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You know where I stand: there's a spectre haunting english departments, the spectre of historicism. All theoretical antagonism pertains to individuals' comfort zones and realms of INNATE competence; we who function, above all else, logically/deductively can navigate the philosophical/anthropological approaches, whilst those who prefer fact memorization to deduction are much more inclined toward historicism and formalism.
That's the only true REASON why I rip on historicism; I don't dig ALL history, only specific regions, time periods, etc. Moreover, I don't dig facts as much as I dig CONCEPTS/THEORIES.
OTher "arguments" against the approach† all bow down to the above.
† e.g.
* It's so fucking.....British, and by "British," I mean ELITIST/ARISTOCRATIC/IVY LEAGUE; anytime I think of history as a discipline I think of A.J.P. Taylor, boarding schools, new england and old money, and I get squeamish.
.....the above is it, really; anybody as concerned with STATUS as the historicist critics (those I've encountered, anyway) seem to be has got to....I can't even articulate the feeling. It's not hatred, rage or any emotion that would lead one to acting out so much as it's just.....I don't even fully understand it, subjectively--elitism. I do and I don't, I guess.
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Shit, in examining the backgrounds of 99% of the critical "prophets" of our time one can discern patterns of MARGINALIZATION.
Derrida was a poor Algerian jew; Foucault was a homosexual "pervert"; wittgenstein was also homosexual, as is judith butler; Said was a christian who was raised in egypt and palestine........it's mind boggling that conformists can implement these peoples' ideas whilst completely glossing over their BACKGROUNDS.
Original thought, it seems to me, emanates from the margins, and so seeing people use the ideas of the marginalized to marginalize others qua their elitism is the epitome of HYPOCRISY!
Further, how can advocates of monogamous social structures--namely marriage--simultaneously be FEMINISTS? Second-wave feminism (Friedan et. al.) was largely a REACTION to stultifying, bourgeois marriage.
Also, I'd argue that 99% of the (ostensible) members of "the school of resentment" can't even COMPREHEND that resentment if they find themselves in positions of intellectual/discursive power; resentment is the product of marginalization.
Flw's analysis (above) utterly NAILS the essence academia (society in general, really): academics begin their lives as marginalized nerds, geeks, etc, so they transfer themselves to a social structure in which precisely the things that once relegated them to positions of "oppression" will ELEVATE them to a position in which they can oppress those who once oppressed them.
In the end, we see that human society, as a whole, is PRECISELY as Nietzsche describes it: "A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power."
Oh, lastly:
An Argument Against Formalism
To reveal the formal "secrets" of HOW certain genres, forms etc. work is to create FORMULAS for literary production that the culture industry can appropriate in order to make more money, which will, in turn, DESTROY those forms/genres with needless repetition. Moreover, if the secrets of how texts do the things that they do are "cracked," then literary studies becomes pedantic and professors of literature become SOPHISTS (teaching RHETORICAL TECHNIQUES to students like the pre-socratics).
The last assertion notwithstanding, I'd still advocate making formalist critique an integral aspect of CREATIVE WRITING programs.
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