Ruth Murphy is a PhD candidate in Italian at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Literature, 澳门六合彩开奖记录. Her most recent article, , was recently published in New Literary History (Vol. 55 No. 1).
Here, Murphy explains the article鈥檚 central idea: that testimonial writing can perform 鈥渁 kind of moral work鈥� when it pays witness to troubling events and simultaneously grapples with their wider moral significance. She also reflects on gender and language in philosophy and on why, 41 years after Martha Nussbaum鈥檚 groundbreaking 1983 article in the same journal, literature still performs as much moral work as ever.
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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How did you get to this subject area?
I鈥檝e never been formally trained as a philosopher. But I found myself in my MPhil and at the beginning of my PhD really attracted to philosophical writing, and wanting to approach these questions in Levi and Arendt from a philosophical lens. Also, Arendt is basically a philosopher, although she didn鈥檛 really like that term.
And then I started thinking about what鈥檚 been written on the relationship between literature and philosophy. Where do we draw these boundaries? Towards the beginning of my PhD鈥擨 think I was just three months in鈥攖he pandemic hit. I had some time to read things that I may not have come across otherwise, and somehow I started reading a lot of Iris Murdoch. She鈥檚 been really influential in opening up analytic philosophy to Continental philosophy and to literature, and now there鈥檚 also been a real resurgence of interest in her philosophy. Obviously she鈥檚 always been well-known as an author, as a novelist. So somehow Murdoch came along, and from there Martha Nussbaum and more contemporary people.
Can you briefly summarise what the article says?
I think this is interesting to anyone who brings philosophy or even theory into their approach to a literary text, and that鈥檚 where I was coming from at the very beginning.
This article looks at the way academics, mainly, have approached the relationship, or lack of relationship, between literary studies as a discipline and philosophy. There are certain people in the history of thinking about this relationship that have really tried to bring them together, like Iris Murdoch and Martha Nussbaum. And there was in particular of New Literary History, the journal that my article鈥檚 been published in, that really made its mark in taking stock of where things were and where things could possibly go, and why [literature and philosophy] had distanced themselves so much from each other.
My argument is that there are ways of reconciling the two: it can be found in the writing of Primo Levi, the writing of Hannah Arendt. I also argue in my PhD thesis that a lot of the essays of James Baldwin do this. And I try to lay out the characteristics of this writing in the piece.
So, what I lay out is a form of writing I call 鈥榖ifocal鈥�, because it鈥檚 based on either lived experience or a historical event, or an examination of a historical event鈥攂ut often the person is quite implicated in the history itself鈥攁nd then it鈥檚 combined with reflection, sometimes over a very long period of time, about the significance of the event, and a philosophical assessment of its general meaning for humanity. It draws general significance from a particularity.
I do think it鈥檚 a more twentieth or twenty-first century kind of writing, but I don鈥檛 think it can be confined to that. At the end of the article I hint that maybe confessional writing, like Augustine鈥檚 Confessions, could be鈥攕o, you know, I鈥檓 hoping that someone else will test those kinds of books.
One of the things I hadn鈥檛 realised was so important, but that you鈥檝e just come back to, is that bifocal testimonial writing is written a long time after鈥攚ithin living memory, but the writers have had a lot of time to reflect. Is that an important aspect of the testimony genre, or do you think that鈥檚 an important prerequisite for people to be able to do bifocal writing?
I don鈥檛 think it always has to be a long time after the event, but I think there has to be some kind of negotiation of distance. So I鈥檓 thinking, for example, of , where Arendt watched some of the trial but actually not that much, and then also brought a lot of her own experience as a Holocaust survivor to a more distant鈥攁nd some people felt quite cold鈥攔eport.
I started reading your article and thinking about journalism, and especially war reporting. But that does seem distinct from what you鈥檙e talking about, because firstly journalists often very deliberately don鈥檛 moralise, and secondly the point is to have an immediacy, to be completely in touch with the event.
Yes. [Bifocal writing] is where that immediacy is somehow negotiated or stepped back from in order to give general significance. If you鈥檙e completely immersed in an event and there鈥檚 a massive emotional and contemporary 鈥榣iving out鈥� of it鈥攃an you already understand that experience? I don鈥檛 think that the significance really hits us as human beings until we鈥檝e had a moment to take stock of it. For me it鈥檚 a way of distinguishing works that are testimonial, but are not necessarily bifocal鈥攊n that they鈥檙e just a description of a particular experience in all its intensity, and in all its specificity and subjectivity, but they don鈥檛 necessarily make the attempt to draw out its broader significance. And I鈥檓 not saying that鈥檚 a bad thing, but the philosophical element, I think, has to incorporate some of this distance.
You also said it鈥檚 got to be new in some way, that it 鈥渇ormulates a new ethical concept or vision.鈥�
I think often the experience of a lived event drives people to write about it, and to make these general statements, precisely because it deviates from our expectations. Or it addresses a breach in our understanding. Jerome Bruner says that鈥檚 why stories that we want to hear are successful: because they address this breach. I also, in the last chapter of my thesis, talk a lot about the work of Miranda Fricker, and she has this idea that鈥檚 quite simple: that there鈥檚 a collective understanding of things, a hermeneutical resource, and in this resource there can be gaps because it hasn鈥檛 served dominant groups in the society to fill听them. Things like there not being 听for 听up until the twentieth century. And so bifocal writing is often where the answers to this come from. She also uses the example of Edmund White, who articulated the experience of being gay before it was widely publicised and accepted. These writers respond to the exception of their experience.
Given all that, what鈥檚 the point of moral philosophy? What does induction from lived experience to moral questions not cover? What鈥檚 left for听moral philosophy to do?
I guess one thing that scares me, if all writing was bifocal writing, and the same in academia, is that the importance of personal experience would reach a level that becomes authoritarian. Having someone completely on the outside to assess different conceptions of lived experience and different moral concepts is a good thing, I think. I just wish that philosophy鈥攎oral philosophy and the analytic tradition particularly鈥攇ave more attention to how people actually live and the problems that people face on a daily basis. But I am wary of philosophy that鈥檚 purely based on felt experience. I think there鈥檚 a place for distance鈥攅ven for a lot of distance. But it has to be balanced.
Lots of the modernist writers that you talk about, and that Nussbaum talks about in her original article鈥擧enry James鈥檚 The Golden Bowl, but also David Sidorsky鈥檚 article talks about Proust and Joyce, and you talk about Primo Levi in this article鈥攁re male modernist fiction writers. And then the , and that group of predominantly women philosophers, are the people driving this refresh between literature and philosophy. What do you think the reason is for that gender gap? Why would the examples not be writers like Virginia Woolf?
It鈥檚 interesting that you mention her, because I would really love to write [about her]鈥攖hat would be my next project, why or how Virginia Woolf is bifocal. I think A Room of One鈥檚 Own is a great example. Joan Didion is someone else whose work could be a really interesting example of bifocality. I haven鈥檛 yet had the time to do this, and I hope to continue, especially if my thesis becomes a book. There are even more examples of similar women writers in the last sixty years.
As for women in philosophy, it鈥檚 changing for the good, but women tended, and still to some extent tend, to be more tangled in experience. And so for women philosophers not to address the messiness of trying to be a professor and a mother is much harder鈥擨 think [G.E.M.] Anscombe had seven kids鈥攁nd you cannot do the same kind of philosophy, I think, when you have the reality of having children and having to make a home.
One of the arguments I make in the article is that testimony as a genre was already, at the time when they were having this big debate in New Literary History, doing a lot of this combination of writing that they were advocating. And at that time, I think you probably still had a lot of bias around what survivors were heard. When we think of Holocaust survivors, we think mainly of men. Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Jean Am茅ry, Antelme in France. And there鈥檚 been some more work done on women in the Holocaust in general, but within that genre of testimony as it emerged, it鈥檚 still male-dominated.
What鈥檚 it like for you now as a woman in philosophy, if that fits? Does that fit? Do you feel outside of philosophy?
I think I鈥檒l always feel outside because I wasn鈥檛 moulded in that milieu. But my sense is still that academic philosophy can be a kind of boys鈥� club. Recently, after a philosophy conference, I was speaking to a Finnish philosopher, a woman, and she was saying that throughout her career she has made the decision not to measure herself by the kind of on-the-spot performativity that was so valued by her male colleagues.
And the idea of thinking on the spot when you鈥檙e challenged after your paper is really interesting to me, because it鈥檚 not very philosophical! If you really want to give a good answer about something, you鈥檙e going to have to think about it. During my MPhil the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero came [to 澳门六合彩开奖记录] and gave a paper and someone asked her a question that had a more philosophical angle. She thought about it for a second and said, 鈥淚鈥檓 a philosopher, so I鈥檓 going to respond to that whenever the answer has come to me,鈥� or something like that. It was respectful, but that need to reflect surely is what philosophy is, right?
Are you planning to turn the PhD into a book?
I would really hope to. I think the most exciting thing for me would be to have bifocality at the centre, and then to look at a range of different works. I鈥檓 hoping, like you said, that Woolf is maybe in there. And one of my other interests is in children and philosophy. Maybe it鈥檚 not that surprising, but children are barely mentioned in the history of philosophy, and when they are, they tend to be by women philosophers because they鈥檝e had to look after children. I have an article coming out about that and I hope to return to the topic at some point in the future.
Friday 9 August 2024
