A Thinking Space
Christopher Schaberg, The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth
Bloomsbury, 168pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781501334290
reviewed by Marc Farrant
Near the beginning of The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth, Christopher Schaberg – a professor teaching in New Orleans and world-renowned expert on the cultures of airports – recalls that, ‘[a]fter the election of Trump, I started having small-scale crises about what to teach, how to teach, and basically what’s its all for’. This sentiment is likely to resonate with Schaberg’s readers, many of whom are deeply invested in the humanities and higher education. Unlike for the social scientist or political theorist, however, ‘post-truth’ (the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2016) poses a few unique problems for the professor or student of fiction: is there still room for posing the problem of endless interpretation, for fostering a learning environment premised on uncertainty, ambiguity and paradox? Are the liberal arts, and their sustained attack on capital- ‘T’ Truth, somehow complicit in our current historical impasse?
Schaberg’s approach is notably different from other popular commentaries such as Evan Davis’ Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit or James Ball Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World. Not being so enamoured with the liberal world order under attack from Trump, Rees-Mogg and company, Schaberg demurs from advocating on its behalf. Rather, if the book offers a response to our times – and its tone is sincerely uplifting – this is in the form of deep reflection on what it means to be human, to be placed on a finite and material earth, and to be situated amongst others.
Avoiding both the standard self-referential style of academics writing about academia and the knee-jerk vituperation characteristic of journalistic think-pieces, Schaberg’s book is a fine example of the ‘soft skills’ which are the humanities’ stock-in-trade. As he argues in a section on ‘Thinking critically about critical thinking’, any defence of the humanities cannot avoid grappling with the ‘mental Swiss army knife’ that is critical thinking. But to consider the ‘critical’ aspect of critical thinking requires moving beyond a measurable or instrumental approach to the very educational transformation that the term itself signals. Schaberg refuses to offer any easy solutions to this dilemma, but in this and other essays on pedagogy, the university and literary studies, he deftly challenges the ground that makes this dilemma into a dilemma in the first place – the ground that is our ‘frantic moment of way-past bedtime capitalism’.
In ‘Liberal arts: A safe space?’ Schaberg examines the idea of the ‘well-rounded individual’, a notion that fails to remain disentangled from the competing interests that coordinate its usage and fails to account for the sheer messiness of a liberal arts education: ‘the wanderings, passions, attractions, predicaments, malaise, and uncomfortable encounters’. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s writings on the ‘oversensitive student’, and the rhetoric against ‘safe spaces’, Schaberg situates the demand for a well-rounded education – as both a broadening and a sharpening of the mind – as a fundamental contradiction. Rather than refuse to discuss difficult issues, the paradigm of safe spaces seeks to circumvent the problem that, as Ahmed outlines, ‘the difficulties people wish to talk about end up being re-enacted within discussion spaces, which is how they are not talked about’. Producing ‘dull edges’ in students is not necessarily a sign of mere weakness but of a softness that highlights the harshness of a world dominated by strength; as Schaberg underlines, ‘a well-rounded individual should have dull edges, geometrically speaking’.
Elsewhere Schaberg writes lucidly and luminously of the practice of sabbatical, an institutional quirk of tenured faculty that seems hard to explain in an era of post-truth: ‘It feels extravagant to writer about this, to reflect on sabbatical itself, even though sabbatical is supposed to be a time for reflection. In the age of shrinking budgets and mass adjunctification, […] how dare I wax philosophical about this supreme luxury?’ This tone of hyper self-consciousness is most apropos in the passages that deal with David Foster Wallace, who emerges in the book as the figurehead of the pitfalls of contemporary self-consciousness. No doubt that Schaberg is correct to assume that ‘post-truth’ is a ‘concept that would have fascinated and galled the late David Foster Wallace’ and, in a later section, Wallace’s definition of irony neatly accords with the books theme: ‘[Irony is] when what one hears does not align with what one sees or knows to be the truth’. The pervasiveness of this kind of ‘everyday irony’ – which Schaberg senses in the transcendental illusion of total satisfaction promised by customer service, from online chat robots to student feedback forms – is definitive of our era of post-truth. On student evaluation forms, Schaberg acerbically writes:
Schaberg rescues post-truth from the jaws of the populist right. In a section on perspectivism he rightly decries how some corners of academia have come to propose a return to objectivity and facts and thereby accept the ‘appropriation of theoretical tactics [by] regressive politics’. This appropriation should be resisted not because ‘theory’ rejects Truth but because it constitutes a fundamental misreading of what the humanities is all about. As Nietzsche argued in On The Genealogy of Morals: ‘All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing. The more emotions we allow to speak in a given matter, the more different eyes we can put on in order to view a given spectacle, the more complete will be our conception of it, the greater our “objectivity”.’ In other words, the real post-truth stance is to think that Truth can be captured and neatly delineated, ‘to think that higher education (or life!) can be made clear-cut, easy to evaluate on a simple form and improve accordingly’.
Schaberg is brilliant in his description of the entanglement of literature and the embedded world, showing us how the messiness of the arts and humanities prepares us for the messiness of life. Questions of language and representation reveal fundamental ecological sensibilities that follow from acknowledging that ‘communication is always about where it’s taking place, too’. Unmoored from measurable or utilitarian ends, literature provides a ‘thinking space’ that is a unique means to ‘think about space’. By registering a philosophy of ‘slowness’ that prefers ‘to decelerate before meaning, to not rush to judgment or opinion’, the physical or objective world spurs a contemplative comportment that, Schaberg argues, is ‘not exactly in the realm of thought, yet not totally external to it, either’. It is in this space, the space of literature, that we might find new means for approaching space and the environment, of sensing how our interdependency (as material beings) might yield a renewed commitment to our intersubjectivity (as ethical beings).
The title of of Schaberg’s book is a slight misnomer: its subject is really the work of the literature professor in an age of post-truth. There is little discussion of how linguistic practices, questions of form and style, relate to propagating or lampooning false epistemologies; to questioning the relations between the public and private sphere; or to modes of giving and taking offence, of fostering and deconstructing identities. The humanist undercurrent of this work further subordinates any attempt to explicitly align literature with an alternative political programme in age of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’.
Yet Schaberg’s impassioned championing of the liberal arts is far from cloying. Against the rabid compartmentalisation of life in an age of post-truth, his honesty is not bolstered by ersatz cognition or faux sincerity but by the good will one still (just about) finds in universities and that ‘will always fall through the cracks of assessment and reimbursement’. The promise of the humanities must remain vulnerable, and indeed draws its strength from that very vulnerability.
Schaberg’s approach is notably different from other popular commentaries such as Evan Davis’ Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit or James Ball Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World. Not being so enamoured with the liberal world order under attack from Trump, Rees-Mogg and company, Schaberg demurs from advocating on its behalf. Rather, if the book offers a response to our times – and its tone is sincerely uplifting – this is in the form of deep reflection on what it means to be human, to be placed on a finite and material earth, and to be situated amongst others.
Avoiding both the standard self-referential style of academics writing about academia and the knee-jerk vituperation characteristic of journalistic think-pieces, Schaberg’s book is a fine example of the ‘soft skills’ which are the humanities’ stock-in-trade. As he argues in a section on ‘Thinking critically about critical thinking’, any defence of the humanities cannot avoid grappling with the ‘mental Swiss army knife’ that is critical thinking. But to consider the ‘critical’ aspect of critical thinking requires moving beyond a measurable or instrumental approach to the very educational transformation that the term itself signals. Schaberg refuses to offer any easy solutions to this dilemma, but in this and other essays on pedagogy, the university and literary studies, he deftly challenges the ground that makes this dilemma into a dilemma in the first place – the ground that is our ‘frantic moment of way-past bedtime capitalism’.
In ‘Liberal arts: A safe space?’ Schaberg examines the idea of the ‘well-rounded individual’, a notion that fails to remain disentangled from the competing interests that coordinate its usage and fails to account for the sheer messiness of a liberal arts education: ‘the wanderings, passions, attractions, predicaments, malaise, and uncomfortable encounters’. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s writings on the ‘oversensitive student’, and the rhetoric against ‘safe spaces’, Schaberg situates the demand for a well-rounded education – as both a broadening and a sharpening of the mind – as a fundamental contradiction. Rather than refuse to discuss difficult issues, the paradigm of safe spaces seeks to circumvent the problem that, as Ahmed outlines, ‘the difficulties people wish to talk about end up being re-enacted within discussion spaces, which is how they are not talked about’. Producing ‘dull edges’ in students is not necessarily a sign of mere weakness but of a softness that highlights the harshness of a world dominated by strength; as Schaberg underlines, ‘a well-rounded individual should have dull edges, geometrically speaking’.
Elsewhere Schaberg writes lucidly and luminously of the practice of sabbatical, an institutional quirk of tenured faculty that seems hard to explain in an era of post-truth: ‘It feels extravagant to writer about this, to reflect on sabbatical itself, even though sabbatical is supposed to be a time for reflection. In the age of shrinking budgets and mass adjunctification, […] how dare I wax philosophical about this supreme luxury?’ This tone of hyper self-consciousness is most apropos in the passages that deal with David Foster Wallace, who emerges in the book as the figurehead of the pitfalls of contemporary self-consciousness. No doubt that Schaberg is correct to assume that ‘post-truth’ is a ‘concept that would have fascinated and galled the late David Foster Wallace’ and, in a later section, Wallace’s definition of irony neatly accords with the books theme: ‘[Irony is] when what one hears does not align with what one sees or knows to be the truth’. The pervasiveness of this kind of ‘everyday irony’ – which Schaberg senses in the transcendental illusion of total satisfaction promised by customer service, from online chat robots to student feedback forms – is definitive of our era of post-truth. On student evaluation forms, Schaberg acerbically writes:
‘It is precisely the acting out of this evaluative, personalized ritual, semester after semester, that ensures that things keep going more of less as is, and that no one ever seriously evaluates or reflects on the whole mess. The purpose of evaluation is not to evaluate but to have conducted evaluation.’
Schaberg rescues post-truth from the jaws of the populist right. In a section on perspectivism he rightly decries how some corners of academia have come to propose a return to objectivity and facts and thereby accept the ‘appropriation of theoretical tactics [by] regressive politics’. This appropriation should be resisted not because ‘theory’ rejects Truth but because it constitutes a fundamental misreading of what the humanities is all about. As Nietzsche argued in On The Genealogy of Morals: ‘All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing. The more emotions we allow to speak in a given matter, the more different eyes we can put on in order to view a given spectacle, the more complete will be our conception of it, the greater our “objectivity”.’ In other words, the real post-truth stance is to think that Truth can be captured and neatly delineated, ‘to think that higher education (or life!) can be made clear-cut, easy to evaluate on a simple form and improve accordingly’.
Schaberg is brilliant in his description of the entanglement of literature and the embedded world, showing us how the messiness of the arts and humanities prepares us for the messiness of life. Questions of language and representation reveal fundamental ecological sensibilities that follow from acknowledging that ‘communication is always about where it’s taking place, too’. Unmoored from measurable or utilitarian ends, literature provides a ‘thinking space’ that is a unique means to ‘think about space’. By registering a philosophy of ‘slowness’ that prefers ‘to decelerate before meaning, to not rush to judgment or opinion’, the physical or objective world spurs a contemplative comportment that, Schaberg argues, is ‘not exactly in the realm of thought, yet not totally external to it, either’. It is in this space, the space of literature, that we might find new means for approaching space and the environment, of sensing how our interdependency (as material beings) might yield a renewed commitment to our intersubjectivity (as ethical beings).
The title of of Schaberg’s book is a slight misnomer: its subject is really the work of the literature professor in an age of post-truth. There is little discussion of how linguistic practices, questions of form and style, relate to propagating or lampooning false epistemologies; to questioning the relations between the public and private sphere; or to modes of giving and taking offence, of fostering and deconstructing identities. The humanist undercurrent of this work further subordinates any attempt to explicitly align literature with an alternative political programme in age of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’.
Yet Schaberg’s impassioned championing of the liberal arts is far from cloying. Against the rabid compartmentalisation of life in an age of post-truth, his honesty is not bolstered by ersatz cognition or faux sincerity but by the good will one still (just about) finds in universities and that ‘will always fall through the cracks of assessment and reimbursement’. The promise of the humanities must remain vulnerable, and indeed draws its strength from that very vulnerability.