thegreatdivide wrote on Dec 30^th, 2024 at 12:32pm:

So why doesn't China destroy its nuclear weapons?
You forgot to tell us.

The Conservative Turn in Literary Studies
In a time of uncertainty, scholars seek a return to the fundamentals.

There’s a conservative turn happening in literary studies, although it hasn’t received much public attention. Those involved certainly haven’t banded together under a banner. In literature departments, there are no “conservatives” to compete with, say, “surface readers” or any other new, branded trend. In fact, it seems likely that those engaged in the movement are not fully aware they belong to it. After all, it isn’t easy to call oneself a conservative in the humanities these days. Yet this conservative turn is significant. It marks a pivotal moment of recognition in the discipline of English’s history.

What defines the conservative turn? A return to disciplinary bedrock, an insistence that the methods and purposes that first defined the discipline be respected and, in some form or other, resuscitated. The conservative turn also, therefore, revives interest in the discipline’s history. It remembers and reappraises not just English’s pathways and achievements but also its core values.

Only a small number of people are involved in this conservative turn. But it is nevertheless driven by powerful political and historical forces. It should be better understood — and, at least in part, endorsed.

The rest here:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-conservative-turn-in-literary-studies?bc_n...

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 16^th, 2025 at 5:02pm:

Ah, you didnt make it past the first triggering word.
Sad.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 17^th, 2025 at 4:57pm:


The article is about literature, incomprehending parrot.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 25^th, 2025 at 7:02am:

Literature is not about the economy, mong.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 25^th, 2025 at 6:02pm:


I am comparmentalising you as a complete **** idiot in the same compartment as Bbwiyawn, thicko as mince-o, gweggy turd, arse sniffing paki and their ilk.

You are a monomaniac like them.  Different bee, different bonnet, same ****ing derangement.

To repeat: The conservative turn is being made by people who are not, in terms of electoral politics, conservative at all. The conservative turn is only conservative in the context of the academic humanities, not in terms of wider social politics. Indeed, paradoxically, the disciplinary conservative turn belongs to the left.

Disciplinary conservatism can avoid becoming entangled with those forms of the humanities that take on the role of society’s conscience.

In the face of this paradox, perhaps our first challenge in trying to understand the conservative turn concerns the word “conservative” itself. Instead of being petrified by it, we need to re-examine it. We need to think about its various, in fact very different, modalities and its various relations to culture and society both historically and conceptually. Such an effort is especially useful today because it seems as if conservativism, in some of its modes at least, can stand against the popular authoritarianisms that have recently become so powerful around the world.

At the same time, disciplinary conservatism can avoid becoming entangled with those forms of the humanities that take on the role of society’s conscience — let’s call them the evangelical humanities. Once the evangelical humanities embraced identity rather than class politics, they were endorsed by the educated class quite generally. But, as many have noted, that triggered a reaction that has helped unleash popular authoritarianisms. Disciplinary conservatism pushes back on this process.