As an English major, I have come into contact with a significant amount of “theory,” or literary criticism, both willingly and unwillingly.
After five years and an earnest attempt to understand almost everything I read, I still find this sort of writing incredibly difficult.
This has always bothered me.
Newspaper articles are easy to read.
Most novels are easy to read.
Even some philosophers, like J.L. Austin, are easy to read. “The Looming Tower” was easy to read.
There are many easy-to-read things out there that are both highly sophisticated and highly informative.
There are also a number of vocal critics of the sort of difficulty endemic to literary criticism. Noam Chomsky is well-known for accusing Jacques Derrida and intellectuals in general of obscurantism, and many from the hard sciences routinely attack literary theory for being a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing (although in slightly different language).
I suspect many people agree with this. I have certainly suspected it of being accurate more than once.
These doubts are particularly difficult to come to terms with, especially because there are immense quantities of pure bullshit produced in the name of literary criticism and couched in the appropriate jargon, some of which get published.
It also seems simply intuitive that there is something fundamentally wrong with writing that requires an hour of the reader to get through five or 10 pages.
Despite all of this, I am going to argue that Difficulty with a capital D is in many cases, ultimately justified.
The reason I am going to use for my argument (and it is far and away not the only reason that difficulty is justified. It is simply my favorite) has to do with the way that language works.
Language is a curious thing. It is not, as some think of it, a sort of acoustic wrapping paper for some abstract informational content.
When we use language, we are not neatly packaging “meaning” and sending it to another person to be unpackaged and understood. Language is much more subtle than that.
Language affects and to some extent defines the way we interact with the world in a real and meaningful way.
Linguistic form and content are not entirely separable.
Things that are similar to what we are used to talking about or that look at the world the way we are used to looking at it are easy to render approachably.
But because of the way language works, it is sometimes impossible to express really novel ideas accessibly, especially when you’re trying to communicate something new about language itself or how it influences us.
On the flip side, things that are supposed to make us question the very foundations of our knowledge have to be hard.
Immanuel Kant (and I am only choosing him because he is so well-known and well-respected) is famously difficult, but necessarily so because of the nature and scope of what he is trying to do.
I see no reason why this should not also be true of literary criticism.
Projects like Kant’s necessarily require immense effort to understand because of the way they have to be written to be successful.
What is unfortunate is that it also requires an immense amount of effort to see complicated, formulaic bullshit for what it is, and there is no easy way to tell the difference between the two, aside from the judgments of other people involved in literary criticism.
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JJanowiak 2 years, 5 months ago
It must make you feel smart to read all those hard books. Good for you!!!
ston9794 2 years, 5 months ago
I wasn't aware that this was a topic that many people had an opinion over
OUguy 2 years, 5 months ago
BORING!
(I hear a foghorn)
BOOOOOOOOOORING
criticaldharma 2 years, 5 months ago
I think the argument undoes itself in part because you cite a philosopher who did not write in the language in which (I assume) you read it. Kant is famously difficult to read for English readers because of the nature of German and the poor ability of English to follow German when it touches particularly technical subjects.
I have never heard how difficult Kant is to read for German readers, but I will make no assumptions. Even ignoring the language translation issue, I would contend that Kant is a poor example because of his use of either difficult or strange language. My experience with Kant has made me frustrated with his insistence that I must read his choice of words with his special definition. Admittedly this makes a case for using more technical vocabulary in order to avoid word confusion.
I will not disagree with your point completely, I see the merit of what you are saying, though I would disagree that Kant provides a good defense.
I would also suggest that the purpose of language, especially for one focusing on the study of one language in particular, is to convey thought in cogent brevity. If an essay is so "difficult" to read, is the language really doing its job?
gleanedaway 2 years, 5 months ago
I disagree with this column. If an author isn't explaining his or her ideas in a way that you can understand without a dictionary, a notepad, and an hour of your life per page, don't read it. Literary critics are paid to make difficult concepts less difficult. If they fail to do that, they've failed as a writer and should be ignored until they learn to write more coherently.
leimapapa 2 years, 5 months ago
Someone should auto-tune this to spice it up.