Comments on: An End to Theory

By: Lies and Truth, Epistemology and Semiotics, to Know Mugi is to know God (Yuri-ka!), The Quixotic Quest of Language; and OH YES Eureka 7 « We Remember Love

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:04:23 +0000

[...] Don’t ask me how. I’m may be good at starting things, but it takes a bolder brand of blogger to kill authors and end theory. [...]

By: IKnight

IKnight — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:21:33 +0000

Hopefully the better class of bohemian critic is doing it for the lulz, knows it, and makes it clear to his or her readers that that’s what’s going on — for that matter, I suspect there were stuffed shirts who went about their business tentatively and with a lot of wit (I should probably read some AC Bradley and find out for myself, or something). I see what you mean, though.

Structuralists, right. I think when I reached the end of the post (and this says a lot about my internet-reading attention span) I’d forgotten where we began. I should read more carefully. That does make more sense. I’d almost agree that criticism can’t be unequivocally right. I think some pieces of criticism can be right, once and for all, but we’ll never actually know for sure, and so we should avoid behaving as though we do know — which probably boils down to the same thing in the end.

By: jp_zer0

jp_zer0 — Sun, 03 May 2009 01:51:30 +0000

“literary philosophy”, I guess it does fit at least in some sense since I had the same idea while reading the OP.

By: Pontifus

Pontifus — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:56:47 +0000

You, sir, have just won literary criticism.

Your next post should be “Undeath of the Author.”

By: Kaiserpingvin

Kaiserpingvin — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:49:52 +0000

The author can be dead and alive at the same time.

So in other words, the author is not dead, he is a zombie?

I like that.

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:23:15 +0000

Yes.

Also yes.

Look into the New Aestheticists. : )

By: Pontifus

Pontifus — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:12:45 +0000

Well, as long as I think that literary opinions are just that, and have no ultimate foundation in the observable physical universe, and are thus neither good nor bad, true nor false, I can’t disagree with you here. I like the idea of the author being dead mostly because I personally, as a reader of fiction, don’t get much out of mulling the author over, but even my own experience has shown that biographical criticism is by no means dead and gone. My Joyce professor, who seemed to be an advocate of death of the author et al., had to admit that Joyce’s connection to his works is such that we’d be missing out if we didn’t at least cursorily consider his life, so the Joyce-centric class I took read up on Joyce’s life — not much, considering the amount of actual criticism we looked through, but that factor was there for all of us. Hell, I used it once or twice in my papers, in minor ways, and I don’t think I did so unreasonably (i.e. I never made leaps of logic like “In Ulysses there is x, therefore Joyce must have been y”).

In short, if a theory exists, it exists, and that’s all that can really be said for any literary theory. The author can be dead and alive at the same time. And speaking of theory, I’ve also wondered if it’s the most appropriate term, though it’s never especially rubbed me the wrong way. “Methodology” is good insofar as it implies something more personal (to me at least), and, well, I guess I just like that.

Oh, and I do like structuralism, even if it failed to do what it set out to do. The problem, I think, is that it was too universal, which is to say not personal enough, which is to say its initial goal was and is impossible beyond pure arbitrariness, but arbitrariness has some use of its own. I’m not sure what state it’s in right now, but I think I can fix it. Give me a few years to mull that over, though, before you ask me to explain.

By: Pontifus

Pontifus — Sat, 02 May 2009 22:40:57 +0000

Or a blender. Fuck frappuccinos.

At any rate, I do plan on writing that other post. Also, I’ll go ahead and wrap this up so I can comment more substantially below.

By: Kaiserpingvin

Kaiserpingvin — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:38:09 +0000

Oh I do intend to write it, I find it great this post ‘ere was done, since I can refer to it and write more on other things I find interesting instead.

Professors are good, I should discuss more with mine. It would mayhaps lead to me actually understanding the importance of the Gettier debate.

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:28:41 +0000

Yeah, I’d never really thought about it either, until this conversation and the following reading. If questioned I certainly would have differentiated between scientific theory and literary “theory,” but I was never really questioned until my professor jumped at my chance use of it in conversation.

No no, write your post anyway. We can have a complete recursive set, Pontifus’s, yours, mine, then yours again. We’ll just have to convince Pontifus to actually write that second post he promised, which I suppose will involve dragging him from the depths of an espresso machine.

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:26:51 +0000

Regarding the text’s intention, I think you’re totally right. In fact, when I write papers I generally phrase assertions in that way, that the text attempts to do X or Y. It’s the same, on one level, as saying the writer/painter/whatever tried to do X, but on other levels they’re very different statements, in that (usually) it can be demonstrated that the text *does* attempt X or Y, through the markers one identifies within it. It allows the text a life of its own, which jives a little more with reader-response, in that it’s the text and the reader together.

By: Kaiserpingvin

Kaiserpingvin — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:58:31 +0000

And with “he” I mean who you think I mean, somehow I managed not to write it rendering the sentence an unspoiler. Go I.