[lit-ideas] Re: Marxism and Political Correctness
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:35:08 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 2/28/2012 8:55:12 P.M. UTC-02,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Edmund Wilson was two years younger than I. A. Richards and not influenced
by him as far as I know.
Right. No, I checked with wiki for Wilson and it's not easy to track his
influences, if any, at Princeton, etc. Perhaps he didn't have any!
"What is good art? I have in mind Harold Bloom on that subject,
especially his Western Canon. He is the antithesis of the Politically Correct
-- a
matter you don't address despite its being prevalent in Tom Hart's class
list and the note of mine you respond to."
Right. I SHOULD have addressed the point of "PC". Harold Bloom can be poli
tically incorrect, you are right.
"Whatever "good art" is, it is not achieved by being or teaching that which
is politically correct. Someone might argue that being Politically
Correct in belief trumps "good art." There is irony in the fact that Tom's
listing of Politically Correct classes is from Colombia, the alma Mater of
[someone]."
I should not have been quoted, but hey...
I should reread T. Hart's list.
"PC" tends to be overrated?
It seems that the Marxist interpretation of literature has not aimed
(_pace_ Wilson?) at giving a verdict on what _GOOD_ literature is.
The whole (mere?) point of a Marxist (or any other sociologically-oriented)
approach to literature is to provide a meta-analytic framework, as it
were.
(cfr. a "Freudian psycho-analytic" approach to Lewis Carroll's Alice books,
say).
But in general, _that_ is what is required in most literature classes --
an 'externalist' approach or explanation of this or that work. The
_internalist_ appraisal is hardly questioned or discussed, since values differ,
and
nobody wants patronising. It all staring from pre-school! They teach you
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" but they don't tell you how silly the rhyme can
be.
The teacher is never supposed to say, "This is GOOD stuff", (implicating,
"So you better listen"). He is _presupposing_ that that inference will be
drawn or grasped by the student. And note that hardly a question in a
literature quiz will be, "Why do you like the book?" (It's rather: provide two
metonymies and a synechdoche from passage 4).
E.g. teaching Virgil's Aeneid. The very fact that it is in the curriculum
-- in high school Latin, say -- PRESUPPOSES that someone (or other) judged
"Aeneid" to be _fine_ -- perhaps because it gives good practice for
conditional sentences, say. It is not necessary that what the Romans held
"Aeneid"
being good for will be maintained by other readers in other circumstances.
I think that this meta-analytic approach is however, very good, since, to
_instill_ a bias towards what the teacher THINKS is good art seems to be
against most paedagogies.
Similarly, an ethics class is supposed to teach you what R. M. Hare's
phrastics and neustics stand for, rather than that eating people is wrong.
What the teacher usually does, when it comes to 'appreciation' or
'criticism', is help the _appreciation_ of this or that work of art: the use of
tropes, the 'message', etc.
And Wilson may be right that a PURELY Marxist approach may be too reductive
or limiting (But then 'reductive' and 'limiting' are possibly
complimentary adjectives to the Marxist, or two one of the Marxism, to echo E.
Yost,
"Marxism and Marxism").
But in the long run, nobody -- in academia, on the whole -- seems to be
interested in why this piece of work is good or fails to be so. Even in
over-the-fence chat.
A: "I read this novel."
B: "Was it good?".
A: "Yes."
B: "Why?".
Whatever the reason A provides, B should better re-interpret it in his own
terms. It is not required that A and B should _share_ standards or
evaluations of appreciation. Note that "Why?" does not mean, "Why is the book
good?". The intelligent questioner will rather pose the question as meaning,
"Why, in YOUR opinion, is that a good book?".
Contra this, it may be argued that if no minimal sharing of evaluation is
presupposed, conversation on these matters would be totally otiose. And I'm
not surprised that Geary's mentor, Aquinas, thought so: "De gustibus non
est disputandum."
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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