Fail Better: the Aesthetics of Contemporary Criticism
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FAIL BETTER: THE AESTHETICS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fullfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF ENGLISH by Erica Schmid May 2014 Examining Committee Members: Daniel T. O’Hara, Advisory Chair, English, Temple University Alan Singer, English, Temple University Laura Levitt, Religion, Temple University Rebecca Alpert, Religion, Temple University ABSTRACT Though literature and literary study have needed defense for most of their respective histories, the current crisis in academic literary study and the humanities more generally has forced scholars into the uncomfortable position of selling their disciplines and simultaneously warning students about the risks involved in earning what the dominant public considers to be “useless” degrees. The paradox, of course, is that dissuading would-be studiers is both ethical and destructive: it is necessary to inform students of the frightful instability of careers in literary study, but doing so renders such careers even more unstable. While some argue that the decline of the discipline is a result of practices within the discipline, I suggest that the root of the problem lies in the dominant discourse, which forces scholars to defend the discipline according to dominant notions of success. Using Frank Lentricchia’s “Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic” as a hinge between discussions of the value of literary study and elaborations of the antisocial thesis in queer theory, I contend that the discipline is not socially valued for the same reason it is socially valuable: it facilitates the pleasure of experiencing and envisioning new possibilities in and through the circulation of discourse. Since this aim does not (easily) translate into wealth accumulation or employability, it does not read as “success” and therefore the discipline has difficulty being socially valued. Rather than explaining the various benefits of earning a degree in literature, I argue that the discipline should embrace (its) failure as both a challenge to and re-imagining of dominant notions of success. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………ii CHAPTER 1. INDEFENSIBLE Drink the Kool-Aid: An Introduction……………………………………………1 The Accidental Theorist: A Methodology……………………………………….14 Belonging: A Context……………………………………………………………22 Success is “Counted” Sweetest: Another Context……………………………….37 Everybody Takes a Beating Sometime: Yet Another Context…………………..55 2. FAILING BETTER Containing Multitudes…………………………………………………………...70 Go Fuck Yourself or Fuck You Explain This One: Performing Pleasure……….93 3. EPIC FAIL Assessment Fail………………………………………………………………...116 Summary Fail…………………………………………………………………...118 Protagonist Fail…………………………………………………………121 Character Fail…………………………………………………………...125 Plot Fail…………………………………………………………………132 Conclusion Fail…………………………………………………………141 Critic Fail……………………………………………………………………….142 Teacher Fail…………………………………………………………………….162 Student Fail……………………………………………………………………..170 iii 4. CONCLUSION: STUDYING FOREVER…………………………………………..182 END NOTES...…………………………………………………………………………185 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………199 iv CHAPTER 1 INDEFENSIBLE Drink the Kool-Aid: An Introduction We created it. Let’s take it over1 Patti Smith, “My Generation” In “Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic,” Frank Lentricchia remarks: “In the hearts of those who study literature lies the repressed but unshakable conviction that the study of literature serves no socially valued purpose. Too bad academic literary critics can’t accept their amateur status—that is, their status as lovers” (65). What may have been a repressed conviction in ‘96 is now a bit of an Internet phenomenon. One need not have a subscription to The Chronicles of Higher Education to find a wealth of articles, blogs, youtube videos, etc. freely admitting, often with stinging bluntness, that academic literary study is not a viable career path. And one need not take a course on, let alone specialize in, Marxist critique to figure out why: academic literary study serves no socially valued purpose. Far from attempting to shake off this conviction, the authors ensure that it sticks, lodges itself (useless) in the hearts of those who study or would study literature. Thus one finds page after page describing and/or depicting the ‘worse than desperate’ (Pennypacker) situation. The story goes something like this (with a few creative/ “confessional” liberties taken): You, a passionate and perhaps promiscuous lover of literature, realize that your undergraduate experience, though amazing, was not enough. You need more; you need to go to grad school. Contrary to the reductive stereotype, you do not fear the “real world” and its “real jobs.” Rather, you wholeheartedly believe in the value of literary study—and the life of the mind more generally—and thus you want to continue your 1 journey as a lifelong learner, eventually securing a job as a professor so that you can share this value with others, who will share it with others, etc. etc. With what you believe to be a thoroughly thought-out plan, you approach your most trusted professor, eager to learn how to “make it” as s/he did. Much to your surprise, you are met with “the talk.” ‘Don’t go to grad school for English or any other subject in the humanities; there are no jobs. Unless you have a substantial trust fund, don’t go; there are no jobs. Even if you get into a top program and even if they offer you funding, don’t go; there are no jobs. You will never see those “celebrity” professors you went to study under, and assistantships are a form of slave labor. Don’t go; there are no jobs.’ But such well-intentioned advice does not dissuade you (it smells like capitalism, and you were warned against that in an introductory course on literary theory). So you go to grad school… 9.5 years later, you, roughly 35-years-old and roughly $45,000 in debt, finally go on the job market. At this point, you are forced to confront the fact that that seemingly paternalistic speech is in fact the reality. There are few fulltime jobs and most of them have low salaries, little security, and are located in places that you don’t want to live. But you will never get one of them anyway. Rather, you join the scores of adjuncts on public assistance who naively believe that they will eventually be one of the lucky ones to win the academic lottery. At some point, you discover that the type of criticism you were trained in is no longer fashionable, and when you turn to your seasoned colleagues for direction, you learn that even they cannot agree on what the discipline is supposed to do and how it is supposed to do it. Looking back, you realize that you dedicated your life to 2 an exceedingly valuable, if not invaluable, “something,” that is, in the eyes of the dominant public, fairly worthless (even if your generous monthly contributions to the US government in the form of student loan payments help subsidize important social services and/or necessary bailouts). Of course, the “tragedy” of the pie-eyed, would-be studier is not the only narrative within the discipline. Many of those currently circulating depict academic literary study in varying states of disrepair, which, depending on the scholar one is reading, is more or less our fault. It may be that we have ‘distanced—or in extreme cases, estranged—ourselves from our object of study’ and “divided [ourselves] into competing sectarian groups, each with its own dogmas and its own arcane language” (Alter 14). It may be that we have ‘reduced the discipline’s legitimacy by locating authority in disciplinary stars’ (Shumway 98) and that we “fall back on status to judge the work of our peers because… we don’t have any good grounds to know whether [our] judgments are valid” (“Revisited” 181). It may be that our “shape of thought has grown old,” that “[i]deas that seemed revelatory thirty years ago… have dwindled into shopworn slogans” (Felski 1). It may be that the pressure to publish has resulted in a glut of “unread or casually read scholarship,” a “devaluation of teaching,” and serious limitations on of the “freedom of scholarship” to explore “promising but unprofitable lines of inquiry” (Guillory 15-6). It may be that the “demystifying protocols” that “we cut our intellectual teeth on” seem “superfluous,” that “the disasters and triumphs of the last decade have shown that literary criticism alone is not sufficient to effect change” (Best 2). It may be that we “literary scholars… have no definable expertise” (Perloff, quoted in Chace), that to study English “is to do, intellectually, what one pleases” (Chace). And it 3 may be that “we can’t sell the public on what we do until we work out a better understanding of what it is we’re doing and why what we do really matters” (Bruns 1). As depressing as these may be, the stories outside of the discipline are perhaps worse. Since, say, the publication of “Last Will,” the American public has had to endure a wide variety of failures (some more ‘epic’ than others): Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, insider trading scandals, the housing crisis, the fall of the banks, Hurricane Katrina, WMDs, drone strikes, etc. etc. etc. In response, the public has increasingly demanded “transparency and accountability” any given group—be it an organization, an institution, a government program, and even a discipline—should clearly and accessibly explain its intended outcomes and the practices designed to achieve those outcomes, and it should clearly and accessibly demonstrate that it achieved said outcomes via said practices; made appropriately “visible,” the group, its outcomes, practices, and achievements should be scrutinized by both insiders and outsiders, and the necessary changes should be implemented by whomever is in a position to hold the group accountable. One need not think long or hard to see the advantages. As a method of determining value, transparency and accountability procedures function to distinguish which outcomes, practices, achievements, and/or groups are worth supporting and which are wasteful, ineffective, fraudulent, and/or abusive.