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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 340.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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[1] From: Bill Benzon
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.321: centre to periphery (77)
[2] From: Bill Benzon
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.319: centre to periphery? (55)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2019-01-15 19:33:50+00:00
From: Bill Benzon
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.321: centre to periphery
Comment below.
> On Jan 12, 2019, at 2:19 AM, Humanist wrote:
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 321.
> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
> Date: 2019-01-11 16:09:10+00:00
> From: Richard Cunningham
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.319: centre to periphery?
>
> Hi Willard,
>
>
> Since my undergraduate studies in English in the 1980s I've associated the
shift
> from centre to periphery with the study and spread of deconstruction,
> specifically Spivak's 1976 translation of Derrida's de la Grammatologie
(1967).
> In no way do I assert that as any kind of authoritative history, but it was in
> the water, as it were, when I was a student and too naive to ask if things had
> ever been different.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
This is an interesting and, I think, important point, though don't ask me for
an argument about why I think it's important. All I have to offer is another
data point.
A couple of years ago I got a call from a graduate student who was doing his
dissertation on the effects of the 1966 structuralism conference at Johns
Hopkins. He'd been looking at Ford Foundation records of the conference (which
it had funded) and found my name mentioned as a student who had been there.
Well, I hadn't really been there but....
So he wanted to know how it had affected me, how it had changed my sense of the
study of the humanities. Now, while I hadn't actually been at the conference
(don't remember whether or not I told him that), I certainly had been in the
orbit of the conference, so it was a reasonable question to put to me. What I
told him, though, was that it didn't change anything for me. I'd come to
Johns Hopkins from a small city in western Pennsylvania (Johnstown). As far as I
knew, Johns Hopkins WAS the American academy. As far as I was concerned, what I
learned at Hopkins was just how the world was. Sure, I heard talk of how this
was new and radical and all that, but, after all, that was just talk. It's not
that I disbelieved it, but it was just talk. I had no direct experience of how
things were at Georgia Tech or Ohio State, or Chicago, or Berkeley, or whatever.
Hopkins was all I knew. That was MY baseline.
So, sure, I loved this structuralism stuff, but when it comes to changes in my
attitude about the humanities, how could I possibly judge?
But, yes, I do think Spivak's Grammatology translation was an important
publishing event.
Best,
BB
Bill Benzon
bbenzon@mindspring.com
917-717-9841
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stc4blues/
http://www.bergenarches.com/#image1
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2019-01-15 19:19:51+00:00
From: Bill Benzon
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.319: centre to periphery?
Hi Willard,
I can't give you numbers on which to build your graph, but I can at least tell
you the rather simple-minded story I've been thinking about with respect to
literary studies in the USA.
After WWII the focus of literary studies shifted to textual interpretation. By
the mid-1960s at least some people were concerned that interpretations were not
converging, rather contrary. And so methodological reflection became widespread
and urgent. 'If we can't agree on the meaning of texts, then how can we
think of our work as the pursuit of truth?' Along comes deconstruction, post
structuralism, and postmodernism in the late 60s and early 70s to inform us that
the meaning of texts is indeterminate. It was then easy enough to convert that
into a rationalization for the study of bodies of texts other than the standard
canon. In that context women's studies, African American studies, Native
American studies, and so forth seemed natural and even necessary. & if the canon
was no longer quite the canon of old, why not study popular culture as well?
This was not, however, taking place in a socio-cultural vacuum. Surely there is
some causal force running from the Civil Rights movement to the drive for
African American studies and the women's movement energized the demand for
women's studies. The anti-war movement had the effect of undermining the
legitimacy of traditional norms and institutions while at the same time
focussing our attention on a distant and culturally different part of the world.
And we've got h rock and roll, drugs, hippies and counter culture flowing
around in all of this as well, and this further amplified interest in the Exotic
East (an interest, of course, with substantial precedent).
And so we're back at the end of WWII. The United Nations is formed. India
becomes independent from Great Britain and a whole bunch of African colonies
become independent nations. The geopolitical structure of the world has changed.
The term 'third world' was coined by Alfred Sauvy in 1952 (Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World#Etymology) and denoted countries
that weren't aligned either with NATO or with Communists. We've got a whole
bunch of independent state actors no longer functioning as colonial appendages
to Western states.
Now, just how all this works in detail, the feedback loops etc., that's beyond
my scope. But whatever has happened, it has happened as an interaction between
the academy and the world.
Bill B
Bill Benzon
bbenzon@mindspring.com
917-717-9841
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/bill.benzon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stc4blues/
https://independent.academia.edu/BillBenzon
http://www.bergenarches.com/#image1
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