But where is the problem you began with? The one like the problem you had with the Rake's critique of James Wood? I don't see it. It seems to have disappeared into an abstraction about "reason and emotion." You do go on to say that "reason" is to be "applied to one's emotion, and to the devices at work in the text.
A curious association: one's emotions with "devices." The same instrument (reason) applied to both, with some sort of assumed analogy to be drawn with the "devices" in the text and the "devices" that constitute our emotions. What is missing, is the problem that sets all this off, the one you have with emotional arguments. Is it that reason (as you understand and use it) isn't adequate to the task? Or is it that you haven't stopped, haven't paused to reflect on the "problem" long enough to recognize it as one distinct from that having to do with writing and thinking about literature? As the problem you have, that belongs to you, the one you experience in meeting arguments laden with affective power.
You don't acknowledge the leap you make in moving from the problem you have, to the conceptual problem you pose--about reason and emotion. A purely abstract idea of this theoretical opposition, itself, an unexamined assumption. The benefit for you being, that it relocates your "problem" to something outside your "self", a set of "devices" ... which, in the absence of definition or conceptual clarity, serves an almost mystical function, standing in for whatever it is that would be the counter-force, the power that saves you from your problem... a reasonable salvation.
The opposition of reason and emotion is, of course, specious. Unfounded and indefensible. In applying the disciplines of reason, emotion is no less present than when we act by ungoverned passion, and "reason" can be a most effective mask to cover emotions we prefer to hide, or deny.
We can work with this sometimes necessary fiction without much danger of impairment to our investigations, when they have to do with black holes, chaos theory, reconstructing ancient civilizations from pottery shards, gene splicing, but when it comes to thinking about art, there is a problem. Another kind of problem. A problem, I suspect, close to your heart.
"Art and the study of art," you write," are not the same thing."
What makes you so sure?
"... otherwise poetry criticism would be written in verse, music criticism in musical notation."
In verse? No. But in the mode of poetic thinking? Yes.
A play or a novel has many modes of being: as repositories of historical information, manifestations of political and cultural perspectives, linguistic and symbolic artifacts--any one or all of which are worthy of our attention and study--yielding knowledge by application of methods borrowed from, and not altogether unlike, those of the hard sciences. Methods which, if we are not critical regarding our own thinking, we might mistake for evidence of the efficacy of the application of reason, as opposed to emotion.
And here is my problem with what you wrote.
When we read, Proust wrote, we read ourselves. An engagement with a play, a novel, a story, a painting... is a double encounter, a dialogue. Critical writing that engages the text is always personal.
Of all Shakespear's plays Macbeth is the most rapid, Hamlet the slowest, in movement. Lear combines length with rapidity,--like the hurricane and th whirlpool, absorbing while it advance. It beings as a stormy day in summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, and anticipates the tempest.Coleridge, from Lectures on Shakespeare.
The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare. There is perhaps no play with keeps the attention so strongly fixed: which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. the artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. ... So powerful is the current of the poet's imagination, that the mind, which once ventures within it, is hurried irresistibly along.
Samuel Johnson, Notes on King Lear
Johnson and Coleridge are reading themselves in reading the play, and in reading themselves, they give us a new portal into the experience and understanding of the play--a kind of reading that does not come by remaining an outsider to the experience, and writing and reflection that is filled and empowered by an engagement which cannot be dissected into categories of "emotion" and "reason" anymore than you can find such distinctions in a poem or play that succeeds on an aesthetic level. We can get away with pretending we are brains in a bottle when investigating the stars (though I see no evidence of that when I read scientists of the highest order... say, like those who post on Cosmic Variance--and can't imagine Sean Carroll making such a claim), but even so, there is a difference when we are thinking about the aesthetics of a text. Treated as an object (as "devices" we can dissect as artifact: of culture, repository of history) --the aesthetic engagement is erased. It cannot endure the unengaged glance. To think and write about the aesthetics of a literary work, you must be engaged in the aesthetic experience: thinking with the body and feeling with the mind. The best critical writing is fully synesthetic--engaging all the senses interchangeably, mind and body as one.
I've said enough for one post. I thought I might go on to defend The Rake, and comment on what I think he's reacting to in Woods, but that would take a extended post in itself. I can suggest that it is Woods exclusionary approach, his disengagement from the works he comments on, his reduction of what he reads to objects for dissection with no evidence of engagement, that closes the door to any possibility of dialogue... he neither treats the text as pure artifact, nor permits mutual engagement, rather, he insists on speaking from a ground that exists only apart from mutual engagement/ The Rake addresses that... and you have a problem with his engagement... a problem, you have yet to address.
It seems to me this is way over thought. What really makes a critic is that he CAN'T do what the writer is doing; and he wonder why. It is just that most critics can't admit that, or are driven by jealousy so thoroughly they develop a desire, sometimes explicit, to do away with the writer altogether. Anyway, my current post deals with this same thing (the difference between writing and writing about writing), though I hope in a way that manages to frame it, and hang it.
ReplyDelete"But you don't describe the problem. You don't mention it again."
ReplyDeleteI think we must be talking at cross-purposes. I'm not sure what you understood by the phrase 'my problem with emotional arguments,' because I thought that that was all I wrote about. You claimed that Rake's post was an example of 'rational textual arguments,' but it's not, as I think I demonstrated. Instead of making textual arguments, Rake attacks Wood's character. This personal attack was intended as an example of emotional argument, and therefore my description of that attack and the damage it does to debate is an example of 'my problem with emotional argument' (that is to say, 'why I don't like emotional arguments'). I'm sorry if I was unclear, but if you read it again with that in mind, I think you'll see that almost every paragraph is about 'my problem with emotional arguments!'
The rest of your post seems to stem from the same misunderstanding. Apart from a few semantic issues, I don't think we disagree about the nature of textual criticism; certainly we don't disagree in the way you imply.
"When we read, Proust wrote, we read ourselves. An engagement with a play, a novel, a story, a painting... is a double encounter, a dialogue. Critical writing that engages the text is always personal."
Yes, I agree completely. In fact, this is exactly what I meant when I said that a critic examines their response to a text analytically. Your Coleridge quote is an excellent example of this: he's describing his individual emotional reaction to Lear, but (using his analytical skills) he has isolated the dramatic devices that caused that reaction: length and pacing. That seems to me like the role of the critic in a nutshell.
What really makes a critic is that he CAN'T do what the writer is doing..."
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence could you possibly offer for such a claim? Doesn't even make sense as a statement. How could you possible know such a thing?
Criticism, and remember, I made a distinction for more strictly academic theory--is the art of writing about art. The subject matter differs, only in that it is explicitly another work of art and employs, to a degree, different rhetorical conventions. To claim that a person writes criticism because they can't write poetry may or may not be true in any particular case, but as a general rule, it's unsupportable nonsense on the order of "those can't do, teach."
What do you do with Coleridge? Johnson? Josipovici? Italo Calvino? Milan Kundera? Keats? Shelley? T.S. Eliot? Proust? ...
I am not saying writers can't do both, as precisely the ones you list do both original literary work and offer their thinking about literature or other topics. When they do so, however, they write differently--and they all know it. Coleridge was absolutely aware of the difference when he was being a poet, and when he was writing his expository prose. I know what that difference is, because I have experienced it myself. (Must I apologize for this vanity?) And I know, from experience, that there are many literary critics who don't have any appreciation for the process itself, and yet who write profusely and pompously as if they understood the creative mind. But if they could write original material, they would. Anyone who can, sees it as a duty (this is called inspiration). Harold Bloom would be a good example. He is pure puffery, and has no understanding of how Shakespeare wrote, and yet he can tell you all about it. The literary world is full of these baboons.
ReplyDeleteIt is precisely the people on your list, and others (Paul Valery, Thomas DeQuincey are two of my favorites) who would agree with me, because they know there is an essential difference in the two types of writing. And it is not a matter of employing a different style, as you seem to think. It is a CONTENT difference, not a matter of treating the same thoughts in a different way--but a difference in being able to bring something new to literature. It is sometimes, and radically, the difference of having a particular type of language consciousness, in my view (as I say in my current post).
"I think we must be talking at cross-purposes. I'm not sure what you understood by the phrase 'my problem with emotional arguments,' because I thought that that was all I wrote about. You claimed that Rake's post was an example of 'rational textual arguments,' but it's not, as I think I demonstrated. Instead of making textual arguments, Rake attacks Wood's character. This personal attack was intended as an example of emotional argument, and therefore my description of that attack and the damage it does to debate is an example of 'my problem with emotional argument' (that is to say, 'why I don't like emotional arguments'). I'm sorry if I was unclear..."
ReplyDeleteI don't think you were unclear.
I think you didn't pay sufficient attention (and (I can only go by your words) to what you said.
That you were "bothered." Not that you disagreed. But something in critical writing with a strong emotional element... bothers you.
Rather than address that--your response, the "bother"... you replaced it with an abstract explanation, without ever dealing with your named response.
In effect, you ignored the very thing that "bothered" you--the emotional component. Instead, you made a leap to an explanation, an abstraction... a rationalization"
I don't know. I can't guess.
I can only respond by saying that I'm left in the dark. You said you were "bothered." But don't say another word about what it was that bothered you... instead, you elaborate your justifications for having been bothered... rather than tell me what it was.
That leaves me confused.
I still don't know what bothered you. And without that, anything more we would have to say on this matter would be a "mismeeting."
No one could argue that Bloom could use an editor.. but that he's all "puffery?
ReplyDeleteHave you read his early book on Yeats?
I've learned from Bloom, and from many other critical writers, on how to read more deeply.
I confess, I find your need to draw this line between "critic" and ... whatever it is you call "real writers" makes no sense to me, other than what I might be tempted to make of it in terms of your own wishful beliefs.
"I am not saying writers can't do both, as precisely the ones you list do both original literary work and offer their thinking about literature or other topics. When they do so, however, they write differently..
ReplyDeleteIsn't that what I said? You don't acknowledge your own contradictions.
"I think you didn't pay sufficient attention (and (I can only go by your words) to what you said. That you were "bothered." Not that you disagreed. But something in critical writing with a strong emotional element... bothers you."
ReplyDeleteIt's true that you can only go by my words. Therefore, you can go by my words when I tell you that that's not what I meant. You've just got it wrong.
I don't understand why you're being so evasive. I thought you wanted to discuss literary criticism, not unlock the secrets of my psyche. (Will I be charged for this?)
How about you give up the psychology 101 wordgames for a moment and think about what I actually said?
You said that emotion laden criticism bothered you.
ReplyDeleteThen you offered a sort of theory of how good criticism works, and said that Rake was attacking Wood's character. Is that what you think of as "emotional? If that, in fact, is what he was doing, why do you attribute what he says to "emotion, " assuming that's where the fault lies, when an ad hominum argument needs no resort to "emotion," at least not on the surface?"
How do know Rake is writing out of emotion? What is your gateway to his psyche?
What you didn't do, is explain what bothered you--that is, the emotional component in your own response, which lies at the heart of where we differ. Without addressing that, we're simply not writing about the same thing and are reduced to talking at cross purposes.
"How do know Rake is writing out of emotion? What is your gateway to his psyche?"
ReplyDeleteI didn't analyse Rake's psyche, I analysed his argument. He made accusations. He took personal offence. This is the stuff of emotional appeals, rather than logical ones. But fine, if you don't like the word 'emotion' used that way, say 'irrational arguments' instead.
And what 'bothers' me about them is exactly what I said the first time and all the other times: that arguments like those obfuscate everyone's positions, hamper debate, and thus waste everyone's time. Is that not a good enough reason?
Also, I didn't say that 'emotion-laden criticism' bothered me. I said that arguments governed by emotion bothered me. I think you have a caricatured impression of my views. You seem to believe that I have some kind of fear of emotion or something. If that were the case, why would I write a blog dedicated to defending the centrality of emotion in art? This whole discussion was sparked off by my agreeing with James Wood that Thomas Pynchon isn't emotional enough!
ReplyDeleteAh what a tangled web...
ReplyDelete"You seem to believe that I have some kind of fear of emotion or something. If that were the case, why would I write a blog dedicated to defending the centrality of emotion in art?"
I believe you were questioning the place of emotion in criticism, not in art.
You made a distinction--as though what was legitimate in one was not so in the other.
My question was, where do you find emotion in the Rake's response to Wood?
Words on a page or screen are just words on a page or screen. The emotion in in the reader.
If you found emotion in the Rake's post, it must have been present in your response. This, you didn't question or examine... or feel any need to. As though you assumed the emotion you perceived was there in some objective form, available to any reader without your addressing and involving what it was in yourself that made it possible to perceive the emotion in the words.
You see what I'm getting at?
Is this not relevant to how we formulate our thoughtful, reasoned responses to a literary work--and the more so, if, as you say, emotion is central to a work of art?
We must make manifest in our consideration how we have been read by the work, as well as how we read the work.
If you're checking an equation, you only need to understand the symbols and their operations.
If you want to go beyond that, and tell to us what a beautiful thing this equation is and what makes it so, you need to step back into yourself, and examine what it is in you that has responded to the equation as a thing of beauty, to speak meaningfully, you must include your experience in the critique, affective and intellectual, and relate that to the object of your critque.
You seem to to prefer, or priviledge, as they say...a criticism governed by reason, and hold an idea where emotion is central to art, but, in opposition to that--a criticism where reason is central.
Put that way, that does seem to set up a nice complimentary pairing.
What I don't buy, is the line such a pairing implies. I think it's, if not an entirely false opposition, one that is gravely misleading.
When you write that you are bothered by the Rake's criticism of Wood, but find no need to include and examine the affective element in your response, as though you're complaint were purely brain-in-a-bottle decoding, like a matematician critiquing an equation, I don't quite believe you... I can't help but feel there's something missing. Something important.
So I write these replies and ask these bothersome questions to find out what that might be.
You say that your response to Rake was a purely rational criticism of irrational arguments; a physicist critiquing a misguided equation, and any affective involvement is irrelevant. I don't see it that way--either that how you felt about Rakes style is of no matter, or that his post on Wood was irrational, or made up of attacks on Wood's person rather than Wood's arguments. However, since I don't want to get into a defense of Rake (he needs no help from me), and this was only incidental to my related questions, I'll let it stand, as improbable as it seems to me.
ReplyDeleteSo let's forget Rake, and return to this other question. Forgive me if I repeat much of this.
You seem to prefer, or privilege, as they say...a criticism governed by reason, and hold to an idea where, emotion is central to art, but (in opposition to that) reason is central to criticism.
Put that way, it does seem to set up a nice complimentary pairing.
Is this an accurate representation of your thinking?
My problem is, I don't see the line such a pairing implies.
How do we go about formulating thoughtful, reasoned responses to a literary work--and this question is particularly important, if, as you say, emotion is central to such a work.
If you're checking an equation, you only need to understand the symbols and their operations.
If you want to go beyond that, and tell to us what a beautiful thing this equation is and what makes it so, you need to step back into yourself, and examine what it is in you, about you, that has responded to the equation as a thing of beauty, as an aesthetic object; to speak meaningfully, you must include your experience in the critique--affective and intellectual--and relate that to the object of your critique.
If you follow me this far, I can explain what caught my attention in your complaints about Rake, and what made me think of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy--the Apollonian/contra Dyonesian thing. Unlike you, who can read and understand his posts in complete detachment--as a pure, intellectual exercise unsullied by your own emotions, I'm capable of no such thing. His writing makes me laugh, arouses warm approbation, sometimes pisses me off--so to respond fairly, for me, there's no way out of it. I have to give thought to my own unthoughtful responses to fairly address what he says.
Far from seeing this as a fault, I think of it as his strength. True, it makes it harder to figure out how to respond... but it's a difficulty precisely analogous to that of judging a poem or novel. And heres the important point: you save yourself from the danger of being taken in, manipulated or misled by the emotional appeal, not by denying the affective power, but by holding your own reaction up to examination--integrating it into and making it a part of the critical judgement.
"However, since I don't want to get into a defense of Rake (he needs no help from me), and this was only incidental to my related questions, I'll let it stand, as improbable as it seems to me."
ReplyDeleteIt's not incidental. It's completely central to my argument, that ad hominems and specious arguments like them destroy debate. It doesn't matter whether you're discussing maths or books or cooking an egg: an ad hominem is an ad hominem.
You see, you're talking about style, but I'm talking about structure. Do you think I don't like good writing? Of course I do! But an argument that is not structured by logic is a bad argument.
You and I seem to agree that textual criticism is what critics should do. I didn't find fault with Rake or anyone else because they were funny, but because they were calling names instead of doing textual criticism.
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ReplyDelete"It's not incidental. It's completely central to my argument, that ad hominems and specious arguments like them destroy debate. "
ReplyDeleteOf course. If that's all that's involved. If you can reduce literature, or criticism, or discussions concerning aesthetics to no more than that, there's nothing to discuss, is there?
I'm certainly not suggesting a defense of name calling.
"You see, you're talking about style, but I'm talking about structure."
I don't mean rhetorical style, but what shapes it, its source. That was the relevance of mentioning Nietzsche. The rhetorical style is only the product, the visible symptom.
"Do you think I don't like good writing? Of course I do! But an argument that is not structured by logic is a bad argument."
"Logic" doesn't structure anything. Logic is not an agent, only an "agency"--a means.
I don't believe in inanimate agents.
I value engaged criticism, and I cannot conceive of discussions involving aesthetics that are other than engaged. Engagement between... an I and an I. The "self" in process.. dialogue. That means...
...it's all personal.
Name calling, rhetoric that refuses the other as one like oneself, there is no engagement in that. I don't defend that. That's not what I mean at all.
Meeting the other as one like oneself begins (though this may happen only in the engagement itself) with recognizing one's self as other (this is how the other is like oneself--by being other).
Appearances can be deceptive. If your sole means of judging an exchange are abstract measures, absent real agents--the appearance of the person in the argument--and the demand... demandent...asking, the always present request for reciprocity: I will be there if you will be there can appear as unreason, as a refusal to be chained to abstract logic (which, of course, it is)... but it is not a denial of the agency of reason, rather it is a request to engage on common grounds (which is the necessary foundation of any possible form of reasoned discussion).
Understand, there is a hidden plea in "I will be there if you will be there." A plea that understands that... if you are not there, if you will not be there for me, if you will not engage... than I will not be there, but only an appearance, an abstraction... that may well look, in your absence, like mere rhetoric... like name calling... when it is really... calling for a name.
You want a form of "reason" that goes on without agents, without motive... rather like what is suggested, meant to be suggested, in the conventional use of passive voice in academic discourse... as though the writing is writing itself. As though no one is there.
In literature, someone was/is/will be there--demandent asking... and there is no way to read it unless you respond... by being there
Well if you're there now, I hope someone's there with you, because you've lost me completely!
ReplyDelete