Bill's Notes

I left a graduate English lit Ph.D. program many years ago. There were numerous reasons, but the biggest one was I thought Critical Theory was bullshit. And the lesson I drew from it was critical theorists are extremely dangerous people — they are as dogmatic and ruthless in their own little realm as anyone you will meet.

A little background: English professors had a problem right from the start. What do they do? In the 19th Century, they came up with the idea that English professorship should be philology. So many books were cranked out about linguistics and literature, how form reflects content, but also dumb things like how the word "the" is used in various works of literature. Problem was, it was tedious and silly, and pseudo-scientific. The physics professors would pick English professors last for Dodge Ball.

So some professors came up with a theory we might call Neat Stuff. The goal of an English professor was to read widely and broadly and learn the Best of What Is Thought and Said, and master large masses of trivia that is Cool to Know and Fun to Say and pass this info on to other students (sometimes, adding Explication — helping students understand the work, maybe through biography or history or other interesting stuff). The students, then, develop a lifelong love of reading, storytelling, and the world around them. These professors were called generalists. They were derided as amateurs. After all, lots of science going on. The physics professors gave them atomic wedgies in the Faculty Club bathroom and took their lunch money.

Then, well, stuff happened and a lot more people began to go to college. They weren't as well educated when they got there, and hadn't done all that reading and general education stuff, so the New Critics came up with a fast-and-dirty way to profess English called New Criticism, which stripped away everything but the text. So the goal of English professorship was to teach people how to do close reading — how to analyze all the parts of a literary work and show how they fit together. Aesthetic unity and all that. Plus, no previous education required to do it! Around this time, the Physics professors seemed to disappear, until one poked his head in a faculty meeting and asked the generalists for a bad-ass quote.

"I am become death -- destroyer of worlds," said the generalists, pleased to be helpful. Then they returned to thinking about the New Critics, aesthetic unity, and the sense that New Criticism seemed problematic. They stroked their beards and smoked their pipes and said, well, it's not so easy to show unity — in fact, it was far easier, the more you thought about it, to show disunity. Meanwhile, the physics professors told the world they'd just invented the Friggin' Atomic Bomb.

The English professors, alarmed, took a long hard look at their profession, especially the New Critics, to see What Could Be Done about the Friggin Physics Professors. The physicists professors then invented the Hydrogen Bomb, the ICBM, and the nuclear sub for Second Strike capability.

The English professors felt irrelevant. Then they got the germ of an idea. They'd spend the next five decades passive-aggressively pursuing power to get back at the Physics Professors. New Criticism's Achilles heel was politics. The lack of politics means accepting the status quo (Ka-Boom!), and besides, works of literature had nowhere near the unity New Critics thought. Plus, wasn't there a lot of nasty shit in world literature? Stereotypes, unstated assumptions, plain old bullshit? Why should we, as readers, only talk about how a text works instead of what the work does? I mean, doesn't criticism mean, hey, Conrad, you asshole, can't you see talking about the Congolese as a bunch of otherworldly savages is wrong? And by the way, can we really trust Shakespeare's depiction of Caliban in The Tempest?

Sounds damned reasonable, doesn't it? I mean, it is.

Meanwhile, over in the philosophy department, things were un-friggin-raveling. Ludwig Wittgenstein put a stake through the heart of philosophy when he suggested that language was preventing our answering the Big Questions. Over in psychology, Sigmund Freud suggested that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes it's about your naughty naughty feelings about Mama, you conflicted pervert, and even worse ones about what you'd like to do to Daddy, you murderous monster. Over in economics, Marx was preaching class struggle as the Key to History and Understanding Everything and Why You're a Lackey for the Current Power Structure, you stoopid crumbs-seeking sucker who's gonna get nuked next Christmas.

And then a whole lot of beta males decided they would rather talk about this stuff while smoking dope and shagging Little Suzie Coed who's just embraced her inner slut rather than going to Southeast Asia and getting their face blown off by a landmine. So they stuck around long enough to get Ph.D.s and never left the campus. They've been rotting on campuses ever since, doing the Long March through the institutions.

At this point, things fall apart. Deconstructionists question language and structure, saying that word doesn't mean what you think it means and it don't mean nothing except you're a lackey for the power structure and Come the Revolution. By the way, all deconstructionists have irritable bowel syndrome, something they share with New Critics. Meanwhile, cultural Marxists decide to go way way deep into abstraction land and talk about how literature, you guessed it, serves the power structures and we need a new literature to open up the literary canon to oppressed groups. They evolved to the point where they said — we need to judge people on the color of their skin, their gender, and sexual orientation 'cuz diversity's what's really important, or rather, The Revolution. And finally, they said, all right, literature is self-serving BS in service of oppression, you're a lackey for the power structure, by the way there's no such thing as a text or an author, I'm still shagging co-eds but I need Viagra cus I'm getting old, God is dead, Elvis is dead and I still can't crap, and I'm going to use critical theory to talk about hip-hop, graffiti and pornography 'cuz someone needs to reign in those friggin' Physics Professors who Invented the Smart Cluster Nuclear Bomb!

And by the way, the new English professors said, that whole thing we said about opening up literature to new voices, new ways of thinking, previously exploited classes — that's not optional, bucko. We're in charge, we're the new orthodoxy, meet the new boss, same as the old boss, but it's us this time, and fuck you if you don't like it, you lackey white boy who probably likes to drop The Bomb on little brown people.

So anyway, in grad school, I was a generalist. Literature is cool, reading is cool, it's connected to world around you, it makes you think about things in new and deeper way. Criticism helps open works up and answer questions. New Criticism, I thought, informed generalism nicely and was cool, as long as you weren't so tight-assed about it to get Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

So with that in mind, read this course listing for Fall 2009:

English 9001 - Introduction to Graduate Studies
Tuesday (1:30-4:15)
Prof. L**** V******
The advanced study of literature depends on acquiring a high level of theoretical sophistication in order to devise and execute projects in literary history and criticism.

At the same time, literary scholars need to be professionally current: they must be able to situate their work in relation to theoretical concepts and critical categories that have acquired institutional authority at any particular moment.

Me: Institutional authority? You mean your rotting generation of draft dodgers who took over the university by exploiting the good will of bien-wedgied New Critics and Generalists and then publish each other in each other's literary reviews and calling it consensus? That's not authority, that's a clever way of rent-seeking.

This course, then, has two interrelated aims: to develop your skills in reading theory and criticism in the most incisive, interrogative ways and to master the foundational materials of the critical orthodoxy that has emerged over the past three decades.

Me: LOL. Actually, it's four decades. As for critical orthodoxy, that means what you Leftist nutjobs who hid from Vietnam and then three decades of life came up with in all that time. Guess what? It doesn't pass the laugh test or the smell test.

We will study notions of authorship and reception, textuality and editing, value and canonicity, ideology and history.

Me: That sounds reasonable, until you go and ruin it by listing the following Marxists:

The readings may include work by Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jerome McGann, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, and Hayden White, among others. We will consider the application and development of theoretical concepts in such manuals as Catherine Belsey’s Critical Practice.

Throughout we will ask: “What is the good of theory?” The answer proposed by this course will be: “No criticism or history is possible without it.”

Me: I'm guessing that the answer isn't so much proposed and demanded to be accepted. And while, yes, you need a theory, that reading list won't get you there.

There. I feel much better.

UPDATE: I've decided I was unfair. I'm going to re-fisk.

English 9001 - Introduction to Graduate Studies
Tuesday (1:30-4:15)
Prof. L**** V******
The advanced study of literature depends on acquiring a high level of theoretical sophistication in order to devise and execute projects in literary history and criticism.

I'll buy that you gotta know critical theory to get on the faculty, or to talk with the faculty about critical theory, but I don't think "a high level of theoretical sophistication" is necessary to devise and execute projects in literary history and criticism.

At the same time, literary scholars need to be professionally current: they must be able to situate their work in relation to theoretical concepts and critical categories that have acquired institutional authority at any particular moment.

For practical, careerist reasons, that's true. However, whether mastering the concepts and categories of what has "institutional authority" amounts to no more than careerism. It has nothing to do with the True and the Good. Nonetheless, one must be able to talk to one's peers to be taken seriously, so I suppose I'll have to sit through this course. BTW, I did 20 years ago and got an A.

This course, then, has two interrelated aims: to develop your skills in reading theory and criticism in the most incisive, interrogative ways and to master the foundational materials of the critical orthodoxy that has emerged over the past three decades.

Here we go down the rabbit hole. The critical orthodoxy in the past three (or four) decades requires me to spend an inordinate amount of time learning bullshit, or to paraphrase Richard Rorty, the kind of philosophy that gives bullshit a bad name. It's equivalent to being told that to become an English professor, you must master the vocabulary and rituals of Mormonism, just 'cuz everyone else has and that's what we talk about. See Games People Play, Eric Berne. Critical Theory is a professorial game, and this course is an introduction in how to play. That's good for civility and manners, but useless in pursuit of the True and the Good or What Matters. OK, professor, I'll put "truth" and "good" in parentheses for you.

We will study notions of authorship and reception, textuality and editing, value and canonicity, ideology and history.

No doubt these are the keys to Playing the Game.

The readings may include work by Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jerome McGann, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, and Hayden White, among others. We will consider the application and development of theoretical concepts in such manuals as Catherine Belsey’s Critical Practice.

The list is a bunch of critical Marxists who believe that if Positivism failed, then there's no truth or good that can be discovered. Guess what? There's no such thing as Santa Claus, either. Yet, there are presents under the Tree each Christmas. I tell you, it's friggin' impossible that there are presents under the tree. They must be texts instead of presents.

Throughout we will ask: “What is the good of theory?” The answer proposed by this course will be: “No criticism or history is possible without it.”

Your proposed answer is Bullshit. By theory, do you mean a stated, conscious theory? Do mean Theory, as in Critical Theory? The latter is no more than a faculty game and Fashionable Thought: Criticism and history predate Critical Theory. As for the former, theory can be something more akin to an analog recording — it's speculation about motives and structures after you've done something. It can also be something unstated that defines itself as you go. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means it doesn't have to be quite as conscious as professors think. Indeed, the attempt to define a theory can consume your life. Better to read a lot and come up with a variety of strategies to approach reading. Yes, I realize that sounds like ad hoc theory.

As some of you, I occasionally have mystical experiences. It makes me sound like a nut -- to me. I don't know how it sounds to you. But talking about mystical experiences sounds nutty to me. Even when I'm doing it.

Mysticism is a very dangerous thing. There are a couple of reasons. First, there are psychological events that look like mystical experiences. Second, there are mystical experiences that are delusions. Third, there are mystical experiences that are more akin to dreams ... difficult to interpret. Fourth, there are mystical experiences that are true that we can misinterpret. And finally, there are mystical experiences that are fairly easy to understand and true.

When you talk to someone who is materialistically or psychologically inclinded, you're likely to hear them put an argument like this: All mystical experiences are ultimately psychological in origin and effect. That warm and cuddly feeling you get about God when you meditate, pray or go to Mass -- that's just oxytocin. When you undergo a powerful sense of connectedness in religious worship, that's oxytocin bonding you to fellow believers. You confuse that bonding experience with what you all believe, and then you're stuck, perhaps permanently, in believing your warm and fuzzy brain chemistry with an experience of God, and then think you can hold onto it by adhering to whatever dogma is being presented.

Thing is, their argument is not necessarily false. It could be true, but not necessarily true. The problem is the word "all."

I think some religions are almost entirely based on this psychological perspective, the psychological-becoming-mystical, and people misintrepeting them as God-says-this.
And once someone says, God told me this, they pretty much can't be dissuaded.

To sum up so far, depending what you believe about mysticism, you can end up:

1. A nonbeliever who gives psychological explanations for anything, or at best, who gives pragmatic explanations for justifying others' belief, e.g., their beliefs are neither good nor bad, but it works for them.

2. A culturally conditioned person who mistakes psychological events (such as aligning your behavior with your conscience or confessing wrongs) for authentic spiritual experiences, and thus, remains in whatever religion they had the psychological event, no matter how silly, dogmatic, or doctrinaire.

3. A person who's had authentic mystical experiences, but they are not of God, but the devil, and thus the person is demonically influenced. (This can be mixed up with point #2, btw.) They then follow the wrong path, though the results, honestly, tend to be very mixed on this.

4. A person who's had authentic mystical experiences, but finds them difficult to interpret or misinterprets them. They may behave in a beneficial fashion, or go down the wrong path. But usually they can come back.

5. The person who's had authentic mystical experiences, that is, an experience clearly from outside of themselves, and who interprets them properly. Then, they apply that to their lives. They're living in the truth.

Now, to me, the existence of cuddly brain chemicals doesn't particularly negate anything. There's no reason why God wouldn't have built that into your brain and use it for various purposes. As a experimental psychologist I know said, "I believe that whatever happens, it's happening through the brain." Fine. Cool. OK, with that.

Thing is, some people then apply Occam's Razor, and well, cut off mystical experience altogether.

So when I'm talking about the mystical stuff, I myself run through these objections myself. I try to separate out the psychological from the spiritual, the potential divergent sources of mystical experience, match up my experience against people who've had mystical experiences, reason and others' opinions. Usually, after going through all that process, I end up forgetting about applying them.

Do you want to know the truth? Are you sure? There are a few things I know -- know beyond doubt -- the truth about. Here are a few: God's existence and His laws are written on every man's and woman's heart and neither God nor law can be ignored until the end of life without destroying the soul. God exists. Spiritual evil exists. There's a spiritual battle for the state of your eternal soul.

What we call "sin" always boils down to a failure or perversion of our need and duty to love one another. You might as well start every confession with, "God, I have failed to love by ..." Those who spiritually deluded, or psychologically deluded, or who are ignoring the promptings of their conscience, that is, everyone but the saints, all have attempted to rationalize or excuse their failure to love -- or have attempted shortcuts to authentic love or substitutions for love.

Seen in this way, sin is different than a bunch of random and arbitrary rules designed to remove all the pleasure and joy out of life. Some people make it that way -- Jesus called those people "Pharisees." Actually, it's the other way around. Sin is the misuse of gifts required to learn how to love and to love which rob life of its love, joy and happiness. The requirements of love are not easy. It's about making and keeping commitments, suffering gladly, bearing wrongs, humbly and even joyfully accepting duties and obligations, taking things on faith -- just everything I haven't done in my life.

The lesson of Christianity says the path of love doesn't lead to immediately happiness, or immediate repentance, but through the cross.

Back to mysticism. Mystical experiences ultimately must be applied. Psychological and mystical experiences together that lead to love ... Jesus said you'll know them by their love, and by their fruits ... those have the biggest chances of being authentic. Especially if they involve loving people normally seen as unlovable -- the old, the forgotten, the helpless, those who can't do you any good, even those who your enemies. Your enemies may crucify you for trying -- that's part of the message of Christ. It's that radical, even after all this time.