sssh! this is a working library.

Further discussion of anti-theoretical language:

In private moments men like Blair defend themselves by saying that their critics (always labelled armchair critics) forget that in this less than ideal world politics is the art of the possible. They go further: politics is not for sissies, they say, by sissies meaning people reluctant to compromise moral principles. By nature politics is uncongenial to the truth, they say, or at least to the practice of telling the truth in all circumstances. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (125)

They call them “armchair critics” because it connotes an image of leisure. The critic is maligned as a member of the privileged class, averse to hard work, spending his many hours reclining in a soft chair, a drink within arm’s reach. He knows nothing of the real world. Once this image of the critic takes hold, there is no need to engage the criticism that emerges from him; it becomes, a priori, irrelevant.

Supporting this image is the belief that physical action is somehow superior to intellectual actions such as speaking or writing. Nevermind that those who denigrate critics for being too soft in the middle, too unaware of the physical labors of the world (think farmers, construction workers, etc.), have themselves never broken a sweat over anything but the treadmill at the nearest luxury gym (a fresh towel nearby, afterwards a massaging shower and a $6 smoothie). In other words, an elite person in power waves aside criticism by attacking his critics with terminology that suggests it is the critic who is the true elite. Nothing short of brilliant, if it wasn’t so disastrously effective.

In his commencement address to the class of 1984 at Texas A&M University, Vice President George Bush, making a familiar point, invoked George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Mr. Bush spoke of the novel as a prophecy that will not come true as long as America and her allies “stand together, firm and strong, in defense of freedom.” … This bellicose interpretation of Nineteen Eighty Four is nearly as old as the novel itself. When it first appeared, some American rightists hailed Nineteen Eighty Four as a vivid anticommunist manifesto – a misreading that Orwell himself publicly repudiated. … Vowing to oppose “Big Brother” by keeping the U.S. permanently mobilized, Vice President Bush spoke exactly like the fictitious managers of Big Brother’s own regime, who also strive to keep their system “firm and strong” against the enemy. … His proclamation that the governments of, say, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras, and Guatemala are “freedom-loving” recalls the perverse official language of Oceania, where the “Ministry of Peace” promotes war, and the “Ministry of Love” promotes torture, and so on. Miller, Boxed In (309)

Aside from proving that history is doomed to repeat itself, there is an interesting intersection of criticism and ideology in here. Bush sees in Orwell’s novel a vision of an enemy, and onto that vision he graphs the vast, communist empire – not because the text suggests it, but because he is incapable of thinking critically about his own position. Rather than investigate the text, he holds it up as a mirror and finds (erroneously) confirmation of his own simple philosophy. Mark Crispin Miller – who, as is evident from even this short passage, is not a Republican – effectively interrogates Bush’s misreading and points out that Bush has in fact assumed the very position he claims to be against.

It is, in fact, a skill of anti-theory (or, as has been stated before, anti-thinking) – to suggest you hold the opposite position that you do, by means of a distortion of words and their meanings. If the “Clean Air Act” and “No Child Left Behind” aren’t Orwellian descendants of the “Ministry of Love,” I don’t know what is.

Boxed In is a work of critical analysis that takes the tools of literary criticism and applies them elsewhere, most notably to television. Mark Crispin Miller was a student and professor of Renaissance poetry by day, and an author of pop-culture essays on film, TV, and music by night; eventually, the walls between those two efforts came down. I’ll be spending some time with it in the next few days as I venture further into these (as yet embryonic) ideas about criticism.

More on anti-theory (otherwise known as anti-thinking):

Since September 11, a number of anti-theoretical terms have been in vogue in the United States. They include [the aforementioned] ‘evil’, ‘freedom-loving’, ‘bad men’, ‘patriot’, and ‘anti-American’. These terms are anti-theoretical because they are invitations to shut down thought.…Theory – which means, in this context, the taxing business of trying to grasp what is actually going on – is unpatriotic.…This is a pity, since unless the United States is able to do some hard thinking about the world, it is not at all certain that the world will be around for that much longer. Eagleton, After Theory (223)

Eagleton’s definition of theory here bears repeating: theory is “the taxing business of trying to grasp what is actually going on.” In this context, theory is not esoteric or inaccessible, and it’s not relegated to the ivory-tower. It’s simply the way we need to be with the world, if we’re to have a world we want to be in.

What is thus called for is long-term study and thought, in an effort to come up with a serious alternative to global bourgeois democracy – blueprints for a better time, perhaps, and for another place. “What radicals need right now,” says de Zengotita,¹ “isn’t action but theory.” Berman, Dark Ages America (329)

Put another way: when you’re rolling down a hill and picking up speed, digging in your heels or grabbing at twigs isn’t likely to slow your descent. But if you take the time you have to consider how you got to where you are – and you shout it at the top of your lungs – you just may avert someone else from suffering a similar fate. Neither the critic nor the protestor is immortal; but the critic’s words will outlast the protestor’s flags.

1. Berman is quoting Thomas de Zengotita from a 2003 article in Harper’s Magazine. ↩

[One] anti-theoretical stratagem is to claim that in order to launch some fundamental critique of our culture, we would need to be standing at some impossible Archimedean point beyond it. What this fails to see is that reflecting critically on our situation is part of our situation. It is a feature of the peculiar way we belong to the world.…Without such self-monitoring, we would not have survived as a species. Eagleton, After Theory (60)

Speaking of the two cultures, I’ve often wondered if this perspective is the result of a misreading of the Heisenberg principal. Something like we can’t take the measure of ourselves without altering our own position. It’s a compelling, if stupid, analogy:

You do not have to be standing in metaphysical outer space to recognize the injustice of racial discrimination. This is exactly where you would not recognize it. Ibid. (61)