Embodied Knowing

Abstract

Responses and Reviews William h. Epstein Embodied Knowing In his recent article in Biography 17.2 (Spring 1994): 125-42, "Reading Lives to Live: Mortality, Introspection, and die Soteriological Impulse," Richard A. Hutch, claiming that his "argument cuts across die grain of postmodern thought in the humanities," contends that "workers in biographical studies have not pursued embodied knowing because it has itself been tied up in postmodernism and a 'disembodied' style of thought. The body has been neglected both as an object of study and also as a researcher's best tool" (127-28, emphasis in original). Although, Hutch observes, "the mortal body" is already "a pressing topic for research" in otiier fields, it has "not so far, it seems," become one "for biography ," more or less because, in postmodern approaches, "the living body vanishes " (127-28). As the author of the only (so far as I know) book-length study of biographical narrative that identifies itself as "postmodern"—Recognizing Biography (Philadelphia : U of Pennsylvania P, 1987)—I have the feeling that Hutch may be writing at least partly in response to my work. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that he cites my book once (his note 6), and is also complicated by two other circumstances . The first of diese complicating circumstances is diat the üieme of embodiment is a major one in Recognizing Biography and "the living body" (in various senses of that phrase) is dealt with at various points throughout the book, especially in die last chapter. The second of these complicating circumstances is diat, in establishing and pursuing his case, Hutch borrows, without acknowledgement, not only some ideas and approaches from Recognizing Biogra- responses and reviews 255 phy, but also the actual language of several passages from the book. The first circumstance might be said to constitute merely an opinion, extenuated by different emphases and methodologies, and I will forgo developing it here. But the second circumstance constitutes a serious charge, which I will now endeavor to specify. There are three instances of this borrowing from Recognizing Biography (hereafter RB) in Hutch's article. The first instance occurs in die article's first paragraph , page 125. Hutch writes: Mass-media observations on die popularity of biography range from the typical comment that "the art, or at least the enterprise of literary biography . . . flourishes so prodigiously these days," to Time's stories on Leon Edel's inaugurating die Vernon Visiting Professorship of Biography at Dartmouth College, and to the current popularity of imaginative, wellwritten biographies by non-academics. The first sentence of page 173, note 2, in i?.B reads: Mass-media observations on the popularity of biography range from the typical comment that "The art, or at least the enterprise of literary biography . . . flourishes so prodigiously these days" (Hilton Kramer, "Writing Writers' Lives," New York Times Book Review, 8 May 1977, p. 3), to Time's stories on Leon Edel's inaugurating the Vernon Visiting Professorship of Biography at Dartmoudi, and on die current popularity of imaginative, well-written biographies by non-academics ("The Lesson of the Master," 22 Aug. 1977, p. 47; and "Raw Bones, Fire and Patience," 21 Feb. 1983, pp. 76, 78). Hutch's sentence replicates RB's sentence, with these changes: Hutch's lowercase "t" replaces RB's upper-case "T" in the word "The" after the first embedded quotation mark; Hutch drops RB's parentiietical citations to Kramer and the Time articles; Hutch adds the word "College" after the word "Dartmouth"; and Hutch changes RB's "on" to "to" at the beginning of his last phrase. Hutch concludes his sentence witii die superscripted endnote number 6. Endnote 6 reads, in its entirety: "Quoted in W. Epstein, Recognizing Biography (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 172-73, footnote 2." Such wording usually means that die quotation embedded in Hutch's sentence, and only that embedded quotation, appeared in RB. Such, obviously, is not the case. Now, readers might quibble that, although Hutch's practice in this instance violates standard documentation procedures in scholarly articles, he nevertheless does cite his source. Perhaps, tiiey might add, he merely made an error in transcription and inadvertently rendered Epstein's language (that is, nearly...