Habits, Infinite Jest and the recoveries of pragmatism

TL;DR

An organization-studies reading (Culture and Organization, 2023) that recruits Infinite Jest into a live disciplinary fight about habit. Two camps: the behaviourist (habits are thoughtless automatic actions — Kahneman's two-system thinking, Thaler/Sunstein nudging, Herbert Simon and the Carnegie School; Ricoeur's "reversion to the thing") and the pragmatist (habits involve intelligence, a "pre-reflective but intentional and intelligent" competence — William James, Dewey, and via Ravaisson the Aristotelian notion of hexis; Ricoeur's "living spontaneity"). Dunne & Pedersen argue Wallace's novel dramatises this dichotomy by opposing two Ennet House residents: Randy Lenz, "characterised mechanistically" (habit as a black-boxed force of nature, animal, Pavlovian, terminal decline), and Don Gately, "characterised experientially" (habit as reflective, cultivated, a practice of humility, lasting sobriety). Lenz is the behaviourist pole and the novel's villain; Gately is the pragmatist pole and its hero — "not because he has mastered his habits but rather because he, the pragmatist, has found a way to live with and through them." AA's practice-over-belief programme ("Just Do It", "it doesn’t yet matter what you believe or don’t believe") is read as Jamesian/Aristotelian habituation — building a new character through repetition — NOT as anti-intellectual thoughtlessness. The novel thereby "emphasises the saving power of pragmatism" and is offered as "a medium of organisational thought in its own right," a contribution to "the ongoing recovery of pragmatism both within and beyond organisation studies." A philosophy-of-habit lens on the addiction-and-recovery spine — companion in subject to Daverman/Raizman (AA as language/form) but keyed to habit theory and to the Lenz/Gately contrast rather than to narrative form.

Key claims

• The organizing dichotomy — behaviourist vs. pragmatist habit. For the behaviourist, habits "'require no thought: they are automatic'" (quoting Feldman and Pentland 2003) — the "automated thing-ness theorised by Ricoeur," whose legacy is a "'long decline of concepts of human habit and emotion…'" in organizational scholarship (Cohen 2007). For the pragmatist, habits are our "'ability to act competently in a pre-reflective but intentional and intelligent way'" (Turner and Cacciatori 2016), a recovery owed to "the re-reading of the work of William James, of John Dewey and – via Félix Ravaisson – of Aristotle’s notion of hexis". Ricoeur's formula opens the Introduction and frames the whole: habit is "'at the same time a living spontaneity and an imitation of the automaton, reversion to the thing.'" (The article's actual epigraph is the IJ 211 Pemulis habit-of-looking passage.)
• IJ as a medium of organisational thought. Situated in the "literary study of organization" tradition (Beyes, Costas, and Ortmann 2019; de Cock; C. Wright Mills), the paper "treats Infinite Jest as a medium of organisational thought in its own right" — not merely an object of analysis but a source of it. "It is a work of fiction that provides moral instruction about how to live with (in) institutions."
• Method: characterology over narratology. They "[bracket] concerns with the story … and the plot," focusing on "how particular characters behave within and experience their own worlds … by means of their habits." The Subsidised-Time chronological puzzle (the clue arrives at IJ 223, "over 200 hundred pages" in [sic]) and the field of "likely unreliable narrators" are given as reasons to read character rather than plot. The hinge: "Infinite Jest grants the capacity for reflection to some characters but not to others".
• Lenz = the behaviourist pole. Lenz is "characterised mechanistically." His habits (northeast compulsion, pulse-taking, fear of timepieces, headstands, etc.) are "presented though not really explained," their aetiologies "black-boxed." Wallace hides Lenz's stash inside William James's Principles of Psychology — "one of the intellectual pillars upon which AA’s programme of recovery was built" — and Lenz misreads it: his animal-killing ("gutter rats," cats, a dog, finally a man) is his "unorthodox" application of James's habituation to a perverse "religious experience", a "Catharsis of resolving". He is Pavlovian ("living breathing animal = resolution opportunity"), a "connoisseur of cats", and ends by succumbing "to the animal state". BUT the reading is not simply damning: Lenz's destruction is "morally suspicious but not cognitively mindless," an "unreflected spontaneity" (Ravaisson), habit as a "moving middle term" between instinct and intelligence — "Perhaps Wallace, through Lenz, is provoking us to appreciate that addiction is never without agency."
• Gately = the pragmatist pole. Two methodological reasons Gately's case is "less enigmatic": IJ gives him a backstory AND represents his subjectivity, so his habits' aetiology exists "both textually and speculatively". His recovery is pragmatist habituation: "a classically Aristotelian notion of habituation in which a new character is produced through just so many acts of repetition." AA's power is practice-over-belief — "it doesn’t yet matter what you believe or don’t believe, Just Do It" — and "Despite how stupid its routines are and require you to be, they actually work". Gately's clarity is that recovery is "predicated upon the suspension of one’s impulse to rationalise the process of staying sober"; he "cannot ever allow himself to forget what he is – an addict –"; he cultivates "an embodied awareness about how to abide, moment by moment". He "has experienced action as more reliable than intention and skill as more reliable than will." What he develops is a hexis (Carlisle), habits "'cultivated at the level of sensations, feelings, and involuntary thoughts.'"
• Grace bestowed unbeknownst. The paper reads Gately's two opening burglaries as prefiguring "Don’s redemption": he "is pardoned … by one from whom he could not reasonably have expected forgiveness" (IJ, 960–964), "in front of the reader but behind the back of the protagonist" — a grace he abides without knowing it is coming, which "makes his efforts all the more commendable".
• The verdict — pragmatism saves. "So if Randy Lenz is one of the novel’s villains then it is largely because he adopts a behavioural perspective towards his habits … And if Don Gately is the hero of the novel then it is not because he has mastered his habits but rather because he, the pragmatist, has found a way to live with and through them." The novel "emphasises the saving power of pragmatism"; its "exhortation to the saving power of pragmatism should facilitate pragmatism's ongoing recovery" within and beyond organization studies.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Gately's recovery is a genuine transformation via pragmatist habituation — building a new character through repetition (Aristotelian hexis / practice-over-belief), NOT willpower or belief; grace is bestowed on it unbeknownst

• Crux: gately-salvation (support); salvation-spectrum (support)
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [text] Recovery as character-building repetition: "Recovery by the AA book … suggests a classically Aristotelian notion of habituation in which a new character is produced through just so many acts of repetition." [sec. The pragmatic perspective]
  • [text] Practice-over-belief as the mechanism, not a failure of thought: the habits of sobriety "are largely predicated upon the suspension of one’s impulse to rationalise the process of staying sober," and yet "Despite how stupid its routines are and require you to be, they actually work: this is the truly remarkable thing about AA, as far as Don sees it." [sec. The pragmatic perspective]
  • [text] Action/skill over intention/will: "He has experienced action as more reliable than intention and skill as more reliable than will." [sec. Concluding discussion]
  • [text] The result is a cultivated hexis, embodied awareness: "So Don Gately experiences himself cultivating an embodied awareness about how to abide, moment by moment, in the position of a perennially recovering addict"; what he develops are habits "'cultivated at the level of sensations, feelings, and involuntary thoughts'" (Carlisle 2010, 141). [sec. Concluding discussion]
  • [text] Grace-unbeknownst / pardon: Gately "is pardoned for the clear criminal transgressions of his past life … by one from whom he could not reasonably have expected forgiveness" (IJ, 960–964), "in front of the reader but behind the back of the protagonist." [sec. The pragmatic perspective]
  • [secondary] Epigraph frame (Gerdes 2015, 353): "The habits that keep Gately sober do so because they constitute a practice of humility."
• Notes: Routes to gately-salvation as a philosophy-of-habit support: the archive's soteriology package already logs "Gately's Lenz-rescue as conversion-by-action" and the trauma-ward/crucifixion frame; this paper supplies the pragmatist vocabulary (hexis, repetition-builds-character, action-over-will) under that conversion-by-action reading, and independently anchors the grace-bestowed-unbeknownst pardon (IJ 960–964) that gately-salvation tracks. Distinct from the AA-as-language readings (Daverman/Raizman): the claim here is that AA's belief-free proceduralism is intelligent habituation, not thoughtless behaviourism — a rebuttal of the "AA is anti-intellectual" temptation from the pragmatist rather than the ironic side.

THEORY: The Lenz/Gately pair is a designed contrast between the BEHAVIOURIST and PRAGMATIST accounts of habit — same organisation (Ennet House), opposite fates (terminal decline vs. lasting sobriety) — and the difference is which theory of habit each character lives out

• Crux: thematic — addiction-and-recovery
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [text] The thesis, stated in the abstract: the novel "represents the difference between terminal decline and lasting sobriety by opposing the fates of two characters: the suffering addict (Randy Lenz) is characterised mechanistically whereas the recovering addict (Don Gately) is characterised experientially."
  • [text] The analytic hinge: "Infinite Jest grants the capacity for reflection to some characters but not to others: this is the hinge on which our analysis turns."
  • [text] Lenz as the mechanistic pole whose aetiology is withheld: his habits are "presented though not really explained," "tantalisingly evoked but essentially concealed, hidden, black-boxed"; he acts "as the Pavlovian might expect him to (living breathing animal = resolution opportunity)".
  • [text] Yet Lenz retains agency — the reading refuses pure behaviourism even for him: his destruction is "morally suspicious but not cognitively mindless," and "Perhaps Wallace, through Lenz, is provoking us to appreciate that addiction is never without agency."
  • [text] The verdict pairs the poles: "So if Randy Lenz is one of the novel’s villains then it is largely because he adopts a behavioural perspective towards his habits"; Gately is a hero because "he, the pragmatist, has found a way to live with and through them."
  • [inference] Both are bound by "the same organisation – the Ennet House … its very strict rules and routines" — so the variable the paper isolates is not the institution but the character's relation to habit.
• Notes: This Lenz-as-behaviourist / Gately-as-pragmatist contrast is the paper's spine and is genuinely NEW to the archive — no existing crux captures the behaviourism-vs-pragmatism theory-of-habit framing, and there is no Lenz-centred crux (in the theory record, Lenz figures only inside the Gately soteriology package, the panel-narration discussion, and the Incandenza/lens wordplay note). Carried as thematic, not crux-level. Cite-as-written caution: the reading grants Lenz agency, so it is NOT a simple disease-model determinism claim — do not route it as if the paper says Lenz has no choice; its distinctive move is the opposite ("addiction is never without agency").

Themes

Addiction and recovery (the paper's home ground — Ennet House, AA, relapse vs. sobriety, read through habit theory); habit / routine / discipline (the whole frame: behaviourist automaticity vs. pragmatist intelligent habituation, hexis, Ravaisson's "moving middle term"); the self and its cultivation (character built through repetition; "change oneself by changing one’s habits"; action over will); grace and salvation (Gately pardoned unbeknownst; habit as "our sin as well as our salvation"); institutions / organisational life (Ennet House rules and routines; IJ as moral instruction "about how to live with (in) institutions"); unreliable narration and readerly difficulty (the Subsidised-Time puzzle; footnotes-to-footnotes; why the authors read character over plot).

Cross-references

• hf-daverman-limits-of-the-infinite-aa — direct companion on AA's practice-over-belief: Daverman's Betty-Crocker cake-mix parable (IJ p. 469) and "chilled conviction that you have no faith whatsoever left in yourself" (IJ p. 351) are the SAME belief-free-proceduralism material Dunne & Pedersen cite from IJ 461–469 ("doing the things that a sober person does for long enough"). Daverman keys it to A.A.'s narrative form (Identifying-not-Comparing); D&P key it to habit/pragmatism. Different lens on one passage-cluster.
• hf-raizman-call-it-something-i-ate — the other AA-as-learned-practice thesis (AA as Wittgensteinian language-game learned by repetition); shares the "repetition builds the recovering self" ground D&P give an Aristotelian/Jamesian reading of.
• chapman-bodies-in-ij — Chapman's agency/embodiment vocabulary ("sense of agency," embodied selfhood) is the clinical-neuroscientific counterpart to D&P's philosophical "embodied awareness" and Ravaisson's habit-agency; both read Gately/embodiment as the grounded pole, from different disciplines.
• gc-ep013-rob-short-aa-recovery and gc-ep020-john-mango-recovery — the podcast recovery episodes the gately-salvation / irony-vs-recovery theory record entries anchor; D&P's Gately-as-pragmatist-hero is the academic complement. Note the paper's endnote 9 credits The Great Concavity podcast and The Howling Fantods as "indispensable" community hubs (plus the Sam Potts and Keith O'Neill diagrams) — the scholarly record leaning on the same fan infrastructure this archive digests.
• general online discussion — the "Bill James" naming question surfaced independently in the 2026 Infinite Summer Discord (build file 0508-562: a reader flags IJ's repeated "Bill James" and floats the baseball-sabermetrics namesake); confirmed against the novel's text as Wallace's own phrase.
• newyorker-dtmax-dfw-in-recovery — biographical recovery context (D&P cite Max 2013, Every Ghost Story is a Love Story, in their notes).
• the addiction-and-recovery theme — the thematic home for this note's routing.