14 ms·

I wonder how much it has to do with the aspect of literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical. Eg. Many Universities support

I wonder how much it has to do with the aspect of literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical. Eg. Many Universities support a practice of literary interpretation that encourages pretty wild takes and explicitly discourages taking “what we think the author was trying to say” into account. I had a friend drop out of Ph.D in Japanese Lit because he felt the only way to progress in his dept. was to purposefully try to come up with the most wild interpretation he could that leaned extremely left and he felt that was intellectually dishonest and disrespectful of the author. This not only alienates people outside the literary bubble but makes it harder to communicate in good faith inside of it. This would have a chilling effect on subscriptions even inside the literary community.

pcmoney 5y ago
also: https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/
dentemple 5y ago
"Literary magazines are failing because people have wild takes these days" sounds like a huge leap of logic and embodies the sort of irrelevant dismissiveness that HN commenters tend to have regarding non-technical topics. As someone else pointed out below, speculative fiction magazines are doing just fine, and you'd be hard-pressed to find ideas that WOULDN'T be considered "wild" in the field of SciFi or Fantasy.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Just out of question, do you read any literary magazines?
  - oldsecondhand 5y ago
    He doesn't even read the comments he's replying to.
- domador 5y ago
  I think you're confusing two different things: 1) Wild ideas INSIDE a given work of literature 2) Wild ideas ABOUT a given work of literature
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  SciFi and Fantasy are explicitly fiction.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  I believe that knowing about a topic is not a pre-requisite to gratify one's intellectual curiosity on this subject on HN. Indeed, I would suggest that we encourage curiosity in others when we see it.
  - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
    Sure, but I would suggest that we also encourage reading the linked articles before commenting. In this case, there is nothing in the CNN article that suggests the decline in literary magazines has a connection to "literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical." It's awfully hard not to see this as the commenter just taking this as a stalking horse to bring up an opinion they already held.
    - useragent86 5y ago
      > It's awfully hard not to see this as the commenter just taking this as a stalking horse to bring up an opinion they already held. Isn't this what happens on every HN thread, people expressing opinions relevant to the topic? Or is it only forbidden when criticizing descendants of the Frankfurt School?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
        I originally wrote a snarkier response to this in response to your snark, but I'm to just gently note that my contention was that the opinion was not relevant to the topic, and it seems to me you're demonstrating exactly what I was complaining about: you didn't actually respond to what I said, you just said, "Ooh, here's an opportunity to snark about something I consider snark-worthy." So, uh, go you.
      - watwut 5y ago
        I think that issue is the claim not being relevant to topic in article, while pretending so to push for specific ideology.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  >speculative fiction magazines are doing just fine, F&SF is down to six issues a year (they had 8 in 2009, and 11 from 1991-2008). Analog and Asimov's each dropped from 10 to 6 in 2017 (and each went from 11 to 10 in 2003). That's not what I'd call 'just fine'.
  - akuchling 5y ago
    Stories in the SF magazines have also pretty much disappeared from award-nominations like the Hugos and the Nebulas, replaced by publications that are free online like Uncanny or Tor.com. It makes sense: people are much more likely to read and nominate these stories, and the shrinking number of readers means a smaller pool of potential nominators. I think it's just a matter of time, maybe a decade or so, before the print magazines disappear.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Speculative fiction magazines are doing relatively well because the standing of speculative fiction in literary circles has risen so much. 50 years ago, it was largely considered pulp and not real literature (though I would argue that plenty of "real literature" was being written in the genre, it just wasn't widely accepted as such by contemporaries). Even the few works that were accepted, people often claimed that it wasn't really SF. More recently, it is increasingly being accepted that being SF doesn't inherently reduce something's literary value, so SF magazines have had more room to grow. Even with that, a lot of the traditional leaders among SF magazines have been struggling. What's doing well are the newer online-first magazines, most notably Tor.com, which has boatloads of money to throw around (by short fiction standards) and doesn't need to be financially self-sustaining because it is effectively a loss-leader for their novels.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Mid-tier genre mags still pay. The pay may suck, but they do pay. Even some fairly low-tier ones pay. Mid-tier literary journals generally don't, and their editors often act insulted if the topic is raised, so the issue doesn't seem to just be that they can't afford to pay. There's seemingly an expectation that until you've already "made it" you should be working for free.
- pcmoney 5y ago
  I am not talking about wild ideas in the literature but wild ideas in the interpretation of the literature. There is a pressure to interpret everything with the lens of partisan identity politics. Eg. Most recently this surfaced outside of the literary community around Sam and Frodo's relationship in LOTR and whether or not they were gay.
  - thebooktocome 5y ago
    People have been debating that since the sixties —- predating “identity politics” by several decades.
    - pcmoney 5y ago
      - thebooktocome 5y ago
        That may be your opinion, but C. S. Lewis was not participating in some discourse on identity politics, not by any stretch of the imagination. He wouldn’t have understood the term. Your citation merely reinforces my point that queer readings of LOTR predate the current generation by several decades. It’s a historical fact.
        pcmoney 5y ago
        Maybe not the term but the practice: “The danger of mistaking our merely natural, though perhaps legitimate, enthusiasms for holy zeal, is always great. The demon inherent in every party is at all times ready enough to disguise himself as the Holy Ghost,”
      - watwut 5y ago
        Yes, gender and race were immensly important to success and literally anything in the 60s. That decade started shortly after bus boycot and ended around the time MLK was killed. Yale, Princeton and Cornell did not allowed women at all. The identity ruled the lifes of people.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  It's amusing to see the responses to this about not reading the parent comment when, as far as I can tell, the parent comment may not have read the article. Literary review magazines publish short form literature, not literary criticism.
jonathanlb 5y ago
Your premise is flawed. From one anecdotal (and subjectve) data point you leap to "Many Universities support [...]".
- useragent86 5y ago
  No, your premise is flawed. You jump to the conclusion that he made that claim based on a single data point. Just because he illustrated his point with one example does not mean his point is based on one example. In any case, this is not a statistical argument, and your comment adds nothing but noise to the discussion.
- pcmoney 5y ago
  I just interpreted your critique as supporting my position. /s Even if it is the minority (from my anecdotal understanding it isn't) it would become like toxic waste in a professional community. Also how would you even survey that? "Do you have zero disregard for objective truth and only interpret things to gain political capital by in-group signaling?"
  - spicybright 5y ago
    How bad it is has no bearing on how often it's happening or not, or at least that can't be your only piece of data to prove this is happening. Why not a survey given to undergrads of if they think this is the case? If you can detect this is going on surely others in your position could too. You could also find a way to analyze the results of research produced now vs before in a particular field. Not sure how that would work necessarily If the only way to measure this is someone's individual's general opinion, then the premise may be flawed from the start.
    - pcmoney 5y ago
      Sure, but I don't think you need a survey to hypothesize that: 1. Literature interpretation is subjective. 2. If you take subjectivity too far then nothing has meaning anymore. 3. People might not pay to read things that are always deconstructed to nothing. I am not saying it IS the reason. Just surmising that it might be. If you feel the need for a survey and review to think things then that is admirable but time is not in your favor.
Scoundreller 5y ago
> I had a friend drop out of Ph.D in Japanese Lit because he felt the only way to progress in his dept. was to purposefully try to come up with the most wild interpretation he could that leaned extremely left and he felt that was intellectually dishonest and disrespectful of the author. I’m getting high school Lord of the Flies english class flashbacks. Teacher: why did they kill the pig Me: because they were hungry. Teacher: NO! It was the author telling you that they were descending into savages! Me: I’m pretty sure they were hungry. This is the first time they ate anything in the book. I’m also wondering about the bathroom situation
- tjalfi 5y ago
  Literary augury[0] is my term for that kind of literature discussion. [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury
- pcmoney 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    You've kind of flipped the script here. First you argue everyone's discounting the author. But then you state "as an allegory of", which would fundamentally be about authorial intent. Instead such would have to be stated as: "The killing of the pig can be read through the lens of..." The second prospect is distinct in that it recognizes that the subjectivity of the reader must be foregrounded by the very definition of experience. The core anxiety here is one of fear in relation to notions of the possibility (or not) of communication. If I cannot ensure meaning of myself with regards to the perceptions of others, then can I control myself, seeing as how there are a multiplicity of myselves in each human perception? What does this mean when the author has evaporated? Was there ever a single Homer? Who wrote Little Red Riding Hood? What about when the author contradicts themselves in regards to intent? Ray Bradbury gave opposing 'meanings' for Fahrenheit 451 over the course of his lifetime; one of them had to be incorrect; how does this bode for authorial intention? Absent of such knowledge does the text become meaningless? No, because it always depended on the subjectivity of the experiencer. Which is why randomized strokes of paint (or stars in the sky) can be experienced as meaningful.
bane 5y ago
Way back when I was working through a few different degrees at a few different universities, I learned the "trick" to getting an "A" in all the literary analysis assignments was to: - Assume the author didn't just mean what they wrote (and suppress any possible evidence to the contrary such as interviews where the author specifically stated that they meant simply what they wrote) - Impose a binary oppositional worldview onto the text to "find meaning". I used to flip a coin or roll a dice to select "communism vs. capitalism", "fascism vs freedom", "gender politics", "racial politics", etc. It didn't matter what it was, you simply had to pick one. In advanced classes you pick two or more. So an analysis might be themed around "gender politics as viewed by the anti-fascist communist author". - Direct the analysis to favor the more leftist viewpoint(s) unless it was specifically understood that the author favored the alternative. - Evidence to support your views are generally direct quotes from the text, liberally interpreted to fit the assumed analysis. then Mechanically create paper, receive "A" grade, be asked to sit in the advanced analysis, and gender studies lit classes the next semesters.
- pcmoney 5y ago
  Grade AAA gold coated bullshit is the life blood of most of those departments. It defines their careers. Way to give them what they want.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    What makes your comment more than that?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- wolverine876 5y ago
  If that actually worked, and you still believe it, you missed out on all the substance of an education. Dismissals are always a signal of ignorance.
  - 5y ago
WalterBright 5y ago
Not too surprising. How much re-analysis of the same books over and over again can one do? Of course people will look for more and more extreme interpretations.
- fullshark 5y ago
  The information age is making us realize the volume of novel ideas is so so much smaller than we thought previously in all fields.
- magicalist 5y ago
  > How much re-analysis of the same [topics] over and over again can one do? Of course people will look for more and more extreme interpretations Hacker News!
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > How much re-analysis of the same books over and over again can one do? Of course people will look for more and more extreme interpretations. In this case, people aren't analysing a molecule or RFC that exists in isolation from its context, and has limited content. It's not a problem to solve. What they are analysing (not a great word IMHO - 'exploring', perhaps) is something heavily defined by its context - the book (or any art) is defined by its specific words, the world around it, and the person reading it. Its content is almost unlimited. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar means something much different in 2022 than in 1822, and something much different to you than to me than to Shakespeare than to George Bernard Shaw, and it there is so much to explore that you will never exhaust it, that shifts and changes as you travel through it. It's not a problem to solve, but an entire world to explore. You don't run out of things to learn and say about the real world either.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I once read an article by a literature professor analyzing Romeo + Juliet. At the end, he ruefully wrote that he would throw away all his analysis and knowledge of R+J to be able to read it again for the first time. I've read some analyses of Lord of the Rings. 98% just sounds like bullshit. Maybe JRR Tolkien just wanted to write a great story! and there's nothing more than that. Sure the story was influenced by his life experiences, like trench warfare. So what. I wish I could read it again for the first time :-)
hnacct2001 5y ago
There are lit mags that feature criticism, essays etc that touch on what you're talking about but predominately they focus on fiction and poetry. The academic ones are tethered to MFA programs, not lit or cultural studies departments. I subscribe to several lit mags of a similar calibre to those mentioned in this article and they do not require any intellectual gymnastics to enjoy. I'd point to other problems (many are MFA echo chambers, for one).
pessimizer 5y ago
Literary criticism being left isn't new. Most literary criticism in the early 20th century was Freudian, then it became Marxist partially out of desperation (Freudian criticism is stream-of-consciousness nonsense), and partially because the CIA was funding a lot of literary magazines in Europe, trying to turn the intelligentsia into anti-communist socialists. Without a framework, literary criticism seems completely pointless, though. There's only so far you can go with trying to figure out what the author is trying to say - the author is usually very articulate and said it.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > There's only so far you can go with trying to figure out what the author is trying to say With due respect, that is a common and almost complete misunderstanding literature and literary criticism. It's not about decoding the author, but about exploring the things (to use the most generic term possible) that the author conveys, both in what the author writes and how the critic responds, and out in the world. > the author is usually very articulate and said it. The author isn't writing a technical manual; they are not complete, correct, consistent, nor are they deducing from perfect knowledge. A much closer analogy, and to speak very broadly, is that they are setting off on a voyage into the unknown - which is what we all do in life and reality - and expressing their perspective on it. Try a review in the London Review of Books or New York Review of Books; you'll get a much better sense of what the real thing is like. Unfortunately, many only know high school book reports.
wolverine876 5y ago
> I wonder how much it has to do with the aspect of literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical. What basis is there to say they are more radical? People who follow the norms have been complaining about it for forever. The difference, I suspect, is that now reactionary, radical capitalist politics (we really need a word for that part of the spectrum) have become dominant, and they do not value, respect, or believe in the freedom of other perspectives. They think that if they don't like something, it should be suppressed, and they do it. Universities have always been 'radical'; that's the idea. They are supposed to nurture free, unconstrained thinking. It's not hard to think beyond what is mainstream and normative; if people an universities aren't saying and writing things that most people think goes too far, then they aren't trying. Also, much that was radical then is normal now, and much that is radical now will be normal in the future.
- tannhauser23 5y ago
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    As a regular reader of it for many years, I'm pretty confident you haven't.
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  Where is the "capitalist" in your description coming from? I disagree that they're necessarily more radical as the other commenter suggested, by they are absolutely far more bias towards left-leaning viewpoints. So much so that in many cases I believe its restricted free thought more so than nurtured it. Many students fear that if they have an opinion which doesn't align with the administrations stated political narrative then they could face academic, social, and/or administrative repercussions.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I find my far left friends often being quite irrational. Any mention of taking a person in the context of their time (slave owner) for example makes some of them explode in anger and cut off contact for weeks at a time. I never make excuses but I stick to my mantra of being honest about history means considering context and that "evil" is not an absolute and changes with morals of society. I believe your friend is on to something. When I (moderate democrat/social libertarian) was at university I had some really good debates with mixed groups of friends at parties, lunch, bbq's etc. Now everyone in their 20s and below (on the left or right) seems to be in their silos and don't want to hear that others are human, and have reasons and logic for what they chose and aren't literally the enemy. Kinda scary...
908B64B197 5y ago
> I wonder how much it has to do with the aspect of literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical. That doesn't even start to describe it [0]. You can get fired for using a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like a slur! [0] https://nypost.com/2020/09/06/professor-placed-on-leave-for-using-chinese-expression-that-sounds-like-n-word/ https://nypost.com/2020/09/06/professor-placed-on-leave-for-...

pcmoney 5y ago

also: https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/

dentemple 5y ago

"Literary magazines are failing because people have wild takes these days" sounds like a huge leap of logic and embodies the sort of irrelevant dismissiveness that HN commenters tend to have regarding non-technical topics. As someone else pointed out below, speculative fiction magazines are doing just fine, and you'd be hard-pressed to find ideas that WOULDN'T be considered "wild" in the field of SciFi or Fantasy.

vorpalhex 5y ago
Just out of question, do you read any literary magazines?
- oldsecondhand 5y ago
  He doesn't even read the comments he's replying to.
domador 5y ago
I think you're confusing two different things: 1) Wild ideas INSIDE a given work of literature 2) Wild ideas ABOUT a given work of literature
kevinventullo 5y ago
SciFi and Fantasy are explicitly fiction.
thinkingemote 5y ago
I believe that knowing about a topic is not a pre-requisite to gratify one's intellectual curiosity on this subject on HN. Indeed, I would suggest that we encourage curiosity in others when we see it.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  Sure, but I would suggest that we also encourage reading the linked articles before commenting. In this case, there is nothing in the CNN article that suggests the decline in literary magazines has a connection to "literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical." It's awfully hard not to see this as the commenter just taking this as a stalking horse to bring up an opinion they already held.
  - useragent86 5y ago
    > It's awfully hard not to see this as the commenter just taking this as a stalking horse to bring up an opinion they already held. Isn't this what happens on every HN thread, people expressing opinions relevant to the topic? Or is it only forbidden when criticizing descendants of the Frankfurt School?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
      I originally wrote a snarkier response to this in response to your snark, but I'm to just gently note that my contention was that the opinion was not relevant to the topic, and it seems to me you're demonstrating exactly what I was complaining about: you didn't actually respond to what I said, you just said, "Ooh, here's an opportunity to snark about something I consider snark-worthy." So, uh, go you.
    - watwut 5y ago
      I think that issue is the claim not being relevant to topic in article, while pretending so to push for specific ideology.
bigbillheck 5y ago
>speculative fiction magazines are doing just fine, F&SF is down to six issues a year (they had 8 in 2009, and 11 from 1991-2008). Analog and Asimov's each dropped from 10 to 6 in 2017 (and each went from 11 to 10 in 2003). That's not what I'd call 'just fine'.
- akuchling 5y ago
  Stories in the SF magazines have also pretty much disappeared from award-nominations like the Hugos and the Nebulas, replaced by publications that are free online like Uncanny or Tor.com. It makes sense: people are much more likely to read and nominate these stories, and the shrinking number of readers means a smaller pool of potential nominators. I think it's just a matter of time, maybe a decade or so, before the print magazines disappear.
TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Speculative fiction magazines are doing relatively well because the standing of speculative fiction in literary circles has risen so much. 50 years ago, it was largely considered pulp and not real literature (though I would argue that plenty of "real literature" was being written in the genre, it just wasn't widely accepted as such by contemporaries). Even the few works that were accepted, people often claimed that it wasn't really SF. More recently, it is increasingly being accepted that being SF doesn't inherently reduce something's literary value, so SF magazines have had more room to grow. Even with that, a lot of the traditional leaders among SF magazines have been struggling. What's doing well are the newer online-first magazines, most notably Tor.com, which has boatloads of money to throw around (by short fiction standards) and doesn't need to be financially self-sustaining because it is effectively a loss-leader for their novels.
- brimble 5y ago
  Mid-tier genre mags still pay. The pay may suck, but they do pay. Even some fairly low-tier ones pay. Mid-tier literary journals generally don't, and their editors often act insulted if the topic is raised, so the issue doesn't seem to just be that they can't afford to pay. There's seemingly an expectation that until you've already "made it" you should be working for free.
pcmoney 5y ago
I am not talking about wild ideas in the literature but wild ideas in the interpretation of the literature. There is a pressure to interpret everything with the lens of partisan identity politics. Eg. Most recently this surfaced outside of the literary community around Sam and Frodo's relationship in LOTR and whether or not they were gay.
- thebooktocome 5y ago
  People have been debating that since the sixties —- predating “identity politics” by several decades.
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    - thebooktocome 5y ago
      That may be your opinion, but C. S. Lewis was not participating in some discourse on identity politics, not by any stretch of the imagination. He wouldn’t have understood the term. Your citation merely reinforces my point that queer readings of LOTR predate the current generation by several decades. It’s a historical fact.
      - pcmoney 5y ago
        Maybe not the term but the practice: “The danger of mistaking our merely natural, though perhaps legitimate, enthusiasms for holy zeal, is always great. The demon inherent in every party is at all times ready enough to disguise himself as the Holy Ghost,”
    - watwut 5y ago
      Yes, gender and race were immensly important to success and literally anything in the 60s. That decade started shortly after bus boycot and ended around the time MLK was killed. Yale, Princeton and Cornell did not allowed women at all. The identity ruled the lifes of people.
nonameiguess 5y ago
It's amusing to see the responses to this about not reading the parent comment when, as far as I can tell, the parent comment may not have read the article. Literary review magazines publish short form literature, not literary criticism.

jonathanlb 5y ago

Your premise is flawed. From one anecdotal (and subjectve) data point you leap to "Many Universities support [...]".

useragent86 5y ago
No, your premise is flawed. You jump to the conclusion that he made that claim based on a single data point. Just because he illustrated his point with one example does not mean his point is based on one example. In any case, this is not a statistical argument, and your comment adds nothing but noise to the discussion.
pcmoney 5y ago
I just interpreted your critique as supporting my position. /s Even if it is the minority (from my anecdotal understanding it isn't) it would become like toxic waste in a professional community. Also how would you even survey that? "Do you have zero disregard for objective truth and only interpret things to gain political capital by in-group signaling?"
- spicybright 5y ago
  How bad it is has no bearing on how often it's happening or not, or at least that can't be your only piece of data to prove this is happening. Why not a survey given to undergrads of if they think this is the case? If you can detect this is going on surely others in your position could too. You could also find a way to analyze the results of research produced now vs before in a particular field. Not sure how that would work necessarily If the only way to measure this is someone's individual's general opinion, then the premise may be flawed from the start.
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    Sure, but I don't think you need a survey to hypothesize that: 1. Literature interpretation is subjective. 2. If you take subjectivity too far then nothing has meaning anymore. 3. People might not pay to read things that are always deconstructed to nothing. I am not saying it IS the reason. Just surmising that it might be. If you feel the need for a survey and review to think things then that is admirable but time is not in your favor.

Scoundreller 5y ago

> I had a friend drop out of Ph.D in Japanese Lit because he felt the only way to progress in his dept. was to purposefully try to come up with the most wild interpretation he could that leaned extremely left and he felt that was intellectually dishonest and disrespectful of the author. I’m getting high school Lord of the Flies english class flashbacks. Teacher: why did they kill the pig Me: because they were hungry. Teacher: NO! It was the author telling you that they were descending into savages! Me: I’m pretty sure they were hungry. This is the first time they ate anything in the book. I’m also wondering about the bathroom situation

tjalfi 5y ago
Literary augury[0] is my term for that kind of literature discussion. [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury https://www.britannica.com/topic/augury
pcmoney 5y ago
[flagged]
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  You've kind of flipped the script here. First you argue everyone's discounting the author. But then you state "as an allegory of", which would fundamentally be about authorial intent. Instead such would have to be stated as: "The killing of the pig can be read through the lens of..." The second prospect is distinct in that it recognizes that the subjectivity of the reader must be foregrounded by the very definition of experience. The core anxiety here is one of fear in relation to notions of the possibility (or not) of communication. If I cannot ensure meaning of myself with regards to the perceptions of others, then can I control myself, seeing as how there are a multiplicity of myselves in each human perception? What does this mean when the author has evaporated? Was there ever a single Homer? Who wrote Little Red Riding Hood? What about when the author contradicts themselves in regards to intent? Ray Bradbury gave opposing 'meanings' for Fahrenheit 451 over the course of his lifetime; one of them had to be incorrect; how does this bode for authorial intention? Absent of such knowledge does the text become meaningless? No, because it always depended on the subjectivity of the experiencer. Which is why randomized strokes of paint (or stars in the sky) can be experienced as meaningful.

bane 5y ago

Way back when I was working through a few different degrees at a few different universities, I learned the "trick" to getting an "A" in all the literary analysis assignments was to: - Assume the author didn't just mean what they wrote (and suppress any possible evidence to the contrary such as interviews where the author specifically stated that they meant simply what they wrote) - Impose a binary oppositional worldview onto the text to "find meaning". I used to flip a coin or roll a dice to select "communism vs. capitalism", "fascism vs freedom", "gender politics", "racial politics", etc. It didn't matter what it was, you simply had to pick one. In advanced classes you pick two or more. So an analysis might be themed around "gender politics as viewed by the anti-fascist communist author". - Direct the analysis to favor the more leftist viewpoint(s) unless it was specifically understood that the author favored the alternative. - Evidence to support your views are generally direct quotes from the text, liberally interpreted to fit the assumed analysis. then Mechanically create paper, receive "A" grade, be asked to sit in the advanced analysis, and gender studies lit classes the next semesters.

pcmoney 5y ago
Grade AAA gold coated bullshit is the life blood of most of those departments. It defines their careers. Way to give them what they want.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  What makes your comment more than that?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
wolverine876 5y ago
If that actually worked, and you still believe it, you missed out on all the substance of an education. Dismissals are always a signal of ignorance.
- 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

Not too surprising. How much re-analysis of the same books over and over again can one do? Of course people will look for more and more extreme interpretations.

fullshark 5y ago
The information age is making us realize the volume of novel ideas is so so much smaller than we thought previously in all fields.
magicalist 5y ago
> How much re-analysis of the same [topics] over and over again can one do? Of course people will look for more and more extreme interpretations Hacker News!
wolverine876 5y ago
> How much re-analysis of the same books over and over again can one do? Of course people will look for more and more extreme interpretations. In this case, people aren't analysing a molecule or RFC that exists in isolation from its context, and has limited content. It's not a problem to solve. What they are analysing (not a great word IMHO - 'exploring', perhaps) is something heavily defined by its context - the book (or any art) is defined by its specific words, the world around it, and the person reading it. Its content is almost unlimited. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar means something much different in 2022 than in 1822, and something much different to you than to me than to Shakespeare than to George Bernard Shaw, and it there is so much to explore that you will never exhaust it, that shifts and changes as you travel through it. It's not a problem to solve, but an entire world to explore. You don't run out of things to learn and say about the real world either.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I once read an article by a literature professor analyzing Romeo + Juliet. At the end, he ruefully wrote that he would throw away all his analysis and knowledge of R+J to be able to read it again for the first time. I've read some analyses of Lord of the Rings. 98% just sounds like bullshit. Maybe JRR Tolkien just wanted to write a great story! and there's nothing more than that. Sure the story was influenced by his life experiences, like trench warfare. So what. I wish I could read it again for the first time :-)

hnacct2001 5y ago

There are lit mags that feature criticism, essays etc that touch on what you're talking about but predominately they focus on fiction and poetry. The academic ones are tethered to MFA programs, not lit or cultural studies departments. I subscribe to several lit mags of a similar calibre to those mentioned in this article and they do not require any intellectual gymnastics to enjoy. I'd point to other problems (many are MFA echo chambers, for one).

pessimizer 5y ago

Literary criticism being left isn't new. Most literary criticism in the early 20th century was Freudian, then it became Marxist partially out of desperation (Freudian criticism is stream-of-consciousness nonsense), and partially because the CIA was funding a lot of literary magazines in Europe, trying to turn the intelligentsia into anti-communist socialists. Without a framework, literary criticism seems completely pointless, though. There's only so far you can go with trying to figure out what the author is trying to say - the author is usually very articulate and said it.

wolverine876 5y ago
> There's only so far you can go with trying to figure out what the author is trying to say With due respect, that is a common and almost complete misunderstanding literature and literary criticism. It's not about decoding the author, but about exploring the things (to use the most generic term possible) that the author conveys, both in what the author writes and how the critic responds, and out in the world. > the author is usually very articulate and said it. The author isn't writing a technical manual; they are not complete, correct, consistent, nor are they deducing from perfect knowledge. A much closer analogy, and to speak very broadly, is that they are setting off on a voyage into the unknown - which is what we all do in life and reality - and expressing their perspective on it. Try a review in the London Review of Books or New York Review of Books; you'll get a much better sense of what the real thing is like. Unfortunately, many only know high school book reports.

wolverine876 5y ago

> I wonder how much it has to do with the aspect of literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical. What basis is there to say they are more radical? People who follow the norms have been complaining about it for forever. The difference, I suspect, is that now reactionary, radical capitalist politics (we really need a word for that part of the spectrum) have become dominant, and they do not value, respect, or believe in the freedom of other perspectives. They think that if they don't like something, it should be suppressed, and they do it. Universities have always been 'radical'; that's the idea. They are supposed to nurture free, unconstrained thinking. It's not hard to think beyond what is mainstream and normative; if people an universities aren't saying and writing things that most people think goes too far, then they aren't trying. Also, much that was radical then is normal now, and much that is radical now will be normal in the future.

tannhauser23 5y ago
- wolverine876 5y ago
  As a regular reader of it for many years, I'm pretty confident you haven't.
MathCodeLove 5y ago
Where is the "capitalist" in your description coming from? I disagree that they're necessarily more radical as the other commenter suggested, by they are absolutely far more bias towards left-leaning viewpoints. So much so that in many cases I believe its restricted free thought more so than nurtured it. Many students fear that if they have an opinion which doesn't align with the administrations stated political narrative then they could face academic, social, and/or administrative repercussions.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I find my far left friends often being quite irrational. Any mention of taking a person in the context of their time (slave owner) for example makes some of them explode in anger and cut off contact for weeks at a time. I never make excuses but I stick to my mantra of being honest about history means considering context and that "evil" is not an absolute and changes with morals of society. I believe your friend is on to something. When I (moderate democrat/social libertarian) was at university I had some really good debates with mixed groups of friends at parties, lunch, bbq's etc. Now everyone in their 20s and below (on the left or right) seems to be in their silos and don't want to hear that others are human, and have reasons and logic for what they chose and aren't literally the enemy. Kinda scary...

908B64B197 5y ago

> I wonder how much it has to do with the aspect of literary critique and interpretation in many Universities becoming more radical. That doesn't even start to describe it [0]. You can get fired for using a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like a slur! [0] https://nypost.com/2020/09/06/professor-placed-on-leave-for-using-chinese-expression-that-sounds-like-n-word/ https://nypost.com/2020/09/06/professor-placed-on-leave-for-...