Who’s Afraid of Virginia’s Daughters? Writing, Research, and

There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves. We’re only just beginning, she thought, to understand, here and there.

(Virginia Woolf, 1937, The Years)

If we get rid of traditional notions of “objectivity” and “scientific method” we shall be able to see the social sciences as continuous with literature-as interpreting other people to us, and thus enlarging and deepening our sense of community.