On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:45 AM, Phil Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Dec 12, 2008, at 10:27 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
No, I mean a journal of opinion which IS peer
reviewed, and an
authority
whose literary criticism has passed such review. In other words,
considered sound, or at least interesting, by a committee.
This is such a complete misrepresentation of what peer reviewed
academic journals are that I don't think there's really an answer for
your question, Fred. The issue seems to be that you don't consider
scholarship in the humanities to be legitimate scholarship, research,
and knowledge. Which, ummm, I would hope that Wikipedia would not be
so presumptuous.
I think you're overreacting to Fred here, Phil.
I don't think he's trying to diminish the role of humanities. Just
acknowledge that some of it is less fact based than the hard sciences.
Literary criticism, while well founded, is not as fact-based as
Chemistry or Physics.
I know professional, academic literary critics focused on popular
culture and science fiction, for example - there's at least one major
annual conference of speculative fiction literary critics, whose
papers are peer reviewed and do serious analysis. But those people
know that they're based on intellectual constructs and opinion, not
underlying physical truth.
I would happily accept any of their appropriate and topical work as
commentary to put into a Wikipedia popular culture article. But
neither they nor I would assert that it's as unambiguous as say a
chemistry experiment.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com