I tend to get my feathers in a ruffle lately when I’m reading literary criticism. You’re probably all nodding along, like, "No shit, Alfina, literary criticism is lame. It is SO LAME. Why would you want to subject yourself to that crap?" And then you can all have a great big laugh, because apparently I am supposed to be on the way to becoming some kind of asshatted literary critic myself, which means not only will I be contributing to the problem (and ostensibly also SO LAME by association), but I will also be forced to read and engage with it all the time. All professional-like, and shit.
I didn’t always feel so ruffled: in the heady undergrad days, before I had to espouse some kind of critical methodology like I was choosing a religion, I found all stripes of the stuff to be fascinating–kind of like when I was sixteen and liked reading about different religions, all "oh, this month I’m so into the Tao." At the end of that phase, though, I wound up becoming an atheist, and I suspect that’s what’s happening with the literary field, too. I’m doubting that any of those methodologies, least of all the ones that are so trendy right now, are going to tell us anything about books at all.
I mean, on the one hand, you have your post-structuralist stuff, where language is a faulty representational system and oh how it pains us, but on the other hand you’re left with the dubious outcroppings of Marxism–and the Marxists don’t even have to read the text, let alone pay any attention to language. All they have to do is arch an eyebrow and call something "problematic." Then, of course, the one hand meets the other hand, and what you get are a bunch of earnest grad students all "Well, due to the inscrutable nature of the semiotic system, the meaning of this text has been completely obscured. And, while I can never claim to know what it says, I suspect it is re-inscribing the dominant patriarchal system / classicist hegemony / heteronormative assumptions, and it is therefore [cue eyebrow] highly problematic." And you know there is nothing that makes me want to roll my eyes more than grad students and their earnestness.
I get that this sounds childish, but can we just remember for a damned minute what it was like to love a book, or a poem or–if you must–even a play? Feeling swept up or elated or punched in the stomach by mere text on a page–text that didn’t stay on the page, that is, but leapt up off of it and whacked us in the face? Something so engaging we stayed up all night to finish it, or, when we did finish, we went right back to the beginning to start again? Even if it was written by some white dude all entangled in the suspenders of patriarchy? Because I am weary of having to seek out "the problematic" in everything I read, and I am weary of the cynical reader who is too caught up in worrying about the fact that art is representational to appreciate it, and I am weary of being weary. No, this is not a pipe; yes, it is a damned fine painting, you know?
I will admit that racism and sexism and homophobia and classicism and colonialism are all lame. They are SO LAME. And I’ll admit that neither the word "pipe" nor the painting of a pipe is a pipe. Fine. Now let’s move on. This is the New School; we read books here.
Hello!
1) This sounds like a drunken rant, but I promise I am sober; I have just been reading all day, and
2) You are really going to want to click on that one link, because there you will find one smashing tidbit of information about that Magritte painting that I bet you did not know. Do it, I dare you.
Vague-
1) You are a breath of fresh air. You hear me? FRESH AIR!!!!!!!!
2) I gave up on literary theory after taking two intensive years of it at Zemblan U., probably with the same profs you’re studying with now. Wearying isn’t it?
3) Now that you’ve had your ephiphany (I know, I know…we musn’t use that word because they are all false and blahblah), I say take your love of literature and poetry to the masses, er, classes. Lord knows, I actually didn’t start really loving literature and poetry until AFTER I graduated with a degree in literature.
So, yeah. I’m with ya. And have a bottle of wine for me while your at it. I’d love one right now.
-Oed
hey! i still have that feeling for books, and i’m starting to get it back for music. there is something about extensive schooling that just sucks the joy out of art. very problematic.
charlotte perkins gilman hates chinese people. that is all.
O– Thanks. I have been feeling like that forever, and that’s a big part of what ye old dissertation project is about–after working on it all day (including rereading a particularly asinine essay on Faulkner) I was kinda amped up about the whole thing!
K– Good! Vive la resistance!
M– Geez, Mel, I am glad you finally learned that. God. You and your white privilege had been really getting me down!
wel ok but if ur trning critics out on a asembly line its a helof alot esier to tech people a algarithm then to per suede em to think. an its the only way to produce a reasenably consistant product. give em a break. their trying to run a busness here.
as for taechign em to apreciate a asthetic esperiarince? forget it. you cant even detect whethar they apreciate it already (actually i do know how btw but i wouldn want it to be comon knowleage).
HA, “esperiarince” is my favorite of your misspellings/neologisms, like, of all time. And maybe you could just email me the secret, instead of publishing it here in my comments section, where approximately ten (ten!) people might read it and know it. IF, that is, you do know it.
Does that comment sound like I have had three glasses of wine? I ask this for no reason.
Just as a point of reference, here are some words that reach up and clutch at your throat with their wordy little hands, all clawing at your very concepts:
From Faulkner, The Man.
And now, back to the Chapter that Refuses to Die.
That Faulkner quote totally expresses how frustrated insomnia makes me. Err, that’s assuming that his words, you know, actually mean something…
Well, I’m sure they mean something racist, given the source. Highly problematic. Bah.
(But didn’t they claw at your concepts?)
Oh, they clawed at my concepts. They clawed them all to fucking hell. My concepts are SO CLAWED that I’m worried I’ll have trouble emptying myself before bed today.
Damn Faulkner and his non-wordy words.
I have no idea what Faulkner means. But I do feel a clawing sensation…oh, it’s just the cat.
hksss, hkssss!
[that was the sound of concept be-clawing]