This is the first of a series of weekly posts on the book Critical Terms for Literary Study.
The Preface and Introduction to Critical Terms for Literary Study make one thing clear. You can’t be neutral in literary study. I agree.
The Preface and Introduction also reject the idea that “divine fiat” has anything to do with what these terms mean or how you can use them. I disagree.
Here are the details…
The preface argues that the essays in the book’s second edition have two message.
- “All interpretations of cultural practice rest upon powerful assumptions and commitments…the goal of raising consciousness about everyday culture cannot be achieved unless these terms of interpretation themselves are examined critically.” (ix)
If you replaced “cultural practice” with “the world” and “critically” with “biblically”, you would have a sentence written by Cornelius Van Til. Yes, we should be epistemologically self-conscious in our literary and cultural interpretation and in our theology. By what standard, though? The next statement gives us a hint.
2. “Any interpretation that proceeds without examining such terms will reproduce cultural and political assumptions rather than question them.” (ix)
Fair enough. But why is this good or bad? On its own, this standard leads to scholars who are always learning and questioning but never coming to a knowledge of truth. The point is questioning? How will we know if the reproduced assumptions are worth damaging or not? The Introduction doesn’t answer these questions, but it does try to explain what the stakes of interpretation are.
3. “What holds these various and often combative programs and schools of thought together…is a shared commitment to understanding how language and other systems of signs provide frameworks which determine how we read, and more generally, how we make sense of experience, construct our own identity, produce meaning in the world.” (1)
Notice how the stakes are viewed completely in human terms. It matters how WE read. It matters how WE make meaning of experience (of this world alone, no doubt), how WE construct OUR identity, and how WE make meaning. As the Introduction demonstrates, we get to question God, but God never gets to question us. Given the prior statement about “reproducing assumptions,” you would think that starting with God might yield some different questions. This book’s god is history.
4. “The essays in this volume…insist that terms have a history, that they shape how we read, and that they engage larger social and political questions.” (3)
But not metaphysical or ethical or theological questions? Well, such investigation, the writers admit, is not value-free.
5. “Thinking of literature as writing emphasizes a text’s entanglement in language as a system of values: literature is part of the process by which the values of a culture are communicated.” (6)
This gives us a concrete reason to study literature, but behind this assertion again is the question: by what standard will those values be judged? How do we know a value when we see one? The introduction’s position on interpretation makes clear that such values are relative.
6. “It is the reader who produces meaning, but only by participating in a complex of socially constructed and enforced practices.” (6)
We are not discovering meaning. We are creating it. Maybe we don’t create our own individual meaning, but some group did somewhere. Meaning and values don’t come from God. They come from people, and people disagree. Therefore…
7. “In a context in which we begin with the premise that no single ‘interpretation’ is possible, since interpretation is always rhetorical, we find that that terms serve the function of shaping our reading process…”
Which contexts demand that presupposition about the impossibility of univocal interpretation? We get an answer in the next statement.
8. “Reading is social and therefore political.” (7)
For these writers, social and political reality is ultimate. The best we can hope for is the ability to “negotiate the complexities of life in language,” defined here as social and political life.
A summary:
I agree that:
A. Literature communicates cultural values.
B. The terms we use to discuss literature can’t then be neutral.
C. All interpretation involves value judgments.
I disagree that:
A. Social and political reality are ultimate.
B. All meaning is humanly produced.
C. The goal of interpretation is confined to this world.
Uncovering and committing to the Bible truth about these terms is not a way of escaping the world. It’s a way of making sure that we see the world properly.
Experiments in Criticism 