Stanley Fish

Stanley Fish (born 1938) is a prominent literary theorist. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is among the most important critics of Milton in the 20th century, and is often associated, at times to his irritation, with post-modernism. Currently, he is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, teaching in the FIU College of Law.

Academic career

Fish did his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania ^* and earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1962. He taught English at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University before becoming Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke University from 1986 to 1998. From 1999 to 2004 he was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After stepping down as Dean, Fish spent a year teaching in the Department of English. In June of 2005, he accepted the position of Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, teaching in the FIU College of Law.

Milton

Fish's academic work began with his critical analysis of the seventeenth century poet's work. Two of Fish's books, Surprised By Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost 1967, and How Milton Works, 2001, reflect over five decades of his scholarship analyzing Milton.

Interpretive communities

As a literary theorist, Fish is best known for his analysis of interpretive communities — an offshoot of reader-response criticism. Fish's work in this field examines how the interpretation of a text is dependent upon each reader's own subjective experience in one or more communities, each of which are defined as a 'community' by a distinct epistemology. Although Fish argues that the only possible meaning of a text is what the author intends, he claims that any actual attempt to discern this meaning is based upon the interpretive community of the reader making the interpretation. Fish distinguishes the former as an epistemological point about what texts mean, whereas the latter is a sociological one about how claims about those meanings are produced.

An illustration of these interpretive communities — as Fish likes to relate to as a model — is that of baseball umpire Bill Klem, who once waited a long time to call a particular pitch. The player asked him, impatiently, "Well, is it a ball or strike?" Klem's reply: "Sonny, it ain't nothing 'til I call it." What Fish is saying is, balls and strikes are not undeniable truths; rather, they "come into being only on the call of an umpire."

His famous essay "How to Recognize a Poem When You See One" ^* (from the book Is There a Text in This Class?) deals with similar issues of individual freedom of interpretation and cultural influence, and uses the example of a class he taught where a group of students took a list of random names on the board and assumed it was a religious poem just because Fish told them that it was, and because that was their area of expertise. Fish concludes that culture fills our minds with assumptions and beliefs that are not only similar, but "alike in fine detail," and, because of this, individual originality and creativity are convenient fictions of our time.

Fish and university politics

A prominent public intellectual, and a hard man to pin down politically, Fish has spent considerable time in various public arenas vigorously debunking pieties of both the left and the right — sometimes in the same sentence.

In addition to his work in literary criticism, Fish has also written extensively on the politics of the university, having taken positions justifying campus speech codes and criticizing political statements by universities or faculty bodies on matters outside their professional areas of expertise.

Recently, Fish participated in a forum regarding the proper role of universities, which appeared in the September 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine; the article, in which Fish appeared alongside notable intellectuals, David Gelernter, Lani Guinier, and Elizabeth Hoffman, is entitled: "Affirmative reaction: When Campus Republicans Play the Diversity Card."

Fish has lectured across the country at many universities and colleges including Harvard University, the University of Georgia, the University of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, and Bates College recently.

Fish and deconstruction

Fish has said that deconstruction: "relieves me of the obligation to be right . . . and demands only that I be interesting." Charles Murray of the conservative Hoover Institute calls that "a silly thing for a grown man to say and a criminal thing for a teacher to say."^* On the other hand, Fish has also spoken passionately about the fact that he considers being right his highest academic responsibility.

Works

By Stanley Fish

Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (Harvard University Press; 1967).

Interpreting the Variorum (Published in Critical Inquiry; 1976)
Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Harvard University Press; 1980).

Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Duke University Press; 1989).

There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, and it's a Good Thing, Too (Oxford University Press; 1994). A collection of essays. The essay with the same title as the book and an additional essay, "Jerry Falwell's Mother" are insightful regarding free speech issues. In particular, if -- as Fish notes -- one has some answer in mind to the question "what is free speech good for?" along the lines of "in the free and open clash of viewpoints the truth can more readily be known" then it is the height of stupidity to defend deliberate malicious libel in the name of "free speech."

Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (Harvard University Press; 1999).

The Trouble with Principle (Harvard University Press, 1999).

How Milton Works (Harvard University Press; 2001).

Criticism and/or Analysis of Stanley Fish’s work

The Stanley Fish Reader, edited by H. Aram Veeser (Blackwell Publishers Ltd; 1999).

Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Work of Rhetoric, by Gary A. Olson (State University Press of New York; 2002).

Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise, edited by Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham (State University of New York Press; 2004).

External links

Stanley Fish in the Johns Hopkins University Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism.
Stanley Fish interview at the minnesota review, (March 3, 2000).
FIU College of Law bio of Stanley Fish
Leading Professor Stanley Fish to Join FIU Law Faculty
Stanley Fish begins blogging for the New York Times (The actual blog is available only through a TimesSelect subscription)
"The Idea of Progress: Once Again, with Feeling", by Charles Murray in the Hoover digest.

スタンリー・フィッシュ

1938 births | American literary critics | Living people | Rhetoricians | Duke University faculty