Hi All,
We don't have anyone signed up to post for this Tuesday's reading, so I'm offering a few questions for discussion both online and in class. Feel free to address any of them. This is not necessarily a template for what online discussions or posts should look like (I'd like you to offer a little more of a reading than I do here), but I figured a few questions could get us going.
1. Erin O'Connor's provocative "Preface for a Post-Postcolonial Criticism" makes a number of assumptions and claims about genre, literary history, and the relationship between literature and politics that I'd like for us to explore.
a) What does O'Connor mean by a "thoroughly domestic novel" (226). What is the relation between the domestic and global in the Victorian novel?
b) What would a "territorial" way of approaching fields look like and what would it yield (228)?
c) If novels aren't "people" (231) what is the relation between a text and the world? (this is a broad question:)) If O'Connor wants us to see JE as a "work of art" and not "an inquiry into some points of ideology" what does such a reading look like?
d) What should we do with the "cacophony" of voices in the 19th century novel and 19th century culture? (236). If grouping them together and generalizing about them is oversimplifying how does one approach such diversity?
e) If we shouldn't use texts to "illustrate" theory (240) and we shouldn't adhere to totalizing paradigms or theories (241), what does such a mode of reading look like? (242).
2. Neil Lazarus's "The Fetish of the West" offers a broad critique of the discourse of "Europe" and "the West" in Postcolonial criticism.
a) What exactly does Lazarus object to and why?
b) Is the idea of "fetishism" particularly useful to his argument about the use of the idea of "the west"? Why?
c) What methodologies or approaches does Lazarus suggest instead? What drives the assumptions behind his methodological and theoretical preferences? In other words, what does he legitimate one approach over another.
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I think subquestions a, d and e of the O'Conner question all tie into her major assertion. Perhaps my reading is a bit simplistic, but O'Conner seems primarily concerned with a specificity of analysis--and a concept of texts being specific, or unique--that she reads post-colonial theory and Spivak running roughshod over. The cacophony of voices within Victorian literature represents the vast array and volume of texts available for analysis, as well as the difference between these texts that cause the din to be unintelligible. The "thoroughly domestic novel" is one part of Victorian literature that has all been lumped into a totalizing theoretical frame of post-colonial theory based on what O'Conner sees as one facet of a complex society: imperialism. O'Conner seems to make a distinction between those British authors that venture beyond the boundaries of England for the setting of their novels and those that stay in England, even if their plots include stories tied to the expansion of England beyond the national border. Therefore, post-colonialist have ample texts to critique without pulling out minor parts of novels that do not necessarily apply (Maggs, the references to the Caribbean in Mansfield Park, etc.) in order to continue to fill in the gaps, to draw the map, of a reifying, reified theoretical framework. I see O'Conner's argument aligning with Lazarus's in that both point out how geographical representation (and temporal, in O'Conner's case) changes to a cultural representation that is simplified and employed as part of a theoretical lens.
ReplyDeleteAbout b): "territorial" way of approaching.
ReplyDeleteO’Connor seems to say, by “territorial mode of thought,” postcolonial discourse tends to treat nineteenth century British literature as its “territory,” in other words, a metaphorical colony/no-man’s land, appropriating and exploiting it for the sake of its own “civilizing mission” of denouncing Victorian literature’s latent complicity in Imperialism. As her coinage “Victorientalism” shows, her assertion is that postcolonial theory is a form of a “reverse colonization,” which reduces the Victorian literary texts into mere sources of consumable otherness, reproducing the “self-serving knowledge” that ultimately neglects the specificities of the novels, on which Jordan has commented. Also, O’Connor’s own reaction to postcolonial reading of Victorian literature—“someone from outside has dared to tread on my field with such infinite condescension”—seems to show that this “territorial mode of thought” produces a metaphorical war over who rules the “legitimate” reading of the texts. Personally, at first glance, I found O’Connor’s argument rather plausible in that postcolonial reading of Victorian literature CAN be reductive, and now it forms a kind of profitable institution. Yet, at the same time I had an impression that O’Connor’s argument itself repeats what she criticizes as a “holistic take over of a genre,” in this case of postcolonial theory, oversimplifying/generalizing it and overemphasizing the impact of Spivak’s essay—it seems that for O’Conor, Spivak’s essay functions as JE in Spivak’s essay.
O’Connor seems to propose inductive rather than deductive literary criticism. Instead of reading as critic-theory-text, she advocates a direct reading: critic—text. Spivak advocates giving the most dispossessed critical attention, but there is a sense that she will never be happy; Rhys centers Wide Sargasso Sea on Jane Eyre’s Bertha, but is in turn criticized by Spivak for not paying enough attention to Christophine. It does seem as though the literary author becomes Spivak’s scapegoat for all the ills of the author’s context, and so it does seem personal, as if Spivak sees books as people. I appreciate O’Connor’s return to the literary work. Essentially criticizing Spivak's deconstruction, O'Connor seems to point to appreciating the literary text more holistically, as mediator between the author and his / her subject (or his / her world), and also as mediator between the author and reader/critic. The text has its own reality and truth.
ReplyDeleteJust to keep us going on this, I'll talk about "territorial" literary studies as well. I agree with Madoka and Emily on their points about O'Connor's methodological stance. O'Connor seems to suggest that critics can and should construct boundaries based on specialty ("... I feel a personal affront when I read or teach Spivak's essay ... an uncomfortable sense that *someone from the outside* has dared to tread on *my* field ..." — 229). On a personal note, I totally cringed/cackled when I read that; not only did it seem like one of a thousand instances when O'Connor was nearly breaking her keyboard with her fists, but it was also one of an equally numerous instances in which her language seemed to betray her a bit, although it was difficult for me to tell whether she did, in fact, consciously choose to make such a dramatic, grave assertion. I agree, Emily, that O'Connor seems averse to any type of theoretical application. While she only lampoons poco theory, the paragraph beginning at the bottom of 233 and spilling onto 234 seems to attack the "marketing" and "packaging" of critical work. I wonder if those complaints could be had of any theoretical approach. One question I do have for Emily, in particular, but everyone else more generally, is whether a text can have its own reality or truth. What does that mean? What would that look like? I guess that echoes a few of your questions, Dan, but I'm wondering about the same things.
ReplyDeleteParts (d) and (e) of Dan’s first question stood out to me, basically regarding what mode of reading we’re left with after O’Connor has had her say. It’s a question I had as I read her essay. I sense the outrage in her view that Spivak et al. put literature in the service of theory rather than the other way around. Ultimately, though, isn’t it a two-way street? O’Connor is more interested apparently in “the genre’s thematic subtleties, structural indeterminacies, and genuine intellectual rigor” (220). Like Emily, I appreciate O’Connor’s focus on the literary work itself. On the other hand, like Madoka, I saw at times O’Connor using the same reductive tactics that she criticizes. It strikes me that O’Connor knew what she was doing, and so I read her tone in part as satiric. Still, I finished the essay without any concrete idea of how O’Connor wants us to approach a text.
ReplyDeleteWoe is Spivak if O'Connor ever catches her on Main Street at high noon--I think O'Connor would shoot to kill. And that antagonism (the fists-on-keyboard element that Matt noted) really hurt O'Connor's argument for me. Like Madoka, I do think that poco readings of Victorian novels can at times be reductive, and in that way I could have been on board with O'Connor, if she had A) not been so horridly, comically combative and B) presented a model that could do away with the search for a "perfect paradigm."
ReplyDeleteMy biggest problem with O'Connor, I suppose, is that her concept of post-postcolonialism seems idealistic, vague, and ultimately untenable. How, exactly, would we avoid using individual works to illustrate theoretical principles? And if we were to do as O'Connor suggests and avoid making literature "participate in progressive interpretive projects," wouldn't we still be harnessing literature to work for some other project?
I found O'connor interesting because she provides an interesting genelogical analysis of the kind that that was famously produced by Said and Foucault. It seems that for O'Connor, post-colnialism serves as an easy taget that could recieve her rage against the dominace of literary theory in English departmetns. She reminds me of Arnold who complained about the predomiance of Philistines and against the reign of anarchy in England. Literature is not produced in vaccum and cannot be read in vaccum in a pure and simple and genuine but vague way that O'Connor advocates. Great readings of literature happen rarely. Literature and English departments have become enriched by their acceptance of what they call theory which is for me an expansion of our understanding of what literatue is. Like great art, great criticsm is rare and it is true even in the days where literary criticsm was pure and devoid of any political taint. It was the uniformity of those pure but boring readings that nearly always resulted in similar readings that led to the expansion of literary studies. Theory is great. It makes literary and its study interesting. It opens our eyes, it is up to us to keep them open!
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