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“The New Ptolemaism” in the humanities and social sciences

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 15–MORE DISCUSSION WELCOME

The author of this piece is a gender critical feminist, but I found more interesting its description of "the New Ptolemaism" than its particular application to debates about trans identity:

This is a push for scholarship to be insistently insular and to be much less interested in the study of the world than in the study of the study of the world. This kind of work, which is by now very common in the social sciences and humanities, performs the same neat trick every time. It turns out, in every such analysis, that the framing of inquiry turns out to be more significant than the object of inquiry. Inevitably, the most important research site thus becomes academia itself because academia is where the framing happens. Any real understanding of the world–and any disruption of it–must on this view begin within the academy. The academy becomes the center around which everything else revolves, and the most profound forms of intervention into systems of “power/knowledge,” to use Foucault’s famous phrase, are those that upend academic conventions.

Curious whether this rings true to any readers.  Please confine the discussion to this idea (and to whether Foucault is fairly implicated in it).

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15 responses to ““The New Ptolemaism” in the humanities and social sciences”

  1. Dean C. Rowan

    This passage and Lowrey's piece bring to mind Randall Collins' The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (2000), and for a few reasons. First, Collins seems to have anticipated Lowrey's worry that the academy is too insular, but he finds a degree of insularity necessary for intellectual progress. The book is enormous. No doubt there are plentiful examples, but here from the Introduction is a paragraph that illustrates the dynamic Collins observes:

    "One may claim that the personal is political, and that there is no rigid separation between what intellectuals do and the economic, political, ethnic, and gendered relations of the surrounding historical era. But the level at which such statements are true cannot be fixed in advance of research on the way intellectual networks operate. The personal is political, but the politics of intellectual practice, within the inwardly focused network of specialists, is not the same thing as the politics of gaining power in the state, or the politics of men and women in their homes or sexual encounters. Winning the focus of attention within the contests among philosophers is done with specifically intellectual resources, which are social resources specific to intellectual networks. There is abundant historical evidence that when players in this arena try to win their way solely with the weapons of external politics, they win the battle at the cost of their intellectual reputations in the long-term historical community. These are not the same game; and at those times in history when one game reduces to another, the intellectual game does not so much give in as disappear, to reappear only when an inner space becomes available for it again. Without an internal structure of intellectual networks generating their own matrix of arguments, there are no ideological effects on philosophy; we find only lay ideologies, crude and simple."

    Second, Collins depicts intellectual work in terms of "contests." The first sentence of the Introduction states, "Intellectual life is first of all conflict and disagreement." Granted, his view of insularity isn't as reflexive as Lowrey's, nor is disagreement merely a matter of what Lowrey deems "topsy-turvy" disruption, nevertheless there are battles to be won, winners on top, losers on the bottom. But Collins isn't focusing on the postmodern moment. He refers precisely once to Foucault, and even then only to include him among a recital of links in the intellectual network springing from early 20th century French philosophers toward "the fog of the present." Instead, the historical scope of the book, like the volume itself, is vast. "This book presents the dynamics of conflict and alliance in the intellectual networks which have existed longest in world history."

    Finally, to explain why he chose such a vast scope for his intellectual history–at a time when "we face new obstacles to understanding," when we "suffer from cognitive overload, from having amassed too much information to assimilate it"–Collins deploys the very "neat trick" Lowery describes. "Some might say that the [book's] effort undermines itself; that this of all times in world history is the least appropriate for a comparative, global eye, seeking out the universal and fundamental. But opposites structure one another; I could equally well say that no time in history is better suited for the effort."

    In sum, Collins suggests that the stage was set long ago for a cosmological theory that places institutions of intellectual labor at the center.

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  2. Ptolemy Fan

    Don’t slander the poor Ptolemaic system! It was very useful and predictively accurate for quite a long time (even when the Copernican system emerged), and therefore relevantly disanalogous to the object of the author’s critique.

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  3. Gordon Barnes

    This seems right to me, and I think it’s exactly what one should expect. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the ideas of any privileged class function to legitimize the social status of that class. The most prominent ideas of such a class will include ideas that successfully perform this function — they justify the status of the class. Now suppose that one such class is an intellectual class — a class that thinks about ideas. Then the ideas of this class will include ideas that justify the privilege of people who think about ideas. Now here is an idea that will perform that function very well — the idea that the way people think about the world is actually much more important than the things in the world that they think about. If that is true, then of course the people who think about ideas should occupy a position of power and privilege in society. In fact, they alone are the ones who can really save us. They’re a kind of priesthood, and they should be treated as such. That idea is just what you would expect to hear from them (hypothetically speaking, of course).

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  4. Martin Mellish

    There's an old phrase for this, I think: 'le trahison des clercs'. Unfortunately, if the Academy does its job in a biased or self interested manner, others (rabble rousers, extremists of various kinds) will rush in to fill the intellectual gaps so left, and do an incompetent and dangerous job of it.

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  5. Ptolemy Fan

    All this hermeneutics of suspicion in this thread leaves me cold. I'm not that sympathetic with the object of the author's critique, but I don't see why the same sort of suspicion can't be raised against the so-called non-privileged, non-intellectual classes too. Presumably, they think they shouldn't be "subjugated" by the intellectual elites, or whatever. They're the salt of the earth; they deserve respect for all their efforts. But let's not be so naïve: it's time to be suspicious. They only adopt that ideology of resentment because it's in their self-interest. So, what? Is it all just power politics at the end of the day?

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  6. Jonathan

    What could be more "Ptolemaic" as defined by this article–" less interested in the study of the world than in the study of the study of the world"– than a website tracking the micro-movements, internal squabbles, and fine-grained rankings of a single, relatively small discipline in the humanities? Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld might say.

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  7. Assistant English prof

    I agree with a lot of what's been posted already. Certainly one can say "it was ever thus" and find plenty of evidence — and no one has said it better than Collins. (Stefan Collini is good on this particular genre of complaint, as well as on what has actually changed in academia.) That said, I do think that there's been a shift in the prominence of meta-analysis and disciplinary introspection in the humanities. But I don't think this reflects insularity on the part of the humanities. I think it's the opposite. Public interest isn't centered on the content of humanities fields but on the academy itself, and more broadly, questions of professionalization, status, and representation, as a glance at any newspaper seems to me to illustrate. In my field, English, changes in the high school curriculum and changed (decreased) reading habits of educated adults have led to the loss (or at least reduction) of a public beyond the academy for general interest studies of literature, especially anything older. It's very hard to imagine a public for The Rise of the Novel outside the academy today — who reads Clarissa except academics? There's a lot to say about the how and why of this. The effect, though, is to make humanities departments into quasi-education departments (a field whose influence seems only to grow), that is, meta-fields concerned with professional structure and social impact, not with any field of knowledge. It's the university itself, not literature per se, that's interesting to the educated public, and to academics themselves, insofar as they are members of that public. The rise of creative writing, which is essentially propping up English enrollments these days, is another symptom of the same process — the shift away from content — in my view. 

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  8. Rollo Burgess

    I agree with lots of the substantive points made in Lowrey's piece but find the analogy with Ptolemaic cosmology, borrowed from Gabriel Rockhill, a bit strained. In Rockhill's essay which Lowrey cites he seems to be likening Ptolemaic cosmology to Foucault's theories with the role of Copernican cosmology being played by Marxism, which is a bit weird as Marxism predated Foucault, whereas Ptolemy lived 1200 years before Copernicus.

    But I agree with the point which I take to be being made that various of these broadly 'woke' ideas function as objectively conservative devices, insofar as they distract attention from looking at the economic roots of social and cultural problems.

    Re Foucault, I've read very little but completely anecdotally – I did my BA in Philosophy & Politics and an MA in Political Theory; my BA was v Anglo-American 'analytic' and included zero Foucault, but in my MA I did a course called 'The Enlightenment and its critics' (great course) which included reading bits of his stuff. The course had some people with a philosophy background and some whose BAs were in Cultural Studies etc. I was fascinated by the way the latter read Foucault – they didn't in any way engage critically with his points, but read him reverentially like a medieval monk reading scripture, and were confused and irritated if people disagreed with his work.

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  9. Canadian Philosopher

    The article is worth taking seriously. Professor Lowrey argues that there are three elements that together threaten to undermine the academy. The “new Ptolemaism” is one piece but is combined with: (2) the Foucault-inspired insistence that academics identify a hierarchically arranged binary and then work to invert it; and (3) the surprising alliance between two groups: (i) the professional managerial class currently running universities; and (ii) a large percentage of social science and humanities faculty, which both, for different reasons, see the traditional/current university as in need of reconstitution, if not outright dismantling. My experience, which includes multiple terms as chair of a department, suggests that all three phenomena exist to different but significant (and generally increasing) degrees, and may well add up to a non-trivial threat to universities as most people over the age of fifty understand them. A particular concern that professor Lowrey raises is how the public and its elected officials will view the value of supporting institutions of higher learning if they are remade in the way she fears.

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  10. Gordon Barnes

    Like many other professions, the academic profession has grown rapidly over the last few decades. The total number of faculty at degree-granting institutions increased by about 50% from 1999 to 2018 — from 1 million to 1.5 million. (If you go back to 1970, I think it was about 550,000.). That is part of a larger trend, in which many professions have grown rapidly. That might have contributed to greater insularity in a couple of ways. First, as the profession gets larger, it becomes a world of its own. The sheer quantity of production in the profession has increased enormously, which encourages, or even requires attention by people in the profession. Second, and related to that, the competition within the profession becomes much more intense. That might also encourage members of the profession to pay more attention to what fellow professionals are doing. The result would be more attention to what is happening in the profession, and less attention to the rest of the world. This is all just speculation, of course. But the increased insularity appears, to me, to be somewhat correlated with the recent growth of the profession.

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  11. James

    I am – in a very minimal sense – sympathetic with the author. My persuasion is Hegel-Marx-Husserl, more or less, so I have some bones to pick with the Foucault Fan Club.

    However, if you write on this problem and single out Foucault without mentioning other scholars who have had a similar influence in the same fields, I do not take you seriously. And no one should. Why? Because I do not have tolerance for lazy scholarship. Did she mention Frantz Fanon, who is very influential among many of the same scholars who also cite Foucault? No, she did not. Why not? Because her scholarship here is lazy. Did she mention Hayden White, who is very influential among many of the same scholars who also cite Foucault? Why not? Because her scholarship here is lazy. If you're going to come for Foucault, by all means, I think it's deserved (and I LIKE Foucault)! But when it's this pathetically, shamelessly lazy? Yeah, no thanks.

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  12. Charles Pigden

    I don't know about the Foucauldian inversion theory, but there is one thing that Lowery suggests that rings true to me. A lot of people in academia, especially in the humanities, fancy themselves as champions of the underdog and speakers of truth to power. Since actually championing the underdog or speaking truth to the genuinely powerful (at least in the kind of way that might actually make a difference) is time consuming, often boring, and (even in a relatively free society) mildly dangerous, and since it is often inimical to a successful career, this is not a role that they want to fulfil in reality. Hence a lot of their intellectual energy is devoted to creating fictitious narratives in which they champion underdogs and speak the truth to power without actually championing any real underdogs or speaking the truth to any dangerously powerful people. Getting rid of a gender critical feminist (for instance) is a great deal safer than challenging the neoliberal ideology of a university president. If you can pose as a champion of the underdog and a speaker of truth to power whilst ingratiating yourself with the neoliberal regime, that kind of hits the jackpot, by combining the ego gratifications of being a tribune of the people with the career benefits of being a lackey of the establishment. Consequently this is what a lot of people do.

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  13. Gordon Barnes

    Wow. That is exactly right. I think that is the most accurate description of current trends in the profession that I have seen.

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  14. Chronos

    I want to third what Charles Pigden says. At my university there are some social science and humanities people in other fields who don't publish lots nor (for lack of a better description) have significant research programs. I think research is quite difficult to do at a competent level and often hard. In its place these people turn their attention to changing their university, and, basically, become focused on social projects. There is something fine with this since one should be concerned with one's place of employment. But it seems to me that this inward focus often gives people gratification without having to go far from their offices.

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  15. Joseph Zepeda

    "If you can pose as a champion of the underdog and a speaker of truth to power whilst ingratiating yourself with the neoliberal regime, that kind of hits the jackpot, by combining the ego gratifications of being a tribune of the people with the career benefits of being a lackey of the establishment. Consequently this is what a lot of people do."

    That is right on the money.

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