Back to the Stone Age

This article in the Chronicle is why people who do not understand literary theory need to shut up about it--or rather start actually reading it and thinking about it. Mark Edmunson launches a very practically, pragmatically oriented, but somewhat uninformed and unclear attack against "readings:"

If I could make one wish for the members of my profession, college and university professors of literature, I would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, we would give up readings. By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary — Marx's, Freud's, Foucault's, Derrida's, or whoever's — to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art. I wish that we'd declare a moratorium on readings. I wish that we'd give readings a rest.
-The Chronicle Review, Volume 55, Issue 33, Page B6 (all further quotes are from here).

Indeed, we're talking about readings in general here, not just theory (he says that his objection is not with theoretical texts per se). But theory ends up as the only real site that Edmunson attacks, since it is one of the only sites that explicitly does use an analytical vocabulary. And that this focusing in on theory takes place is entirely appropriate: what Edmunson is objecting to is the fact that theory has an impact on reading, as it very much does. But if he really understood why theory came to prominence, why it is so useful and illuminating, he would understand that the ties between theory and reading are precisely what any intelligent theoretical activity begins with and aims to interrogate. Indeed, its as if he couldn't believe that theory actually would have had some impact on reading--as if it were merely the activity of critics thinking they are philosophers, outlining abstract system of ideas standing apart from how they change our view of particular texts.

I'll put it in a different way. Theoretical readings aren't to be done away with, despite Edmunson's recommendation, because what Edmunson actually considers a reading is something so dumb that, well, only dumb students would ever actually produce a reading of this sort:

When you launch, say, a Marxist reading of William Blake, you effectively use Marx as a tool of analysis and judgment. To the degree that Blake anticipates Marx, Blake is prescient and to be praised.

What he's describing we well know--it is the sort of thing that overzealous and indeed stupid people did in the late 70's and early 80's as they were learning from the likes of de Man, and then a generation later in the early 90's when they were learning from de Manian students who became professors (I use de Man merely as an example). Insofar as the task is to somewhat lessen the frequency of this type of activity, I'm all for it. But what is more important is that what Edmunson is really describing is not an activity anyone really frequently engages in. It is, rather, an effect. In other words, these readings are not produced by "applying" Derrida or Marx to a text at all. They are produced as a consequence of a certain student or professor not understanding that "application" is the wrong application of literary theory (again that it is just the outlining of a system apart from being concerned with reading).

But, then again (I'll entertain the thought that this sort of misunderstanding and stupidity could be useful), why exactly would this be wrong at all in the first place? If we're really against readings, doesn't the proliferation of a set of non-interpretive, less (in his language) judgmental activity such as the mere application of a theorist to a text actually further our cause? Of course the real problem is that this activity (supposing, just on a practical level, that it can seriously be sustained by anyone with any real intelligence) is still interpretive, is still judgmental--it isn't as non-interpretive and theoretical as it claims to be. And perhaps even actual theoretical readings (not the stupid ones) are subject to this same problem, despite the fact that they are designed to challenge this, to move beyond interpretation.

But Edmunson, though he intuitively understands this problem, precisely looks past it (no doubt because it would involve actually beginning to understand that literary theory's concern is primarily reading) because he says that what's wrong about this reading is that it just isn't interpretive enough, judgmental enough. Besides collapsing together stupid theory (which we can't take seriously) and actual theory, this returns us back to square one, where reading is conceived as close reading, as letting the text itself speak, as touching the text itself or being immanent to it, as witnessing (or being) the text's self-consciousness in something like "a Blakean reading of Blake:"

The problem with the Marxist reading of Blake is that it robs us of some splendid opportunities. We never take the time to arrive at a Blakean reading of Blake, and we never get to ask whether Blake's vision might be true — by which I mean, following William James, whether it's good in the way of belief.

It's as if theory, hell, the last 40 or even 50 years in literary criticism, never happened. But let's be a little more gracious than Edmunson and not be so quick to condemn. For Edmunson is indeed speaking somewhat from a practical perspective: when you teach an author, of course you have to outline the basic aspects of the author's beliefs or the worldview that determines them--though indeed I'd actually say the strength of literary criticism, what produces the validity of its results, is that you don't have to do that, or only have to do that to a certain degree. Regardless, though, even if you have to outline the beliefs that inform an author's work, this by no means implies that you should make getting at those beliefs the only proper task of reading--to the extent that you "frame a reading that the author would approve:"

I've said that the teacher's job is to offer a Blakean reading of Blake, or an Eliotic reading of Eliot, and that's a remark that can't help but raise questions. The standard for the kind of interpretation I have in mind is actually rather straightforward. When a teacher admires an author enough to teach his work, then it stands to reason that the teacher's initial objective ought to be framing a reading that the author would approve.

This just seems to actually advocate more readings--many many more of them, the old interpretive activity that literary theory quite rightly questions, because this activity wants to make literary criticism into an act of subjective judgment, held by all-knowing masters and passed down as such (without significant question, or even development) to disciple-consumers, not thinkers ("The best purpose of all art is to inspire, said Emerson, and that seems right to me"). That is, it is an activity that militates against any reliable mode of establishing valid results that our discipline achieves and has achieved and that literary theory, to a large extent (along with literary history), keeps alive. It is the criticism of critics who (quite mistakenly) think they are artists:

This kind of criticism is itself something of an art, not a science. You cannot tell that you have compounded a valid reading of Dickens any more than that you have compounded a valid novel or a valid play. When others find your Dickensian endorsement of Dickens to be of use to them, humanly, intellectually, spiritually, then your endorsement is a success. The desire to turn the art of reading into a science is part of what draws the profession to the application of sterile concepts.

This is the language of the Science vs. Poetry debates around Cambridge in the 1910's (that is, in case it hasn't sunk in, almost a hundred years ago) and is so self-evidently wrongheaded that I don't really know whether I should dignify it by outlining all it involves. Suffice it to say that the whole opposition is mistaken: it takes the one thing that reading does actually involve at the professional (i.e. academic and critical) level, which is skill, or technique, or method, and then turns it into something that is either more (science) or less (art) able to establish "objectively valid" results (where "objectivity" is understood to be something not even a scientist would say she establishes). One thing is clear, however, and that is those who say reading produces validity in different, less "objective" forms (i.e. those who think they are advocating reading as "art") need to hold on to precisely the "objective validity" of this opposition (indeed, who really is advocating this Scientific Criticism that is so very objective?). And insofar as this is the case, they sometimes get quite a dangerous anti-intellectual attitude, which indeed produces anti-professional results (remember this article started as a recommendation to "the members of my profession"): because they would rather mischaracterize the situation and fight the old battles to forward their agenda (whose point still escapes me), they hold up work at better outlining what this skill actually involves, or what forms of validity (objective or not) skillful reading actually produces.

I'll just conclude in saying that what Edmunson deplores, any literary theorist would deplore as well. And insofar as what Edmunson says is coming from a pragmatic, teaching perspective, well, I think that's a little bit more justified--to the extent that the classroom is a place where the professor challenges her or his undergraduates to think in a new way (perhaps, one week, a Dickensian way) and encounters resistance. But even here we should recognize two things. First, in considering this pragmatic sphere, we have now left the sphere where this is a critique of theoretical readings, and perhaps have left the sphere where this is a critique of reading (as opposed to a critique of a type of teaching) altogether. Second, this sort of Devil's advocate activity is actually at most only one way to teach, or one pragmatic device in the arsenal of good teaching. So, ultimately, none of this really holds up and I'm at a loss as to what Edmunson really wants us to do except to return, via some sort of new aestheticism, or an "art" of criticism based primarily on subjective judgment, to the literary-critical Stone Age.

Note: I've pretty crudely insisted on a difference here between stupid theoretical reading and actual theoretical reading, and said that 1) we can't take the former seriously and that 2) the former isn't really frequently engaged in. This isn't exactly self-evident, so I'll explain myself. What I mean by this is that we can't take stupid theory seriously in terms of its validity--it is just immediately loses all its credibility, and anyone who is willing to entertain that credibility isn't being a responsible critic. Such tolerance might have flown in the age of "play," afte the 60's, and indeed when many were overzealous as I've said, but to say that this wasn't, precisely, stupid, and to actually engage in it now, is I think irresponsible and actually works to further discredit and kill off theory (you're basically just as good as its opponents--you are it's opponent). And to the second point, that it isn't really frequent, what I mean is that once we take theory seriously, and move in spheres where serious, valid things are discussed and determined, there just isn't much of the stupid theory around. However, Edmunson's article is no doubt about addressing the opposite possibility: that this sort of stupid theory is very, very frequent, especially in undergraduates and graduate students. It should be clear that what I've said doesn't discount this possibility at all--indeed I'd be willing just to say it is a fact from what I've seen (though I wouldn't presume to have as much experience as Edmunson). The point is just that this whole sphere of activity isn't the activity of theory--it is an effect, an effect of bad teaching. The whole task of Edmunson's article is to address this practical problem in the sphere of teaching--and as I've said, I think that this is absolutely key. But while he's got the location of the problem right, his solution isn't to actually produce better teachers of theory--that's my solution, and indeed the solution many theorists are advocating--but just to do away with the teaching of theory alltogether. To me this doesn't do away with theory, but just produces more crappy theorists. (Sadly, that would precisely serve Edmunson's "criticism as art" agenda.) And it involves the confusion of the activity with the effect: in short, the distinction between stupid theory (and I've called it that not only to condemn it, but to insist on how it is uneducated, untaught) and serious theory isn't drawn, and while the distinction isn't absolutely necessary (I've indicated a way in which tying them together would be extremely pertinent which Edmunson, because of his aestheticism, can't see), it is for seeing that the problem in teaching is not with theory per se, but with how the use of theory is taught--in short, how theory is handled. Where Edmunson throws in the towel and says that no matter how you teach it, it will be used stupidly, I'm saying that what we need to do is try and find out how exactly it gets used seriously and how you teach that--in short to make the classroom into a place where serious, valid things are determined. Nevertheless, I'm willing to concede that at some point, you have to do away with a certain approach, and I think what Edmunson is really saying is that this point is reached when the approach becomes unteachable. But--though I wouldn't be as overzealous as de Man and say that theory is eminently teachable (in any sense in which these words can retain any of their meaning)--I would indeed say that theory hasn't reached that point of unteachability yet. Indeed, I'd say that we need more teaching of theory, not less.