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COPYRIGHT 2002 Indiana University, Purdue University of Fort Wayne
Truth and Consequences: Intentions, Conventions, and the New Thematics. By Reed Way Dasenbrock. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. x-vii + 330 pages.
Reed Way Dasenbrock's Truth and Consequences: Intentions, Conventions, and the New Thematics is a rich and thought-provoking work that says many things that ought to be of interest to philosophers of history and to reflective historians. Although I take issue with some of Dasenbrock's claims and assumptions, he deals carefully and well with a number of matters. I find myself in entire agreement with him when he touches on issues of pedagogy. I also find illuminating his discussion of the distinctly aesthetic appeal of works of art, music, and literature. I find less illuminating his deep engagement in this book with analytic philosophy. But before proceeding further, I need to convey some sense of the overall argument of the book.
The argument is difficult to summarize, for Truth and Consequences is preoccupied with two distinct sets of issues. One of these nodes is a specific theoretical or philosophical position, namely, conventionalism. Briefly put, Dasenbrock is intent on demolishing theories that hold that truth, value, and meaning are functions of consensus or agreement among specific groups. He is correspondingly intent on defending an "objective" theory of truth, value, and meaning. In other words, he argues that the truth, value, and meaning of literary and aesthetic works--indeed, truth, value, and meaning in general--are not products of our own decree. If Shakespeare's Hamlet has great aesthetic value, this is not because people decided at a certain point that it was a great works of art, but because of characteristics inherent in the play. Although Dasenbrock attacks a fairly large number of scholars for their conventionalism, he focuses on three in particular: the philosopher Richard Rorty, and the literary scholars Barbara Herrnstein Smith and Stanley Fish. Rorty is well known for having articulated a conventionalist theory of truth; Smith, for having articulated a conventionalist theory of literary and aesthetic value; and Fish, for having articulated a conventionalist theory of meaning.
The second node of Truth and Consequences is not so much a theory as it is a set of literary-critical practices. Dasenbrock calls this node "the new thematics." By this term he designates, in the first instance, an emphasis in literary studies on the themes of "race, class, and gender." He contends that this emphasis amounts to "a new paradigm, an orthodoxy" within contemporary literary studies (xvi). The "new thematics," as Dasenbrock sees it, is more than simply a race/class/gender emphasis. What he really has in mind is a wider and deeper view--namely, that we should take "group ideology" as "the central category in the analysis and specification of [literary] meaning." According to Dasenbrock, adherents of the new thematics maintain that we "read ... as we are socially constructed: women read as women, men read as men, gays as gays, lesbians as lesbians" (137). Such a position is in some ways close to conventionalism, for, in the "new thematic" view, the meaning, truth, and value of literary works hang on those works' articulation of group values and commitments. Group values and commitments are nothing other than conventions--although the "new thematics" adds to plain conventionalism a preoccupation with questions of identity. Thus the new thematics, as described by Dasenbrock, holds that we must read and evaluate authors in the light of the group identities to which they...
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