Modern and postmodern critical theory

What lit-crit lens / attitude toward art and culture is being satirized?
Reading the blurps from the Onion: Yes, it is easy to sit there and go along with the cheap laughs, but ultimately it is quite depressing. In the same manner as the Stewart/Colbert Show seriously seems to constitute the political horizon and attitude towards political life for many, the Onion, 'America's Finest News Source,' seems incapable of transcending a kind of locker-room giggling as they cast their satirical eye at academic pursuits.

The topic of the satires: ridicule of modern and postmodern critical theory, ‘being intellectual,’ and their agents, as intellectual activity intersects with some undefined notion of what constitutes ‘real life.’ Truly a sad testament to what probably is a general attitude in society towards rational thinking as it ought to be employed in higher education.

They essentially turn ‘literature’ into a matter of soap-operas. Whether the pieces of literature or authors mentioned are actual or invented becomes a mute point: the interpretive perspective has already locked them into a position of ridicule.


Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner
“Durst's three-page work contains a revolutionary insight into a key piece of symbolism in the novel which had previously escaped scholars. “

- Yeah, right. Ridiculing the very act of interpreting literature as well as learning from and appreciating literature, language, words, creation, experience. Pretty sad.

Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu
“analyzing the menu's content as a text, or 'text,' subjecting it to a rigorous critical reevaluation informed by Derrida, De Man, etc., as a construct, or 'construct,' made up of multi-varied and, in fact, often self-contradictory messages, or 'meanings,' derived from the cultural signifiers”

“the impact of feminism, post-feminism, and current 'queer' theory on received notions of gender and sexual preference/identity. Realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu”

- Phony, populist juxtaposition of ‘real life’ food-need and criticism.

New Roommate Has Elaborate Theory About How Kenny Rogers Is A Genius
“a line-by-line analysis of the lyrics to "Coward Of The County" and once to declare the 1968 First Edition hit "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" a "true pop-psychedelic classic”

- Perspective: fluffy academics can interpret anything into something it isn’t. Indeed, it would be nice if academics chose their targets carefully. That’s where a theoretical vocabulary comes in.

Radical Socialist Movement Ends After Three Semesters
“its three-semester struggle to smash the bulwarks of slavery and oppression everywhere”

“we have chosen to pursue even more subversive socialist endeavors in the radical Ann Arbor underground while working at a variety of part-time jobs during the day”

“Barlow said she has worked out a similar plan to overthrow the racist, imperialist U.S. government with a series of massive labor strikes and agitation campaigns among urban poor. She was unable to provide specifics, however, as she was late for her shift at Einstein's Bagels.”

- Ridiculing the notion that ‘slavery and oppression’ exists by placing it in the hands of a three semester struggle (before graduation to ‘real life’). The author should also have exploited the student’s desire to obtain credits for their work; and added that at Einstein’s Bagels she worked 20 hours a week for less than minimum wage and not even the shadow of a dental plan for her and her fatherless child. That’s when it gets real funny!

Area Girlfriend Still Hasn't Seen Apocalypse Now
“the fact that Jensen is "exactly my idea of the perfect woman for me," making her ignorance of the seminal film all the harder to fathom and forcing him to call into question, at a profound level, the basic foundation of their relationship and future together”

- A few lines into the reading I was just waiting for the moment the angle would become a relationship-matter. I wasn’t disappointed. The truth is, of course, that if you want to have any claim to being intellectual Notting Hill, and When Harry Met Sally etc. – as cute as they are – simply doesn’t cut the mustard. Girlie/Oprah Winfrey/feel-g00d-movies of no consequence. Slap-stick comedy. He should definitely dump her.

Shakespeare Was, Like, The Ultimate Rapper
“In fact, were he alive today, I'm convinced he would be a rapper. Well, I guess he could be a playwright, too.”

“You see, Shakespeare never intended for his works to be read in some dusty old study!”

- Let’s first ignore the shameful stereotype that reading Shakespeare represents “some dusty old study!” Such suggestion is indicative of a mindset in need of serious dusting; of someone who apparently hasn’t been equipped with sufficient means of how to elicit existential interest in literature. Can there be a rapper out there not entirely consumed by the commercial framework of his enterprise regardless of the appearance of his message – I sincerely doubt it! Pop-culture at its worst; the media and its commercial base depletes the message.

Hilarious Hamlet Essay Circulated In Teachers' Lounge
“How else can they be expected to teach sub-literate, mildly retarded kids like Erin Grupman all day long without losing their minds?"

- This one is cynical. But it does manage to posit the generational question: no matter what you do you will feel alienated. Hamlet does seem, however, to possibly be a productive place where difference can be overcome – provided the leader possesses the right interpretive tools to guide those who may feel lost in the mass of historically distinct expression. And then the occasional, necessary ridicule and bitching could be kept among those of like mind.

My Novel Addresses Universal Themes Of Humanity And Has Fucking
“it will be widely appreciated, as it addresses themes that speak to the human condition and, coincidentally, has loads of fucking.”

“but I believe there's something in it for everyone”

“it will inspire them in other ways with a totally hot scene in a convent where Steve has sex with a gorgeous anarchist posing as a nun.

- Satire of novel exploiting the sex-version of what below is the death-version, and what above was the cutie-version (in Notting Hill etc.), i.e. a limited, mindless perspective. Instead: read Homer, something real.

“Is technology dehumanizing us? Are the very items that enable us to function using us as much as we use them?”

- I don’t think so. I think it is the lack of theory, of perspective, of method, of world-view that dehumanizes us, or in teaching: that amplifies the distance between student and teacher, or rather: their distance to their object of study. Hence, there is no pedagogical way of getting around the leader knowing her topic. The necessary banking!

Someday, I Will Copyedit The Great American Novel
“I won't be stuck standardizing verb tenses in business documents my whole life. One day, I will copyedit the Great American Novel.”

“I know how many idealistic young people dream of taking a manuscript that captures the spirit of 21st-century America and removing all of its grammatical and semantic errors.”

"To a writer who didn't strive for perfection, my corrections would seem niggling. But the author of the Great American Novel will understand that I am as essential to his book as the ink that will cover sheaf after sheaf of virgin paper.”

- Again: satire on the confluence of literary idealism (= great American novel) and prosaic reality’s formal nitpicking, especially in the minds of some.

Author Too Much Of A Pussy To Kill Off Characters
“Oprah Winfrey, who was considering featuring the novel in her high-profile Oprah's Book Club, decided to drop it after determining that her viewers would "probably not get anything out of a death-free story."

- Instead of sex being fashioned as the main ingredient in the interpreters narrow focus, here it is death. See My Novel Addresses Universal Themes above.

Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs Notes
“The humanity displayed in the Character Flowchart really stirred something in me.”Added Weaver: "I never wanted the synopsis to end."

“Weaver was assigned Of Mice And Men—a novel scholars have called "a masterpiece of austere prose" and "the most skillful example of American naturalism under 110 pages"—as part of her early twentieth-century fiction course, and purchased the Cliffs Notes from a cardboard rack at her local Barnes & Noble”

- This one is quite funny. It is comedy because it targets stupid individuals and not the literary object or the act of interpretation. Barnes & Noble, of course, brings it home. Sad too, as it shows us the barbarians who are only interested in the bottom line.

Nation's Teens Disappointed By Banned Books
“there is no reason to read Stephen King's Cujo when you can see it on cable 24 hours a day; plus, it's not that good, anyway.”

- Historical context and a critical vocabulary would lend meaning to those works. For our time, unfortunately, Stephen King, un-banned, may well be all that will be remembered.

* * *
WLMA, Chapter 13: If this chapter satisfies one’s quest for literary critical knowledge, one should consider engaging in broad, existential revision. Unless one knows intimately what is referred to by Saussure, Derrida, Foucault, Althusser (did we find any of their books annotated or just referenced?), one is only scratching the surface, and one might wonder: why scratch it at all, since surely even less would filter down to one’s subjects in the classroom (I guess, ‘subjects’ here could refer to both literature and human beings).

Cpt. 13 asks us to read “The Yellow Wallpaper” through five theories to “open up avenues for interpretation” (346) but the Gilman-intro (347-348) seems to give it all away rendering any of the five irrelevant. The intro is a fine example of 19th century biographical criticism in which the author's personal existential characteristics and events subsequently were identified in his/her literature, and vice versa, based in little more than common sense.

Content is king?

As I set up my blog, I started out with the question below (1/8/08), on the one hand to become familiar with the posting-bit, on the other, I picked up on Julie’s statement from class: “Content is king!” - “Content is king!” - as she instructed us in how to set up and manage a blog. I think there was a sarcastic touch to her voice as she made the statement. Sarcasm is good because you simultaneously embrace and distance yourself from your statement, so I look forward to have my understanding of the nature and pedagogical relevance of ‘content’ clarified.

Before commenting on Freire’s text I salute and take comfort in our instructions: write a ‘personal, informal narrative of 500 words’ on his text/own classroom experience/best teacher you ever had. The great thing about ‘personal narratives’ is that you just can’t go wrong no matter how wrong you go. Should be the case, at least, inasmuch as ‘personal’ places more demand upon the reader’s ability to keep her idiosyncrasies in check. So, I’ll enjoy (at least in this writing) informally to jab a little right and left according to my personal humor, and thus leave whatever opinions I might have irreverently shrouded.

I’ll get straight to the point with Freire in a couple of related questions:

(1) Isn’t there something fundamentally awkward and false about pretending that there isn’t, or shouldn’t be, distance between teacher and student?
(2) How does his pedestrian, elementary-political, repetitive-redundant diatribe on oppression and liberation based in his false dichotomy of “banking education” vs. “problem-posing education” translate into teaching 1st graders the alphabet, 3rd graders geography, 6th graders German, and English graduate students literary theory?

If it indeed is true (which I subscribe to) that “the unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity” (65) must we not rather celebrate the fact that we are 'distant' than goofily suggest that difference is bad? Genghis Khan and I both had our first organized, educational experiences before the invention of the laptop and the cell phone – does that not make us fundamentally different from those generations who received these items in the crib? You ask your undergrads if they’ve seen Terminator 2 or Jaws and you’re lucky if one or two nod. Throw in a handful of foreign languages and cultures and you seem to miss out on something important if you systematically ignore multifaceted difference. In this sense his text is the educational equivalent of a Jehovah’s Witnesses-brochure depicting lambs gently and lovingly embraced by lions in their religious-utopian la-la land: both have little clue about reality. But he likes to pretend he does: “Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world.” (62) What brilliant statement of the obvious! This can only be a revelation to gullible educators thirsting for theory to lean on. Do we breathe as well? That might constitute the next pseudo-theoretical project for Freire. In this sense his approach constitutes the pedagogical equivalent of confirming that Nazi-Germany was bad. “The banking-concept of education” (e.g. 52-53) = ‘regurgitation’/’rote memorization’ vs. collaborative, participatory learning is something we – at least in some parts of the world – have been familiar with since the 19th century and certainly was turned into effective social practice since World War II.

Finally, did French existentialism not arrive upon the Copacabana until very recently? What’s the deal with Sartre and de Beauvoir? Surely, if you want to go philosophical on educational practice, things have happened since then? Another good trick in scaring your audience into submission is to nonchalantly, without further ado, drop the names of scary philosophers: Hegel (53), Jasper (60), and Husserl (64). Scary shit unless you are already well-versed, especially if you don’t offer any further explanation of their relevance.

So, I look forward to Julie telling us about content being king. Somewhere in the above lies ‘my own’ ‘classroom experience’; but I have run out of words, so I may elaborate later. ‘The best teacher I have ever had’ – I’ll go with Noam Chomsky giving a talk at WSU a couple of years ago: a splendid orator whose economy of diction and pedagogical approach in explaining his position and guiding his listener exemplifies a learning strategy which Freire – had he any wit – would give his right arm to be able to emulate, both in terms of theoretical lucidity and message. And Chomsky did leave time for critical questions.

Question for 'pedagogy on teaching literature': does content matter? I.e, if the literary object is 16th century protestant poetry, or a short story on motor bike repair from the 60s, or an Icelandic saga - does the content have an effect on/guide/define/confine the conversation? How do we identify the boundaries between the content and the way we engage it?