By Lumumba Mthembu
As a student of English Literature, I find that my relationship with the literary critical establishment is characterised by a profound sense of betrayal. The treachery that underlies the academic treatment of literature is best exposed by way of an allegory I encountered during three years of mindlessly meandering through the field of Psychology. There is a science fiction story about an unidentified flying object that is detected orbiting the earth. At first, the military is all for shooting it down but the people of earth soon relax upon discovering that there are no life forms aboard the alien craft. A computer database containing writings in an unknown language is the only object of human interest on board the ship.
It is presumed that these writings will reveal valuable information about the spacecraft’s origins. The database is then downloaded onto computers on earth so that cryptologists, linguists and anyone else for that matter, can get to the business of deciphering the strange writings. Industriously, the humans apply themselves to the task, ever reliant on the principles of hard work and intellectual rigour. Eventually, the writings are rendered intelligible as the code is broken. There are celebrations all round. What the humans do not immediately perceive is that, in the act of rendering the alien language comprehensible, they have assimilated the alien way of thinking which subsequently transforms them into aliens even though outwardly, they still appear to be human. Without a second’s delay, the ship leaves the earth’s atmosphere and sets out to colonise other planets.
In much the same way, the literary critical establishment estranges the student of English Literature from their own independent thought and line of critical pursuit. While their mind is still pliable and their footing unsure, they are indoctrinated by the normative discourse spewed out by the academic establishment. While they are still naïve and impressionable, they are told that they are not qualified to have an opinion and so they should master the skill of hanging onto the coattails of those who are qualified: the critics who have been published in peer-reviewed journals and the scholars who have become intimate with ‘the Man and his Work’ over years of incarceration in the ivory tower that is academia. Far too late in the day – when their instincts have been blunted and their confidence checked, when their mind can no longer hold an idea without having to rely on the crutch of academically sanctioned discourse for support – the trick of their enfeeblement is revealed to them.
I am currently studying the major works of Joseph Conrad in a course on Modernist literature. Joseph Conrad, the historic personage, is obviously unknown to me but in my academic endeavours I speak of him as if he poured his very essence into his works. I have assumed that the man is somehow brought forward by his works and I have been conditioned to believe that it is my professor’s job to tease out the ways in which Conrad’s life colours his texts. Like a trained German Shepherd, my mind sniffs out the source of official academic discourse and remains loyal to it. Without my consent, my mind gravitates towards readings of his novels that are privileged by the academic literary community. I am told that I should merely accept that Joseph Conrad is a racist and the only recourse that is left to me is to simply deal with it, and like a dumb man, I nod my head without a sound. Gullibly, I venerate the author by buying into the myth of his creative genius. What would have become of me were it not for my encounters with theorists who question the validity of authorship, I leave to your imagination.
Ideally, I would like to see the academic literary establishment engender a culture of critical readers as opposed to the current system, which reduces students of English Literature to Golden Retrievers who have been trained to ‘fetch’ information from ‘credible’ sources. This establishment should not just accommodate the many interpretations, it should actively encourage diverse views and should resist the impulse to privilege any one particular discourse at the expense of another. Traditional critics’ recourse to the values of clarity, nobility, and humanity, which they treat as neutral, exerts a censoring force on other interpretations. The establishment needs to display more commitment to self-reflection and reaction.
The idea of a literary canon needs to be interrogated if not thrown out all together because it is the very construction of a core of canonical literature that relegates contemporary, alternative and deviant literatures to the sidelines of academic focus. The changes I am calling for have been implemented to some extent. My problem is that the effects of these changes have not yet filtered down to the grassroots level. A small corner has been carved out for the expression of these revolutionary ideas within the academic literary establishment, but only so as not to contaminate the centre. No matter; we shall toil from within the confines of the space that has been demarcated for us by the powers that be, because at the end of the day, “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”*.
As a student of English Literature, I find that my relationship with the literary critical establishment is characterised by a profound sense of betrayal. The treachery that underlies the academic treatment of literature is best exposed by way of an allegory I encountered during three years of mindlessly meandering through the field of Psychology. There is a science fiction story about an unidentified flying object that is detected orbiting the earth. At first, the military is all for shooting it down but the people of earth soon relax upon discovering that there are no life forms aboard the alien craft. A computer database containing writings in an unknown language is the only object of human interest on board the ship.
It is presumed that these writings will reveal valuable information about the spacecraft’s origins. The database is then downloaded onto computers on earth so that cryptologists, linguists and anyone else for that matter, can get to the business of deciphering the strange writings. Industriously, the humans apply themselves to the task, ever reliant on the principles of hard work and intellectual rigour. Eventually, the writings are rendered intelligible as the code is broken. There are celebrations all round. What the humans do not immediately perceive is that, in the act of rendering the alien language comprehensible, they have assimilated the alien way of thinking which subsequently transforms them into aliens even though outwardly, they still appear to be human. Without a second’s delay, the ship leaves the earth’s atmosphere and sets out to colonise other planets.
In much the same way, the literary critical establishment estranges the student of English Literature from their own independent thought and line of critical pursuit. While their mind is still pliable and their footing unsure, they are indoctrinated by the normative discourse spewed out by the academic establishment. While they are still naïve and impressionable, they are told that they are not qualified to have an opinion and so they should master the skill of hanging onto the coattails of those who are qualified: the critics who have been published in peer-reviewed journals and the scholars who have become intimate with ‘the Man and his Work’ over years of incarceration in the ivory tower that is academia. Far too late in the day – when their instincts have been blunted and their confidence checked, when their mind can no longer hold an idea without having to rely on the crutch of academically sanctioned discourse for support – the trick of their enfeeblement is revealed to them.
I am currently studying the major works of Joseph Conrad in a course on Modernist literature. Joseph Conrad, the historic personage, is obviously unknown to me but in my academic endeavours I speak of him as if he poured his very essence into his works. I have assumed that the man is somehow brought forward by his works and I have been conditioned to believe that it is my professor’s job to tease out the ways in which Conrad’s life colours his texts. Like a trained German Shepherd, my mind sniffs out the source of official academic discourse and remains loyal to it. Without my consent, my mind gravitates towards readings of his novels that are privileged by the academic literary community. I am told that I should merely accept that Joseph Conrad is a racist and the only recourse that is left to me is to simply deal with it, and like a dumb man, I nod my head without a sound. Gullibly, I venerate the author by buying into the myth of his creative genius. What would have become of me were it not for my encounters with theorists who question the validity of authorship, I leave to your imagination.
Ideally, I would like to see the academic literary establishment engender a culture of critical readers as opposed to the current system, which reduces students of English Literature to Golden Retrievers who have been trained to ‘fetch’ information from ‘credible’ sources. This establishment should not just accommodate the many interpretations, it should actively encourage diverse views and should resist the impulse to privilege any one particular discourse at the expense of another. Traditional critics’ recourse to the values of clarity, nobility, and humanity, which they treat as neutral, exerts a censoring force on other interpretations. The establishment needs to display more commitment to self-reflection and reaction.
The idea of a literary canon needs to be interrogated if not thrown out all together because it is the very construction of a core of canonical literature that relegates contemporary, alternative and deviant literatures to the sidelines of academic focus. The changes I am calling for have been implemented to some extent. My problem is that the effects of these changes have not yet filtered down to the grassroots level. A small corner has been carved out for the expression of these revolutionary ideas within the academic literary establishment, but only so as not to contaminate the centre. No matter; we shall toil from within the confines of the space that has been demarcated for us by the powers that be, because at the end of the day, “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”*.
*Quotation from Victor Hugo
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