Stanley Fish and the Houses of the Holy

Yesterday, I was so fortunate as to attend one of the most remarkable public lectures I'd ever seen: Stanley Fish gave a talk entitled "Change the World on Your Own Time", and, though no one seemed to agree with him, the man provided food for thought and conversations that ran on till late into the night.

Fish is not only an eminent Milton scholar, but also very much a public intellectual, regularly publishing op-ed pieces in The New York Times, in which he frequently speaks out against everything academics and left-wing intellectuals like to stand for. (For instance, he has the nerve of tackling Richard Dawkins' widely acclaimed The God Delusion, and he has an essay collection called There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, and it's a Good Thing, Too.)

On this particular occasion, he began by outlining a court case in which a teenager was expelled from school because of a banner he had made and displayed. Poking some mild fun at the Supreme Court, and particularly Justice Clarence Thomas (a universally despised republican of the worst kind who, in this case, claimed that civil rights do not apply to schools), Fish then went on to assert that he agreed entirely with everything Thomas had written in his conclusions about the case. People actually gasped, while others turned to each other in utter bewilderment, puzzled faces asking: surely he didn't say that? Did he?

By this point, I had already decided that this one was going to be worth listening to - for the man had just ad libbed his entire introduction more eloquently than most people ever manage to write a text, and captivated his audience to an extent I haven't seen here, yet. He then polemically went on to tell this gathering of Criticism and Theory people that academia needs to stop doing politics in the classroom... this may not sound like a bold statement as such (particularly to people who are used to a European model of teaching and politics), but a lot of folks here regard College education as a means to convert or confirm students to left-wing politics. And, of course, as Fish very well knows, there isn't a seminar in this particular course that is not explicitly political.

It was thus a token of pure nerve and rhetorical confidence that this man did not just present his very polemical paper; he also broke it up into pieces and gave the audience the opportunity to react to what he had just said, rather than having one big discussion at the end. He got some very critical questions, strong arguments, and persuasive responses, but he had a way of catching anything that was hurled at him, poking holes in it, and casually tossing it away again. Water off a duck's back.

When I grow up, I think I want to be able to speak like Stanley Fish. Who cares if it's wrong? At least it's provocative, and, surely, nothing is healthier than a good kick against the shins, from time to time. Think I'll buy his Milton book.