[Dragaera] Cool Stuff Theory of Litterature was: (RE: Steven Erikson (was: Reading series))

[Michael Wojcik]

skzb wrote:
> 
> Michael Wojcik wrote:
>>  
>> But a traditional Marxist reading of Mieville's work would see
>> Mieville as determined by his class position.
> 
> Um.  Not so much.  That is a pseudo-Marxist approach.

Well, I'd say that's debatable, but I'm not going to launch into the
eternal question of the degree of determinism in Marx. I'll admit that
what I wrote was at best a vulgar-Marxist gloss, and a very sweeping
one at that. I exaggerated for purpose of contrast with the highly
subjective and intentional way I had just read the CSTOL.

>  A traditional
> Marxist reading would focus on finding the fundamental contradictions
> that drive the work.

Yes, yes, the inevitable dialectic; and one can see how easily this
leads to full-blown poststructuralism, even before there was a
well-developed structuralism to be post of. But that's tangential to
my point, which is that there are readings of novels which are not
grounded in the author's affective relation to the material.

> "A work of art must be
> considered first of all as a work of art." - Trotsky.
> 
> Recommended reading: Trotsky's Literature and Revolution.

Yes, but Trotsky was a second-generation Marxist. Still "traditional",
I suppose, but not what I was referring to (though I did not make that
clear). L&R was written in, what, 1924? So some forty years after
Marx's death. Marxist thought had progressed significantly.

> Oh, and less insulting form is TrotskyIST (unless you are choosing to be
> insulting deliberately, which is of course your right).

Apologies. I don't recall ever seeing that objection, and I thought
I'd seen the two terms used interchangeably by authors who are
sympathetic to Trotskyist thought. (I'm thinking Robert Young, in
_Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction_, which I am currently
reading.) But likely I am misremembering.

-- 
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University