Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies

Fish, Stanley

ISBN 10: 0822309955 / ISBN 13: 9780822309956

Published by Duke University Press Books, 1990

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 0822309955-3-31222933

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822309955
• ISBN 13: 9780822309956
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 29 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In Doing What Comes Naturally, Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through.

From the Back Cover

"Nothing that Stanley Fish writes can be ignored. In this latest work, he explodes all our comforting notions of unbiased, uninflected judgment in the pursuit of interpretation."--Annette Kolodny