I'm not sure.[1]
The tentative--and not irrefutable--starting point of my question is to suggest that literary studies are generally divided into two methods of account: historicization and contemporization. (I am also going to presume here that literary criticism is conducted towards a particular type of community, which I will discuss below.) To my view, this division between methods is a temporal one. The community toward which literary criticism is directed exists within a specific, determinant frame of time.
Historicization is a matter of excavation; it unearths evidences in order to show what a work of literature meant in the past for audiences of the past. In doing so, it is a study that separates itself out from present conditions. In discussing the ways in which Chaucer's characters represent the social changes occurring in his contemporary circumstances, it does not matter that there might be an ebola epidemic, a terrible Toronto mayor, or a seemingly never ending documentation of police brutalities throughout North America.
In this way, that line which is drawn between present and past seems to become a hurdle if one would wish to reapply the historical meanings of a work of literature to whatever kind of presence it may have today. Still, perhaps that is not absolute. Perhaps there is no real necessity which relinquishes literary works from long into the past to be subjected to a separative historicization.
(This all points to an additional question, an aside, of whether or not a long past work of literature bears the possibility of renewing a political capacity within the present.)
Contemporization is a method of literary criticism which actively seeks to connect the work of literature to the conditions of the present. Of course, it is certainly easier to make this account concerning a recent work of literature, since the ripples sent out from its production may yet be lapping at our understanding. Consequent to a method of contemporization in literary criticism is a recognition of the politicization of a work of literature--that is, that a work of literature can be active within a community, to change and resituate certain understandings that may be held by a community. The key terms and technologies of various fields of critical and literary theories (critical studies of race, gender, class, age, ability, language, media) are most ready to construct a bridge between the work of literature and "the now."
This is why I am situating the division of methods as a temporal matter, since the politicization of a work of literature encounters the continuing struggle over its meaning in a way that is directly connected to broad, contemporary social concerns. The technologies of a certain theoretical perspective lay within every activity of literary criticism. They may certainly be applied to a study of Shakespeare or Wollstonecraft, but in such instances the "bridge" being constructed is there a matter of historicization, of connecting a work of literature to the circumstances of its time. They may also be applied to a study of Junot Díaz or Jennifer Egan where, simply due to the recentness of a work, the potential for the politics of literature is given recognition.
I am not taking a determined stance between these two methods based upon the capability of each to engage politically within present circumstances; it is a tentative distinction, which has led me into the question I want to approach here.
The question proposed in the title is to wonder whether the literary critic[2] is meant to act in accordance with one of three approaches: as one who either reveals through their very own reading (to act upon); one who enhances through their emboldening interpretation (to act with) [3]; or, one whose is as a conduit who channels the (politics of a) work of literature (to act for). Just as before, I am not taking any kind of ethical stance among these three approaches--although, of course, behind that question there is a personal sense of conundrum with how I would situate my own approach.
From these three approaches, my sense is that the method of historicization is a practice of "acting upon" a work of literature, to provide evidences that would allow for new understandings of what that literary work meant. This may be a ready explanation for the role of a literary critic, but the very reason for my writing at the moment is because I do not feel content to leave off with such a solution. If historicization "acts upon" literature (a description with which I can be comfortable, I think), then it is left to wonder how contemporization/politicization relates to the approaches of "acting with" and "acting for."
Let us first consider the latter. The approach of "acting for" the politics of a work of literature does not seem to have a great amount of weight to it. The literary critic does, after all, engage critically, and there is no criticism in portraying or reproducing the meaning or politics in a work of literature. There is little criticism in an article or book whose own pages are simply nodding in agreement with the literature it is studying. On the other hand, "acting with" a work of literature is an approach that I find difficult to grasp, at least for the moment. It seems to necessarily situate both the critic and the work of literature among their broader circumstances, situated both together and apart.
Nonetheless, it is between these that I come to ask, what is a literary critic? Tucked within the question given in the title are some preceding questions that might first need an answer: "How do I read literature? How do I write about literature?" And, further still: "How do I define literature?--an historical document? An imaginative commentary? An authorial representation?"
I should add one last note, which is perhaps the most important since it preceded the process of these reflections. Wondering about the "role" of a literary critic refers to a primary question: "For whom am I writing?" Whatever the answer to this question, it will determine the comfort of one's method and approach to literature. Based upon what one chooses to write about, they are quietly, if not unknowingly, choosing their intended audience. A literary scholar has their own interests, though they also exist within several communities at once--public, private, cultural, and academic--and it is towards one or all of these communities that they work. As a scholar whose criticism is written to be read, the choice of audience leads to the choices of method and approach.
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[1] This little piece is a follow up to my MA thesis and the loose ends that came from it. But, you know, you don't have to read that.
[2] The image of the "literary critic" I have in mind here is, simply, my own, along with my graduate student colleagues. A person who reads and writes about literature, and does so while negotiating and developing a method of study within academia.
[3] Eagleton describes uses the term "explain" when defining Marxist criticism: "it is not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and meanings. But it also means grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the product of a particular history."
Thank you for posting this and for making an honest effort to question after the role of the literary critic, the literary scholar, the professor of literature, etc. By no means, in my opinion, despite the cultural clout accumulated by literary practice over the last century, is it clear that these occupations justify themselves.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few critics who I find inspiring, who seem to be sensitive to the distinction between seeking and finding in literature. Most scholars seek, I believe. Seeking is easy -- it is not difficult for a Marxist or post-colonial critic to find slivers of pertinence to his/her theories in just about any literary artifact. This kind of research is accumulative, at best it sharpens or challenges some facet of a literary theory by finding something in the literary work that resists it. At worst it performs an activity similar to that of children changing the outfits of their dolls.
Other critics are able to keep their impulses in suspense -- especially the impulses instituted by their academic training -- long enough for something in the work to materialize. Whatever this thing, it appears to the reader as foreign (even if it isn't, even if it is still a more-or-less scripted insight guided by the rules of some academic discourse) and the reader endures this mystery (even if it isn't a mystery to a different reader) without attempting immediately to foreclose it, to solve or dispel it, to publish on it or teach it. Instead, if a reading like this does produce a genuine need to write in response (I know of exactly zero scholars who write without purpose, without some eye toward making their writing professionally useful somehow) then this writing is motivated not by the work itself but by the writer's desire for his or her own language.
The master is the master precisely because he/she doesn't know what she wants. The discourse of the master shuts down desire, outsources it to economies that determine the value of literary objects according to more or less automatic procedures. We don't want to interrogate these procedures as to their meaning because we are afraid that we will find none. It is in fear of this possible truth -- that literature is not meant for meaning -- that literary critics and scholars resolve instead to produce and produce and produce meanings. But what do these people want, I want to know. What would you write that you would write even if you were not a scholar at all? What lesson would you endeavor to learn if you were not a teacher? What would you write in the face readerlessness, beyond the canopy of the university?