authors as Real People
Sep. 9th, 2005 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootThe meta haul today made me think about authors--two thoughts, the first of which leads into the second.
One thought was, once again, about the whole idea of a comm for literary criticism of fic, which I think is lovely. (And already well established in several locations, for example the Symposium. But anyway.) This, however, leads immediately into the thought about how there is a huge difference between literary criticism and critique.
Litcrit is textual analysis. It's looking for the patterns of the text, the subtext, looking for what the text, in context, says about the values and worldview and understanding of reality that underlie and support the production of the text. It, um, also tends to produce sentences like that one, which may or may not require a jargon dictionary and/or several terms of directed reading to unravel.
Critique is fault-finding. It's parsing a text with an eye, particularly, to saying where it fails, though critique does, technically, also encompass saying where a text succeeds. The people who critique professionally just seem to think it's unprofessional to spend too much time on that part. The default mode of critique is evaluative--and skeptical.
Critique often shows up as a user-guide. Critique of food, movies and books may be found in many a magazine and online forum, couched to give other tasters, viewers or readers an idea of what to expect from the product. Or, sometimes, couched more honestly as an opportunity for the writer to showcase his Esteemed Opinion. The writers in question are, of course, known as food critics, movie critics and book critics.
Not, you will note, literary critics, because that's something different.
A literary critic publishes, with or without benefit of academia, something that is not a comparison of merits (as in the movie critic's case), but an attempt to explain. To explicate. To draw out. To analyze. To further the dialogue of text and reader, to highlight and discuss ideas that the story presents whether overtly or covertly, to connect it to other stories and read the story that they make between them--which is a good trick because that one isn't written down. Not until the literary critic writes it. (Esteemed Opinions come in here, too, though in a somewhat different shape.) A literary critic within the last fifty years, at least, isn't concerned with whether the text "works" or is "good", unless s/he is studying which audience segments identify with the story and which do not, and why. S/he is concerned with saying what the text does.
Now it hasn't always been like that, and this trend owes a lot to the whole question of what to do with the author. As a lot of well-preserved Greek guys figured out for themselves, a few thousand years ago, analysis that is abstract and doesn't name names is a lot... cleaner. Analysis of specific authors who are still alive and vocal has a strong tendency to slide into either satire or name-calling, hair-pulling cat-fights. Often the former is merely the prelude to the latter, when it comes to live people. Critics today have evolved a number of ways to deal with this, and one of the most effective and prevalent is to simply write as if the author is dead. Or, perhaps, deaf.
Litcrit today has a strong undercurrent of separation from The Other Side--the creative writers. As a protective mechanism, in my opinion, critics write as if the creative writers can have no possible interest in these discussions, will never read them, and are not really an issue. I happen to think that this creative/critical division is a resoundingly false dichotomy, but that's an essay for another day. The point I'm after is the ignoring, if not death, of the author. The activity of making the author Not Real.
Because that leads into the other thought that the meta brought up, which is about RPS. Many of the things I see said by RPS authors about the souce-person sound remarkably similar to what I see literary critics say about creative authors. It isn't about the person. Despite the fact that the production in question uses that person's work, their name, the details of their life--it isn't about them.
Also, incidentally, it's a lot easier to write about people who are safely dead.
And I think, in both cases, there is a strong element of practical self-deception in that not-about-them claim. To be sure, in litcrit, it isn't just about the person. Well, not unless you're doing biographical criticism. But it is about them; that cannot be escaped, if we are all being honest. The person was the source of the production. Not in isolation. But the immediate and driving source of it, nevertheless. We are, in fact, talking about them when we analyze the text, because the person who wrote the text cannot be separated from in. They don't stop having a relationship with the text, just because the text got published.
Is this not the case in RPS, as well?
Actually, I find it ironically amusing that a literary critic would be likely to say that the Real Person in question is the primary Thing The Text Is About, in RPS, closely followed by performativity, identity and the liminal valence of sexual remapping. The immediate author, of course, would be referred to only in the categorical terms of her social situatedness, not as a real person at all. Then the next critic comes along and points out that the immediate author is, in fact, the primary Thing The Text Is About in the first analysis, and doesn't this say fascinating things about the social situatedness of the first critic?
In both cases, you see, the author of a text (or a life) is not allowed to be a real person, only a Real Person. Anything else makes things too hard, too complicated, too fraught with nasty, squishy things like emotions and personal investment and authority and ownership. Which, when we are talking about publically performed texts (or lives), do not, any of them, have neat, clean answers.
Coming around to the start again, I think it may be those who critique who have the greatest culture of honesty behind them, at this point. While I've read plenty of critiques that do talk around the author, the majority of them seem to have at least an inkling that the author is still alive and kicking. And, quite possibly, pissed off. That awareness doesn't stop these critics, as it shouldn't. But it may, at least, stand to remind them that there's another real person on the other end of the text.
And another real person on the other end of the Real Person, too.
One thought was, once again, about the whole idea of a comm for literary criticism of fic, which I think is lovely. (And already well established in several locations, for example the Symposium. But anyway.) This, however, leads immediately into the thought about how there is a huge difference between literary criticism and critique.
Litcrit is textual analysis. It's looking for the patterns of the text, the subtext, looking for what the text, in context, says about the values and worldview and understanding of reality that underlie and support the production of the text. It, um, also tends to produce sentences like that one, which may or may not require a jargon dictionary and/or several terms of directed reading to unravel.
Critique is fault-finding. It's parsing a text with an eye, particularly, to saying where it fails, though critique does, technically, also encompass saying where a text succeeds. The people who critique professionally just seem to think it's unprofessional to spend too much time on that part. The default mode of critique is evaluative--and skeptical.
Critique often shows up as a user-guide. Critique of food, movies and books may be found in many a magazine and online forum, couched to give other tasters, viewers or readers an idea of what to expect from the product. Or, sometimes, couched more honestly as an opportunity for the writer to showcase his Esteemed Opinion. The writers in question are, of course, known as food critics, movie critics and book critics.
Not, you will note, literary critics, because that's something different.
A literary critic publishes, with or without benefit of academia, something that is not a comparison of merits (as in the movie critic's case), but an attempt to explain. To explicate. To draw out. To analyze. To further the dialogue of text and reader, to highlight and discuss ideas that the story presents whether overtly or covertly, to connect it to other stories and read the story that they make between them--which is a good trick because that one isn't written down. Not until the literary critic writes it. (Esteemed Opinions come in here, too, though in a somewhat different shape.) A literary critic within the last fifty years, at least, isn't concerned with whether the text "works" or is "good", unless s/he is studying which audience segments identify with the story and which do not, and why. S/he is concerned with saying what the text does.
Now it hasn't always been like that, and this trend owes a lot to the whole question of what to do with the author. As a lot of well-preserved Greek guys figured out for themselves, a few thousand years ago, analysis that is abstract and doesn't name names is a lot... cleaner. Analysis of specific authors who are still alive and vocal has a strong tendency to slide into either satire or name-calling, hair-pulling cat-fights. Often the former is merely the prelude to the latter, when it comes to live people. Critics today have evolved a number of ways to deal with this, and one of the most effective and prevalent is to simply write as if the author is dead. Or, perhaps, deaf.
Litcrit today has a strong undercurrent of separation from The Other Side--the creative writers. As a protective mechanism, in my opinion, critics write as if the creative writers can have no possible interest in these discussions, will never read them, and are not really an issue. I happen to think that this creative/critical division is a resoundingly false dichotomy, but that's an essay for another day. The point I'm after is the ignoring, if not death, of the author. The activity of making the author Not Real.
Because that leads into the other thought that the meta brought up, which is about RPS. Many of the things I see said by RPS authors about the souce-person sound remarkably similar to what I see literary critics say about creative authors. It isn't about the person. Despite the fact that the production in question uses that person's work, their name, the details of their life--it isn't about them.
Also, incidentally, it's a lot easier to write about people who are safely dead.
And I think, in both cases, there is a strong element of practical self-deception in that not-about-them claim. To be sure, in litcrit, it isn't just about the person. Well, not unless you're doing biographical criticism. But it is about them; that cannot be escaped, if we are all being honest. The person was the source of the production. Not in isolation. But the immediate and driving source of it, nevertheless. We are, in fact, talking about them when we analyze the text, because the person who wrote the text cannot be separated from in. They don't stop having a relationship with the text, just because the text got published.
Is this not the case in RPS, as well?
Actually, I find it ironically amusing that a literary critic would be likely to say that the Real Person in question is the primary Thing The Text Is About, in RPS, closely followed by performativity, identity and the liminal valence of sexual remapping. The immediate author, of course, would be referred to only in the categorical terms of her social situatedness, not as a real person at all. Then the next critic comes along and points out that the immediate author is, in fact, the primary Thing The Text Is About in the first analysis, and doesn't this say fascinating things about the social situatedness of the first critic?
In both cases, you see, the author of a text (or a life) is not allowed to be a real person, only a Real Person. Anything else makes things too hard, too complicated, too fraught with nasty, squishy things like emotions and personal investment and authority and ownership. Which, when we are talking about publically performed texts (or lives), do not, any of them, have neat, clean answers.
Coming around to the start again, I think it may be those who critique who have the greatest culture of honesty behind them, at this point. While I've read plenty of critiques that do talk around the author, the majority of them seem to have at least an inkling that the author is still alive and kicking. And, quite possibly, pissed off. That awareness doesn't stop these critics, as it shouldn't. But it may, at least, stand to remind them that there's another real person on the other end of the text.
And another real person on the other end of the Real Person, too.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 10:44 pm (UTC)interesting and very pomo...
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 04:57 pm (UTC)I'm probably going to get howled at by the RPS people, but, hey, too bad. They're analytical subjects, it's not really about them, after all. *evil*