
—
Jaques who, to
the
“mere
extreme form, in the passage
cite
Adorno’s phrase again,
invisible satchel
on
his back.” It
model schoolboy, showing
the
is
logical genesis”); second, the
appearance: Jaques’ famous, or infamous,
his
without gaps or omissions, an
“melancholy Jaques,” fashion
It is
its
in fact present, in
where Shakespeare’s schoolboy makes “Seven Ages of Man.”
of
“reels off is
—here
off
all
Jaques, the in parodic
weU-worn “knowledge” which had by Shakespeare’s time become a cHche: All the world’s a stage.
And
all
the
They have
men and women their exits
And one man His
acts
merely
players.
and their entrances.
in his time plays
many
parts.
being seven ages. (2.7.138—42)
Instead of the diligent schoolboy,
Adorno recommends
the
model of the slugabed
and the truant: Every thought which Its full
legitimation, as
is
and
to
—
like
Teaching
waits to
idle
we know
.
.
in
.
bears branded
on
it
dreams that there are mathematics
lessons,
blissful
be transformed into teaching.^^
thought
— depends upon what
knowledge, the resistance to the idea of
resist
the inevitability of such a progression that
and
all
been missed, upon the gaps
of
facts, a
I
want
the other ways in
to point
which
from time
are
on the way,
to time
—
I
hope
that they
and
It is
in order to
toward the useful-
literature shocks us into
awareness and preserves something that cannot be reduced to
modes of reading
m
“discursive progression
of every step without omission.
stage to stage,” the recording
ness of anachronism, play,
has
a citation
from
at least
the impossibility of
morning in bed, which can never be made up. be woken one day by the memory of what has been missed,
missed for the sake of a
Thought
not
a
ground. Whatever
their practitioners will dare
to be historically incorrect.
67
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
1
Claire
Short Studies
McEachern, introduction to Religion and Culture
in
Renaissance England, ed. Claire
McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2
Ibid.
3
Richard Bernstein,
“We Happy Many,
Playing Fast and Loose With History,”
2.
New
York Times, 18
January 2000, B1-B2. 4
Nabokov
have belonged to a
fictive “Ekwilist doctrine”: “It is better for a
politically incorrect organization
tion at all.” Vladimir
5
and
offers this piece of mindless
Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947;
man
to
than not to have belonged to any organiza-
reprint.
among young people on tone mocking the pieties of our own
New York:
Vintage Books, 1990), 158.
New
the term
was
Maurice tsserman recalls that
the so-called
“always used
insular political counterculture.” Maurice
a
in
Isserman, “Travels with Dinesh,” Tikkun
Left,
6, no. 5 (1991): 82.
6
Ed Siegel, “Hazy Shade of ‘Winter’ at ART,” Boston Globe, 19
7
Clifford Longley,
“Sacred and Profane: Labour and the
Fail
May 2000,
Di.
of Political Correctness,” Daily Tele-
graph, 26 November 1999, 31. A recent publication by the British Institute of Economic Affairs, entitled “Political Correctness and Social Work,” insisted that “anti-oppressive practice” was
“oppressive as well as practically ineffectual.” See “Social Workers Reject
itself
Home News,
22 November 1999; Sue Clough, “judge Attacks Correct Rules on Race,” Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1999, 1. rectness,” Times
8
Walter Benjamin, “Literary History and the Study of Literature,”
in
Political Cor-
Irvine’s Politically
Selected Writings, vol. 2
(1927-1934) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 464. 9
10
See Samuel cited in
England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), Titus Andronicus, ed. Jonathan Bate, Arden Shakespeare edition (Walton-on-Thames,
Surrey:
Thomas Nelson,
Alan
F.
Kliger,
The Goths
Segal, “The Ten
in
1997), 19-20.
Commandments”; Michael
Grant, “Julius Caesar”; Carolly Erickson, “The
Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark
Scarlet Empress,”
all in
(New York: Henry
Holt, 1995), 38, 44, 88.
C.
Carnes
Desmond, “The Roman Theater of Cruelty,” Harvard Magazine, September/ October 2000,
11
Peter
12
Michel de Montaigne, “Of Thumbs,”
in
22.
The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M.
Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 523: It
was
a sign of favor
Your partisan with both
in his
Rome
to close
thumbs
in
will praise
and hold down the thumbs — your game.
— Horace — and When They
of disfavor to raise the people’s
kill their
man
thumb to
them and
turn
them outward:
turns up.
please them.
—Juvenal Howard, “Blood and Circuses,” Times (London), 17 May 2000, sec.
13
Philip
14
Steve Allen, Meeting of Minds (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989), 161, 82.
15
Don Freeman, “Scripts Made a Meeting of the Minds,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 December 1989, entertainment section,
16
Linda Nochlin, quoted
in
2,
pp. 3-4.
6.
Sarah Boxer, “Snubbing Chronology as a Guiding Force
in Art,”
New
York Times, 2 September 2000, A19-A20. 17
Boxer, “Snubbing Chronology,” A19-A21. Boxer cites British art
London Review of Books and
Jed Perl
in
the
New Republic.
critic
David Sylvester
in
the
A Manifesto
for Literary
Studies
I
Historical Correctness:
18
Iwana Blazwick, quoted
19
Elmer Edgar 12, 8,
20
1,
Stoll,
in
The Use and Abuse of History
Marjorie Garber
for Literature
Boxer, “Snubbing Chronology,” A21.
“Anachronism
in
Shakespeare
Criticism,”
Modern Philology 7
(1910):
5, 7,
1,
19.
Anne Bradstreet, “The Author
Works of Anne Bradstreet,
to Her Book,” in The
ed. Jeannine
Hensley (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 221. 21
The editor of Bradstreet’s works makes a similar claim: “In ‘The Author to Her Book,’ the metaphor of the book as a child expresses how the poet felt when she saw her work in print.
was her own child, even if she was ashamed of its errors.” Jeannine Hensley, introduction to The Works of Anne Bradstreet, xxxi. The “new historicist” twist not found in this 1960s reading
it
is
the presentation of period images from authors like Ambroise Pare.
22
Adrienne Rich, “Anne Bradstreet and Her Poetry,”
23
John Heminge and Henrie Condell, “To the great Variety of Readers,” prefatory
in
The Works of Anne Bradstreet,
Facsimile, The First Folio of Shakespeare, prepared by Charlton
W. W. Norton, 1968), 24
The Norton
7.
August Wilhelm von Schlegel, “The Art of Shakespeare’s Romantic Drama,” from Lectures on
David Daniell, introduction to Julius Caesar, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd Surrey:
26
letter.
Hinman (New York:
Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black (1808; London: George 25
x.
There
Thomas Nelson,
is
also
in
Julius
Bell ser.
and Sons, 1909), 356. (Walton-on-Thames,
1998), 17-22.
Caesarthe matter of “sleeves.” “As they pass
by, pluck
Caska by the sleeve”
Cassius instructs Brutus (1.2.178). “Togas had no sleeves,” corrects John Dover Wilson bridge edition of the play. Once again the redoubtable Daniell
comes
in his
Cam-
to the rescue, suggesting
that nearby references to cloak (1.2.214) and doublet (1.2.264) are clues that “Shakespeare also
had London tive.”
in
mind,” and reading the combination of pluck plus sleeve as, again, “almost
These anachronistic references to clothing
coded: their out-of-place-ness that the play
is
is
a theatrical
are, in other
fur-
words, both functional and double-
and interpretative marker, reminding the audience
about now as well as then (Shakespeare’s London as well as Caesar’s Rome),
while also drawing attention to a particular kind of affect (here “furtiveness”).
News
March 1991.
27
David Patrick Stearns, “Akalaitis’ Henry IV Conforms,” Gannet
28
Charles Spencer, “The Arts: Shakespeare Meets Le Carre,” Daily Telegraph, 9
29
Herbert Mitgang, “Books of the Times,”
30
Jacques Lacan, “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,”’ trans. Jeffrey Mahlman, in The Purloined Poe, ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
New York
Service, 19
November 1998,
19.
Times, 18 April 1986, C31.
1988), 39-40.
31
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Shakspeare: Or, the Poet,” (New York: The Library of America, 1983), 716-21.
32
Theodor Adorno, “Gaps,”
33
Ibid., 81.
in
Minima Moralia,
in
trans. E.
Representative Men: Essays and Lectures
F.
N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978), 80.
69
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
^U0cef¥. Saleotth'S"®'®"®
BAKER & TAYLOR
One
of the essays in this
volume
is
Marjorie Garber’s lecture entitled
based on
“Who Owns
‘Human Nature’?” which she delivered as a in
2002 Solomon Katz Distinguished Lecturer the Humanities at the University of
Washington. The Katz lecture series, administered by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, was established
in
1975 by
the University of Washington’s College of Arts
and Sciences to recognize distinguished scholars
in
the humanities and to emphasize
the role of the humanities
Marjorie Garber
is
in liberal
education.
the William R. Kenan,
jr.
Professor of English and the Director of the
Humanities Center at Harvard University.
A renowned Shakespearean
scholar, Garber's
research spans dramatic theory and
performance, cultural studies, psychoanalysis
and
literature,
gender and feminist theory,
media studies, and visual her
many books
are
culture.
Among
Academic Instincts
(2001),
Sex and Real Estate (2000), Symptoms of Culture (1998),
Dog Love
Interests: Cross-Dressing
(1996), Vested
and
Cultural Anxiety
(1992), and Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as is
Uncanny Casualty
(1981). Garber
currently President of the international
Consortium of Humanities Centers and institutes (CHCi).
-
fl
*
manifesto for Literary Studies
“In this thoughtful polemic, Marjorie Garber boldly cultural status of literary studies.
examines the current
Have practitioners of literary studies forfeited
the prestige of their discipline to historians? Have quintessentially literary questions about language and form been overwhelmed by an often nonliterary allegiance to the material world?
How has
it
come about
that discursive
ownership of the concept of ‘human nature’ has passed from the humanities to the sciences? Exploring such issues in her contagiously readable, graceful style,
Garber importantly reasserts the centrality of
discussions of meaning, value, and
Mary Beth Rose
is
i
Illinois at
Kathleen Uloodward
9 0 0 0 0
9
780295 983448
Chicago.
Marjorie Garber
Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities
ISBN 0-2^5-^8344-2
identity.’’
Professor of English and Director of the Institute for the
Humanities, University of
H manifesto for Literary Studies
literary studies to
/
short studies
Series Editor