Fists in the Air

I think that Marxism would consider Liberal Humanism an excellent cause for a fist fight--hopefully one that would spark spontaneous complete revolution (To be clear, although Marx and Engels believed in the ability of their theories to change the world, rather than just understand it, it is my understanding that that is not necessarily a given with Marxist theory and criticism. Some forms of Marxism attempt to correct oppression, while other forms are not necessarily concerned with social activism).

However, I do think that Marxism and Liberal Humanism are very much at odds with each other. Primarily, it is essential to the liberal humanist that good literature transcends the cultural and historical moment in which it was written, as well as transcending any cultural, historical, or economic biases or assumptions which the author may have personally held. This concept of the purity of the text--as a Teflon entity to which nothing sticks--is in direct opposition to one of the fundamental, and perhaps the most important, tenets of Marxist criticism. That is, Marxism maintains that literature is inevitably a product of the social, cultural, and historical context in which it is written. Marxism does not allow for the concept of an ideal world or set of forces beyond the material, which seems necessary to follow the Liberal Humanist line of thinking about literature's ability to transcend cultural-historical context and authors' ideological predispositions. Instead, in Marxist thought, because literature is a part of the superstructure which is shaped or at least influenced by the economic system (base) by which it is produced, it cannot escape influence of an author's ideology shaped by her or his class membership.

I find that the Marxist point of view is in some ways much easier to accept and understand than the Liberal Humanist point of view, because it seems logical that an author's assumptions and biases will influence what she or he writes (although I know that will be challenged as we continue on in the semester), and it also seems logical that the historical, cultural moment in which an author lives will influence her or his point of view. I think partly this is due to the fact that I have been raised and educated during the reign of theory (or perhaps even the post-theory world), rather than in a time still dictated by the Liberal Humanist-only regime, which dominated the study of literature for so long. I think this is also because I have grown up in a time skeptical of an ideal world, in which it has become at least more acceptable to distrust anything which claims to be pure.

The Inquisition Begins

I begin today my inquisition of the world of literary theory--and theory's place in the world outside of itself. I feel as though I have not yet much to say because I am still behind the glass looking into a world of concepts and jargon still seemingly unaccessible.

This speaks somewhat of a lack of confidence on my part because the image of theory as residing high up on a pedestal, away from the grittiness of a practical and political world, is at least in part illusory. Although the language of theory can be difficult and at times inaccessibly abstract, it does deal either directly or indirectly with political conditions and consequences as well as issues of common sense. Theory's insistence upon examining, questioning, and when appropriate, proving wrong commonly held beliefs in the areas of literature and cultural studies can be unsettling to some, especially at first exposure. However, I think it is just this unsettling practice which is the doorway of accessibility to the study of theory because common sense is common to most people, and is therefore available as a starting point for discussion.

Theory's willingness to consider cultural and historical context (as compared to the text-only close reading of liberal humanism which dominated English studies prior to the 1960s), as well as its distrust of liberal humanism's selection of worthy texts makes it in some ways significantly more democratic than the more exclusive, tradition-trumps-innovation practices of liberal humanism (such as Arnold's touchstone theory, judging the worth of texts based on a rubric consisting of a few works previously judged to be great). An assessment of theory as democratic sounds somewhat ironic because it is often theory which is considered to be elitist because of its use of jargon and frequent complexity of ideas and writing.

Additionally, I think many people consider the study of theory to be useless outside of quibbling over literature in the halls of academe because it has often been exiled to the realm of inaccessibility. I anticipate to discover that theory is indeed applicable to multiple realms of life because unlike its predecessor, liberal humanism, theory incorporates politics, culture, philosophy, and other disciplines, allowing for an application to human beings, rather than being obsessed with the construction of a rigid, confining view of a ruling human nature.