Reason editor Nick Gillespie reports on a panel entitled "English Studies and Political Literacy":
The University of Chicago's Kenneth Warren emphasized the role of pre-college education, even as he gently chided moderator [Donald] Lazere for subtly equating "political literacy" with agreement on a particular political agenda. Lazere argued that instructors shouldn't shy away from politics in their classroom, because "literature can't be studied independent of political literacy." In fact, he said, they should bring in a wide array of sources, including The Nation and The Weekly Standard, where appropriate or relevant. That's all well and good. . . .
No, that isn't "all well and good." The notion that "literature can't be studied independent of political literacy" is bullshit. It's this idea that's brought ruin upon "English Studies" to begin with. It's just another way of trivializing literature, making it subservient to politics or culture or history or whatever. What other academic discipline has to endure this kind of marginalization, even on the part of those who belong to it? What would political scientists say if it were asserted that in order to understand politics one must first know poetry? Is it the case that, say, microbiology "can't be studied independent of political literacy"? Why is it only literature that can't be allowed its own autonomy, its own integrity as a subject that might be studied for its own sake and might provide its own kind of knowledge?
I am just old enough to have gone through graduate school before "English Studies" became entirely a hostage to political advocacy. I can attest that many of my fellow students were apolitical, at least as far as their approach to literary study was concerned. Some had decided to study literature precisely because it was removed from the hectoring insistence of political debate and required no political "literacy" in the sense this term is being used by Gillespie and the participants in this panel--i.e., they were free to ignore the inanities of politicians and other self-appointed cultural savants. Few of these students had any trouble separating politics from the study of Medieval drama or 18th-century fiction. Now we're being told it's necessary to consult The Weekly Standard in order to appreciate Wordsworth and Coleridge?
That Gillespie would so readily agree that political literacy is a necessary prerequisite to the study of literature only underscores the fact that conservative and libertarian critics of the academy are not opposed in principle to the politicization of academic literary study. They'd just prefer that the propoganda disseminated to college students be of the right-wing rather than the left-wing variety. Gillespie quotes Mark Bauerlein on the "diversification" of literary study: "Bring in a little less Foucault and a little more Hayek. Some Whitaker Chambers to go along with Ralph Ellison." Wrong again. Get rid of both Foucault and Hayek. Neither of them belong in literature courses. Pair Chambes with Ellison if you're interested in postwar intellectual history, but leave out Chambers altogether if you're teaching postwar American literature.
According to Gillespie, "Bauerlein also pushed for instructors to provide students with an American identity that is positive. 'Often the identity students get is too negative,' he said. 'We need not uncritical patriotism, but some line of argument about American history that students can espouse while criticizing other elements.' That sort of positive feeling would, he argued, make it easier for students to want to become engaged politically and civically." This is where the transformation of literary study into another mode of "political literacy" gets us. Left-wing "scholars" want to indoctrinate students with a "negative" view of American history, while their right-wing counterparts want to cultivate "positive feelings." A pox on both.
While I admit a certain crossover of disciplines--history being taught via Epic of Gilgamesh and Candide, for example--I, as an older student, was upset by the political overtones in almost every college course except those mathematical. There is a problem however in teaching a specific period of literature without acknowledging the forces of politics and society that drove the times and affected the vast majority of the writings. But isn't the focusing on political or cultural atmosphere of a piece of work a particular critical theory, like New Historicism or some such thing, and should be viewed just as one of many approaches?
Posted by: susan | 12/29/2005 at 05:00 PM
"There is a problem however in teaching a specific period of literature without acknowledging the forces of politics and society"
This would be "historical literacy," not "political literacy" of the sort those on this panel are talking about. Historical literacy is a good thing to have, and in some cases certainly enhances one's understanding of literary texts, but I would still argue that this sort of literacy is not absolutely required for literary study to be worthwhile. "Acknowledging" historical forces is not the same thing as making those forces the primary object of interest. Texts that can only be understood or appreciated historically no longer have strictly "literary" value at all.
Posted by: Dan Green | 12/29/2005 at 05:07 PM
I'm certainly all for literary appreciation for its own sake alone, and agree that it need not have political, historical, cultural, feminist, philosophical, etc. aspects investigated to be worthwhile study. I believe that all these theories of analysis enhance, as you say, the understanding, and could/should be taught as the variety of ways of looking at literature. History is strongly influenced by political environment, and I take it as an integral part of its progress. And of course, not all literature is influenced by politics, nor an author's intent to make a statement, thank God.
Posted by: susan | 12/29/2005 at 11:30 PM
Wasn't Ellison a rather conservative fellow compared to the Black Power rabble rousers. I think they considered him a Uncle Tom. Chambers was a conservative after a fling with running a communist cell. Anyhow, they are of the same stripe, Conservative in their maturity, so there was no Left-Right argument there.
Posted by: R A Rubin | 12/30/2005 at 07:57 AM
Amen, amen, amen. I dropped out of grad school 10 years ago and never got my long-dreamed-of Ph.D. because I was so fed up with the politicization of everything in English Studies. For a long time, I thought I was alone in my resistance to it because so many other grad students just seemed to accept it in order to have respect and jobs. It was profoundly disappointing to me, someone who loved literature and wanted to study it for its own sake, to find that literary studies had been taken hostage by a bunch of angry people who were more interested in (mostly far-left) politics than in literature. They seemed to view literature as merely a convenient tool for political argument, and not as valid thing in itself.
Posted by: Waterfall | 12/30/2005 at 08:15 AM
Dan,
You'll be happy to note that I think Salman Rushdie agrees--at least, that's my surmising from reading Shalimar the Clown. There's a great passage in there about how hair and chicken broth is political.
Trent
Posted by: Trent Walters | 12/30/2005 at 03:06 PM
Salma Hayek! That's what we need more of. Less Foucault and more Hayek.
Posted by: Jonathan Mayhew | 12/30/2005 at 10:17 PM