Poststructuralist Criticism and Ejaculate

Spoken like a true Cambridge student.

One might point out that sperm need the seminal fluid to survive, and indeed in order to have a chance of fertilising anything; it's not merely a barrier or needless dilution.

And, centrifuge? Surely there's a more fun way?

Reply 2

OP

I'd anticipated that response. As one must write badly to be taken seriously these days, the dilution is no longer needless :wink:

Reply 3

silence

16

i always found of grammatology a bit hard to swallow.

Reply 4

Da Bachtopus

I'd anticipated that response. As one must write badly to be taken seriously these days, the dilution is no longer needless :wink:

It's debatable how seriously they're taken. I wouldn't say the incorporation of post-structuralist 'techniques' is fundamental to the kind of criticism being written today. Certainly not at your University by the sound of things! Oh and by the way, do you actually think there are many insights to be found in Derrida et al or was that just to further the analogy?

I think my stance on post-structuralism has softened somewhat since starting Uni. If you take the progression of post-structuralism - (roughly) from Nietzsche to Derrida (and beyond) via Freud, Lacan, Barthes &c. then the only prose - of the major figures - which it's possible really to lay into is that of Derrida and perhaps Lacan. However, if you consider the fact that Derrida is essentially questionning the entire history of Western philosophy, the difference in his style compared with those who went before him is perhaps more understandable. A lot of his prose seems to be to do with language play and he valued literature highly for its ability to write between the lines (for want of a better term). From his ideas about the impossibility of truth, he could quite easily have discounted all writing - especially literature. [Interesting aside here; I know a girl who dropped English and switched to Philosophy because she said language was too unreliable - it makes you think]. Anyway, you're an English student (with a v. good knowledge of French) surely you could come to appreciate the word-play and humour within Derrida's writings?

Oh yeah, this almost warrants a new thread but it's sort of evolved from post-structuralism (and Foucault); what do people think of the idea of New Historicism? I really like it; it's great for mixing close textual criticism (although all too often this is forgotten by those writing it :rolleyes:

) with a close reading of the historical moment. I love their use of anecdote - it's enough to drive any historian insane, but I think it works really well.

Reply 5

silence

i always found of grammatology a bit hard to swallow.

Haha!

Reply 6

OP

englishstudent

It's debatable how seriously they're taken. I wouldn't say the incorporation of post-structuralist 'techniques' is fundamental to the kind of criticism being written today. Certainly not at your University by the sound of things! Oh and by the way, do you actually think there are many insights to be found in Derrida et al or was that just to further the analogy?

I was being arch all along, and not intending to start a serious discussion. Of course it's not fundamental to take a post-structuralist approach when writing criticism today, and Cambridge as a whole is quite traditional.

I have two issues with this kind of criticism. Firstly, I find it slightly concerning that you will be seen as a naïve critic unless you have absorbed a large quantity of contintental philosphy, critical theory and social anthropology. I don't deny that this can be brought to bear on literary studies, but a student ostensibly reading English will not explore these topics in the same depth as a Philosophy or Anthropology undergraduate. I think students are made to rely on superficial glosses of other disciplines. For example, I went to a lecture on Marie de France the other day, the first half hour of which was an exposition (or assertion, rather) of basic anthropological theories, and the second a predictable reading of the Lais in relation to Marie's subverting gender stereotypes (amusingly, there was a lecture that came to exactly the same conclusions two days before). I don't like feeling that a reading is just based on a gloss of a theory, which is accepted as axiomatic without any real study. The interdisciplinary turn, whilst in principle breeding polymaths, in practice gives students a cavalier attitude towards other subjects in which they acquire only superficial learning. As a true interdisciplinarian, I feel it's my right to assert all this :wink:

. At least, that tends to be my experience, and it only seems logical, given that English students can't be reading the equivalent of three undergraduate courses.

If you take the progression of post-structuralism - (roughly) from Nietzsche to Derrida (and beyond) via Freud, Lacan, Barthes &c. then the only prose - of the major figures - which it's possible really to lay into is that of Derrida and perhaps Lacan.

Well, since Nietzsche long preceeded Structuralism per se, I'd take issue with your including him in such a 'progression'. I can see how you'd argue that he anticipates post-S. though.

My second problem is with the language. The lectures I referred to above were both well-expressed (only one or two "always alreadies" slipped in). Indeed, you really can lay into the prose of Derrida (and certainly Lacan, come on!) - but what about Paul de Man, Kristeva, and thousands of minor academics who churn out essays that pun on "mother" and "Other" to no reasonable end? It's not so much the syntax I dislike, but the jargon. I think it's a barrier that's been erected so as to give literary studies the same appearance to Scientists as advanced research papers might have to Artists, somehow validating the discipline by demonstrating its complexity; however, whilst in the case of science jargon is a necessity, in the arts it's merely revenge. C/f the Social Text affair, &c.

Not all the time is Po-Mo badly written. Indeed, lots of traditional criticism is appalling, or just dull.

However, if you consider the fact that Derrida is essentially questionning the entire history of Western philosophy, the difference in his style compared with those who went before him is perhaps more understandable.

'The Case for Irony' or whatever doesn't persuade me. It's a pretty abstruse way of making the point that meaning is always 'differed' and unstable by writing like a f****er. I suppose he at least can claim that he's doing it on purpose, unlike - say - Hegel, who was just a dreadful writer.

Actually, I don't think Derrida is always that bad. His literary essays tend to be pretty readable, and I like his wordplay and 'riffing' with motifs. The above idea irritates me, though. Mallarmé expresses the idea of a 'transcendental signified' much more clearly in 'Crise de vers', which Derrida just seems to be rehashing.

[Interesting aside here; I know a girl who dropped English and switched to Philosophy because she said language was too unreliable - it makes you think].

That's hilarious! Does she somehow expect to escape unreliable language by switching to Philosophy, where she's likely to encounter even more?

I really have to do some work now. New Historicism I like, but I'd never take it as an exclusive approach. In fact, I think that taking anything as an exclusive approach is dangerous. Perhaps most importantly, once you stop thinking about language only in the terms of Sassure (thence stucturalism and Derrida), and consider it as something that people actually use in practical situations, you can escape the paradoxes that arise from their position. If we're going to be interdisciplinary, then people reading Derrida should read Wittgenstein as well.

Reply 7

Oh yeah, this almost warrants a new thread but it's sort of evolved from post-structuralism (and Foucault); what do people think of the idea of New Historicism? I really like it; it's great for mixing close textual criticism (although all too often this is forgotten by those writing it ) with a close reading of the historical moment. I love their use of anecdote - it's enough to drive any historian insane, but I think it works really well.

New Historicism did a tremendously valuable thing in breaking down the text/context dichotomy, and in arguing for the rooting of literary texts in material practices. And so on...

It's all fascinating stuff, but it's oh-so-problematic. I mean, take an anecdote which apparently has no direct relevance to a literary text and relate each to the other? The theoretical movement was useful but the practice seems to me flawed.

Look at someone like Tennenhouse - in order to make his arguments work in Power and Display he ends up making massive generalisations about both historical events *and* literary genre. And, having made those generalisations, he then uses simplified history to inform his reading of the plays, and the plays to build up that simplified history. Very circular reasoning. And a general scheme of argument that comes rather close to old historicism.

Further, New Historicism actively discourages close reading in a traditional New Critical sense. (Read Greenblatt in Shakespearean Negotiations - he essentially says he had to keep stopping himself from doing 'close readings' as he wrote the book.) In order to make the theoretical point the new historicists moved to an extreme. But in practice that's probably not an ideal way to carry out literary analysis.

Reply 8

anycon

11

Yay! Down with An Introduction to Literary Studies: Text, Context, Intertext! You can tell they needed an all-night mutual wanking session to come up with an exam like that.

Sample question: '"The text-world dichotomy is a vampire that won't lie down" (Bennett & Royle). Vampire, or chimaera?'

Reply 9

Genius. Wouldn't it just make you want to laugh out loud in the exam room? Though, you know, at least Oxford doesn't still have two compulsory papers on Practical Criticism. I love Cambridge dearly, but, behind the times much?

Also, I think that possibly beats my favourite exam question ever, from the Cambridge Tragedy paper a few years ago:

" 'Tragedy / When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on / It’s tragedy ... Tragedy / when you lose control / and you got no soul / it's tragedy...' (Barry Gibb/Maurice Gibb/Robin Gibb)"

Reply 10

zigguratted

Also, I think that possibly beats my favourite exam question ever, from the Cambridge Tragedy paper a few years ago:

" 'Tragedy / When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on / It’s tragedy ... Tragedy / when you lose control / and you got no soul / it's tragedy...' (Barry Gibb/Maurice Gibb/Robin Gibb)"

Seriously?

Reply 11

Toscar

11

anycon

Yay! Down with An Introduction to Literary Studies: Text, Context, Intertext! You can tell they needed an all-night mutual wanking session to come up with an exam like that.

Sample question: '"The text-world dichotomy is a vampire that won't lie down" (Bennett & Royle). Vampire, or chimaera?'

should i be scared that i have absolutely no idea what that question is asking?

Reply 12

OP

englishstudent

Seriously?

The notorious Dr Eric Griffiths set the paper that year. He's giving a lecture in 50 minutes called 'French as a Literary Medium' - last week's consisted of at least half an hour's ranting about how bad undergratuates' French is and how they can't be bothered to remedy their ignorance. Hilarious, but he ran over by 20 mins.

Reply 13

"Literary medium" - charming! Language learning is in pretty serious decline, I'm not surprised he thinks that really. One of my favourite aspects of the course here is that there's a compulsory foreign language component.

Reply 14

OP

zigguratted

Genius. Wouldn't it just make you want to laugh out loud in the exam room? Though, you know, at least Oxford doesn't still have two compulsory papers on Practical Criticism. I love Cambridge dearly, but, behind the times much?

I've not sussed why they have two, the 'real' one in Part II and then 'Literary Criticism' in Part I that has some topic questions and inflected Prac Crit exercises. I won't complain, as Prac Crit = no need to revise.

I'd say it's more excessive than behind the times - it's an important skill, and students can't avoid encountering contemporary criticism in everything else they do.

Reply 15

OP

englishstudent

"Literary medium" - charming! Language learning is in pretty serious decline, I'm not surprised he thinks that really. One of my favourite aspects of the course here is that there's a compulsory foreign language component.

He's right (and he certainly knows it!). Cambridge don't offer language classes proper, except in Italian. He's doing a series on that as well...

I'd have assumed that the majority of people doing a French Lit paper would have A-level or equivalent standard French. Of course, this doesn't stop them writing rubbish about the "melodious quality" of French or whatever. They look like they'll be a very useful series of lectures, but - typical of Dr G - consist of 1/5 ranting.

Reply 16

Da Bachtopus

I've not sussed why they have two, the 'real' one in Part II and then 'Literary Criticism' in Part I that has some topic questions and inflected Prac Crit exercises. I won't complain, as Prac Crit = no need to revise.

I'd say it's more excessive than behind the times - it's an important skill, and students can't avoid encountering contemporary criticism in everything else they do.

Yes, you're right really. It's not so much prac crit per se that I have a problem with (since, yes, it is an important skill, and one I'm glad to have been able to focus on).

It's more that Part I paper which troubles me. Isn't it rather skewed in focus to have a paper on 'literary criticism' which looks at Arnold, Eliot, and Freud, but doesn't care much about what happened after that. Unless they've changed it significantly since 2003?

It seems a rather blinkered approach, one which doesn't really acknowledge the post-Leavis world unless you take the optional paper in Part II (which is tantamount to saying theory is a 'special subject', as if we could completely segregate it from the study of English Lit). Obviously you're free to apply as much or as little of it as you like in other papers, but.....

Hmm, but possibly I simply have a grudge against that paper. It was marked by Eric Griffiths in my year (possibly every year??), and a lot of us did very badly. Apparently he was regularly grading papers 10 marks lower than the other examiner.

Reply 17

OP