Great job Liza! Not sure if you read Camille Paglia but she has been dismissive of literary theory for over thirty years now, in long essays like Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders and the cancelled preface to her great book Sexual Persona. She even makes the brilliant point that a great deal is lost in translation- that deconstruction and post structurturalism make sense for the French language and even for French culture but not at all in the United States, although not sure I have that argument clear in my head right now- Paglia can be a mind f--k!
I religiously cited Paglia in my undergrad thesis. She is fantastic and probably one of the reasons that I got booted out of my program. They don’t like her at Columbia.
It's an interesting transition literary criticism made -- from closely looking at the text to understand what it says, to first adopting a specific Marxist-flavored worldview and then explaining why the text is all about the pre-determined slant.
Liza, thanks for the excellent summary of the development of literary criticism. The same development took place in history departments.
The problem with all ideologies/philosophical frameworks is that they often contain a kernel of truth, but when pushed to the extreme, they are false.
Let’s take Foucault’s assertion that sexuality is a ‘social construct’. There is an element of truth to that. While our evolution has provided a framework for the expression of our sexuality, that framework provides a lot of flexibility in that expression. And the way we individually express our sexuality will be generally influenced by a balance between our genes, our individual desires, and the social norms of the society we live in.
But stating that sexuality is a social construct is not by itself a meaningful statement. If it is a true statement, then ‘sexuality’ generally cannot be understood outside of the norms of a specific culture Since all humans live in cultures that create that social construct, all social constructs are equally valid, including the norms of our own culture.
Fortunately for most of your readers, we live in a society more like Popper’s Open Society, where individuals are relatively free to decide what norms they will follow, than Plato’s Republic or the Ayatollah’s Iran that strictly enforce a narrow range of norms. Though it might be more accurate to say that we have a less constrained range of choices than many other cultures.
They built a church out of footnotes and called it truth. Hung Saussure’s teeth above the door and laid Derrida’s bones in the foundation like it meant something, like it could keep the rot out. They said this is how you read, this is how you mean, this is how you hold language without it biting back.
We walked in barefoot. They handed us a glossary and asked us to sing.
And for a while, we did. God help us, we tried. We quoted Barthes like scripture, Foucault like law, Butler like prophecy. We took our rage and dressed it in parentheses. We tucked our rawest memories behind clever line breaks and learned to say “liminality” instead of “fuck.”
But theory doesn’t keep you warm at night. It doesn’t sob when your character says something you didn’t expect. It doesn’t scream when the story cracks open and your dead mother walks out, blinking. Theory claps politely and asks for clarification.
We don’t need clarification. We need combustion.
Because something monstrous is happening. A generation of writers sharpening their voice into a LinkedIn-ready ice pick, surgically removing the soul so it fits the submission guidelines. Every sentence pre-apologised, every metaphor hedged in latex gloves and peer-reviewed disclaimers. Writing not to say something, but to prove you’ve read the right things before daring to speak.
This isn’t literature. It’s a bureaucratic exorcism. It's a chorus of spectral MFA grads huddled around a ghostlight, whispering “Does this resonate with the discourse?”
The discourse can choke.
I don’t want your framework. I don’t want your model. I don’t want to parse grief like it’s a tax return or run my sentences through a sieve of approved semiotics so nobody gets their precious certainties shaken. I want to throw language like a brick through the stained-glass window of the canon and shout into the hole it leaves.
I want to name the thing before I understand it.
I want to fuck up in public and call it style.
I want to cry in the margin and leave it in the draft.
And I want to do it all without a single citation.
Because here’s what the theoryheads won’t tell you: they don’t know either. All that scaffolding, all that jargon, all those reams of academia dry-humping itself into irrelevance — it’s a panic room. A language built to keep feeling out.
Well guess what.
We’re feeling everything.
We’re feeling like grammar doesn’t fit anymore. We’re feeling like the sentence isn’t long enough for what we need to say. We’re feeling like metaphor is the only way left to speak without lying. And we’re feeling like if we don’t scream it now, messy, loud, wrong, embarrassing, the machine will finish grinding down the last syllables that ever mattered.
So fuck your theoretical lineage. Your precious timeline. Your laminated who-begat-whom of thought.
We’re not here to inherit. We’re here to interrupt.
We are the bastard children of broken syntax and blackout poetry. We are the sentence half-deleted and still twitching. We are the underlined confession in a stranger’s book. We are the wrong voice in the wrong room saying the wrong thing with such unbearable honesty that it becomes sacred.
So if you want us to play nice, play smart, play safe, too late.
We’re already at the edge of the page, throwing matches into the library.
Great job Liza! Not sure if you read Camille Paglia but she has been dismissive of literary theory for over thirty years now, in long essays like Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders and the cancelled preface to her great book Sexual Persona. She even makes the brilliant point that a great deal is lost in translation- that deconstruction and post structurturalism make sense for the French language and even for French culture but not at all in the United States, although not sure I have that argument clear in my head right now- Paglia can be a mind f--k!
I religiously cited Paglia in my undergrad thesis. She is fantastic and probably one of the reasons that I got booted out of my program. They don’t like her at Columbia.
Thanks Liza!
It's an interesting transition literary criticism made -- from closely looking at the text to understand what it says, to first adopting a specific Marxist-flavored worldview and then explaining why the text is all about the pre-determined slant.
Liza, thanks for the excellent summary of the development of literary criticism. The same development took place in history departments.
The problem with all ideologies/philosophical frameworks is that they often contain a kernel of truth, but when pushed to the extreme, they are false.
Let’s take Foucault’s assertion that sexuality is a ‘social construct’. There is an element of truth to that. While our evolution has provided a framework for the expression of our sexuality, that framework provides a lot of flexibility in that expression. And the way we individually express our sexuality will be generally influenced by a balance between our genes, our individual desires, and the social norms of the society we live in.
But stating that sexuality is a social construct is not by itself a meaningful statement. If it is a true statement, then ‘sexuality’ generally cannot be understood outside of the norms of a specific culture Since all humans live in cultures that create that social construct, all social constructs are equally valid, including the norms of our own culture.
Fortunately for most of your readers, we live in a society more like Popper’s Open Society, where individuals are relatively free to decide what norms they will follow, than Plato’s Republic or the Ayatollah’s Iran that strictly enforce a narrow range of norms. Though it might be more accurate to say that we have a less constrained range of choices than many other cultures.
I'm a reductionist. Which is a pretentious way of saying I like things to be simple.
Liza, how far wrong am I to summarise the trend as being one that moves further and further away from the actual text something like:
New Criticism: Focus primarily on the text
Reader Response: Focus primarily on the response the reader has to the text.
Pragmatism to Post-colonialism: Focus primarily of the response wider society has to the text.
Post-Colonialism to New-Historicism: Focus primarily on the presumed cultural values of the author.
Derrida: Ditch even that and focus primarily on the abstract considerations of academic criticism.
I wonder if this is illustrative of a loss of academic confidence in taking a position based primarily on artistic value.
Footnote This, You Cowards
Simian Smith, blood-wet and bellowing
They built a church out of footnotes and called it truth. Hung Saussure’s teeth above the door and laid Derrida’s bones in the foundation like it meant something, like it could keep the rot out. They said this is how you read, this is how you mean, this is how you hold language without it biting back.
We walked in barefoot. They handed us a glossary and asked us to sing.
And for a while, we did. God help us, we tried. We quoted Barthes like scripture, Foucault like law, Butler like prophecy. We took our rage and dressed it in parentheses. We tucked our rawest memories behind clever line breaks and learned to say “liminality” instead of “fuck.”
But theory doesn’t keep you warm at night. It doesn’t sob when your character says something you didn’t expect. It doesn’t scream when the story cracks open and your dead mother walks out, blinking. Theory claps politely and asks for clarification.
We don’t need clarification. We need combustion.
Because something monstrous is happening. A generation of writers sharpening their voice into a LinkedIn-ready ice pick, surgically removing the soul so it fits the submission guidelines. Every sentence pre-apologised, every metaphor hedged in latex gloves and peer-reviewed disclaimers. Writing not to say something, but to prove you’ve read the right things before daring to speak.
This isn’t literature. It’s a bureaucratic exorcism. It's a chorus of spectral MFA grads huddled around a ghostlight, whispering “Does this resonate with the discourse?”
The discourse can choke.
I don’t want your framework. I don’t want your model. I don’t want to parse grief like it’s a tax return or run my sentences through a sieve of approved semiotics so nobody gets their precious certainties shaken. I want to throw language like a brick through the stained-glass window of the canon and shout into the hole it leaves.
I want to name the thing before I understand it.
I want to fuck up in public and call it style.
I want to cry in the margin and leave it in the draft.
And I want to do it all without a single citation.
Because here’s what the theoryheads won’t tell you: they don’t know either. All that scaffolding, all that jargon, all those reams of academia dry-humping itself into irrelevance — it’s a panic room. A language built to keep feeling out.
Well guess what.
We’re feeling everything.
We’re feeling like grammar doesn’t fit anymore. We’re feeling like the sentence isn’t long enough for what we need to say. We’re feeling like metaphor is the only way left to speak without lying. And we’re feeling like if we don’t scream it now, messy, loud, wrong, embarrassing, the machine will finish grinding down the last syllables that ever mattered.
So fuck your theoretical lineage. Your precious timeline. Your laminated who-begat-whom of thought.
We’re not here to inherit. We’re here to interrupt.
We are the bastard children of broken syntax and blackout poetry. We are the sentence half-deleted and still twitching. We are the underlined confession in a stranger’s book. We are the wrong voice in the wrong room saying the wrong thing with such unbearable honesty that it becomes sacred.
So if you want us to play nice, play smart, play safe, too late.
We’re already at the edge of the page, throwing matches into the library.
And if we go down in flames, fine.
At least it’ll be warm.