From the Australian, “New Literature Course ‘Too Political’”:
The subject that would replace English literature in West Australian high schools encourages political and moral sermonising, according to a noted English professor who shares the concerns of teachers lobbying against the changes to the course.
Poet Dennis Haskell, the University of Western Australia’s acting head of English, Communication and Cultural Studies, said it was sad that the draft consultation exam for the course, called Texts, Traditions and Culture, was inherently political.
The draft exam, obtained by The Australian, asks students to consider economic rationalism, redundancy and redeployment in a passage from an Australian play. Supporting documents from the course instruct Year 11 and Year 12 students to record their responses to “mainstream texts” such as video music clips and games, song lyrics and commercial television.
Professor Haskell said the course appeared to train students in social and political commentary without allowing them to simply appreciate the “music of language”.
Two things here: first, it is heartening that there are still some literary types in positions of academic power willing to push aback against the conversion of literary studies into an arm of the progressive political movement, even if we have to go all the way to Australia to find them; and second, Professor Haskell’s complaint is, slightly modified, precisely the thing that convinced me to learn theory in the first place.
To wit: as a fiction writer enrolled in a PhD program, I was taking classes with literary studies students, who had learned, during their Masters training most likely, to speak in a kind of code, one wherein the dropping of theorists’ names substituted for making substantive comments about the primary literary text under discussion. Which is to say, we’d be assigned a piece by H.G. Wells, for instance, and the discussion in class would quickly turn to the Boer War, and—without having to crack the Wells text itself—we would spend the entirety of our “study” of “The Time Machine” discussing British colonialism, with a few nods to Foucault of Benjamin.
Which, from the perspective of a fiction writer (who was interested in how the levels of telling in the story created a kind of unreliable narrative situation, and so may be said to undercut, for the reader, the ostensible lesson the protagonist learns), was quite unsatisfying. After all, I’d assumed that literature classes would require me to bury myself in the primary text; but instead, I noticed that the secret of literary studies was to learn a few snippets of theory, then apply that to every text and textual situation and call it a “specialty.”
This struck me as both easy and lazy—not to mention a procedure that reduced literature to a mere springboard for politicking.
My response was to throw myself into theory, to study the major movements and reduce them to their kernel assumptions about language (which is why I’m not much interested in the invocation of a theorist’s name, except insofar as it indexes a particular set of critical assumptions)—all in an effort to bring literary studies back to the primary text, which I believed should be more than just the ostensible object of study. And eventually, after learning and working through the canon of kernel theoretical assumptions, I came to the conclusion that, for purposes of interpretation, intentionalism was the only coherent one to approach a text as text. Which of course doesn’t mean there aren’t other (often more interesting) things we can do with texts; just that, from the perspective of a writer who was interested in how language worked to produce such complex puzzles as literary texts, studying how the author was able to put a text together and make it work became a primary interest of mine, specifically from a technical (structural) level. Which led me into narratology, a field that itself has a specialized vocabulary—but that has the advantage of dealing with the primary text in a way that borders on the scientific.
For me, intentionalism simply is. So what came to interest me was what we think we’re doing when we teach a literary text. For instance, if we ask students to read Moby Dick and write a paper on it, what are we asking them to do, exactly? And I concluded that if the answer was to “interpret” the work, what we needed to stress was the necessity of appealing to authorial intent as a prerequisite for something purporting to call itself interpretation.
I never conceived of this, initially, as a political argument; in fact, I conceived of it as a way to return the “literariness” to literary studies. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have other implications, many of which I have tried to articulate on this site, even as I’m thinking through those implications myself.
In short, I was reacting to what I thought an unwise shortcut to studying a text that conveniently did away with the difficult work of having to first understand it from the perspective and intentions of its creator.
Which hopefully helps explain the trajectory that brought me to my current position on textual matters.
But back to the primary text:
The students will be assessed against four “outcomes” called textual production, applying skills and understandings of self and society, readings of texts, and processes and strategies for exploring, developing and shaping ideas through texts.
“Ironically, that kind of thing is on the wane in universities,” Professor Haskell said. “You need to allow students a certain amount of innocence, above everything a certain amount of pleasure in reading and it does not appear to be offered here.
“The ancient, longstanding dictum of Aristotle was that the purpose of the arts was to entertain and instruct—this seems to go heavily towards the instruct and the entertain goes out the window, and that’s pretty sad.”
Some English teachers told The Australian this week that the draft exam could be passed by a student who had not even completed a literature course.
“It needs a great deal of rewriting so that it is clearly a literature-based course designed to extend those students who are interested in studying literary texts and being challenged intellectually,” one teacher said.
The English Teachers Association of Western Australia supports the course, despite concerns about assessment.
Curriculum Council acting chief executive David Axworthy agreed a student who had not done a literature course could pass the draft exam, but was annoyed the document was facing media scrutiny. “It is getting past ridiculous that every piece of paper released by the Curriculum Council, in its consultations with teachers, has to go under the media microscope,” he said.
[My emphases]
I’ll let you all make what you will out of the bolded bits. But I think many of you can connect the dots between intentionalism and the annoyance of those who have rejected it—up to and including their wish to keep their procedures for teaching texts free from scrutiny from those whom they considered uninitiated in the ways of cultural materialism.
Which, sadly, is not surprising at all.
(h/t Allah)
My.
Boy, this is spot on, Jeff! The devolution of literary criticism to a few well-dropped names as a way to ‘explain’ the piece of literature is just too facile.
As a “returning” college student, I had to take a Humanities course. I was elated to find a photography course offered! Yeah, there’s be tons of writing and critiqueing of the images, sure, but photography interested me. Imagine my chagrin when it turned out to be an Art History course and focused on the kinds of junk I’d throw out of any portfolio I had! And the course was entirely about forcing the several texts to argue amongsts themselves about various lofty concepts. Boy, talk about a serious drag, forced to compare two useless authors!
Anyway, one of the images was gushed over as “almost ruining photography”. My point in my final paper was that perhaps it DID ruin photography! What exactly would have been different if it were “ruined”??
Now literature is being ruined. At least I got a B in the course, but it almost ruined my love of art criticism
OK, that did ruin it, but that’s my problem.
Boy, I step away from the puter for a couple days and look what happens.
This is what you would expect to hear from someone who wishes to hide what they are doing from the public eye. You have to laugh that a person involved in the public education of the young could think that this is acceptable. I hope the Aussies aren’t inclined to put up with this sort of crap.
Anyone else remember that old vaudeville gag about the joke-writers? They were so steeped in every conceivable bit of humor that to tell a joke they’d just refer by number to a punchline? “Twenty-seven!” “Great one, Jenkins!”
And now it appears that literary criticism may have descended to the same thing. “Derrida!” “Astute analysis, professor!”
– Hard to work your “progressive” magic of amorphizing everything in sight into a globular, mind numbing blob, with others looking over your shoulder….
Apparently PC is rampent down under. To wit:
– In April the organization Gymnastics Australia ordered cheerleader teams to supply less revealing uniforms (e.g. no bare midriffs), not based on any position of “indecency” or modesty, but on a stated organizational fear that: “[the] open exhibition of nubile sveldt young cheerleader bodies might make overweight girls “feel bad”, and lead to even more widespread eating disorders”.
Am I missing something here? What, exactly, is the point of the course if a student could pass the exam without taking the course? Why not just save these kids some time, let them take the exam, and give them an hour a day for a semester to FO?
The point is, as always, to make the “student” feel good about themselves. Having them learn anything is strictly a secondary objective, unfortunately.
SB: true
yoo betcha
I knew the big names’ major works before I was “taught” them. Followed the chain down from Nietzsche et al. Loved ‘em all. Still do.
Then I was taught what Jeff describes, the reduction of interpretation to two or three one-size procedural formulas from which properly left(-sounding)-political conclusions are inevitably “reached,” factory-syle, sprinkled randomly with names-as-arguments, all texts regardless. It’s an easy, dumb desecration of the philosophies/-ers in whose names it proceedsâ€â€that’s what I thought.
While I was amazed/disgusted/etc. at the universal blunt misuse to which these names and works are put (like Searle was)â€â€because they’re so much more interesting, revealing, and useful pre-reductioâ€â€I was most amazed/disgusted/etc. that the big names themselves, universally (except Foucault), endorsed such, and only such, reductive misuse (again, Searle).
It almost made me a Marxist. Not the self-justifying academic-aristocrat kind. The scary kind. Almost.
Humiliation. mojo is almost exactly wrong. (Sorry.) Pre-emptive obedience does not “feel good” in that way.
(Inner Hulk-Althusser emerges.)
INTERPELLATION! AAAARRRRGH!
What is up with the word “outcomes”? I notice the author puts it in quotes, singling it out for attention.
I just got the syllabus for my summer humanities course today and it also refered to “learning outcomes.” Did the old phrase “learning objectives” imply too much work? I’m just now returning to my education after a decade or so, and this is a new development I think. Anyone know where it comes from?
An objective may not be reached. An outcome can be guaranteed.
Except when a dude with two first names uses same tactic to blow “Michaelsian” smoke up your ass.
Seriously though, this is just a fantastic post that ties your underlying points in all the Thersites crap up very nicely in a package any non-specialist can understand and find very compelling. Great job.
That’s where I went, too. It smacks of “no score” soccer tournaments where everyone’s a winner!
Thanks for this background, Jeff. I find it very interesting to hear about your journey.
I went to a non-traditional college, Evergreen in Olympia, Washington–no majors, no grades, emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. Largely seminars. In my last year I studied with a writing teacher who was really helpful. Sandra Simon. No longer living, sadly.
For the first individual meeting with her, we were asked to bring a piece of writing. Anything, about three pages. When we met, she read my piece, then took out a scissors and cut the thing to ribbons. Then she pieced it together in a new way (with scotch tape!) and handed it to me. It read much better.
From then on, she had my attention.
She introduced us to (what she called) rhetorical analysis, and the main thing we did was to look at a piece of prose and discuss where the thing went–why does the next word seem to follow or not follow, why does the next sentence seem to follow or not follow, etc. Then the author would explain what they had intended–at the same level of detail, what they had been trying to say, why they chose a certain word, why the next sentence was there, etc.
Paying attention to this juxtaposition of what was in the author’s mind and what ended up on the page turned out to be very helpful.
I guess I was lucky to get this kind of training early on. I would go mad in a situation like the ones described in this post. I admire your reaction: learning enough to walk the walk!
Maybe you have answered this elsewhere in your pages, but are you still writing fiction? I hope so, you have a lovely voice and an interesting perspective.
Good on Prof. Haskell. Anyone who takes Aristotelian aesthetics seriously is all right in my book.
Art, by definition is crafted to be beautiful, and delightful. I doubt Aristotle would have understood “entertaining.” “Friends” might be entertaining, but it ain’t art.
And beauty is not only delightful but also instructive. The Aussies have it bass ackwards. They start with a lesson and then foist it on the work–a sure prescription for killing any legitimate delight or instruction. Look what the race baiters have been trying to do to Huckleberry Finn for crissakes.
One of those virtous old Romans, Cicero I think, added a third criteria–art delights, instructs, and leads the perceiver to virtuous action. What a concept.
Samuel Clemens once said: “I write for my readers so they can experience the sorrows, and joys of their existance. As to the critque of my “meanings”, I leave that for the monkeys of higher learning.”
Which means aesthetically pleasing. I have no formal training in art…I just collect. It so happens that I tend to collect those items that seem timeless, and which happen to appreciate in value, and which I enjoy looking at tremendously.
I have a large painting that I bought at auction some years ago, unsigned. At this particular auction (redneck, knuckledraggers all) no one bid on this piece and I ended up purchasing it for $.50. The auctioneer made a big deal out of it and asked the bidders to “give that man a hand”.
I get to look at this magnificent painting every day, now going on 20 years.
Jeff, outstanding post.
I had a similar experience in graduate school. I’d been a working journalist for four years when I went into a full-time creative writing program, M.A., and then later into the lit Ph.D. program. I saw that the “writers” approached literature far differently than the “readers” (that is, the lit majors). I was interested in storytelling and technique; hermeneutics just wasn’t my thing. They seemed interested in theory.
Unlike you, however, I never fully embraced a hermeneutic of intentionality; I was satisfied with the concept of the implied author. I agreed with Eliot (IIRC) who said a writer (that is, the physical being) has no more authority over interpretation of his work over any other reader, since he returns to his work as a reader. The implied author is the author at the moment of writing—an agent attempting to say something (and that agent may or may not have anything to do with a real person) and who has said something. As readers, we all get to determine what that means. People say more than they mean sometimes.
My own hermeneutic is that hermeneutics seriously applies in one area—sacred scripture. The stakes are far lower in theories of interpretation of lit. Hermeneutics applied to literature give readers a variety of ways to understand texts. A variety of approaches doesn’t upset me. But I’m interested in stories and in meaning. I think it helps us to understand Heart of Darkness if we approach it from a psychological perspective, but a post-colonial perspective reminds us not to buy in too heavily to the idea of savage natives.
Not to split the difference.
Perhaps you’ve compelling argued for intentionality. I’d have to study what you’ve written in more depth to comment further.
[comment removed for fear the late-term syphilitic dementia from which its author suffers might be contagious]
[comment removed for fear the late-term syphilitic dementia from which its author suffers might be contagious]
IB Bill —
I was initially a fan of the Eco distinction between authorial intention and the intentions of the text (and I do believe there is what I used to call a “narrative entity”—the implied author), but in the end, it’s really a distinction without a difference from the perspective of signification, though it certainly matters in terms of trying to determine meaning. Because the implied author could, presumably, be an ironization of the historical author. Which is why biographical criticism, as well as other clues to meaning, should alway be taken with a grain of salt.
Still, the originating agency of the signification is the same whether you talk about the implied author or the historical author. So from an intentionalist perspective (which is, when all is said and does, largely descriptive of the nature of signification, nothing more) there isn’t much of distinction to be drawn.
[comment removed for fear the late-term syphilitic dementia from which its author suffers might be contagious]
[comment removed for fear the late-term syphilitic dementia from which its author suffers might be contagious]
I’m glad that Hamster Brain is being “civil” and adding such depth to the topic.
It is certainly entertaining.
I suggest the “actus treatment” for this latest troll.
I think the NY JuCo teacher’s pedophile has just revealed himself here.
Someone should tell Tena, Esq.
Cordially…
Roughly translates as – “Bloody taxpayers, who are they to stick their snouts where they don’t belong? Leave it to your betters.”
– We’re attracting demented hamsters now. And to think this all started as an innocent academic exercise. What next, Hillery voters?
– Don’t let on to the ‘dillo. Hes terribly territorial, and might think hes been replaced.
As a writer, nothing has made more sense to me than Nabokov’s lectures on Literature. After reading his work, I can never take any of this philosophical crap seriously.
OK. But only if we can use it on acthole too.
– Oh look…..through yonder window light doust break… ‘Tis the east… and Homer is my G_d……(more donuts anyone?)
So, ya figure he got the hamster brain by clenching his sphincter?
As a writer, nothing has made more sense to me than Nabokov’s lectures on Literature. After reading his work, I can never take any of this philosophical crap seriously.
I didn’t think they were published. Are they available somewhere? Or did you go to Cornell in the 50s, Mr. Shakespeare?
Where can I find them?
Niiiiiiiice. A little double entendre…or something.
What is up with the word “outcomes�
Outcomes happen. So do acti and rodent droppings.
TW: specific
species, specious
Look, we’ve told you the answers. You don’t need the questions.
The birthplace of Toohey’s New gets some slack from me, but not that much.
Yea gods.
Hmm.. perhaps if I reduce the percentage of blood in my alcohol system by a couple of tenths this will all make more sense.
[…]
And what ever happened to that armadillo? Now he knew how to criticize a piece of literature.
“As a writer, nothing has made more sense to me than Nabokov’s lectures on Literature. After reading his work, I can never take any of this philosophical crap seriously.”
I bet in his lectures he said words the equivalent of “There are no higher truths to be revealed bythe study of narrative, because narrative itself IS the higher truth”.
I’m still looking up your language, but I know your basic context. Like how Libs, think that “stranger in a strange land” is a liberal doctrine, the idiots.
Nice post, Jeff.
I’ve enjoyed the recent head-to-head . . . well, more like foot-to-ass scholarly throwdowns you’ve had with Thersites. Well, what of it I could understand. Some of that shit goes even over my head.
But I think this one really brought it all home.
I was an English major in college because I thought there would be more writing courses. Big mistake. The courses I took were mostly literature-intensive, and chock-full of the deconstructionist bullshit you’ve been facing on a daily basis here.
However, I did strike back at my professor’s constant quasi-political criticisms. I got to write two term papers which utterly destroyed liberal icons. One shredded Norman Mailer; that was good. But the big prize was when I risked my entire course grade to ruin my Shakespeare professor’s idol, Coppélia Kahn, author of such works as Roman Shakespeare (Feminist Readings of Shakespeare) and Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. You know the type: ”Macbeth is the archetypal Victorian screed against women . . .” yada yada yada.
I used Macbeth and Hamlet to utterly wreck her, and I got an A on both papers.
TW: “wrong” . . . too easy.
IBBill:
Try this.
His Lectures on Russian Literature are even better. Also, read Strong Opinions. He can beat back the relativists with both lobes tied behind his back.
I really don’t think he realized exactly how much he was revealing when he said this…heh.
We live in NOLA. My 10 year old had to take the IOWA tests this year. LA state law stipulates that if either the reading comp or the math sections are failed, then you have to retest. Fail the restest, fail the grade. My boy fails the math section (interestingly, he made Honor Roll overall for the entire year, with an 89.8 average for all subjects, including a B- in math), but is within the range (15 pts) that we can request that he be passed anyway, given his work in the subject over the course of the year. The School Administrator, in initially talking to my wife about this, says, and I quote,
“I know you don’t care about this, but if he takes a retest and passes, we get more money.”
Methinks she doth reveal too much….
No freaking wonder I got in so much trouble in Honors English in highscrewl for saying to the (middle aged woman) instructor:
“But that’s a bunch of crap! You’re just adding in a bunch of meanings and crap that the author never intended! You can do that forever and you never even have to read the story!”
I said that in 1986 in my first Honors English class.
I wrecked my grade and came to hate ‘literature classes’, though I do enjoy literature.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Jeff.
I’m an electrical engineer… Go figure….