Research and the Theoretical Field - Pauldowling.me

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literary studies that is concerned to effect political, social change. The kind of
work that he is referring to is the new historicism of Louis Montrose:
On its face he seems to be saying something like this: ‘I have surveyed the
various approaches to Shakespeare and Spenser now in play and have decided
to employ in my own work those (like gender studies) that will be the most
subversive of the political powers oppressing us. But when I read Montrose I find
his analysis informed by a conviction that the accounts he offers of Shakespeare
and Spenser are true. He may believe that by producing these true accounts he
will be participating in the reformation of contemporary society, but his belief in
their possible political efficacy is independent of his conviction that they are true,
Were he to be persuaded that there was no particular political benefit to be had
from putting forward these views of Shakespeare and Spenser, they would still
be his views, and they would remain so until they were changed by the usual
kinds of argument one associates with literary studies, It is surely the case that
his views of Shakespeare and Spenser could change, but one thing that won't
change them (if they are really his views and not merely politically convenient
sentiments) is the realization that they aren't doing the kind of political work he
hoped they would do. (What might change, if he experienced that realization, is
his determination to remain a professional reader of texts; he might get into
another line of work.)
(Fish, 1995; pp. 47-8)
Fish believes that no one, outside of literary studies will be very interested in
what Montrose has to say qua literary critic and so his political will is, insofar
as he is performing literary criticism, impotent. The danger, however, seems
to be that Montrose and the other new historicists may succeed in
transforming the practice of literary criticism out of all recognition. This is
possible, because, in Fish’s view, literary criticism is as it is by convention
and, this being the case, is vulnerable to collective transformative acts:
A conventional activity […] lives and dies by the zeal with which we ask its
questions and care about the answers. A conventional activity is one whose
possibility and intelligibility depend on a specialized and artificial vocabulary
which is generative of the phenomena it picks out, in this case the range of
verbal nuances that emerge when one takes up the tools of close reading,
semiotics, and poetics, If that vocabulary falls into disuse, the facts it calls into
being will no longer be produced or experienced. If no one any longer asks 'What
is the structure of this poem' or 'What is the intention of the author and has it
been realized', something will have passed from the earth and we shall read the
words of what was once literary criticism as if they were the remnants of a lost
language spoken by alien beings.
(Fish, 1995; p. 70)
The supposed political gains of a shift in the discipline towards new
historicism are, therefore, imagined rather than real, whereas there is a very
real danger in the loss of what, to many now working in the field, is a
worthwhile activity.
The dispute between Stanley Fish and the new historicists really highlights the
fundamental dilemmas that are at the base of all of the assertions, challenges,
rationalisings and decisions that constitute the agonistic discourse of research
ethics: just to whom does the researcher have responsibility and precisely
what are those responsibilities. Fish may by sympathetic with the new
historicists’ claim to have responsibility towards oppressed groups, but he
questions whether the nature of that responsibility should lie in the
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