One of the basic tenets of the school of neo-sincerity to which I belong is difficult to formulate in any rigorous way. Come to think of it, that's perfectly natural since neo-sincerity isn't inclined to formulate anything in a rigorous way. I'm reminded of Sextus Empiricus' hopelessly circular set of principals and definitions of skepticism in Phyrronian Inquiries (neo-sinceritists and Phyrronian skeptics are natural allies and sometimes in outright cahoots). The circularity and non-apodicticity were part of the point.

The same kind of loose argumentation figures in the way that neo-sinceritists are inclined to view problems of historical understanding. From certain, non-neo-sincere, kinds of perspectives, it is a constant problem as to how one can enter into the thought or understanding of another era. This kind of 'epochal' thinking views history as a series of epistemic breaks more than as anything profoundly continuous. And there are, of course, truths to this way of thinking. There is no question that the world of, say, Late Antiquity of North Africa is opaque and difficult to 'get inside of' for anyone raised in the contemporary West.

The problem, from a neo-sincere point of you, is when this difficulty is made the stepping stone for a series of theoretical constructions that propose to solve this concern by reifying it. The neo-sinceritist is inclined to say 'relax', don't get yourself in an analytical tizzy. Simply read more, immerse yourself more, and the problem will tend to dissolve of its own accord. This is because the neo-sinceritist is reasonably convinced that a kind of low level universalism without a big 'U' is so embedded, so manifest, to the actual experiences of human beings on this planet that it doesn't need to be proven through such overwrought and generally boring epistemological fireworks.

The neo-sinceritist sees communication everywhere and therefore quickly tires of the various proofs of its a priori impossibility. (For those still rapt in attention, this is the root basis of the sometimes noted alliances between neo-sinceritists and Wittgenstinians.) Meaning, to put it another way, is taken by the neo-sinceritist to be self-evidently a vast, if bumpy, continuum that stretches across time and space in no particular order. Neo-sinceritists don't get that bent out of shape wondering about how we got meaning in the first place (though, paradoxically, we're amazed and excited often by those who do). Instead, neo-sinceritists are more excited by the prospect of mucking about in the available swamps and hot houses of meaning that are already here. "Let's get to the bottom of this meaning thing once and for all" says the one kind of philosopher. "OK . . . " replies the neo-sinceritist warily "but wait, there's so more of it over in that clump of funny stuff!" and rushes off haphazardly, having already forgotten the earlier question.

All this is preface to some intriguing comments by Frank Kermode on the nature of classics and in particular Wuthering Heights. I had the opportunity, recently, to read Wuthering Heights again. Actually, I read it aloud, all in one night, as part of a rather ridiculous, in the good sense, Flux Factory project. A group of ten or so read different classics aloud, all in one room, at one sitting. In doing so, I found that I neither understood nor appreciated Wuthering Heights any more than I did the first time reading it, which was hardly at all. Maybe it was the circumstances of reading it, unusual as they were, but I don't think so.

This brings us back to Kermode, and Foucault, and epistemic epoches, and the nature of the classic. Kermode makes the following claim in his essay about Wuthering Heights.

We may accept, in some form, the view proposed by Michel Foucault, that our period discourse is controlled by certain unconscious constraints, which make it possible for us think in some ways to the exclusion of others. However subtle we may be at reconstructing the constraints of past epistèmes, we cannot ordinarily move outside the tacit system of our own; it follows that except by extraordinary acts of divination we must remain out of close touch with the probability systems that operated for the readers of the Aeneid or of Wuthering Heights. And even if one argues, as I do, that there is clearly less epistemic discontinuity than Foucault's crisis-philosophy proposes, it seems plausible enough that earlier assumptions about continuity were too naïve.

If this is true, than the neo-sinceritist must be a little more careful about those same assumptions, the ones I earlier called universal with a small 'U'. This is especially true when bumping into texts like Wuthering Heights, which, for whatever reasons, fail to yield to us the repositories of meaning that they otherwise promise. On the other hand, I take Kermode's point to be in basic agreement with the neo-sincere position. Which is to say, meaning hides along the vast spacial-temporal expanse in which it resides. There are pockets and dark spots that, though by no means inaccessible a priori, are hard to get to from whatever peaks and dales of the expanse we happen to find ourselves in the here and now. When we find those dark spots, it means that greater work is required to get to them or they are simply going to be overlooked. Maybe even with the extra labor things there will maintain a kind of dimness. The final paragraph of Kermode's essay puts all of this in a rather nice way.

For what was thought of as beyond time, as the angels, or as the majestas populi Romani, or the imperium were beyond time, inhabiting a fictive perpetuity, is now beyond time in a more human sense; it is here, frankly vernacular, and inhabiting the world where alone, we might say with Wordsworth, we find our happiness--our felicitous readings--or not at all. The language of the new Mercury may strike us as harsh after the songs of Apollo; but the work he contemplates stands there, in all its native plurality, liberated not extinguished by death, the death of writer and reader, unaffected by time yet offering itself to be read under our particular temporal disposition. 'The work proposes, man disposes.' Barthes' point depends upon our recalling that the proverb originally made God the disposer. The implication remains that the classic is an essence available to us under our dispositions, in the aspect of time. So the image of the imperial classic, beyond time, beyond vernacular corruption and change, had perhaps, after all, a measure of authenticity; all we need to do is bring it down to earth.

- posted by morgan @ 3:22 PM