Prof. Stanley Fish is on the prowl again. This time he has dug under the fence of his preserve and shown his claws to the Modern Language Association and lightly gored a digital humanists or two. By accident, I think, a case of mistaken identity. The computists are in therapy at a trauma center mostly for shock and a bad case of self-doubt manifesting in excessive reasonableness. Warning! The professor must be considered dangerous, but he can be made docile by expressing interest in "anti-foundationalism" in contemporary thought.
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| Peabody Institute, JHU |
[Note: This introduction is followed by three sections discussing the three blogs published by Fish in the NYTimes, Dec. 2011 and Jan. 2012. The discussion of the Areopagitica in BLOG3 and the material about Milton following, explores some digital alternatives in approaching Milton.]
[Note: After the discussion of the 3 blogs, there follows a sketch of a programming project on the Areopagitica with a selection of perl programs.]
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Prof. Fish has received many accolades in his long academic career. He has never shied from controversy, on the contrary. He also has not shied from intruding into areas where he has little expertise and making it up on the fly. In questions of theory or ideology he has never been shown to be out of his depth given his dialectic skills, despite loud cries of foul by some of his opponents and a torrent of rather ugly invectives like subjectivism, relativism and sophistry.
Alas, in his latest pronouncements on the studies of humanities involving computers, he has demonstrated not even a passing acquaintance with the work in the area. The field dates back to the 1960's and has gone under many names, Literary Computing, Humanities Computing, Text Computing, Arts Computing and many more. Most recently it has been named Digital Humanities, and that name appears to stick, and all wiki entries have been updated. Hint, hint, go there.
In his ire at the Modern Language Association for dropping his favorite -isms from the program, some rather startled, hard working junior academics trying to meld modern network technologies with humanities content have had to endure some negative press from Fish and Co. for allegedly filling the gaping void with a messianic vision and promises of raising the dead.
The field of digital humanities, or better, this direction of teaching and research in the several fields comprising the humanities, seems to have intruded on Prof. Fish's awareness over the 2011 Christmas holidays. Three of his wide ranging regular posts in the NYTimes deal with this topic and attracted some minor attention in the post-Christmas 2011 doldrums and the new semester rush; digital humanists graze the blogs more than most and mounted an embarrassed and perplexed defense.
Since the blog is an impatient genre, as I have been told, it is important to front-load the important stuff; you cannot count on the reader for more than a few paragraphs. I am already well beyond that. Blogs are also horribly undisciplined, especially when several excited people start filling the comment boxes. Yet it is good to hear people think for all to see, in written text.
One of the reactions to Fish BLOG3, which flashed across the skies shortly after the post, was the discussion started in Language Log by Lieberman. I am not in this particular quilting bee so I can only react on a surface impression, no offence intended.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3730
It is a techie defense concentrating on BLOG3. The concentration is on "p and b" and other phonetic features (I assume the blogs have been read.). They run the numbers and try to understand Fish's point. They have googled "Bishops and Presbyters" and have come up with a theory, an unsatisfying theory. They did no real statistics except some large grain graphs, which seems strange. Perhaps they held back out of deference, perhaps since the whole proposition seemed too weird. Perhaps they realized that the underlying data requires an advanced degree in 17. century English, not linguistics. That is an insight to be recommended, especially to humanists engaged in between-the-ears statistical analysis. There is no mention of chiasmus which points to the suspicion that oil is meeting water here with no emulsion forming.
I plan to devote a chapter to this blog later since it is a good case study of the gap between technology, linguistitic technology, and in this case, Milton-think, if I am allowed to coin a term.
The first problem with the Lieberman post is that showing graphs does not tell a story to most humanists. Chronological word lists separated by sentence cusps is more congenial to literature people. There it is possible to inspect the actual words that carry the sounds. This will come in a few posts anon. For the linguists, the graphs are enough to warn them off further consideration.
Then, there is some headscratching about Bishops and Presbyters. Some of the commenters googled the two words and arrived at the discussion of church history, some arrived at Milton's earlier work. This is a murky area of Milton scholarship and somewhat contradictory positions abound. But it is really simple today, now that doctrinal disputes are generally forgotten. The "name and thing" reference is also not that obscure. I don't think Fish gets it either since he lets his phonetic acuity drag him headlong down a primrose path.
The point is that the "Bishop Persbyter" debate and the "name thing" debate a.k.a the nominalism debate have both raged in Milton's times. In the sentence in question (Sen. #26 quoted a few paragraphs below), Milton expresses a willingness to set aside both debates, debates dear to his heart, debates in which he has been active himself probably on a regular basis in discussions, debates in the course of which he would like to skewer the opponent and his opponent would like to skewer him, literally. He is willing to declare to "friend and foe" that both debates have become uninteresting in order to make his points about censorship. This is a plausible interpretation, but it is not buttressed by a life spent in scholarship on the reception of the Areopagitica; however, I plan to discuss the passages that lead me in that direction below.
One more point, it is fairly settled that in early Christian times, the Greek words for B and P did point to the same function. However, it is equally clear that in Milton's time, the two had diverged significantly. Etymology to Hellenistic Greek roots ("episcopos" and "presbyteros") is fairly irrelevant in this question. There are, however lots of details that are very important to various Christian groupings to this day. The wiki entry on "Presbyterian polity" will give you an insight into an area with infinite possibility for detail. I'll leave you with this thought: in a church without a Pope or a Patriarch, Bishop is the top rank. Does that help?
Continuing with Lieberman, where are the good statistics? The 5% vs. the 6% is OK, but we can do better. How about some ratios of pb words vs. non-pb words in individual sentences? There the percentages of pb words in individual sentences range from 31% to 0. More on this later.
Finally, there is no mention of chiasmus in Lieberman or in the 39 comments. It was the chiasmus of p and b (such as it is) that set Fish off. There seem to be only a few. There are passages that simply cry out for a chiasmus where chiasmus is avoided:
Sen. #26Sentence 26 comes at the end of the general introduction and just before the start of the historical treatment of the topic of censorship, starting with Athens. It is a structurally significant sentence, God forbid, pre-figuring much of the historical argument. Milton makes a pun on the lexical item "license" but avoids the chiasmus: "...introducing licence ... licencing I oppose." Or perhaps I am wrong here, perhaps Milton is presenting a "participial gerundal" chiasmus "introducing ... Licencing." That could be called an asymmetrical grammatical chiasmus. Grinning allowed.
"But lest I should be condemn'd of introducing licence, while I oppose Licencing, I refuse not the paines to be so much Historicall, as will serve to shew what hath been done by ancient and famous Commonwealths, against this disorder, till the very time that this project of licencing crept out of the Inquisition, was catcht up by our Prelates, and hath caught some of our Presbyters."
Sentence 102 presents us with a nice chiasmus, a little unsymmetrical, but acceptable.
Sen. #102But look at the chiastic possibilities missed: "...we bring not innocence ... impunity rather bring we." It may be that chiasmus is not that big a deal in the Areopagitica, but I will continue to scour the text.
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary.
The mention of "opposites" as a chiasmus by Fish is hard to accept. Can you find the chiasmus in sentence 230? It is marked in red.
"... obstructing violence meets for the most part with an event utterly opposite to the end which it drives at ..." [Sen. #230]This is merely the interpretive mechanism having reached fantastic oscillations of fishtailing and finally plunging off the cliff. Crash and burn. More below, later.
However, one more bit of front-loading: Sentence 26 contains a precise hierarchy of culpability in the area of censorship:
"... this project of licencing crept out of the Inquisition, was catcht up by our Prelates, and hath caught some of our Presbyters." [Sen. #230]Parliament, being cajoled here is largely absolved and only reminded of its latent wisdom.
The real culprits for instituting censorship, in order of culpability are:
1. the Inquisition from whence it crept,
2. the Church Prelates who caught it "gladly" and
3. the reformed Presbyters, "only some them" had been caught by it.
I see a specific hierarchy here, I hierarchy that MUST be made the basis of any further equivalence of Bishops and Presbyters. The difference is between all "catching" and some being "caught by." That is the semantic side of the argument, conveniently ignored in the orgy of phonemes. Or, is it possible, passed over in re-reading, forgotten if ever mentioned.
I should add, in all modesty that I found this sentence with a routine semantic inventory with a search and retrieval engine. I can only claim to have recognized the importance of sentence 26. The "triall and triall" chiasmus I found by checking "and pairs." I thank my Toshiba laptop number three.
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http://tedunderwood.wordpress.com/
There is also the Underwood blog. Ted Underwood teaches text mining among other things at Urbana-Champaign and seems to have read a paper at the MLA in question. He seems to be up on the details of Critical Theory. He vacillates between disgust at such a shallow treatment of his field and succumbing to the siren song of Fish. It is not really what Fish says, it is more what recollections of methodological issues Fish has inadvertently, I think, raised in his mind. No earnest and forthright researcher stands a chance arguing against Fish. The series of blogs are a good read, would they were a bit more combative. You have to box your way out of the corner with Fish. Don't let his "nerve," his obscene nerve, call text mining into question. Any text miner worth his salt would grant Fish not a single premise. Smack him good! For all of us; or ignore him and do your work.
I will fade the preview to black here. I will try to cover more response blogs where appropriate below. As you will discover, this is not really a blog, but merely a convenient way for me to get things off my desk. I have turned off comments but welcome e-mail at batke_p@hotmail.com.
The three Fish blogs that I have found so far are: one in December '11 and two in January '12; I hope this is the end of the disinformation campaign, and Prof. Fish will turn his attention to politics or the law or religion or whatever other -ims may be waiting for a pat or a kick. Let us just all be real quiet and not move, and I beg you, do not let the children make a noise.
Don't get me wrong; I firmly support all sorts of epistemological investigations when it comes to literature and texts. I have studied phenomenology with some ardor and for some time and lean towards a form of voluntary excising of personal intentionality. As I have grown old, I have embraced the view that it is better to have read with intentionality than never to have read at all. Becoming aware of intentionality is a kind of rebirth not necessarily in the religious sense, a kind of renascence in the philosophical sense. A birth and a life are required for a rebirth. It is difficult to talk about these issues without building firm ideological walls thick with happy warriors. That is just what my reading of phenomenology discourages.
Yet I also lean towards the view of text as digital artifact that can be analyzed by algorithms. I have some hope that index and retrieval, non-sequential second readings based on computer generated entry points and a thorough extraction of abstract nouns, prepositional phrases, and-pairs, repeating phrases and whatever features may pertain to the text in question may be a counter measure to intentionality. It would be silly to deny that indexing in the larger sense has not become a serious science, a mathematical science. It would be laughable to maintain that no huge progress has been made in indexing the vast quantities of text that are available for this kind of work, quantities of text on a scale never seen before, ever. Alas, any science requires formal training or at least some dedicated autodidacticism.
In all fairness, no harm done, most commentators to the Fish blogs err on the side of reasonableness, and mea culpaism before the great critic, and they have stayed away from derision but within the realm of humor or earnest pedagogy. I shall try to take a more lingering acerbic look, just for the record. I want to have some fun with this. How often can you catch someone like Prof. Fish with callow, homespun, impromptu arguments floundering through modern research methods.
My commentary will appear to be ad hominem, preferring to poke fun at Prof. Fish rather than responding in a professional manner to the points raised. I accept the charge. I have not taken the time to try to understand what eternal bedrock principles in his body of work should make his hostility to digital humanities a logical consequence. I have no reason to pick his work over others for close examination. My skepticism is clearly second hand and partially based on the display of his personal style. I am not competent to review the Fishian thought through the time it has been with us, nor all the nuanced wrinkles in all the -isms he brings to bear. But I know enough to go for some laughs. Surely we have to ask ourselves: "Who is this man, and why is he saying these things open to misinterpretation?" Since there is no real attempt to treat digital humanities professionally, except to discredit it as a false religion (and I get no great pleasure from writing about this); I am convinced that it is a legitimate tactic to examine the background of someone who would make such a charge in public.
This cannot be done without recourse to humor. Perhaps the business of post-modern iconoclasm is still extremely serious business. Yet when the merchant of this serious business careens wildly in the electronic space of the NYTimes, one is permitted, even required, to ask, what is the background here? This man has read some snippets, perhaps carelessly formulated phrases from digital humanists, and there are many, which led him to conclude that digital humanities has inflated itself into a theological dispensation that will not be able to perform any miracles or save even one church mouse from addiction to the saprotrophic fungus in the pastor's Stilton.
Prof. Fish promises sternly to give digital humanities a summary defrocking, tarring, feathering and running out of town on a rail should it turn out to be worth his trouble, which it may not be after all given his wide range for seeking targets for reproof. Personally, I am longing for a nice clean funny ad hominem attack.
The medium under discussion here is an electronic blog, "The Opinionator" of the NY Times; Prof. Fish is a regular contributor. It is in the four to five single-spaced page category. Thus it is more than what one would expect from a traditional printed "column;" yet, it IS merely a column, a long overweight column lacking the precision a column requires, thus making it merely a blog about whatever may strike Prof. Fish fancy that month or week, from Milton to Obama and back via academic freedom and tenure and whatever - I am not subscribed. We get a five page dollop of whatever the Professor has scooped from the web with extensive comment if not quite analysis.
Columns and blogs have their place in the literary landscape, but when Stanley Fish blogs serially on digital humanities that delicate ecology is upset. It would be like building a MacMansion in the middle of Sheep Meadow in Central Park festooned with banners. What would Olmsted have said of throwing such transience out in a public space kept intact since the Civil War. The house appears solid and everyone can see it, or the cladding, the faux quoins, and the blind dormers at least; the banners show catchy phrases; yet, one wonders if it is appropriate to build a house there to attract attention. Perhaps one could clear two or three lots in Sheepshead Bay for such a building, and consult a building inspector and get the appropriate permits i.e. find a journal to take this on, and lose the catchy phrases.
Prof. Fish does have a long tail of baggage going back to the heady days of post-this-and-that. He did sweep along at least one generation of impressionable graduate students, perhaps even two. He did also infuriate many more colleagues than he inspired; I have no data on his new colleagues in the Law. Some members of the current cohort of digital humanists are even gleefully flattered to have raised the ire of Prof. Fish. A certain status has been conferred. Not everyone has attained such stature.
The Fish cachet was (and is) that he has a solid traditional background in scholarship, publishing on Skelton and Milton while also engaging in the most tendentious of contemporary enthusiasms in the name of truth and justice for all. Any prolonged contact with Prof. Fish had consequences, back then, in the 80's and 90's; for universities it meant notoriety. I still remember being asked to send someone from our Humanities Computing Project at Duke University to the Deans Office in the latter 1980's because their spreadsheets were not working right. We all had a good laugh when it was discovered that the salaries of Fish and Co. were so out of proportion with the rest of Arts and Science salaries that the dean's graphs were reduced to spikes and indecipherable squiggles.
I took the opportunity to nip up to Johns Hopkins which had been declared a Fish-free zone by 1988.
The blogs:
1. December 26, 2011, 9:00 PM
The Old Order Changeth
By STANLEY FISH
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/the-old-order-changeth/
2. January 9, 2012, 9:00 PM
The Digital Humanities and the Transcending of Mortality
By STANLEY FISH
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/the-digital-humanities-and-the-transcending-of-mortality/
3. January 23, 2012, 9:00 PM
Mind Your P’s and B’s: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation
By STANLEY FISH
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/mind-your-ps-and-bs-the-digital-humanities-and-interpretation/
