New Year, New Purpose

Same Pedantry?

You may notice that the title of this newsletter has changed from “Rethinking Intellectual History.” “Always Historicize What Hurts!” is a tribute to Fredric Jameson and a mashup of two of his most famous written sentences, “Always historicize!” and “History is what hurts”—both from The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981).

This title change indicates a broadening of my purpose here, but I find it difficult to designate new parameters for what the newsletter will be. I do envision a couple of recurring features, for what it’s worth.

The first, which I’ll tag with the title, “Does It Hold Up?” (DIHU) will examine some classic books and essays from several decades ago that, broadly speaking, have in common a more psychoanalytic approach to history and culture than is common today. Occasionally, though, I’ll use “DIHU” to write about other “neglected” academic or critical works that don’t fit under that rubric. At any rate, I plan to start with the literary critic Leslie Fiedler.

In the second feature, “Flagged for Further Study” (FFFS), I will track my explorations of a number of currently vibrant subdisciplines that I have little or no formal training in, mostly in philosophy and literary studies. What are some of the debates ongoing in these intellectual spaces, and what is interesting about them? First up will be social epistemology.

I can promise that there will be very little writing about politicians (especially living ones) and an aversion to any discourse that can be labeled “is [X] dying?” or “the crisis of [Y],” (particularly if X or Y is “higher ed” or “the humanities”). There are, in fact, still things currently being written that are worth being read, and I will sporadically respond to some of them if I think I have something original to contribute.

More than anything, I am looking for an excuse to flex my writing muscles. I used to blog—both as an individual and as part of the USIH Blog and, even earlier, The Valve—fairly regularly, and I miss it. I hope you will (continue to) read these irregular installments as I am able to send them out. Thank you!