Back when I was in grad school, lots of people were buzzing about Foucault.* But the really hip kids were deep into Walter Benjamin. And being hip**, I hopped on the bandwagon and never jumped off. Benjamin’s work has become especially important for me recently, as I’ve tried to finish my book on the politics of memory surrounding the Sand Creek massacre. Which is all just a long way of pointing out that Terry Eagleton’s study of Benjamin has been re-released (though maybe not in the States). Regardless, it’s worth a read. And now, having said all of that, I find myself wondering: which theorists are the kewl kidz*** reading these days?
* Yes, I’m that old. And also washed-up, but that’s a story for another day.
** Well, not really. But some of my best friends were Europeanists.
*** I know, I know, historians can never really be kewl kidz. Except for Marc Bloch, bitchez, who was kewler than Elvis and Beeker combined.
55 comments
November 13, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Walt
Agamben?
November 13, 2009 at 12:55 pm
silbey
I’m afraid to say anything for fear of being out-kewled.
November 13, 2009 at 12:57 pm
AcademicLurker
Agamben and Badiou seem to be the hot items. Although they’ve been hot items for some years now, so maybe there’s a new hot thing I don’t know about (not being particularly hip).
November 13, 2009 at 1:07 pm
zunguzungu
Blogs are pretty hip, I hear. Y’all should get in on that.
November 13, 2009 at 1:09 pm
eric
Who’s hot now?
This, dear readers, is what’s known in the trade as “fishing for compliments.”
November 13, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Jim
i thought all roads led to zizek. but i haven’t hung out with the hipster philosophy crew for awhile.
November 13, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Josh
Who’s hot now?
Ari Y. Kelman.
November 13, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Anderson
M.H. Abrams. It’s hip to be square.
(Or, hell, William Empson, whom I’m actually reading right now.)
November 13, 2009 at 2:27 pm
zunguzungu
It seems to me a good thing that there is no obvious answer to this question*. I was but a sprightly lad in the days of High Theory, of course, but there seems to be something counterproductive about having a single theory or theorist who can be “hot” across too many disciplinary boundaries. Different conversations are in different places and at different stages of different kinds of developments, and should — one would think — have different kinds of “the hottest new thing.”
* unless there is, in which case we’re all even more doomeder-er than we were before.
November 13, 2009 at 2:33 pm
eric
“No obvious answer to this question.”
November 13, 2009 at 2:40 pm
zunguzungu
Just cause I just commented here and I have to vent somewhere. WTF yesu kristo is up with Mark Yudof being named one of the top ten college presidents by Time magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1937938_1937933_1937940,00.html
“Faced with a $1 billion budget gap, Yudof pleaded with faculty and staff to take unpaid furloughs — they agreed — and pushed through a 32% tuition hike over the next two years, calling these sacrifices an investment in the future.”
I am become vomitous.
November 13, 2009 at 2:47 pm
eric
And what the hell is the “University of California, Oakland”?
November 13, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Anderson
i thought all roads led to zizek.
More like “the path to hell is paved with Zizek’s works.”
November 13, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Josh
And what the hell is the “University of California, Oakland”?
Two separate identifiers, rather than one with a comma in the middle.
November 13, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Josh
There’s probably a Gertrude Stein joke to be made about the location of the Office of the Regents of the University of California, but I’m not capable of coming up with it right now.
November 13, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Mario
Is Deleuze already passe? It seems like people throw in gratuitous references to A Thousand Plateaus just so that reads know that the author has read it.
November 13, 2009 at 4:31 pm
ari
To be clear, the point of my question was that I have no idea what’s passé or au courant.
November 13, 2009 at 4:42 pm
bitchphd
I tell you what’s definitely NOT hot is fakey hiphop spellings. I’m cringing over here for you, Ari. You sound like Michael Steele or something….
November 13, 2009 at 4:54 pm
ari
I think Danielle Steel is an important author, b. Your ongoing efforts to police the canon are tedious, if you ask me.
November 13, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Brian
It seems like Benjamin is still cool, and if one judged by the footnotes to a certain strain of American Studies works, Ranciere seems to be all the rage nowadays.
November 13, 2009 at 5:50 pm
amadeupfakename
Laurent DuBois is my current favorite. His work on the Haitian Revolution is great and he’s doing a history of the banjo. What more can you ask for?
http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Romance/faculty/ld48
November 13, 2009 at 6:09 pm
ben
Fuckin’ Bergson, bitches!
November 13, 2009 at 6:17 pm
PorJ
Wait… Gramsci’s out? Uh oh. Gotta hide the bell-bottoms.
November 13, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Charlieford
Great question. Following eric’s lead, it seems to me academia has followed music, both kind of balkanized, with no universally acknowledged reference points. I wonder if it (the academia part at least) isn’t a function of the end of the Cold War?
November 13, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Eric
huh. the person i know best qualified to answer this dropped out of my program last year. He’s writing a blog and looking for a job.
November 13, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Urk
(Eric is Urk) and thanks for pointing out Dubois and the Eagleton book. what I really needed in my life right now was more stuff that i want to read. but seriously, thanks. and I have no clue who’s hot.
November 14, 2009 at 12:23 am
THE CON
Marc Bloch….. cool?
November 14, 2009 at 12:32 am
dave
The good thing about Agamben and Zizek is that we can now say definitively that the preachers of ‘theory’ are clueless from A to Z.
November 14, 2009 at 2:09 am
andrew
Methodology.
November 14, 2009 at 4:29 am
kevin
Is empiricism hot again? Can you wake me when it is?
November 14, 2009 at 8:45 am
Jonathan Dresner
Marc Bloch….. cool?
There is no definition of cool which Marc Bloch does not fit.
But “cool” and “now” are two different things.
November 14, 2009 at 10:32 am
JPool
Whe I was applying to grad school I wanted to be one of those historians who took theory seriously, so I read a bunch of what seemed au courant in the late nineties, at least in anthologized excerpt form, and thought that I could be hip and with it. Some of the things I read have since fizzled out (cyborg theory? anyone?) and others, like Gramsci, have been tremendously useful, but haven’t yet made their way into my work. I read a bunch of African philosophy around this time too, and while the intellectual excitement of it was fabulous, it hasn’t made a significant impact on Africanist history. Then I got to grad school and the kewl kids, in the interdisciplanary department across the way, were reading Deleuze and Guattari and they tried to explain it to me, but then I had to go lay down for a while.
The reference to Laurent DuBois is a good one, because I see historians turning more to the work of other historians these days. The writer who’s most all over my dissertation is Frederick Cooper, a historian of a comparative and theoretical bent, followed by non-standard political scientists: Anderson, Mbembe, Chatterjee. Foucault shows up in my dissertation, but much to younger me’s chagrin, no Marxists do.
I’m planning on writing an article on national monuments at some point. Yi-Fu Tuan better show up there or I’ll be very dissapointed in myself.
November 14, 2009 at 11:33 am
Colin
I’m half way through Gershom Scholem’s memoir on Benjamin, as it happens. Can we bring back religious mysticism? I’m more than ready.
Ari, kewl kidz say “late Foucault,” in a knowing kind of way. Early is passe’ already.
November 14, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Shane Landrum
I think it really depends on what subfield one’s in. I’ve recently enjoyed Margot Canaday’s The Straight State, which has some theory where it counts but is mostly really research-intensive. (Check the footnotes in chapter 1 to see what I mean; she spent a long time with US immigration case files….) But I’m definitely curious about other people’s answers to this question.
November 14, 2009 at 12:46 pm
ben
Empiricism sux. Sorry, kevin.
November 14, 2009 at 12:59 pm
kevin
Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m fine. Feel sorry for the historians who rely on theory as a crutch because they’re too lazy to do their own archival research and, to some extent, too lazy to do their own thinking.
N.B. I am most definitely not talking about Ari or, as far as I can recognize interweb handles, anyone else here. But there is a sadly growing contingent of scholars in the field who wrap themselves in the authority of Great Dead Minds rather than do their own thinking.
Theory, in history, is like salt. Assemble your own ingredients, according to a recipe of your own creation, and use a little theory to bring out the natural flavor, and you’ll do well. But dump a whole shaker of it on what’s essentially rubbish, and it only makes it worse.
Again, that attitude might not make me one of the kewl kids, but I honestly don’t care.
November 14, 2009 at 4:45 pm
JPool
kevin, maybe discussions of theory or references to theorists are like salt, but theory, as Thompson might say, is what assembles the data into ingredients and organizes them into a narrative meal. You don’t have to be all Cooks Illustrated and explain how you arrived at your recipe, but it can help others better understand and evaluate the meal you’ve produced. Empiricism would claim that you could dump whatever’s in the back of the archives onto a plate and it would sort itself into a nutricious salad (a salad for salad sake if you will). The problem then is not with meal that are over seasoned, seasoning is a matter of taste, but with but with meals that are essentially empty calories or where the preparation gets in the way of appreciating the ingredients.
What do you mean the metaphor ended five minutes ago?
November 14, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Colin
Does that explain the stuff going moldy at the back of my fridge?
November 14, 2009 at 6:34 pm
aschup
Excuse my ignorance, for I am a lowly first year, but does disaffection-with-totalizing-capital-T-Theory count?
November 14, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Brian
kevin, I would love to know who makes up this sadly growing contingent of scholars in the field. In fact, history has generally been seen as a discipline opposed to the uses of theory and has been slow on the uptake of a serious consideration of recent theoretical work. In fact, at least in my field (early American history), I would say that, unfortunately, an uninterrogated empiricism is still hot. And we are the worse off for it.
November 15, 2009 at 8:10 am
dave
JPool, that isn’t theory, that’s just ideas, which any historical enterprise necessarily has. The question is whether the historian is able, or sufficiently interested, to interrogate their own ideas, or simply leaves this exercise for the reader. I agree there is a tendency in the humanities at large to accept familiarity with ‘Theory’ as if it conveyed some kind of authority [this largely seems to me, for example, to be the mistaken reason Zizek is read for more than just unintentional comedy-value], but arguments from authority are the very thing that should be taken with a large pinch of salt. And in an historical enquiry, that salt is usually, as it should be, provided by the specifics of empirically-acquired evidence.
On a side-note, empiricism is actually a form of scepticism, which requires evidence in order to judge the merits of assertions. That it became associated with the notion of assembling an allegedly objective history under the guidance of white male bourgeois professional seers in the late C19 is merely an unfortunate coincidence of terms.
November 15, 2009 at 9:12 am
kevin
kevin, I would love to know who makes up this sadly growing contingent of scholars in the field.
It’s widespread in 20th century history across the board. Very present in modern Europe, but with growing influence in postwar U.S., and also Latin Americanists and Asianists, particularly ones who place themselves in a transnational mode and/or work in gender, critical race theory, or urban studies.
The trend to interdisciplinary work of historians working in this era has led to the incorporation of approaches from sociology and anthropology, but especially an influx of cultural studies and other po-mo wankery.
In fact, at least in my field (early American history), I would say that, unfortunately, an uninterrogated empiricism is still hot. And we are the worse off for it.
No. You’re not. Enjoy the sheltered life while you can.
November 15, 2009 at 9:21 am
kevin
kevin, maybe discussions of theory or references to theorists are like salt, but theory, as Thompson might say, is what assembles the data into ingredients and organizes them into a narrative meal
I’m not sure the best way to answer a complaint about “argument from authority” is to, um, invoke an authority like Thompson. But I take your point.
November 15, 2009 at 10:43 am
JPool
JPool, that isn’t theory, that’s just ideas
Right, and the difference between those two things would be, what? The necessity of reading secondary material? Unless you want to valorize reinventing the wheel, I’m not sure why idiosyncratic “ideas” should be preferable to an understanding of relevant theoretical materials. Such an understanding both helps one think through one’s ideas and to make an argument for why other folks should care about them. Why should people care about one’s History of Events and Processes in East Westwhich? Perhaps, because it speaks to a larger literature about events or processes, or because East Westwhich was connected to or comparable to other places?
Look, we can all agree that there are folks, like Homi Bhabha, where the inter-textuality gets so dense that you have to have basically read all of the books he cites already for the text itself to make any kind of sense, and that this is obnoxious. Further, we can agree that there are people, including perhaps a few historians, who present theoretical models in place of evidence, and that this is not sufficient. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water and decry all future talk of baths and babies.
I’m not sure the best way to answer a complaint about “argument from authority” is to, um, invoke an authority
It is if one finds the complaint misguided and wants to acknowledge that other smart people have already made the point that one is making at greater length. It’s a kind of shorthand, you see. For me, the proper response to an argument from authority is not “Shut up, shut up,” but, if I find the argument unpersuasive, “I read X differently,” or “I’m not sure X is correct about that,” or “I’m not sure that you’ve demonstrated that X’s point applies in this instance,” or even, “I haven’t read X, but what I understand you to be saying is y, so…”
November 15, 2009 at 12:21 pm
dave
JPool, who said ‘idiosyncratic’? Historical study can be informed by any number of perspectives one can call ‘theoretical’, but ‘theory’ in the singular means something quite specific [though, ironically, that specific thing is also quite amorphous] in the ‘humanities’ at large, as the rest of this discussion has demonstrated. And history certainly doesn’t have to have that kind of ‘theory’ in it to be both meaningful in itself and thought-provoking in general.
Meanwhile, it cannot have escaped your attention, surely, that a great deal of history is written which is only of interest to people who already know themselves to be interested in that time and place, regardless of how much theory, or not, is placed in, on, around or upon it?
And, because I like to now and then, I will also point out that the root of ‘history’ in the Greek is ‘to investigate’, and of ‘theory’, ‘to speculate’. And all the speculations in the world amount to nothing if, in the end, an empirical investigation cannot tie them to that world.
November 15, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Anderson
In Defense of Theory (after two martinis):
What do you say about a work of literature? Do you relate it to the author’s life? Then you’re a biographer. Do you relate it to the social setting? Then you’re a historian, or a sociologist. Do you relate it to the reader’s response? Then you’re a psychologist.
But if your Ph.D. is in “English” and you’re trying to figure out what *your* department has to contribute, then what do you say about a work of literature?
De Man famously (or it *should* be famous, goddammit) called the English department a body devoted to the pursuit of everything except its own subject matter.
“Theory” is, or should be, an effort to figure out what is peculiarly “literary” about literature.
Now, in the end, is this any more than being bad philosophers, instead of bad historians or psychologists? Maybe not. But it seemed like a legitimate question at the time.
(And yes, the damn English majors did try to argue that EVERYTHING is a text and take over everyone ELSE’s departments. In an obvious overcompensation for their own conceptual inferiority.)
… Did I mention those martinis were 5:1?
November 15, 2009 at 5:51 pm
serofriend
I definitely agree with the above commenters that Walter Benjamin, Slavoj Zizek, and Yi-Fu Tuan should make the hit list. I also enjoyed Laurent Dubois’s two books as well as his witty reviews, although I’m hesitant to classify his work as theory.
I’d like to add the later work of E.E. Evans-Pritchard, especially Theories of Primitive Religion, for anyone interested in indigenous theory.
November 15, 2009 at 6:02 pm
serofriend
Also recent theory on economic geography (even Paul Krugman), which contributes to the pedagogy, and application of, geographic information systems.
November 16, 2009 at 5:56 pm
mcmc
I only read authors that haven’t even been published yet.
November 16, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Western Dave
Geez, is de Certeau out already? Soja, Harvey, other geographers? I do like anybody named Scott quite a bit. There’s James Scott of Seeing Like a State (hat tip: Tim Burke: although this is more applied theory than theory itself). Joan Scott (Gender as a Category of Historical Analysis) and of course, Rebecca Scott (Laurent Dubois’s dissertation adviser btw she once called the cops on the recruiting the new graduate students party, which I believe was at his apartment, but my memory of the night is foggy)
November 17, 2009 at 9:26 am
JPool
Western Dave, that a great story, or rather the suggestion of an even better story. And I’m with you on the Scotts. I’d say de Certeau is difinitely not out and quite possibly due for even greater resurgence. His ideas are, I think, becoming ubiquitous, and folks will want to reexamine the source material (much as it seems to me happened with Foucault a decade back).
November 17, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Western Dave
It was history’s year for hosting joint-anthro-history students as well as history students. Both departments had reputations for throwing great parties with lots of dancing and good food and drinks. Hm, maybe that’s why so many of us didn’t get tenure track jobs….
I still find de Certeau rewarding but the primary text is impossible to teach to high school students or even, I would guess, early college students. I’ve had better luck with Harvey and used bits of it sometimes in AP world and World History since 1300. Tried Soja with undergrads at Swat and it went past them. They liked Harvey’s Justice Nature and Geography of Difference, an overlooked work of his, I think.
November 18, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Adam Kotsko
I want to be on record as saying that Ernst Bloch is on the verge of a resurgence.
I wonder if the new book will improve Hardt & Negri’s currency. Negri seems to be moderately big among theory-oriented religion people.
You know who deserves more attention than he gets (i.e., virtually none)? Enrique Dussel.
November 19, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Michael Holloway
Mark Kingwell was kewler 3 years ago but fame is fleeting…
December 6, 2009 at 8:04 am
weserei
The trendy kids all read Zizek at my alma mater, and some of them also Agamben. Lacan and Althusser constituted “the classics.” Pretty much nobody actually read Marx seriously, though, or even Gramsci.