(no subject)
Highly annoying article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. In fact, every article I've read from there has been annoying.
Quotes:
For years real, live, ink-stained, tear-stained artists were granted refuge in the university, but they have been replaced by a breed domesticated in master's-of-fine-arts programs. Over in literature departments, what passes as scholarship has also become more scholastic. We've heard the many rants about how it is elitist, or politicized, or irrelevant, or abstruse, or too theoretical, or not theoretical enough. My concern is more basic. Literary criticism no longer aims to appreciate aesthetics - to study how human beings respond to art. Do you get dizzy when you look at a Turner painting of a storm at sea? Do certain buildings make you feel insignificant while others make you feel just the right size? Without understanding that intensely physical reaction, scholarship about the arts can no longer enlarge the soul.
The problem is not just that literary scholarship has become disconnected from life. Something else more suspicious has happened to professional criticism in America over the past 30 years, and that is its love affair with reducing literature to ideas, to the author's or reader's intention or ideology - not at all the same thing as art. As a result, literary critics are devoted to saving the world, not to saving literature for the world, and to internecine battles that make little sense outside academe.
The last time you looked down the corridor may have been when theorists were raising their banners, but the reality is that a much more repressive approach was seizing control. Now we are told we should boil down the moral meaning of a work to a sentence. Say whether it is favorable to a particular group. If not, ban it from the classroom. I exaggerate, but only a little.
Today, in 2005, it looks as if Sontag was dead wrong, her words a painful reminder of how foolish we all sounded back then when we wore our bell-bottoms and tie-dyed T-shirts. Interpretation has established its dominion over American literary scholarship. In so doing, it is threatening to wipe out 30 years of postmodernism that emerged out of the intellectual ferment of the 1960s. Can we break its hold?
What does the author mean by domesticated master's of arts programs? Don't MFA programs hire "Real ink-stained, tear-stained artists" of all sorts? And what the fuck is with the tear-stained artists? Are we back in the Romantic era now?
Interpretation has established its dominion over American literary scholarship. In so doing, it is threatening to wipe out 30 years of postmodernism that emerged out of the intellectual ferment of the 1960s.-- so the author is mourning the loss of postmodern criticism?
I'm highly confused by this article. I think the terminology here is imprecise: what does the author mean by "postmodern criticism"? Are they indicating a time period or an overarching kind of criticism? Do they mean post-structuralist more precisely than postmodern?
Who is the "we" that are being told to "boil down the moral meaning of a work to a sentence"? I've never heard a professor use the words "moral meaning" in my life. Is the author talking about queer theory/post-colonial theory/feminist theory and other kinds of criticism that focus on representations of certain groups in literature as the bad guys who want to make us think about morals? If so, then don't those kind of theoretical frameworks fit into the "postmodern" category?
Quotes:
For years real, live, ink-stained, tear-stained artists were granted refuge in the university, but they have been replaced by a breed domesticated in master's-of-fine-arts programs. Over in literature departments, what passes as scholarship has also become more scholastic. We've heard the many rants about how it is elitist, or politicized, or irrelevant, or abstruse, or too theoretical, or not theoretical enough. My concern is more basic. Literary criticism no longer aims to appreciate aesthetics - to study how human beings respond to art. Do you get dizzy when you look at a Turner painting of a storm at sea? Do certain buildings make you feel insignificant while others make you feel just the right size? Without understanding that intensely physical reaction, scholarship about the arts can no longer enlarge the soul.
The problem is not just that literary scholarship has become disconnected from life. Something else more suspicious has happened to professional criticism in America over the past 30 years, and that is its love affair with reducing literature to ideas, to the author's or reader's intention or ideology - not at all the same thing as art. As a result, literary critics are devoted to saving the world, not to saving literature for the world, and to internecine battles that make little sense outside academe.
The last time you looked down the corridor may have been when theorists were raising their banners, but the reality is that a much more repressive approach was seizing control. Now we are told we should boil down the moral meaning of a work to a sentence. Say whether it is favorable to a particular group. If not, ban it from the classroom. I exaggerate, but only a little.
Today, in 2005, it looks as if Sontag was dead wrong, her words a painful reminder of how foolish we all sounded back then when we wore our bell-bottoms and tie-dyed T-shirts. Interpretation has established its dominion over American literary scholarship. In so doing, it is threatening to wipe out 30 years of postmodernism that emerged out of the intellectual ferment of the 1960s. Can we break its hold?
What does the author mean by domesticated master's of arts programs? Don't MFA programs hire "Real ink-stained, tear-stained artists" of all sorts? And what the fuck is with the tear-stained artists? Are we back in the Romantic era now?
Interpretation has established its dominion over American literary scholarship. In so doing, it is threatening to wipe out 30 years of postmodernism that emerged out of the intellectual ferment of the 1960s.-- so the author is mourning the loss of postmodern criticism?
I'm highly confused by this article. I think the terminology here is imprecise: what does the author mean by "postmodern criticism"? Are they indicating a time period or an overarching kind of criticism? Do they mean post-structuralist more precisely than postmodern?
Who is the "we" that are being told to "boil down the moral meaning of a work to a sentence"? I've never heard a professor use the words "moral meaning" in my life. Is the author talking about queer theory/post-colonial theory/feminist theory and other kinds of criticism that focus on representations of certain groups in literature as the bad guys who want to make us think about morals? If so, then don't those kind of theoretical frameworks fit into the "postmodern" category?