gone Fishin'

Stanley Fish gave a lecture here on Thursday night. I ended my grad course early so we could all go and, I gotta say, I wasn't really expecting to be as impressed as I was. The man can argue. I think this might say a little bit about the man: ISU's provost said a few things about him and then turned it over to Gary Olson, Dean of CAS, who told a story about a debate he'd witnessed between Fish and Dinesh D'Souza. When Fish took the podium, he corrected parts of Olson's story. It was x, not y, that happened.

His talk was called "Three on a Match: Intelligent Design, Holocaust Denial, Postmodernism." I'll try my best to reconstruct from my notes his primary claims which aren't actually all that surprising, but when so incredibly well argued, strike one dumb. Okay. Postmodernism's insistence on tolerance, often at the expense of judgment, has allowed far-right conservatives to argue for things like Intelligent Design by hitching their wagon to pomo's values of fairness, free inquiry, and open debate. Intelligent Design, they argue, has been marginalized, and aren't we in the academy committed to hearing all voices, regardless of how unpopular, perhaps because they're unpopular? Because pomo has insisted on the historicity of all claims and the fallibilism of all human judgment, proponents of Intelligent Design can argue for taking the long view of history: because we don't know what will happen in the future--Intelligent Design might be demonstrated to be completely valid--we should ignore the lack of evidence and the judgment of the scientific community in favor of pluralism. But Fish argued that the long view of history doesn't tell us how to respond to questions now. He's disturbed--disgusted--that there are no criteria for ruling out those who exploit the values of postmodernism--so that proponents of Intelligent Design and Holocaust deniers are heard despite the fact that they have no new evidence to present. No claim, in these cases, can ever be disallowed. There's never anything at stake if we aren't looking at the nitty gritty of the argument. It's not a real argument if it's continually sold as the case for "open debate." How can anyone be against open debate, especially in the academy?

The mistake, Fish argues, is to think that the historicity of claims to truth invalidates them. Postmodern thought renders all accounts equally the products of human judgment--they're equally historical--but they're not equal in any other respect. All the important differences remain.

Here's the thing about Fish's talk: it was so well argued that, unless you were paying very close attention to the subtle nuances of his argument, it would be easy to hear Fish as arguing against pluralism and open debate. At one point he said something along the lines of "diversity as an agenda makes no sense at all." I can totally see someone hearing that, taking it out of the context of his discussion of postmodernism, and labeling Fish as anti-diversity.

People did actually line up to ask questions after his talk. Fish said something like, "line up and I'll shoot you all." One audience member began with this: "I followed your talk. I disagree with it, but I followed it." To which Fish responded, "Clearly you didn't follow it." At first I understood that as primarily an arrogant response: how can anyone disagree with Stanley Fish? But as I was driving home I realized that he meant it quite literally: if you followed his talk, you'd understand that intellectual response isn't about agreeing or disagreeing, it's about marshalling arguments. Opinion, he said at one point, is just bullshit.

Final note: I can't believe it, but I actually DIDN'T require my rhetoric students to attend this lecture. What kind of teacher am I? I've been so overwhelmed and so exhausted this semester that it somehow slipped my mind. Ugh.