Why Can't I Be a Modernist? Or, on Terriers and Blind Terror

Music: Camper Van Beethoven: New Roman Times Part of my job as a scholar is to write essays and publish them in academic journals. These journals are typically read by other academics, less so students, and of course, rarely the general public. I've been asked on a number of occasions to speak about my experience as a writer working on publishing in an academic context. Three years ago, as a graduate student about to become an assistant professor, I wrote an article--with a tongue firmly planted in my cheek--about my experiences publishing in the discipline of communication studies. Although my tone was deliberately bratty and playful, the gist of what I said then remains true today: rarely do reviewers take an essay on its own terms, but filter it through a particular intellectual agenda or political allegiance that is embodied. Owing to years of reading, studying, and writing, reviewers are inevitably disposed--myself included.

At this point in my scholarly career, having an article rejected is routine. Sure, rejection still stings on some level, but I've learned that tenacity, or alternately, adopting the figure of the terrier as a patron doggie-saint, leads to success eventually. I've also learned in the past three years that folks in my discipline are pretty hostile toward psychoanalysis, since apparently it's another dreaded 'p" word. Here's a recent rejection I received on a manuscript that attempts to explain the appeal of Huey Long to Louisianans in terms of neurotic structures:

I am counseling rejection for "Hystericizing Huey: Psychoanalysis, Charismatic Monumentalism, and Southern Demagoguery."

I am not rejecting the essay on propriety grounds: "this isn't a fit with The More Conservative Journal in Rhetorical Studies; try publishing it in a journal more amenable to theory." I am not rejecting it on theoretical grounds: "this ain't Aristotle or KB so it must not be very good." Nor do I counsel rejection based on what strikes me as a very clear desiring of the Other: "the David Foster Wallace meets Slavoj Zizek thing gets a bit old--just like the Rolling Stones." Nor do I reject on the Butt-head principle since you invoke our misfits at the outset: "Turds, wieners and butts--or a little something for everyone, Beavis." Nor even the myriad of sloppy mistakes that pepper each page. No, my counsel to reject is far more mundane.

First, the idea that all of emotion (and thus ethos, too) in a rhetorical encounter is reducible to the body is not defensible nor defended. [Josh: nor is it ever argued or suggested] Sure, I think much charisma has a bodily locus, but to reduce the complexities of emotion to a speaker's body is just a bit overdrawn. Do words simply have no place in the Lacanian scheme of emotional things? If not, perhaps Jacques needs a bit of Aristotelian updating (and surely you'll note that in Book II of On Rhetoric, the lispy Macedonian talks extensively about the body as it relates to pathos; sans mirrors, though). And speaking of mirrors, the Lacanian Moment of Moments appears rooted in the biological. To wit, "Lacan later argued that the imaginary phallus is simply the object-form of GESTALT of the body, something that the pre-symbolic subject can identity with (principally because she senses something is missing from her image of the body)." I'm curious to know how our pre-symbolic gal can figure this one out, since "she" doesn't yet exist in the realm of language. I wonder how her "sense" can be anything but biological. How can she "miss" something she never had, sans the symbolic? If it isn't biology, I wonder if we're into auto-mysticism. Thus is desire innate? Or mystic? Third, and not unrelated to the preceding point, the author is frighteningly clear that theoretical pluralism isn't in the cards. The invocation of "must" just has a whiff of rhetorical Jihadism about it. Finally, the author seems really to be something of a traditionalist at heart: explaining effects and the successes of Huey Long. A thoroughly Wichelns-ian project. To my way of thinking, though, answering this all-important rhetorical question can't be done with theory; it needs to be done with real people in real historical moments--not "unconscious" subjects being diagnosed by rhetorical clinicians, however expert.

As my reviews go, this one is actually pretty funny (I enjoyed the snide humor, even if it was directed at my work). Of course, I didn't say pathotic appeals were reducible to "the body," nor do I disavow a "pluralism" of approaches. Nor do I jettison the work of Wicheln's--indeed, I embrace Herbie (even wrote an article with Laura on why we should admire the Wichelns-ian). Yeah, the essay still needs some work before it's ready to go out again to someone else. Even so, this reviewer does a nice job of illustrating the perceived incongruity of (theoretical) idioms—of a certain kind of embodied disposition.

Apparently I'm a postmodernist who doesn’t realize he’s a modernist. For the bystander, ”postmodernist” is a label some people in my field use to characterize those folks or that work that they do not like.

I'm a modernist, aren't I?