Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary & Legal Studies

In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In Doing What Comes Naturally , Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through. In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In __Doing What Comes Naturally__, Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through. Introduction: Going Down The Anti-formalist Road -- With The Compliments Of The Author: Reflections Of Austin And Derrida -- Why No One's Afraid Of Wolfgan Iser -- Working On The Chain Gang: Interpretation In Law And Literature -- Wrong Again -- Fish V. Fiss -- Change -- No Bias, No Merit: The Case Against Blind Submission -- Short People Got No Reason To Live: Reading Irony -- Professional Despise Thyself: Fear And Self-loathing In Literary Studies -- Anti-professionalism -- Transmuting The Lump: Paradise Lost, 1942-1979 -- Don't Know Much About The Middle Ages: Posner On Law And Literature -- Consequences -- Anti-foundationalism, Theory Hope, And The Teaching Of Composition -- Still Wrong After All These Years -- Dennis Martinez And The Uses Of Theory -- Unger And Milton -- Critical Self-consciousness, Or Can We Know What We're Doing? -- Rhetoric -- Force -- Withholding The Missing Portion: Psychoanalysis And Rhetoric. Stanley Fish. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Introduction: Going Down the Anti-Formalist Road -- With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida -- Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser -- Working on the Chain Gang: Interpretation in Law and Literature -- Wrong Again -- Fish v. Fiss -- Change -- No Bias, No Merit: The Case Against Blind Submission -- Short People Got No Reason to Live: Reading Irony -- Profession Despise Thyself: Fear and Self-Loathing in Literary Studies -- Anti-Professionalism -- Transmuting the Lump: Paradise Lost, 1942-1979 -- Don't Know Much About the Middle Ages: Posner on Law and Literature -- Consequences -- Anti-Foundationalism, Theory Hope, and the Teaching of Composition -- Still Wrong After All These Years -- Dennis Martinez and the Uses of Theory -- Unger and Milton -- Critical Self-Consciousness, Or Can We Know What We're Doing? -- Rhetoric -- Force -- Withholding the Missing Portion: Psychoanalysis and Rhetoric