Schooling Thought

During my break between semesters, I get to read a more diverse range of books than I would get to taking classes that fit into my degree. I've picked up break reading somewhat randomly. A good friend sent me Nancy Chodorow's "The Power of Feeling." Browsing through library shelves, I came across a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories set in St. Paul (edited by Patricia Hampl, who I had a great class with last year). I've also grabbed some essay collections.

Being able to read in this way has particularly brought into a focus a way of thinking/reading/educating I've found rampant in graduate school, what I’m calling developing a school of thought. Again, I'm going to take the easy way out an not put much effort into really describing this phenomenon very well, but I'm guessing most grad students and academic types will know what I'm talking about. It's the attempt to develop a somewhat fixed, somewhat flexible, perspective. Situating yourself within a school of thought helps determine what kind of questions you ask as much as how you will answer them. It leads you to read certain people, ignore others, and usually fixate on a cluster of concepts and keyterms. Schools tend to validate particular ways of knowing (textual analysis, ethnography, therapeutic experience, etc) and discard others. While contemporary schools of thought attempt to avoid pinning themselves down too much as grand theories or narratives, they still work enormously to restrict curiosity. Not having many external demands right now gives me a chance to breath new life into that undisciplined curiosity.

There are great advantages to developing a school of thought. Once you've laid the foundation, you are able to address new issues through your established framework, or by making rhetorical moves that have become easier with practice. Schools of thought go hand in hand with professionalization and academic legitimacy. Academics authority and credibility comes from peer (or descendent) validation. I am pretty thoroughly convinced that not much academic writing would be compelling without such regimes of validation. Anyone who picks up a book by Larry Grossberg, Derrida, or Nancy Chodorow would probably not find it at all interesting without already being somewhat drawn to their established credibility. This is not to say the contextual situatedness of each of these writers within respect to their discourses makes their work less worthwhile. I'm just trying to point out the dependency on interpretive communities or regimes of legitimacy and validation.

As a student, it takes a certain disciplining to be able to think in the school of thought sort of way. It requires an internalization of the impulse to suppress certain kinds of questions and the productive power to create others that adhere to rules of the school. There's no way out of this. Without developing some kind of adherence to a school of thought, it might be impossible to develop a voice or write in a way that can escape schizophrenic illegibility. Yet, I do believe there's room for negotiation as to how disciplined you allow yourself to become. At least, I hope that is so. I try to keep asking questions of cultural studies, of critical theory, etc, even when I'm pretty cognizant that my questions aren't going to "fit" very well within the trajectories of the discourses I'm working within. My reference point for determining what is compelling (perhaps the most crucial question of all intellectual orientation) is usually to consider what I can talk about with a generally educated and engaged group of people rather than what a group of disciplinary specialists would consider compelling. Of course, my own "generally educated and engaged group" is a historically and socially specific; sometimes I think of the public that reads Harpers, sometimes a group of my own friends. Clearly, this is no universal category.

Structurally, a school of thought mentality could be characterized as "modernist," even though the structure is repeated often by schools of thought that claim postmodern positions. The structure I'm referring to has to do with how knowledge and insight accumulate. School of thought-ers tend to construct intellectual lineages that map progressions of insight. A parody: Husserl figured this out, Hiedegaar then made this advance, then Foucault gave us this concept, etc. This accumulation tends to occur among a group of people who are taught by or at least influenced by each other (as opposed to, let’s say, an intellectual bricoleur who pieces together ways of thinking from people who do not have much to do with each other). Now it doesn’t always work in such a straightforward linear way. It’s often most fashionable to find the roots of an idea in a neglected forefather (i.e. Bahktin, Benjamin, etc.). The point is that understanding comes from intellectual mastery of this lineage with the emergent critique in mind.

This route towards knowledge differs greatly from the path of the poet, literary writer or the everyday philosopher. Like many students, I’m trying to find a way to preserve my curiosity, uncertainty and respect for many different ways of knowing, while being able to produce writing that can make a contribution to an ongoing conversation.