Nine Theses for the MLA Convention

People I know are trooping off to the dread MLA convention,
so I thought I'd give them some wise (albeit unsolicited)  counsel.

1. Literary works and scholarly works can have a political-ethical intention or not. Either way is OK. If there is a political-ethical intent, often the real effect of the work conflicts with the intent -- all human action is like that. But closing off options is bad.

2. Any work can be analyzed either as autonomous object, or in relation to a larger whole of which it is part, or in terms of the components comprising it. Everything is potentially related to everything else.

3. All scholars have agendas. These need not be explicit. Having an agenda, even quite an odd one, is in no way disqualifying, but no one needs to take anyone else’s agenda seriously. (An inexplicit agenda is not a “hidden agenda” except in rare cases where nefarious intent can be shown).

4. All scholarship is caveat emptor. Scholars should be aware that readers have the right to mock or ignore them. Readers should be aware that scholars might be just plain silly.

5. Criticism is a worthwhile activity but not really a very important or authoritative one. But among the ways people have of enjoying life, reading literature is one of the finest. It’s good to enjoy life.

6. Because criticism is not important or authoritative, even though it has its value, pluralism is fine. It’s not like medicine, where a non-standard treatment might kill people.

7. Attempts to define criticism by limitation, and to make these definitions authoritative, usually can be traced to old-boy networks trying to guarantee jobs for their students. Since literary scholarship has been defined as a productive job, and since high-level scholars get paid real money, it couldn’t be any other way. Within the bureaucratized university, putatively objective criteria have to be given for hiring, firing, and promotion, so methodologization and paradigmatization were inevitable.

8. What is inevitable is not necessarily good, and the methodologization, etc., of literary studies is really the shitty colonization of an ultimate value or form of play by instrumental, productive, positivist, and bureaucratic forms of organization.

9. Deal with it, sucker.

Cross-posted at Adam Kotsko

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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

Original materials copyright John J Emerson

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