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Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. _____________________________ ______________ Claire Laville July 17, 2014 Reading to the Test: Character, Method, and Complicity in U.S. Writing from Emerson to Adorno by Claire Laville Doctor of Philosophy English _____________________________________ Michael Moon Advisor _____________________________________ Walter Kalaidjian Committee Member _____________________________________ Benjamin Reiss Committee Member _____________________________________ Deborah Elise White Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ___________________ Date Reading to the Test: Character, Method, and Complicity in U.S. Writing from Emerson to Adorno by Claire Laville Hon. B.A., University of Toronto M.A., Emory University Advisor: Michael Moon, Ph.D. An abstract of a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English 2014 Abstract Reading to the Test: Character, Method, and Complicity in U.S. Writing from Emerson to Adorno By Claire Laville In “Reading to the Test,” I demonstrate that recurrent literary figures and changing theories of reading drove the evolution of experimental psychology, and argue that the ubiquity of the test motif demands that we reconsider the priority granted to character and experience in recent critical theory and U.S. intellectual history. Additionally, I show the pertinence of earlier debates surrounding human-subjects research to discussions of figure and personification in literary theory. Chapter 1 responds to an increasingly canonical assessment of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James as proto-pragmatic thinkers, an assessment that relies upon the link between experiment and experience. I argue that Emerson and James contest that link, often holding to a stubborn and potentially queer disbelief in the existence of other minds. In the second chapter, I describe the psychological experiments Gertrude Stein carried out as an undergraduate. She told the story of trying to write “automatically” several times, in different genres and voices. In so doing, she grappled with traditions, literary and scientific, that held repetition to be a characteristically feminine style of passivity or complicity. Her 900-page novel The Making of Americans reflects her ambivalence toward studying human subjects and toward her teachers’ all-encompassing theories of character, habit and experience. The third chapter begins with the curious fact that Henry A. Murray, who designed numerous personality tests for psychiatric and military use, was also one of Herman Melville’s earliest biographers. Murray and his colleagues’ appropriation of Melville and Hawthorne unsettles the conventional history of American Renaissance scholarship, as well as commonsensical distinctions between a close (or even queer) reading and a reductive one. Chapter 4 finds Theodor Adorno and Vladimir Nabokov, émigré writers of conflicting ideologies, mocking and reimagining the personality tests whose creation I discussed in the previous chapter. Particular tests challenge each author’s presumptions about the redeeming value of art and the power of self-reflection. At the same time, testing provides a way for each author to abstain having to accept either social or disciplinary formations as given. Reading to the Test: Character, Method, and Complicity in U.S. Writing from Emerson to Adorno by Claire Laville Hon. B.A., University of Toronto M.A., Emory University Advisor: Michael Moon, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English 2014 Acknowledgements My dissertation committee—Michael Moon, Ben Reiss, Deborah Elise White, and Walter Kalaidjian—possessed a supernatural (or maybe just psychoanalytic) ability to understand my thoughts better than I did. At various points, my studies were enriched in conversations with other members of the faculty, including Monique Allewaert, Deepika Bahri, Geoffrey Bennington, Cathy Caruth, Jonathan Goldberg, Elizabeth Goodstein, John Johnston, Elissa Marder, and Elizabeth Wilson. Laura Otis deserves special mention for her hard work and infinite patience as director of graduate studies. Thanks to the Laney Graduate School for providing me with the funding necessary to conduct this research, including a visit to Henry Murray’s papers and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard. I am grateful for a fellowship which allowed me to try out my ideas in the classroom, and send a shout-out to the students in “American Literature as a Human Experiment” and “Inventing Languages.” The friendships I’ve made during my years of graduate study came as the best kind of surprise. Table of Contents List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3 1. Other than Experience: Emerson’s Unpragmatic Styles ............................................... 24 2. How Experiments End: Gertrude Stein ......................................................................... 72 3. Shocks of Recognition: The Thematic Apperception Test and the Melville Revival 113 4. Method and Mimicry: Adorno with Nabokov ............................................................ 137 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 173 Permissions ..................................................................................................................... 199 1 List of Abbreviations AI Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology AP Theodor W. Adorno, et al., The Authoritarian Personality BB Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor CR Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason CM Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models CMA Gertrude Stein, “Cultivated Motor Automatism” DE Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment DI Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination EC Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet E&L Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays & Lectures Exp. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience” ETE Stanley Cavell, Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes JMN Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks IGI Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” Intro. Henry A. Murray, Introduction to Pierre (Hendricks House) LIA Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America MA Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans M-D Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Northwestern-Newberry) MM Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia NR Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nominalist and Realist” P Herman Melville, Pierre (Northwestern-Newberry) 2 PBC William James, Psychology: Briefer Course RR Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism RT Paul de Man, “The Rhetoric of Temporality” SE Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Works SR Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” TAT Thematic Apperception Test TAV Judith Butler, “Taking Another’s View: Ambivalent Implications” TD Avital Ronell, The Test Drive TF Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling WPE William James, “A World of Pure Experience” 3 Introduction Reading is connected with psychological testing, whether we like it or not. The pervasiveness of the relation between reading and testing impinges upon our powers as critics to give an account of our critical practices, to affirm certain identities (‘queer,’ for instance) vis-à-vis literary artifacts, and to defend the arts and humanities by traditional means. This project examines the origins and consequences of that connection in American letters between the mid nineteenth century and the mid twentieth. Scholars in the humanities often contrast their interpretive methods, favorably, to the direct, invasive, and potentially mortifying exercises on human bodies preferred in other disciplines. This opposition remains largely under-theorized.1 At the center of my dissertation is the personality test: literally, the methods used by psychologists and social researchers since the early twentieth century, including the Rorschach inkblot test, the Thematic Apperception Test, and others; and metaphorically, thought experiments querying the existence or the worth of others. I demonstrate that recurrent literary figures and changing theories of reading drove the evolution of psychological testing, and argue that the ubiquity of testing demands that we reconsider the priority granted to character and “lived” experience in recent critical theory and intellectual history. Additionally, I show the pertinence
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