Monday, January 18, 2010

Lit Review Update 18

I’m getting a better estimate of my feelings about the future tasks associated with this literature review. What I’ve decided:

I Will Finish Bell-Fialkoff

The more I read the book, the more I understand why I hate it. Basically, a Myers-Briggs sort of framework, Bell-Fialkoff has very little intuitive capacity. He’s all sensing, all the way. Now, don’t get me wrong. Someone with a high proclivity for sensing can be an excellent researcher. But such a researcher must at least be able to draw on their intuition enough to determine the relative importance of each fact so as to guide his or her reporting. Bell-Fialkoff, poor man, doesn’t even have this to help him. As a result, the whole book reads like the research paper written by that undergrad with no experience who is simply guided by what he finds interesting. Fact follows fact, and most are non sequitur to his alleged topic. He creates mammoth typologies that may or may not have some later use. He is interested in using his imagination to a limited extent—he will, for example, share his feelings about the different types of identity he discusses and how they interact. That said, he never attempts to prove any of these impressions.

His theory chapter is the best example of this approach. It is called “Cleansing as a Metonym of Collective Identity.” Well, OED gives this definition for the term metonym:

a. Rhetoric. (A figure of speech characterized by) the action of substituting for a word or phrase denoting an object, action, institution, etc., a word or phrase denoting a property or something associated with it; an instance of this.

b. In extended use: a thing used or regarded as a substitute for or symbol of something else. Also (esp. in Linguistics and Literary Theory): the process of semantic association involved in producing and understanding a metonymy.

Because the association involved in metonymy is typically by contiguity rather than similarity, metonymy is often contrasted with metaphor.

Wikepedia’s definition is a little clearer, although I’m not sure that it’s better, which is worrisome:

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance, "London," as the capital of the United Kingdom, could be used as a metonym for its government.

So cleansing is supposed to be a shorthand method of referring to collective identity. But that, of course, makes no sense. So perhaps, annoying git that he is, Bell-Fialkoff is using the term “metonym” as a sort of metaphor. Perhaps his meaning is something along the lines of “We like to make references to groups as if they were monolithic blocks. We use the term ‘Arab’ for example, with reference to a place like Syria, Jordan or Egypt. But the truth is that all these societies contain far more than just Arabs. But we like the shorthand, so collective identity is, in a sense, a metonym for whole societies. Now, ethnic cleansing is supposed to end that state of the collective identity being a metonym. That is, if one weeds out all the individuals who do not meet the identity, then the collective identity is an objective reality and not a metonym anymore. That would at least be comprehensible. Of course, that doesn’t explain why ethnic cleansing is a metonym for collective identity. If you can think of a more literal explanation please do let me know. As is, this is the best I can do.

Titles aside, however, there is barely a reference to ethnic cleansing in the whole chapter, which appears to be nothing other than a typological survey of the different possible forms of identity ranging from ethnicity and religion to gender and sexuality. Occasionally he does discuss how politicized a form of identity can become. For example, he does not believe that feminism will become a basis for an independent state, where ethnicity can. But cleansing doesn’t seem to be in the chapter. This frustrates me greatly, because I feel that reading it is a waste of my time.

That said, he keeps getting cited. So I am going to assume that I need to know the book. Frustration has to be part of the process. So I need to avoid sitting down and doing the book at one time. That will drive me batty. If I spread it out and keep coming back to it as I do other tasks, I will be better able to digest the damn thing.

I’ll then ask Steve how to politely review the book. Yeah, I really hate the book, but I have no reason to hate this man. Sadly, the two are associated willy nilly. The problem is that I’ve found very little that is positive so far, and typically, one has to find something to praise in order to be civil in a book review. I can perhaps gesticulate at a few of the interesting thoughts he rambles about but never develops.

I’m Going to Draft a New Proposal after I’ve Read All the Theory Sections

I had initially thought I would do a complete lit review of both theories and cases and turn it into a 10,000 word review article and then distill that down as a smaller part of a theory chapter. Then I realized that I need a grant. So after I read the theory sections of all the books, I’m going to put a hold on the cleansing-by-cleansing overview of the cases. Instead, I’ll start the grant proposal.

I now despise grant writing because, of all documents, a grant proposal requires the most distillation of the most possible texts and must, ironically, be complete before the product that achieves that distillation. As “distilling in my head” is my greatest challenge as writer now, the genre of the grant proposal is my Achilles’ heel. I despise it above all others.

There is hazard here. I need a new causal model. That model requires a good distillation before I can spell it out. I had hoped to write a theory chapter before I wrote the grant proposal. I have to do the proposal first. This is genuinely frightening to me, as I have failed at this task so many times. But I need money. There’s no way around it.

My current model requires me to know at least two books by Carl Schmitt’s work inside and out. I read and marked up the text of The Concept of the Political several years ago. I still need to convert it into an outline. I need to read and mark-up Political Theology, which is at least already photocopied.

Reading Plan

So my planned reading for the term looks something like this:

Bell-Fialkoff

With all the whining about Bell-Fialkoff both here and on Facebook, you’d think I’d have gotten further. In a sense, I have. I’ve marked up Chapter 3 through p. 85, which means I’ve marked up about 29 pages out of 59. This puts me at roughly the halfway point for the chapter. But even worse than reading abstruse German theory like Hegel is reading someone who has no real idea behind his or her writing. If you suffer with Hegel, you will get something at the end of the day for having mastered the text. All I’ll get from mastering Bell-Fialkoff is the ability to say that I gave him a completely fair shake. That’s really awful motivation. I’d honestly prefer punting the book to being fair to him. That said, I will force myself to read it.

Kaufman

What irritates me about Kaufman is that I distilled him before, but probably didn’t keep the mark-up. So I know how the theory is supposed to “work” (whether it can be said to work is another matter entirely), but I don‘t have the notes for easy citation. Moreover, I distilled him down to what I judged to be the most generous possible reading—a reading that made his theory look as if it were a theory. At the time, I judged that to be rhetorically expedient. It probably still will be, but I don’t have the notes to be able to reconstruct the range of possible readings. Might as well get the homework nailed so I never have to hunt through the text again.

Rae

I discovered Rae at the library the other day. She calls ethnic cleansing “pathological homogenization,” which is why she didn’t show up on my first pass through the databases. I can’t recall how I stumbled across the book. It may have been while looking for reviews for Bell-Fialkoff to see if everyone else hates the book as much as I do. I haven’t read her argument yet, but the book looks interesting. Moreover, she provides case studies, so she gives me more historical fodder for the review of cleansings that will follow the writing of the proposal.

Bulutgil

Sadly, since she doesn’t employ case studies, I may have to read her whole dissertation at a shot, which will make this part of the theory review a bit of work. She’s a fairly clear writer, however, so at least it won’t be a great deal of suffering. I figure at this point, I’ll start with her introduction, her theory chapter and her conclusion and then make a judgment about whether I know enough to give her a place in the quick lit review that is needed for the proposal, the way I would with the case theory books, or whether I must read the whole thing at a single sitting. My guess is it’s going to look and feel a great deal like the famous Fearon and Laitin piece on civil war. It will have the same strengths and the same weaknesses.

Chirot and McCauley

This is the most difficult of the books to survey quickly. It looks as if Chirot and McCauley have engaged the literature thematically, but are not necessarily presenting any new evidence. This means that there is no “evidence” section to survey separately. If I’m to read it, I have to do the whole thing. This makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just start marking this one up now. As this piece seems to be much more of a large-scale critical survey of the literature, reading it in detail might do a great deal to contextualize me into this literature quickly. Still, it’s a whole book at a shot. Looking at it again, I see that there is a chapter that is about pre-modern mass murder. I could always slot that with the chapters from Mann, Bell-Fialkoff and Rae that are pre-modern. So maybe I don’t have to have the whole book at once. Just most of it.

Schmitt

For a German, Carl Schmitt is a very light read. He has a rare gift for being both direct and succinct. The marking up is already done for The Concept of The Political. That first box should already be gold, but I'm too lazy to fix it now. At any rate, The Concept of the Political is remarkably short and should only require a few days to convert into an outline. I’ve never read Political Theology. But there are several external clues in the critical literature that suggest that I’d find it useful.

Reading Sequence from Here

I might start with typing up the outline for The Concept of the Political, just to give myself a feeling of momentum again. Then I could do ten more pages of Bell-Fialkoff. Then do a chapter of Chirot, followed by ten more pages of Bell-Fialkoff, and work my way alternating chapters of Chirot with wretched snippers of Bell-Fialkoff. Hopefully I can then go and clean up through the smaller authors at the end and finally digest Political Theology. We’ll see how it goes.

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