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

[Michael Wojcik]

Jerry Friedman wrote:
> --- On Fri, 1/23/09, Michael Wojcik <mwojcik at newsguy.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think the important points are, first, that the CSTOL is not meant
>> to describe a school, but a theory of literature - that is, it's a way
>> to think about literature, not a way to produce it.
>> It's descriptive, not prescriptive.
> 
> I don't agree.  Part of what Martin quoted was advice
> to authors.

Hmm. Well, we shall disagree on this point. Perhaps the Author would
like to weigh in? (Though who, besides Walter Benn Michaels, pays any
attention to intention these days anyway?)

>> And second, the theory is that authors will write about
>> what interests them,
> 
> Is that different from what they enjoy?

I'm interested in things I don't enjoy, such as recent US foreign policy.

> But isn't this "vulgar-Marxist" analysis, as you call
> it below, or the more Trotskyist approach that Steve
> outlined, a way of /explaining/ why Mieville finds those
> things cool?  It doesn't ignore the author's affect; it
> just sees it as one mechanism by which the underlying
> causes operate.

This is a contentious issue. Some theorists would likely draw that
conclusion - that Mieville is "enjoying his symptom", as Zizek might
put it (a materialist-psychoanalytic reading), or that while ideology
may play a significant role in the construction of his subjectivity,
his agency is still the primary source of his work.

But others would put little stake in the author's affect, or at best
consider it an effect rather than a cause: various forces impel the
author to add certain elements to a work, and pride of authorship
leads the author to find them cool. I'm not of that persuasion, but
I've known a few constructivist hard-liners who might be.

And then there's the subdued-to-what-we-work-in middle ground, which
posits a reciprocal relation: as the author writes, the work
conditions how the author feels about the material. I'd probably lean
toward this one, with a healthy dollop of psychoanalysis (at least the
thesis of the unconscious) and an actor-network view of subjectivity.

>  (Same with Freudian criticism, if there still is any.)

Oh, sure - you can't keep a good critique of the Enlightenment down. I
suppose there isn't all that much pure-Freudian litcrit being done
these days; it's probably mostly Freudian/Lacanian or
Freudian/Lacanian/Zizekian (ie, Freud plus successors), or Freud
conjoined with other theoretical frameworks - like Spivak's "Can the
Subaltern Speak?", which is primarily a Derridean analysis but starts
with Freud (and, in its later, longer version, appears in a collection
called _Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture_, so she gets points
for hitting all of the Big Three).


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