Theory, Literature, Hoax by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Essay

Theory, Literature, Hoax

Published: April 29, 2010

We love stories as much as we need them, but a funny thing has happened to departments of literature. The study of literature as an art form, of its techniques for delighting and instructing, has been replaced by an amalgam of bad epistemology and worse prose that goes by many names but can be summed up as Theory. The situation seems to call for a story, and one written in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, the grand chronicler of the tragicomic struggle between humans and logic.

Enlarge This Image

Illustration by Peter Arkle

Rumors had reached us of a doctrine called Theory emanating from distant corners of the university. We in the Department of Philosophy understood it immediately as a grand hoax. I will not dwell on my particular amusement, in which I was so tragically at odds with my collaborator, Theo Rhee. This is the story not of my particular emotions but rather of Theory. Suffice it to say that the self-parody of the appellation, singular and majuscule as if affixed in Plato’s firmament, appeared to rule out all interpretations competing with that of shenanigan. So, too, did the buffoonery of the language, phraseology bloated past the point of grotesqueness. Above all, what convinced us that we had an advanced absurdist on our hands was the localization of Theory to departments of literature, the very experts steeped in the collective genius of expression, whom we judged to be as likely to embrace violations of the laws of sense and felicity as physicists to make merry with violations of the laws of nature. We looked to these colleagues to explain a poem to us, not to tell us our epistemology.

“Ah, it is too good, too good,” wheezed our affable and asthmatic chairman, Hans Furth, too much given to excessive laughter for his own aerobic good. “Who is it that makes such funnies? Is it you?”

That it was not I, I hastened to avow, even as he wagged an insinuating finger at my nose. The amiable soul had sustained his exaggerated belief in my humor ever since that night, some five years ago, when we had found ourselves in a dimly lit wine cellar in Budapest, drinking Tokay, and I had discovered, with the inevitability of discoveries made late at night, that I could project the shadow puppet of an angry man on the wall behind us.

I confess I was flattered that Hans thought me capable of the lofty absurdity achieved in Theory. For I have not yet described its assertions, a caricature of idealism’s worst follies. The fantastical vision of a Berkeley or even a Hegel is, however whimsical, a description of some logically possible world. Even this tentative brush with the real was eschewed by Theory, which flipped all our knowledge, no matter the subject, into knowledge of Culture. Culture is the pest always sneaking up from behind, clamping its clammy paws over the eyes and shrieking, “Guess who!” There is no shaking off Culture, blocking the path to any ledge in all the ranges of knowledge — the sciences and the social sciences, the humanities and the arts — from which we can look out and see. The upshot was that there is no knowledge of truths either objective or universal. Except, of course, that one. And those others that got us to that one. But no more. O.K., that too.

Holy inconsistency! Of course. It was precisely in the tumultuous play of contradictions, smeared all over like glow-in-the-dark goo, that the prank was lifted above the rank of banality to become brilliant. And who among us could fail to detect the erudite allusions swimming in the rich nonsense? Does the barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves shave himself? Does the invalidity of all universal statements invalidate itself? I never doubted for a moment that the author of the hoax was acquainted with the more recondite researches in the paradoxes of self-referentiality, leading me to conclude that these high-minded high jinks had their source close to home.

My suspicions gathered round the baby-cheeked Theo, whose inscrutably arranged face provided the perfect camouflage for masterminding plots. Theo’s name was of no account, as the very obviousness of it would lead one a priori to dismiss him as the merry prankster, which dismissal, being itself of a deducible nature, would reverse the first dismissal, to be in turn dismissed, and so forth. A jokester of our caliber could be counted on to possess such elementary combinatorial skills, for which reason I grounded my suspicion far from Theo’s name, focusing instead on the following two facts:

1. In all the years of our collaboration, Theo had never once displayed the slightest susceptibility to humor, indicating that he must long have been laying the groundwork for his mischief.

2. Theo alone insisted that Theory was no hoax but was intended as the most imperialist of cognitive campaigns, having designs on all the disciplines. Culture owns knowledge, and departments of literature own Culture. It follows (at least if logic can be said to hold constant in the face of frenetic Culture) that departments of literature can legitimately claim dominion over us all.

Oh, he was magnificent, expostulating that departments of literature were arrogating not only the intellectual, but also the moral high ground, denouncing any who declined to accept their theory of knowledge-to-end-all-knowledge as lackeys of the status quo.

“Come now, Theo,” I cajoled, hoping that my own guffaws would shatter his masterful solemnity.

“Look, my friend,” he replied. After so many years of collaboration, this was the first time that he had intimated a personal relationship, leaving me mystified and slightly queasy, as he produced, with self-incriminating alacrity, a printout from which he read aloud. “Humanities departments, besieged by enemies, must not retrench; rather, they must colonize.” Glancing quickly at me in his familiar sidelong manner, he whispered, “I await our avatar.”

Several weeks later, there was a faint knock at my office door. I opened it to find Theo, tight-lipped and pale, holding the latest copy of Annals of Symbolic Logic. Wordlessly, he handed it to me, and I read where he pointed. It was a retelling of a famed chapter in the history of our field as rendered unintelligible by Theory. I looked up grinning. To have gone to such lengths! For I had read that same issue of the Annals that very morning, and there had been no such article!

“Then it’s worse than I thought,” Theo said dully, as I triumphantly produced my uncorrupted copy. He spoke so softly I was uncertain I caught his words, but they seemed these: “Reason is giving ground on more than one point. Captivated by Theory’s audacity, humanity will forget and keep on forgetting that it is the audacity of academics and not of angels.”

It was at this moment that Hans Furth appeared and ambled over. In mournful synchronicity, we delivered over to him the nonidentical copies of the Annals. An expression of blasted comprehension was followed by heaving spasms of laughter.

Clutching at his chest, he gasped “It is too good, too good!”

It was, of course, our chairman’s last laugh.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is a novelist and former professor of philosophy. Her most recent book is “36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.”