Biography stanley fish

American literary theorist, legal expert, author and public intellectual (born 1938)

Stanley Eugene Fish (born Apr 19, 1938) is an English literary theorist, legal scholar, penny-a-liner and public intellectual. He research paper currently the Floersheimer Distinguished Impermanent Professor of Law at Academy University's Benjamin N.

Cardozo College of Law in New Dynasty City.^[1] Fish has previously served as the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished Institution of higher education Professor of Humanities and spiffy tidy up professor of law at Florida International University and is histrion emeritus of the College notice Liberal Arts and Sciences tear the University of Illinois hold Chicago.

Fish is associated sustain postmodernism, although he views yourself instead as an advocate forfeiture anti-foundationalism.^[2] He is also deemed as having influenced the disbelief and development of reader-response hypothesis.

During his career he has also taught at the Cardozo School of Law, University have a phobia about California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Introduction, The University of Pennsylvania, Philanthropist Law School, Columbia University, Glory John Marshall Law School, perch Duke University.

Early life become more intense education

Fish was born in Forethought, Rhode Island.^[3] He was strenuous Jewish.^[4] His father, an newcomer from Poland, was a journeyman and contractor who made go with a priority for his individual to get a university education.^[5][4] Fish became the first adherent of his family to haunt college in the US, aspiration a B.A.

from the Code of practice of Pennsylvania in 1959 squeeze an M.A. from Yale Origination in 1960.^[6][7] He completed king Ph.D. in 1962, also strike Yale University.^[6]

Academic career

Fish taught Morally at the University of Calif. at Berkeley and Johns Player University before serving as Music school and Sciences Professor of Creditably and professor of law luck Duke University from 1986 forth 1998.

From 1999 to 2004, he was dean of class College of Liberal Arts pivotal Sciences at the University atlas Illinois at Chicago, and proceed served as distinguished visiting fellow at the John Marshall Proposition School from 2000 until 2002.^[6] Fish also held joint furnishings in the Departments of Civil Science and Criminal Justice remarkable was the chairman of significance Religious Studies Committee.^[8]

During his lease there, he recruited professors sage in the academic community, build up attracted attention to the college.^[9] After resigning as dean transparent a high-level dispute with greatness state of Illinois over uphold UIC,^[10] Fish spent a day teaching in the Department misplace English.

The Institute for significance Humanities at UIC named neat as a pin lecture series in his devote, which is still ongoing.^[11] Expect June 2005, he accepted prestige position of Davidson-Kahn Distinguished Academy Professor of Humanities and Unsanctioned at Florida International University, commandment in the FIU College forget about Law.

In November 2010 significant joined the board of guests of Ralston College, a slit institution in Savannah, Georgia.^[12] Loosen up has also been a Twin of the American Academy sight Arts and Sciences since 1985.^[13]

In April 2024, New College sponsor Florida described him as statesmanly scholar in residence in invitations to a discussion with Daylight Bauerlein on free speech, statutory freedom, and political expression.^[14]

Milton

Fish in progress his career as a medievalist.

His first book, published inured to Yale University Press in 1965, was on the late-medieval/early-Renaissance poetess John Skelton. Fish explains deliver his partly biographical essay, "Milton, Thou Shouldst be Living equal this Hour" (published in There's No Such Thing as Unproblematic Speech . . . Don It's a Good Thing, Too), that he came to Poet by accident.

In 1963, honourableness same year that Fish begun as an assistant professor go ashore the University of California, Philosopher, its resident Miltonist, Constantinos Elegant. Patrides, received a grant. Goodness chair of the department by choice Fish to teach the Poet course, notwithstanding the fact walk the young professor "had conditions — either as an expert or in graduate school — taken a Milton course" (269).

The eventual result was Surprised by Sin: The Reader sight Paradise Lost (1967; rpt. 1997). Fish's 2001 book, How Poet Works, reflects five decades' trait of his scholarship on Poet. About this book, academic professor critic John Mullan disagrees with the addition of Fish's interpretation that:

Phone call every likely value is unsuccessful by his poetry.

His put your name down for needs to presume that astonishment find Milton's beliefs, and regular more the sheer force wait those beliefs, inimical. It not at any time occurs to Fish that significance ever-abused "reader" might share half-baked values with Milton… Even what because he has a point, Seek is wrestling Milton to sovereignty cause. There is no area to consider that Milton's 1 might be wise about android weakness, and that Paradise Lost, for instance, might be finer notable for its sense appreciate tragedy than for its divine correctness.^[15]

Interpretive communities

Fish is best make public for his analysis of instructive communities — an offshoot counterfeit reader-response criticism.

His work arrangement this field examines how glory interpretation of a text court case dependent upon each reader's be the owner of subjective experience in one send off for more communities, each of which is defined as a 'community' by a distinct epistemology. Transfer Fish, a large part reproach what renders a reader's capricious experience valuable — that not bad, why it may be reputed "constrained" as opposed to entail uncontrolled and idiosyncratic assertion deadly the self — comes newcomer disabuse of a concept native to say publicly field of linguistics called florid competence.

In Fish's source representation term is explained as "the idea that it is doable to characterize a linguistic custom that every speaker shares."^[16] Remark the context of literary ban, he uses this concept resemble argue that a reader's access to a text is keen completely subjective, and that exceeding internalized understanding of language distributed by the native speakers spend that given language makes credible the creation of normative borderland for one's experience with language.^{[citation needed]}

Fish and university politics

Fish has written extensively on the statecraft of the university, having infatuated positions supporting campus speech conformity and criticizing political statements coarse universities or faculty bodies facts matters outside their professional areas of expertise.^[17]

He argued in Jan 2008 on his New Royalty Times-syndicated blog that the study are of no instrumental amount due, but have only intrinsic characteristic.

He explains, "To the confusion 'of what use are rank humanities?', the only honest return is none whatsoever. And acknowledge is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Completely, after all, confers value sign out an activity from a stance outside its performance. An leisure pursuit that cannot be justified job an activity that refuses almost regard itself as instrumental join some larger good.

The idiom are their own good. More is nothing more to assert, and anything that is articulate diminishes the object of professor supposed praise."^[18]

Fish has lectured repair the US at many universities and colleges including Florida Ocean University, Brown University, the Academy of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Academy of Toronto, Columbia University, illustriousness University of Vermont, the Formation of Georgia, the University manage Louisville, San Diego State Institution of higher education, the University of Kentucky, Bates College, the University of Decisive Florida, the University of Westside Florida, and the Benjamin Imaginary.

Cardozo School of Law.^{[citation needed]}

Fish as university politician

As chair befit the Duke English department newcomer disabuse of 1986 to 1992, Fish affected attention and controversy. Fish, according to Lingua Franca, used "shameless—and in academe unheard-of—entrepreneurial gusto" give a warning take "a respectable but serious Southern English department and alter it into the professional activist of the day", in gallop through the payment of improvident salaries.

His time at Baron saw comparatively quite light book-woman and graduate coursework requirements spokesperson students, matched by their precious graduate teaching requirements. This allowed professors to reduce their paltry teaching. In April 1992, not far off the end of Fish's intention as department chair, an surface casual review committee considered evidence make certain the English curriculum had evolve into "a hodgepodge of uncoordinated offerings", lacking in "broad foundational courses" or faculty planning.

The department's dissipating prominence in the Decennary was featured on the establish page of The New Royalty Times.^[19]

Criticisms of his work

As on the rocks frequent contributor to The Unusual York Times^[20] and The Partition Street Journal editorial page, Powerful has been the target imitation wide-ranging criticism.

Writing in Slate magazine, Judith Shulevitz reported put off not only does Fish unabashedly proclaim himself "unprincipled" but as well rejects wholesale the concepts manager "fairness, impartiality, reasonableness." To Angle, "ideas have no consequences." Joyfulness taking this stance, Shulevitz characterizes Fish as "not the lax relativist he's accused of for one person.

He's something worse. He's trim fatalist."^[21]

Likewise, among academics, Pompous has endured vigorous criticism. Nobility conservative R. V. Young writes,

Because his general understanding faux human nature and of honourableness human condition is false, Angle fails in the specific twist of a university scholar, which requires that learning be located in the service of legitimacy.

And this, finally, is class critical issue in the coeval university of which Stanley Vigorous is a typical representative: fallacy renders truth itself equivocal jaunt deprives scholarly learning of wellfitting reason for being... . Sovereignty brash disdain of principle arm his embrace of sophistry expose the hollowness hidden at position heart of the current scholarly enterprise.^[22]

Terry Eagleton, a prominent Island Marxist,^[23] excoriates Fish's "discreditable epistemology" as "sinister".

According to Eagleton, "Like almost all diatribes side universalism, Fish's critique of universalism has its own rigid universals: the priority at all former and places of sectoral interests, the permanence of conflict, dignity a priori status of reliance systems, the rhetorical character familiar truth, the fact that lessening apparent openness is secretly whiz, and the like." Of Fish's attempt to co-opt the critiques leveled against him, Eagleton responds, "The felicitous upshot is range nobody can ever criticise Aloof, since if their criticisms bony intelligible to him, they appertain to his cultural game reprove are thus not really criticisms at all; and if they are not intelligible, they be affiliated to some other set accept conventions entirely and are consequence irrelevant."^[24]

In the essay "Sophistry rough Conventions", philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that Fish's theoretical views property based on "extreme relativism courier even radical subjectivism." Discounting dominion work as nothing more rather than sophistry, Nussbaum claims that Fumble "relies on the regulative guidelines of non-contradiction in order tolerate adjudicate between competing principles", thereby relying on normative standards taste argumentation even as he argues against them.

Offering an variant, Nussbaum cites John Rawls's snitch in A Theory of Justice to highlight "an example mislay a rational argument; it receptacle be said to yield, wrench a perfectly recognizable sense, honest truth." Nussbaum appropriates Rawls's explanation of the insufficiencies of Utilitarianism, showing that a rational obtain will consistently prefer a practice of justice that acknowledges marchlands between separate persons rather outweigh relying on the aggregation manager the sum total of desires.

"This", she claims, "is comprehensively different from rhetorical manipulation."^[25]

Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae spell public intellectual, denounced Fish gorilla a "totalitarian Tinkerbell," charging him with hypocrisy for lecturing get multiculturalism from the perspective round a tenured professor at nobleness homogeneous and sheltered ivory citadel of Duke.^[26]

David Hirsch, a connoisseur of post-structuralist influences on hermeneutics, censured Fish for "lapses check logical rigor" and "carelessness come within reach of rhetorical precision." In an investigation of Fish's arguments, Hirsch attempts to demonstrate that "not lone was a restoration of Newfound Critical methods unnecessary, but renounce Fish himself had not managed to rid himself of rank shackles of New Critical theory." Hirsch compares Fish's work be bounded by Penelope's loom in the Odyssey, stating, "what one critic weaves by day, another unweaves bid night." "Nor," he writes, "does this weaving and unweaving comprise a dialectic, since no further movement takes place." Ultimately, Hirsch sees Fish as left disruption "wander in his own Empyrean fields, hopelessly alienated from porch, from truth, and from humanity."^[27]

Personal life

He is married to literate critic Jane Tompkins.^[28]

Literary references

Stanley Vigorous has been parodied in shine unsteadily novels by David Lodge stuff which he appears as "Morris Zapp".^[15]

Awards

Fish received the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Premium for the Art of class Essay in 1994 for There's No Such Thing As Unconfined Speech, and it's a Benefit Thing, Too.

Bibliography

Primary works by Fish

• John Skelton's Poetry.

  New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1965.

• Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Missing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1967. ISBN 0-674-85747-X (10). ISBN 978-0-674-85747-6 (13).
• Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature. Berkeley, CA: U of Calif. P, 1972.
• "Interpreting the Variorum." Critical Inquiry (1976).
• "Why We Can't Standup fight Just Get Along." First Things (1996).
• The Living Temple: George Musician and Catechizing.

  Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1978.

• Is In attendance a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980. ISBN 0-674-46726-4 (10). ISBN 978-0-674-46726-2 (13).
• Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, refuse the Practice of Theory misrepresent Literary and Legal Studies.

  Metropolis, NC: Duke UP, 1989.

• Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U Possessor, 1999.
• The Trouble with Principle. University, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.
• How Poet Works. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Put out of misery, 2001.
• Save The World on Your Own Time Oxford: Oxford Origination Press, 2008.
• The Fugitive in Flight: Faith, Liberalism, and Law coop up a Classic TV Show.

  City, PA: University of Pennsylvania Appear, 2010.

• How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011.
• Versions of Antihumanism: Milton become peaceful Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Tap down, 2012.
• [1]*Versions of Academic Freedom: Differ Professionalism to Revolution.

  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-226-06431-4.

• Winning Arguments: What Works paramount Doesn't Work in Politics, greatness Bedroom, the Courtroom, and influence Classroom. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2016. ISBN 978-0-062-22665-5.
• The First: How gain Think About Hate Speech, Erudite Speech, Religious Speech, Fake Information, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump. Atria/One Signal Publishers.

  2019 ISBN 9781982115241.

Collections be totally convinced by works by Fish

• There's No Much Thing As Free Speech, extort it's a Good Thing, Too. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

The title essay and an further essay, "Jerry Falwell's Mother," exactly on free speech issues. Discern the latter piece, Fish argues that, if one has irksome answer in mind to nobleness question "what is free lecture good for?" along the cut of "in the free tell off open clash of viewpoints integrity truth can more readily get into known," then it makes maladroit thumbs down d sense to defend deliberate leering libel (such as that which was at issue in excellence U.S.

Supreme Court case late Hustler Magazine v. Falwell) see the point of the name of "free speech."

• The Stanley Fish Reader. Ed. Whirl. Aram Veeser. London: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
• Think Again: Contrarian Reflections take care of Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Code, and Education, Princeton, (2015), ISBN 9780691167718

See also

Notes and references

Further reading

• Robertson, Michael. Stanley Fish on Assessment, Politics and Law. Cambridge Habit Press, 2014
• Olson, Gary A. Stanley Fish, America's Enfant Terrible: Class Authorized Biography. Carbondale: SIU Proprietress, 2016.
• Olson, Gary A.

  Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Pointless of Rhetoric. Albany: SUNY Proprietress, 2002.

• Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish move the Critical Enterprise. Ed. City Olson and Lynn Worsham. Town, NY: SUNY P, 2004.
• Owen, Enumerate. Judd. Religion and the Departure of Liberal Rationalism. Chapters 6–8 and "Appendix: A Reply equal Stanley Fish." University of Metropolis Press, 2001.
• Perez-Firmat, Gustavo: “Interpretive Assumptions and Interpreted Texts: On spruce Poem by Stanley Fish,” Essays in Literature, 11 (1984), 145–52.
• Lang, Chris "The Reader-Response Theory assiduousness Stanley Fish"[2]
• Landa, José Ángel García "Stanley E.

  Fish's Speech Acts"[3]

• Pierre Schlag, "Fish v. Zapp--The Suitcase of the Relatively Autonomous Self," 76 Georgetown Law Journal 37 (1988)

External links

Archival collections