Postmodernism, Etc.: An Interview with Ihab Hassan - Interview

Style, Fall, 1999 by Frank L. Cioffi

Born in Cairo, Egypt, Ihab Hassan followed the path that many bright young Egyptians took in the first half of this century: he trained to become an engineer. After graduating with highest honors from the University of Cairo, Hassan came to the United States to further his study of electrical engineering, and in 1948 he earned his MS in that field at the University of Pennsylvania. Yet he continued on at Penn, changing his field to something that spoke to him, evidently, more deeply than did engineering. He studied literature, and earned two degrees in English--an MA in 1950 and a PhD in 1953.

After a brief period teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Hassan moved to Wesleyan University, where he taught from 1954-1970. Since 1970, he has been the Vilas Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During his professional career, he has also held visiting professorships in Sweden, Japan, Germany, France, and Austria--as well as at Yale, Trinity College, and the University of Washington.

Over the last forty years, Hassan has won numerous awards and fellowships, including Guggenheim Foundation fellowships; Senior Fulbright lectureships; National Endowment for the Humanities grants; research appointments in France, England, Italy, Japan, Australia, and Ireland; and teaching awards. He was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Uppsala (1996) and the University of Giessen (1999). Currently he is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Association of University Professors of English.

Ihab Hassan's bibliography is long, including some fifteen books and 200-odd articles. Among his critical works are Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (1961), The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett (1967), The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971), Paracriticisms: Seven Speculations of the Times (1975), The Right Promethean Fire: Imagination, Science, and Cultural Change (1980), and The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (1987). In more recent years, some of Hassan's work has moved toward autobiography, some toward travel writing: Out of Egypt: Fragments of an Autobiography appeared in 1986, Selves at Risk: Patterns of Quest in Contemporary American Letters in 1990, and Between the Eagle and the Sun: Traces of Japan in 1996. His Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades collects portions of earlier works.

Hassan continues actively publishing in academic journals, and some of these articles will be alluded to in the interview that follows. The last lustrum has witnessed his publication of "Criticism in Our Clime: Parables of American Academe," "Negative Capability Reclaimed: Literature and Philosophy contra Politics," "The Expense of Spirit in Postmodern Times: Between Nihilism and Belief," a contribution to a PMLA "Forum on Intellectuals," "Postmodernism Revisited: A Personal Account," and "Queries for Postcolonial Studies."

Hassan's writings have been translated, at this writing, into twelve different languages.

I first met Ihab Hassan in 1982, when I participated in his NEH Summer Seminar, "Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Question of the Text." It was there that I discovered Hassan was more than just a writer and critic; he was a teacher of extraordinary ability and power. In the intervening years we have kept in touch, and I find I have been influenced as much by Hassan's pedagogy and stance as by his writings.

The following interview was assembled from November, 1998, through January, 1999, and done by telephone, e-mail, and postal mail.

Your major works of criticism that engage the idea of the postmodern--The Dismemberment of Orpheus, Paracriticisms, The Right Promethean Fire, The Postmodern Turn, and many essays--have had an enormous impact on literary culture and theory. Can you briefly characterize and account for this impact?

IH: Did they have an "enormous impact"? My impression is that their impact is enormously spotty. Some like Charles Jencks or Linda Hutcheon or Hans Bertens will mention the work. Others--especially neo-Marxists--will have a very different attitude toward it, a magical or apotropaic attitude, as if to ward off a bad spell; or else they ignore it in audible silence. There are exceptions, of course, like Bernard Smith, whose roots are in historical materialism, and whose recent essay, "The Last Days of the Post Mode," shows remarkable poise and maturity of judgment. But all this is quite familiar to writers throughout history.

Well, you coined the term "postmodern" in reference to a certain kind of literature; indeed, you helped define a literary movement--or do you not want credit for this?

IH: No, I didn't coin the term. Some claim that a British painter called John Watkins Chapman used the term casually in the 1870s. Since then, Federico de Onis, Bernard Smith, Dudley Fitts, Arnold Toynbee, Charles Olson, Irving Howe, and Harry Levin have all used the term variously--with diverse meanings and degrees of insistence--before I did. But I guess I did stick with the term, and I did try to clarify for myself an emergent movement.