on theoretical allegiance

Music: Pieter Note: Our space (2006)

I've been having a lovely time this holiday break seeing friends and family. Yesterday I visited with my grandmother in the home, then with some folks in Buckhead for early supper, and ended the evening chatting with a dear friend at her home in Decatur. Within the last few years so many people I adore have moved to Atlanta or Athens, and so coming "home" now affords social opportunities that makes visits literally whoosh by.

Last night my friend challenged me with a question: why psychoanalysis? She noted that my discussions of popular culture on RoseChron always resort to a psychoanalytic lens, and much of my analysis seems to point toward a form of universalism, as if I'm after the answer. "This was never how you taught seminar," she noted, saying that my blog persona contrasts starkly with who I am in the classroom. "Not everything is about mommy, daddy, and penises," she said jokingly. Explanations of events are multiple, complex, and historically specific.

I didn't disagree with her; I worry, however, that things here appear dogmatic after her comments. I noted that this blog is often a place to "try out" arguments and test things out. I'm often deliberately polemical and not as careful as I would be, say, writing for publication. We discussed the differences between those of us with a debate background and others who haven't been trained to think in terms of the autonomy of argument. She thoughtfully suggested that perhaps part of the resistance folks have to psychoanalytic scholarship is its style of argumentation; it carries the tone of "the answer." Of course, this "I've got it!" tonal quality is central to the argumentative tradition rooted in Speech Communication.

Do you really believe, she questioned, that early childhood experiences affect behavior in the ways your arguments seem to suggest? My answer was yes, I do have to believe at some level there is a coherent truth to some of the things I argue here (and in scholarship). But I stop short of saying a psychoanalytic approach to criticism is the only approach, or that it is mutually exclusive to other approaches.

In graduate school, my coursework with Ed Schiappa taught me a lot of things, and one of them was an understanding of "theory" as vocabulary. Following Rorty, the idea is this: different theories comprise different vocabularies or "language games" that yield meaning in this way or that way. Psychoanalysis in the theoretical humanities comprises a vocabulary for formative experiences and affects that allows for certain kinds of discussions, but does not allow for others. For example, psychoanalysis has a lot to say about the individual subject. It meets a limit when we attempt to use psychoanalytic vocabularies to talk about social movements---it just has not been theorized (very well) to address questions of that scope (hence, the Freudo-Marxisms of the 20th century). Deleuzian approaches to popular culture begin from different premises (e.g., no constitutive lack) and therefore comprise a different vocabulary allowing one to make meaning of an event alternatively; Deleuze's philosophy lends itself more easily to making claims about social movements because of its affiliation, for example, with complexity theory.

I'm not sure I did a good job explaining to my friend that I did not embrace psychoanalysis as a kind of religion, but rather, as a perspective that allows me to answer certain questions. Fundamentally, I think psychoanalysis has an excellent explanatory mechanism for understanding persuasion on an individual-to-individual level, or individual to group. I do think more Deleuzian/Foucauldian approaches lend themselves to answering questions about larger social or group processes, the suasive forces of discipline and control, the function of norms, the constitutive assemblies of various dispositifs and they way they work, and so on. Theoretical fidelities should be chosen on the basis of what kinds of questions one wishes to answer.

Lately I've been moving into discussions about media ecology and "thing theory" too---I may be adopting these vocabularies because of questions I am now starting to ask (e.g., what is the role of technology in influencing how we understand speech today?). I don't see myself as inextricably wed to psychoanalysis as a scholarly identity, even though I know I have been branded with this dreaded "P" word. I wonder to what extent my own argumentative practices---here and in scholarship---contribute to this brand, and to what extent the way disciplinarily seems to work in my field contributes to this brand? Obviously it's a little of column A and a smidge from column B. I suppose I have never really thought about the import of how one's work and thinking is branded until last night. I'm grateful to my brilliant buddy for pressing the issue and making me think more deeply about the consequences of one's theoretical pieties, whether actual or attributed.