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First, some miscellaneous thoughts:

A very basic assumption for Sosnoski is that people and characteristics of people can be spoken of as essentially ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’; furthermore, ‘feminine’ is good and ‘masculine’ is bad, and not in a merely metaphorical way. Is it useful to talk label a certain type of literary theory ‘feminine’ and another ‘masculine’?

It’s interesting that Sosnoski uses the concept of the Magister Implicatus: it’s a male personification, as opposed to the more usual female ones i.e. Liberty, Justice, Mary-Anne, etc.

His device in the opening section of repeating the phrase, “this is an essay about …” but with a different ending each time … I like that. Why shouldn’t a scholar be very clear about zir’s agenda?

Is a 19^th century gentleman preferable to a 20^th century businessman? Sosnoski seems to suggest this. “Back in the good old days …” Though I’d rather find my calling than pursue a career.

From footnote 13: “Far more important than the deconstruction of literary texts is the politicization of literary study, a project in which feminists have led the way.” Could a woman say that? Would a woman take so much credit?

Now, some thoughts that all hang together:

He writes in the format he criticizes, with footnotes and everything! On the surface, I see no difference.

-footnotes are a sign of the evil of masculinity and patriarchy, because they embody verification and falsification (pg 59)

-In the epilogue of Theorizing Myth, Bruce Lincoln said “If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes.” He considers footnotes to be the least ideological and the least narrative (what is this close link between ideology and narrative?) portion of scholarly texts.

“Ideally, footnotes mark the fact that a scholarly text is not a discourse of free invention, wherein ideological interests escape all controls. Rather, they serve as a visible reminder that scholarly texts result from a dialectic encounter between an interested inquirer, a body of evidence, and a community of other competent and interested researchers, past, present, and future. All who participate are committed to a sustained engagement with the data and also with one another, their engagements being mediated by shared principles of theory and method, which – like the evidence and its interpretation – are subject to renegotiation in the space of their texts and conversations. Scholarship implies and depends on debate wherein one experiences the scrutiny and criticism of others who are able to point to data and invoke established principles of method. In so doing, they act as a check on ideological manipulation. This check is important, even though it is never entirely effective, since critics also have their ideological interest and themselves must be subject to scrutiny and critique.”

Lincoln seems to fall between Sosnoski and the Magister Implicatus: Lincoln advocates for objectivity, but no one person is capable of it; indeed, the community is not capable of it. Nevertheless, we must try. The very footnotes which Sosnoski objects to (or is just how they’re used that he objects to) are central to the attempt. Is Lincoln describing a kind of communal story-telling? Can scholarship be practiced that way? Is it practiced like that already, when not at it’s worst?

-How does Sosnoski use footnotes? Is he consciously, pointedly not using them for either verification and falsification?

Some other thoughts, on then nature of story-telling and the pleasure of having no hierarchy for the tellings:

“We know that Hamlet was no woman in disguise” (pg 61); immediately, I want to write a version of Hamlet in which he is a woman in disguise, it’s a challenge! Perhaps he’s transgender? Though describing a transgender person as a man or woman in disguise is problematic, excitingly so. Perhaps there was a reason to hide his true sex? Why? Who knows? How vast is the conspiracy, or is it an open secret? And is there anything in the play which can be used toward the end of explaining how Hamlet might be a woman?

This reaction is the result of my long exposure to fandom, which is what happens when fans of a particular book, tv show, movie, etc. wonder ‘what if?’ and then write it; or they wonder what so-and-so was thinking when that happened, or what the background is for an underdeveloped or minor character, or what kind of sexual relationship those two characters would have, or what will happen next, and they write it. As my friend Dana put it:

I've never watched it, but I believe the format of Iron Chef is the same as that chef competition I read a book about: you just turn up for the competition, and they give you a couple of sheet pans with, f'rex, a duck, some hanger steaks, figs, broccoli rabe, sand dabs, raspberry jam, fava beans, and banana liqueur. And everybody else gets the same stuff, and you know the judges are going to be pretty bored if you cook exactly what they expect. They may feel better about it if your technique is impeccable, but...

And that's how I think of canon. Everybody gets the same ingredients, although there will be various opinions about whether the show jumped the sand dabs (or at what point). But I'm always more interested in whether a story is interesting and fresh than its degree of canon compliance because, if I wanted something really canonical I'd read/watch canon.

PS--if lyrstzha decided to make, like, duck *ice cream* I bet it would be great.

I have vastly enjoyed several tellings of the same story, as a result. My liking has depended far more on the skill of the writer than on the premise. Indeed, one of my very favorite things about fandom is how unexpected it can be; a talented writer can make anything into a good story, and more likely than not it won’t have to be a satire or parody to be good. It might have to be AU, but it can still be, in a way, in this telling, true to the characters, and true, just as true as canon. In The Telling, a novel by Ursula K. le Guin:

[Story-telling is a central part of the old culture/religion/practices of Aka] But these stories weren’t gospel. They weren’t Truth. They were essays at truth. Glances, glimpses of sacredness. One was not asked to believe, only to listen.

“Well, that’s how I learned the story,” they would say, having told a parable or recounted a historical episode or recited an ancient and familiar legend. “Well, that’s the way this telling goes.”

The holy people in their stories achieved holiness, if that was what it was, by all kinds of different means, none of which seemed particularly holy to Sutty. There were no rules, such as poverty chastity obedience … There were no rules. There was always an alternative. The story-tellers, when they commented on the legends and histories they told, might point out that that had been a good way or a right way of doing something, but they never talked about the right way. And good was an adjective always …

All that said, the fen are perfectly capable of becoming deeply invested in one particular telling, to the point of vicious argument; they don’t all delight in variety. Still, fandom provides an opportunity to share and enjoy multiple tellings.

The location and mode of legitimate, valid Truth has changed. Is Sosnoski aware that mythos was once where truth was kept? In Homeric times and before, mythos meant truthful speech, logos meant false. This changed as a result of the invention of writing. (According to one scholarly story, one which I find beguiling.) Mythos was associated with young men, women, tricky and untrustworthy characters; logos with masculine warlike honest men. This seems similar to Sosnoski’s observation that in traditional criticism, arguments are characterized as intellectual masculinity, quarrels as female (pg 71). He also equates personified Logos with a frightening punishing father (pg 58). Truth was gendered for the ancient Greeks, and it is gendered for Sosnoski. Truth and knowledge are markers of power, of status. For most of history, truth has one way or another been more in the domain (if that’s the right way to put it) of men: if it’s an old wives’ tale, it doesn’t contain much truth; women were denied access to education so that they couldn’t break into scholarly story-telling.

And therefore …