Lecture #02
Critical theory
Critical theory, Marxist-inspired movement in social and
political philosophy originally associated with the work of
the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal
of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures
through which people are dominated and oppressed. Believing that science, like
other forms of knowledge has been used as an instrument of oppression, they
caution against blind faith in scientific progress, arguing that scientific
knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference to the goal
of human emancipation. Since the 1970s, critical theory has been immensely
influential in the study of history,
law, literature, and the social sciences.
Critical Theory
Background
What are my first questions for this course?
Ø
What is literature?
Ø
What are we supposed to do with it?
Ø
How do we approach literature?
Critical theory articulates what we bring to literature,
which presumably determines what we get out of it. This is not a chaos of
subjectivity. Instead, critical theory tries to examine what types of questions
we should pose about literary works.
What does "common sense" say about this? That
literature is about life or is a reflection of life written from personal
experience? That we study literature in order to "appreciate"
something:
Ø
an historical time period and what life was like
then?
Ø
or a particular author's ideas and feelings?
These indeed were the standard and unarticulated assumptions
about literature traditionally.
HISTORICAL / BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM
Until well into the 20th century,
much of literary study was based on the assumption that to understand a work
you need to understand the author's social background, the author's life, ideas
circulating during the time the author was writing, what other works influenced
the creation of the one under examination, and so on. Most book introductions
still offer this kind of material. Valuable literature, therefore, is that
which tells us truths about the period which produced them. We are getting,
according to this approach, a vision of human nature or the world in general as
filtered through an author's individual insight and perceptions.
One problem with this assumption is
that it requires a crash course in matters falling outside the work itself. The
reader presumably must rely on an expert's special knowledge before being able
to "appreciate" the work, and this makes the study of literature
rather elitist. Literature seen this way seems dismissed almost, or at least
presented as simply a way of arriving at something anterior to itself: the
convictions of the author or that author's experience as part of a specific
society. And so why not just study history?
EXPRESSIVE REALISM
When the Aristotelian concept that
art is an imitation of reality fused with the Romantic conviction that poetry
is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, the "expressive
realist" notion took hold, insisting that truly authentic and valuable
works are those expressing the perceptions and emotions of a person of
sensibility. Thus we gush about how well an author captured the whale-killing
experience or conveyed his or her vision of love during the Civil War. But
critic Northrup Frye objects to this attitude:
The absurd quantum formula of
criticism, the assertion that the critic should confine himself to 'getting
out' of a poem exactly what the poet may vaguely be assumed to have been aware
of 'putting in', is one of the many slovenly illiteracies that the absence of
systematic criticism has allowed to grow up. This quantum theory is the
literary form of what may be called the fallacy of premature teleology. It
corresponds, in the natural sciences, to the assertion that a phenomenon is as
it is because Providence in its inscrutable wisdom made it so. That is, the
critic is assumed to have no conceptual framework: it is simply his job to take
a poem into which a poet has diligently stuffed a specific number of beauties
or effects, and complacently extract them one by one, like his prototype Little
Jack Horner. (qtd. in Belsey 27)
Both of the above approaches have
fallen under attack in recent decades by scholars objecting to the inherent
elitism of the approaches, or the notion of the reader being in the position of
passive consumer of literature, or in some cases how these approaches make
literary criticism parasitic on literature.
Before we involve ourselves with
their approaches, here are some terms designed to codify the most general tendencies
in literary criticism.
THEORETICAL
CRITICISM proposes a theory of literature and general principles as to
how to approach it; criteria for evaluation emerge.
PRACTICAL /
APPLIED CRITICISM discusses particular works and authors; the
theoretical principles are implicit within the analysis or interpretation.
IMPRESSIONISTIC
CRITICISM "appreciates" the responses evoked by works of
literature with oohs and ahhs regarding "the soul" and declarations
of "masterpieces."
JUDICIAL
CRITICISM attempts to analyze and explain those effects through the
basic forms of "dissection": subject, style, organization,
techniques.
MIMETIC
CRITICISM seeks to evaluate literature as an imitation or
representation of life.
PRAGMATIC
CRITICISM decides how well a work achieves its aims due to the author's
strategies.
EXPRESSIVE
CRITICISM gushes about how well an author expressed or conveyed him or
herself, his or her visions and feelings.
TEXTUAL
CRITICISM aims to establish an accurate uncorrupted original text identical
with what the author intended. This may involve collating manuscripts and
printed versions, deciding on the validity of rediscovered versions or
chapters, deciphering damaged manuscripts and illegible handwriting, etc. One
medieval problem, for example, is that of minims: ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ
= minimum.
Critical Theory:
Interpretive Strategies
Historicism considers the literary work in light of "what
really happened" during the period reflected in that work. It insists that
to understand a piece, we need to understand the author's biography and social
background, ideas circulating at the time, and the cultural milieu. Historicism
also "finds significance in the ways a particular work resembles or
differs from other works of its period and/or genre," and therefore may
involve source studies. It may also include examination of philology and
linguistics. It is typically a discipline involving impressively extensive
research.
New Criticism examines the relationships between a text's
ideas and its form, "the connection between what a text says and the way
it's said." New Critics/Formalists "may find tension, irony, or
paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence
of meaning." New Critics look for patterns of sound, imagery, narrative
structure, point of view, and other techniques discernible on close reading of
"the work itself." They insist that the meaning of a text should not
be confused with the author's intentions nor the text's affective
dimension--its effects on the reader. The objective determination as to
"how a piece works" can be found through close focus and analysis, rather
than through extraneous and erudite special knowledge.
Archetypal criticism "traces cultural and
psychological 'myths' that shape the meaning of texts." It argues that
"certain literary archetypes determine the structure and function of
individual literary works," and therefore that literature imitates not the
world but rather the "total dream of humankind." Archetypes
(recurring images or symbols, patterns, universal experiences) may include
motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, symbols such as the apple or
snake, or images such as crucifixion--all laden with meaning already when
employed in a particular work.
Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of
"reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret what a
text really indicates. It argues that "unresolved and sometimes
unconscious ambivalences in the author's own life may lead to a disunified
literary work," and that the literary work is a manifestation of the
author's own neuroses. Psychoanalytic critics focus on apparent dilemmas and
conflicts in a work and "attempt to read an author's own family life and
traumas into the actions of their characters," realizing that the
psychological material will be expressed indirectly, encoded (similar to
dreams) through principles such as "condensation,"
"displacement," and "symbolism."
Feminist criticism critiques patriarchal language and
literature by exposing how a work reflects masculine ideology. It examines
gender politics in works and traces the subtle construction of masculinity and
femininity, and their relative status, positionings, and marginalizations
within works.
Marxist criticism argues that literature reflects
social institutions and that it is one itself, with a particular ideological
function: that literature participates in the series of struggles between
oppressed and oppressing classes which makes up human history. Similar to
Marx's historical theory, Marxist criticism will focus on the distribution of
resources, materialism, class conflict, or the author's analysis of class
relations. It examines how some works attempt to shore up an oppressive social
order or how they idealize social conflict out of existence, how others offer
an alternative collective life or propose a utopian vision as a solution.
Cultural criticism questions traditional value
hierarchies and takes a cross-disciplinary approach to works traditionally
marginalized by the aesthetic ideology of white European males. Instead of more
attention to the canon, cultural studies examines works by minority ethnic
groups and postcolonial writers, and the products of folk, urban, and mass
culture. Popular literature, soap opera, rock and rap music, cartoons,
professional wrestling, food, etc. -- all fall within the domain of cultural
criticism. We are focusing on it particularly as it concerns questioning the
ways Western cultural tradition expressed in literature defines itself partly
by stifling the voices of oppressed groups or even by demonizing those groups.
We will focus on how literary tradition has constructed models of identity for
oppressed groups, how these groups have constructed oppositional literary
identities, and how different communities of readers might interpret the same
text differently due to varied value systems.
New Historicism "finds meaning by looking at a text within
the framework of the prevailing ideas and assumptions of its historical era, or
by considering its contents within a context of 'what really happened' during
the period that produced the text." New Historicists concern themselves
with the political function of literature and with the concept of power,
"the complex means by which societies produce and reproduce
themselves." These critics focus on revealing the historically specific
model of truth and authority reflected in a given work.
Reader-Response criticism "insists that all literature
is a structure of experience, not just a form or meaning," and therefore
focuses on finding meaning in the act of reading itself and examines the ways
individual readers or communities of readers experience texts. These critics
examine how the reader joins with the author "to help the text mean."
They determine what kind of reader or what community of readers the work
implies and helps to create. They examine "the significance of the series
of interpretations the reader goes through in the process of reading."
Deconstruction is a recent school of criticism which ventures
beyond the structuralists' assertion that all aspects of human culture are
fundamentally languages--complex systems of signs: signifieds (concepts) and
signifiers (verbal or non-verbal--and that therefore a quasi-scientific
formalism is available for approaching literature (and advertising, fashion,
food, etc.). Deconstructionists oppose the "metaphysics of presence,"
that is, the claim of literature or philosophy that we can find some full, rich
meaning outside of or prior to language itself. Like formalists, these critics
also look "at the relation of a text's ideas to the way the ideas are
expressed. Unlike formalists, though, deconstructionists find meaning in the
ways the text breaks down: for instance, in the ways the rhetoric contradicts
the ostensible message." Deconstructive criticism "typically argues
that a particular literary, historical, or philosophical work both claims to
possess full and immediate presence and admits the impossibility of attaining
such presence,"--that texts, rather than revealing the New Critic's
"unities," actually dismantle themselves due to their intertwined,
inevitably opposite "discourses" (strands of narrative, threads of
meaning).
Marxism
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was primarily
a theorist and historian (less the evil pinko commie demon that McCarthyism
fretted about). After examining social organization in a scientific way
(thereby creating a methodology for social science: political science), he
perceived human history to have consisted of a series of struggles between
classes--between the oppressed and the oppressing. Whereas Freud saw
"sexual energy" to be the motivating factor behind human endeavor and
Nabokov seemed to feel artistic impulse was the real factor, Marx thought that
"historical materialism" was the ultimate driving force, a notion
involving the distribution of resources, gain, production, and such matters.
The supposedly "natural"
political evolution involved (and would in the future involve)
"feudalism" leading to "bourgeois capitalism" leading to
"socialism" and finally to "utopian communism." In
bourgeois capitalism, the privileged bourgeoisie rely on the proletariat--the
labor force responsible for survival. Marx theorized that when profits are not
reinvested in the workers but in creating more factories, the workers will grow
poorer and poorer until no short-term patching is possible or successful. At a
crisis point, revolt will lead to a restructuring of the system.
For a political system to be
considered communist, the underclasses must own the means of production--not
the government nor the police force. Therefore, aside from certain
first-century Christian communities and other temporary communes, communism has
not yet really existed. (The Soviet Union was actually state-run capitalism.)
Marx is known also for saying that
"Religion is the opiate of the people," so he was somewhat aware of
the problem that Lenin later dwelt on. Lenin was convinced that workers remain
largely unaware of their own oppression since they are convinced by the state
to be selfless. One might point to many "opiates of the people" under
most political systems--diversions that prevent real consideration of trying to
change unjust economic conditions.
Marxist Criticism
According to Marxists, and to other
scholars in fact, literature reflects those social institutions out of which it
emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological
function. Literature reflects class struggle and materialism: think how often the
quest for wealth traditionally defines characters. So Marxists generally view
literature "not as works created in accordance with timeless artistic
criteria, but as 'products' of the economic and ideological determinants
specific to that era" (Abrams 149). Literature reflects an author's own
class or analysis of class relations, however piercing or shallow that analysis
may be.
The Marxist critic simply is a
careful reader or viewer who keeps in mind issues of power and money, and any
of the following kinds of questions:
Ø What role
does class play in the work; what is the author's analysis of class relations?
Ø How do
characters overcome oppression?
Ø In what
ways does the work serve as propaganda for the status quo; or does it try to
undermine it?
Ø What does
the work say about oppression; or are social conflicts ignored or blamed
elsewhere?
Ø Does the
work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the problems
encountered in the work?
Comments
Post a Comment