Letters to the Editor
achilleselbow
Published Letters: 286 Editor's Choice: 16
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Theory is to blame, but not completely
[Read the article: Who killed the literary critic?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those who blame theory are right to some extent. I'm currently in an interdisciplinary Humanities MA program, and I regularly meet people who are well-versed in Foucault, Lacan, and Baudrillard, but have an entirely blank slate when it comes to classic literature, preferring instead to apply theory to comic books or the Internet. On the other hand, this is what most of them started out wanting to do, and it's not certain that they would have done literary studies otherwise.
Part of the blame actually lies indirectly with Philosophy departments rather than English or Cultural Studies. The thing is that most Philosophy departments in English-speaking countries focus exclusively on analytic philosophy (plainly written logical arguments about very specific points) and entirely exclude continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sartre, and the later poststructrualists (basically all the wide-sweeping 'meaning of life' stuff that people normally associate with philosophy). This is almost the opposite case in Europe and the rest of the world. But of course American students still want to study that kind of philosophy, so English departments are usually the ones that have to fill in the gap and offer courses in theory. So what may seem like theory siphoning away English majors who would have otherwise focused on literature may actually be the English departments attracting students who can't find what they want in the Philosohpy department.
In fact, most larger schools have multiple cultural studies departments that are separate from English, which allows English to maintain a certain autonomy. This raises the more interesting question for me, which is what does literary criticism look like without theory? From what I remember in undergrad, it either involves historicism or formalism (like New Criticism), both of which are just boring as all hell. The reason a lot of people are drawn to theory as an alternative is because it offers rich new ways of reading literature that are, well, fun. At least at first. The problem is that the deeper you go into it, the more it becomes metatheory (that is, theory about theory and method rather than about literature). But it's still very possible to use theory to create interesting and illuminating readings of texts (for example Barbara Johnson's reading of Billy Budd) rather than just interrogating them for hidden biases and the like.
Basically my point is that theory isn't necessarily opposed to literature, and unless you're in a particularly theory-heavy English department it isn't really forced on you anyway. In my case I actually had to go out of my way to learn it. So I would be inclined to think that the real root of the problem really is that people just aren't very interested in reading novels anymore. Which is sad.
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Contrary to popular belief...
[Read the article: ABC: "Sex and the City" forced teen to have sex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...it is real-life violence that contributes to violence on television.
Likewise, Sex and the City is only the accurate reflection of, well, I really can't say it any better than "a generation of sluts".
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Gender neutrality
[Read the article: Putting "women" in the WSJ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I loved the implicit dig at brightstar and his ilk. If there's one argument in favor of keeping a separate women's section in publications like this, it's that it satisfies a sociological interest to see what kind of pathetic, emotionally damaged trolls crawl out of the woodwork to attack it.
Which is not to say that I don't often criticize Broadsheet. But I'd like to think that, having had to wade through feminist theory for several years now, I at least sort of know what I'm talking about. And my criticism has generally stemmed from my view that Broadsheet generally presents a rather narrow middle-of-the-road mainstream brand of feminism that is pre-emptively dismissive of the more challenging and extreme positions with the movement. Which is similar to the mistake that the trolls make when they make blanket pronouncements about feminism in general. If there's one thing I've learned it's that 'feminism' encompasses so many opposing views that any attempt to make a generalization about it reveals far more about the speaker than about the subject.
Anyway, despite the fact that I support the notion of gender neutrality in theory, in practice I can see some need for a separate women's section. It is true for the foreseeable future that things like parental leave from work, abortion, and birth control affect women in a fundamental way that they do not affect men. Then again, Broadsheet has given much coverage to queer issues as well, so perhaps a better description for it would be "gender issues" rather than "women's issues".
This does not, however justify passing off navel-gazing tripe like articles about shoes and Sex and the City as "women's issues" - something that Broadsheet itself has been guilty of at times. In a perfect world all of this would either not be printed or perhaps relegated to a special "Vapid Indulgences" section. One can only dream...