Ingeborg Löfgren: "The Truth in Skepticism and the Truth in Formalism"

Ingeborg Löfgren, Uppsala University: "The Truth in Skepticism and the Truth in Formalism: Stanley Cavell, Cleanth Brooks, and the Acknowledgment of Interpretative Vulnerability"

Abstract
Other-minds skepticism is tragedy disguised as epistemology, Stanley Cavell (1926–2018) argues in The Claim of Reason. What lies at the heart of Othello’s deadly jealousy of Desdemona, and his frantic search for proof of her infidelity, is not lack of knowledge but avoidance of the vulnerability of love.

In this presentation I will argue (i) that a kindred form of avoidance haunts literary studies. This avoidance, the avoidance of readerly vulnerability, result in in a form of interpretive skepticism. I will furthermore argue (ii) that Cavell implicitly addresses this form of skepticism when critiquing the formalism of New Criticism.

Recently, Rita Felski and Toril Moi have both fruitfully appealed to Cavell’s work while challenging skeptical attitudes in literary theory and criticim. In particular, they have criticized various forms of formalism in literary studies (Felski 2015, 2019, 2020 & Moi 2017, 2019, 2022).

I will attempt to nuance this post-Cavellian discussion about formalism – and formalism’s eventual skeptical attitudes towards literature and interpretation – by delving into some central essays in Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? In doing so I will argue (iii) that Cavell – importantly – never attempts to refute or debunk New Critical formalism. Instead, he carefully reminds us of (what I would like to call) “the ‘truth’ in formalism” – a formulation consciously alluding to Cavell’s notion of a “truth” in skepticism. This “truth”, however, is easily lost in recent critique of formalism, even when that criticism draws heavily on Cavell. By offering a two-aspect-reading of Cavell’s criticism of Cleanth Brooks’ “The Heresy of Paraphrase”, I will argue that Cavell not only reveals what is skeptical and flawed in Brooks’ formalism, but also (just as importantly) what is also right in it.