In the context of a public that has grown skeptical of higher education and the familiar contours of the “crisis of the humanities,” Russell Berman suggests that literary scholarship should take stock of the opportunities among which it can choose. Rather than proceeding opportunistically by guessing how best to curry favor with the current or a future administration in Washington, it is vital to recognize competing intellectual opportunites. This paper discusses four distinct directions and attempts to put them in a systematic relationship to each other. 1) Prioritizing the aesthetic value of works of literature, potentially as a source of pleasure, primarily for the private recipient. 2) Describing literary structures precisely and the technical reading processes, including narratology or phenomenological accounts of imagination. 3) Advocacy methods, often explicitly political and directing a “hermeneutics of suspicion” toward the object of study, whether it be national literature, western literature, or the university as such via diversity agenda or post-colonialism. 4) Promoting cultural transmission on the basis of an affirmative understanding and an endorsement of tradition.
Corinne Blackmer contends that the postmodern turn in literary studies has, within the context of an institutionalized culture of higher education dedicated to left wing politics and “social justice” advocacy, resulted in an “official” commitment to “diversity” that disguises anti-Western, anti-democratic, and antisemitic realities. The metanarrative has not disappeared; rather it has become a fiercely intolerant and anti-democratic master narrative based on identity politics, and post-colonial, critical race and gender theories. This contemporary “postmodern” discourse subverts the democratic principles and institutions that have enabled it. Most important, it has contributed to the evisceration of the reputation and sway of the humanities within the academy and the public. They are robbed of a cohesive narrative that unifies rather than divides and can help guide Western principles of advocating for individual liberties and democratic culture across the globe. To move past the ruinous legacies of the postmodern condition will necessitate repudiating identity politics and embracing, as Harold Bloom contends in The Western Canon, merit according to aesthetic splendor, cognitive power and wisdom rather than race, gender, or sexuality.
Judith Paltin argues that, rather than using language as a sophistical expression of one’s activist commitments, critics should focus on excavating and preserving factual truths. We once used critical theory to help us to understand our inherited prejudices and ideologies, or in other words, Christina Sharpe’s “weather.” Criticism is agonistic with culture, not part of its territory. The precondition for politics, for a human world, for Hannah Arendt, is openness to others. Politics happens in the space between people-- we build a world in common between us by speaking together. Friendship is political, and its absence is fatal to politics, bringing dark times. The political task of the day then is to bring misinformed opinion and necropolitical thinking to the bar and subject it to critical judgment, or even just to factual truth-telling. The instability of regimes of power leads to political opportunities, opportunities for friendly and critical conversations that re-assemble a shared factual world.
David Pan points to the possibility that aesthetically successful works of literature might be condemned for their political meaning, indicating possible conflicts between these two aspects of a literary work. On the one hand, there are clear standards for literature that determine its quality in terms of truth value and impact, differentiating talented from untalented writers. On the other hand, the moral and political meaning of literature is in some ways a separate issue from the question of literary quality, depending on the particular way in which a literary work might interact historically with the development of a society and its collective decision-making. The study of literature must take into account both of these aspects of a literary work, even and especially when the assessments of aesthetic value and the political meaning conflict with each other.
Each of these papers presents a differing stance regarding the relationship between literary study and politics today. Each presenter will be allowed 10 minutes to speak, thereby leaving approximately 30 minutes for discussion.