New APPS

This morning I was rereading this string, where we discussed things not to do at conferences, and I noticed a comment by Neal Hebert:

Although I can't speak for Jon on this, I do think this is a good place to point out that some of the above are next to unthinkable at conferences in other disciplines. When Jon and I jointly presented our paper at the American Society for Theatre Research in Dallas this past November, I can't recall any of the above happening.

If anything, the bigger problem was that feedback to all papers was TOO positive, and there wasn't much opportunity within the nomoi of the conference to push the speakers into considering new territory.

In addition to the ASTR conference Neal is mentioning, I've presented at a radical theology*and narratology conferences recently,** and the thing I've noticed is that the difference that Neal writes about creates potential severe incommensurabilities. In particular, other fields don't handle the question and answer session in anything like the way philosophers do. In philosophy it's perfectly licit to just give some reasons why you think the speaker's view is wrong. If you are in a philosophy conference the person will then engage in dialectic with you. But, at least in my experience, this is completely unacceptable in other fields.

This was very hard for me at the narratology conference. Since so many of the papers engaged with analytic philosophy (including panels on semantics and pragmatics, structuralist theories of narrative, fictionality, and counterfactuals), I wanted to engage with the speakers in the way we do in analytic philosophy.*** The person would be talking about somebody like Lewis, Walton, or Carroll then in the Q&A I'd do the normal philosopher thing of presenting a challenge for the view. But then there would be this long, uncomfortable silence with all of these Northern Europeans stoically grimacing at me. As it stretched out I would begin to feel like my Chihuahua mix probably does right after he defecates on the rug. After ten or so seconds of agony the moderator would just say "Next question please."

By the end of the conference I started to get the hang of it though. As with any complicated enough social skill, there is no algorithm for success, and I still found myself mystified by what made certain behavior such that it would be encouraged and certain behavior such that it provoked censorious silence. I've never really figured out how to eat correctly in a French Restaurant either (my European friends' ability to get the check in a timely manner without angering the waitstaff strikes me as magical). But I do think that I've discovered one good rule of thumb for philosophers participating in Q&As for talks given by non-philosophers; make sure that your question actually has the surface grammatical form of a question. You can do a little prologue about why you found the person's paper interesting, but you have to end by actually explicitly soliciting information from the speaker. When I started following this rule I was made to feel like a good dog by the sundry and gathered narratologists. They didn't pat me on the head or anything, but they did smile and use nice voices. It was cool.

I'd be interested in wisdom that any other people might have gleaned from interacting with non-philosophers at conferences. I used to think that the norms were different between American analytic and continental philosophers with respect to questions and answers (Python's argument clinic versus Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney), but after attending two SPEPs I'm not sure this is really the case.

[Notes:

*Speaking of radical theology, kudos to the good people at an und für sich for being counterexamples to the things I'm going to gripe about in these footnotes.

**Given the way that continental metaphysics seems to be getting over bigger in non-philosophy departments, this will probably continue.

On not getting over in philosophy departments, see this post for statistical evidence. Also note how the canonical English professors working in this field are at good English PhD programs. As with theory's heydey and philosophers of language**** (at least until the Theory's Empire anthology came out), as far as I can tell analytic metaphysicians are missing the boat here. The return of realism across wide swaths of the humanities has created a huge opening for analytic philosophers to engage in dialogue with people outside of our disciplinary niches.  This is in part why it's important to learn to do this without coming across as jerks at conferences.

***Again, philosophers missing the boat. Narratology is flourishing in Northern Europe. As a field it is far, far more like analytical aesthetics than theory motivated by post-structuralism (though there is very important post-structuralist work within the field, such as Ridvan Askin's Deleuzian theory of narrative), yet there were no analytic philosophers (except to the extent that I count as one) at the conference. If you are reading this and write about anything relating to narrative, please follow the link above and submit something next year. This is a real potential growth area for analytic aesthetics that we should not be wasting.

The Baby Boomer era circular firing squad***** approach to culture wars ended up squandering the similar opening provided in the  heydey of post-structuralist theory. If we had handled that era correctly, then the Boomers' students would have been employable at far more non-philosophy departments. And the theory being done in those departments would have been stronger.

This being said, the disconnect now between analytic philosophy of art and aesthetic theory done by non-philosophers seems to be one more of neglect than outright hostilitity. This is progress of sorts.

****Not entirely analogous. While serious inroads are being made in English departments, judging by number of presentations by first and second generation Speculative Realists by far the largest inroads are in art schools, departments, and galleries. You can check out the number of art institute and museum presentations on Graham Harman's cv or even a fraction of the cool things going on in the New York area (especially involving Reza Negarastani) and Berlin (e.g. Armen Avenessian) to get a picture of the ferment.

*****Sadly, Youtube doesn't have a video for the bit in Monty Python's Life of Brian where the crack suicide squad tries to liberate poor Brian.]