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by John Favretto |
This article has been inspired by my four years at Wesleyan discussing recent scholarship in the fields of gender, feminist, literary, and critical theory with my friends and professors. It also has its roots in my personal reactions to newly emerging disciplines such as "Cultural Studies", which strives to be a comprehenive, interdisciplinary critiqe of cultural and social phenomena. A very broad and ambitious design indeed. This article is also about the state of theory now at Wesleyan, and my impressions of why literary and cultural criticism has become so frusturating and unfulfilling to many students. You need not be a theorist-in-the-making to be affected by it here; Theory, Cultural Studies, and popular politics are all intertwined. Perhaps you have never taken a Queer Theory, Race and Gender Studies, or Marxism and Postmodernism-type course at school. Maybe you are turned off by the winding, exclusive vocabulay of "deconstruction", "discourse", and the "Other". Or perhaps you are excited and enthused by the potential and insight that Cultural Theory can provide, as well as by the challenge and the diversity of material. I did not write this article with the intention of "bashing" Theory. It is a personal reaction to Theory in the Wesleyan classroom, and I maintain two fundamental premises: that Theory as of now is in dire staits and coming to a dead end, and that Cultural Theory should be rescued and revitalized entirely, hopefully by current humanities scholars both teaching and learning at places like Wesleyan. In this article, I shall capitalize Theory (interchangeable with Cultural Theory) in order to refer specifically to contemporary postmodern, poststructuralist, neo-Marxist, and postcolonial crticisms (as opposed to, say, Einstein’s "theory" of Relativity). I shall conclude with a review of an excellent book that points in a positive direction for all interested Theory today.
Perhaps you are an aspiring Theory Queen (or Theory Diva, or Theory Head, as you prefer) here at Wesleyan. You know: the deconstructive, psychoanalytic, postmodern, postcolonial, quasi-Marxist wannabe star of the Post-Everything Catwalk. I have been up that road for the past three years, and let me tell you, Theory is on hard times. I am not referring to the quality of teaching in the classroom, or even all of the texts (just most of them), or even the idea of Theory itself. I have enjoyed and been rewarded by every Theory course I have taken here. The major problem is that Theory is becoming a pathological entity warping students’ minds. Current modes of theoretical thought in Cultural Studies are entirely, utterly insolvent. What we need is a major overhaul here, not this endless recycling and sprucing up of long passe French criticism. This perpetuation of moribund ideas serves no use and is annoying: classroom discussions begin to resemble a dog chasing its tail, getting nowhere (except frustrated and angry). If you have a strong interest in Theory at Wesleyan, it might help to be aware of a few quirks involved, what to pursue and what to avoid.
I have always felt myself to be in good hands with the professors here. I have always felt secure knowing the profs have plenty of academic and personal training to be teaching these courses; they must have command and mastery of the material. Ironically, a major symptom of many Theory students is the inability to accurately and comprehensively read their own theorists! Many Theory students, with no training in history, philosophy, art, or anthropology don’t know where to begin a criticism except from campus popular politics. Budding humanities scholars who can’t be bothered with doing rigorous interdisciplinary research, read Foucault and think "Oh, so that’s 300 years of history." Yikes. Foucault was a flop when it came to history and all of his major philosophical ventures - including the popular Madness and Civilization and The History of Sexuality - are rife with historical error, wild, unsubstantiated speculations passed of as truth, and judgmental flaws. The History of Sexuality especially, that oft-quoted cornerstone of gender studies, is a shabby mess. A few thoughtful comments and interesting opinions about sex and society are tossed around, backed up by.... more of Foucault’s opinions. Foucault had no feel at all for religious thought and its titanic impact, psychology, art and its relationship to sex and culture, history before 1600, science, or even medieval and ancient philosophy. Madness and Civilization, another fairly interesting but shaky book, is propped up by Theory students who breezily insist that all notions of "normal" behavior are a Mean, New post-Enlightenment invention. Madness and Civilization is riddled with misinformation about the attitudes medieval Europe had towards insanity and mental health, misleading students who unwittingly accept the postmodernist fallacies of "historical discontinuity" that Foucault and his imitators supply. Foucault’s ever undefinable and vague "power" blob is such a silly theoretical device - just read Nietzsche and Durkheim, the two figures that Foucault lifted most of his important ideas from, for crying out loud. Then add Kafka for real insight into bureaucratic structures of domination.
Here’s a name: Ferdinand de Saussure. The arch-villain of them all! What a disaster. This man came up with the linguistic school that doomed literary poststructuralism from the start, seeping through Lacan and Derrida to present day semiotics. The man was a quack. Saussure’s ideas are mildly interesting from a purely linguistic point of view, but entirely corrupt otherwise. His fraudulent theories are totally indefensible philosophically and entirely unjustifiable in their many uses and abuses by clueless semioticians. There is almost nothing useful in Saussure for the present day student of literature - his ideas are embarrassingly easy to expose and, along with them, his whole school of disciples. Take Jacques Derrida. The man is a serious philosopher whose ideas on writing and language are now as moribund as Saussure’s. It’s too bad, too, because Derrida has a lot to offer in spite of his shortcomings and imperfections, regarding (post)metaphysical philosophy. Unfortunately, he churns out these tired, repetitive texts with nothing particularly illuminating to say anymore. Derrida’s directions are admirable, but his interpretation and readings of Western philosophy are entirely questionable, as are his basic assumptions about language and textuality’s role in Western consciousness. Students ignorant of French language and its relationship to French culture don’t realize that Lacan and Derrida read much differently in the original language, and that English and American literature simply do not function in the same manner. Student’s don’t even read the actual Derrida anymore! They simply toss around the word "deconstruction" in class all day, using it to refer to pretty much anything they like. Derrida is an involved philosophical read, interesting when placed in the context of Western thought. Without knowledge of or experience with this context, from Plato and Aristotle through Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Derrida doesn’t make any damn sense! Why is it that students who have nothing but scorn for the Western tradition (written by mean Dead White Men) desperately cling to these faded figures at the tail end of that very same tradition? Foucault: Another "Dead White Male" who never discusses women in his writing. Lacan: also a "Dead White Male", and no budding feminist at that. Students who cry over how nasty Freud was run to this guy? Lacan’s vision of subjectivity and consciousness and their relationship to language are just wrong, alright? Here’s a thought: read Freud and then Lacan. Freud is infinitely easier, more dynamic, and more important as a cultural phenomenon. No, you don’t have to love or even like him, but you must come to terms with him if you want to talk about sex. Lacan’s psychoanalysis is just Freud diced and chopped in a Saussure cuisinart. This "male gaze" concept, latched onto by narrow-minded, flimsy film critics, is a sham. Students need to inform themselves about these problems, lest they fall into the myriad pitfalls of the Theoretical maze, one that systematically rewards and encourages specific ideological practices and products.
Let me give you an example. I recently went to talk with the Graduate Head of an Anthropology Department at a much-respected university. We were discussing what scholarship we found interesting, what his department was like, what I wanted out of my graduate education. I mentioned that I found Carl Jung’s writing to be of interest and possible relevance to my endeavors. The conversation stopped. There was a long pause and the man looked at me with a mixture of embarrassment and discomfort and told me that Jung wasn’t a "serious" thinker and that he had no place in modern anthropological study. I was baffled (I could only assume he thought I meant the Jungian approach to anthropology that existed in the 1940’s, which, in fact, I did not). He then proceeded to gush about these hot, exciting thinkers - Foucault, Lacan, and Baudrillard! Then I was horrified. Here was the graduate head of a major research center going gaga over these tired critics while trashing Jung? What??? Baudrillard is a one-trick-wonder with his "hyperreal simulation" bit. That’s all he knows, all he did. Why is this interesting to anthropologists? I wanted to ask. I see how it goes: bring up the cool theory of the moment and you’ll get the academic approval, no matter how faded and discredited Baudrillard might otherwise be. But bring up C.G. Jung to a "serious" academic and he looks at you like you just befouled his desk. Jung was one of the most beautifully profound thinkers of the century! No one reads him, maybe, because to do so would expose the whole Foucault-linguistic-obsessed school of Cultural Studies as the flim-flamming fools they are. And then where would we be?
Okay, all sarcasm aside, there are reasonable questions to ask about the way Theory functions in Wesleyan student’s lives, inside the classroom and out. As one of these students, there are both things I would like to see more of and things I would love to be rid of. I would love to be rid of this juvenile, paralytic, hand-wringing that plagues many of my peers. "I just wish I could stop all of this oppression in the world (sniff, sniff) but I can’t!". This is not doing anyone any good. This is neither noble nor politically compelling. It’s pathetic. If you read someone and come away traumatized, then the author is probably wrong about what a miserable trap the world is. Petty critics, tearing at each other’s past criticisms of other people’s critical theory, just don’t have much to offer, do they? They don’t produce anything. Negativism, long the hallmark of many a Wes Theorist’s demeanor, has got to go. Like Catherine MacKinnon, that know-nothing Nerd of the North, Luce Irigaray, with her portentous, sloppy splashings through the wading pool of philosophy, and all of the sniffy, sobby writers that too many Wes students swallow whole. The "all-inclusive" argument - that all feminist and queer/gender theorists must be read equally as part of the "resistance" is ridiculous. All feminists and gender critics? Really? What about Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, and Simone de Beauvoir: three stunning feminists that no one looks at anymore? Even....Christina Hoff Sommers, Katie Roiphe, and other "unacceptable" writers? Even Camille Paglia? I’m sure she’d have a lot to say about the issues raised here. I am neither defending or condemning any of these people, but there is very much a "canon" of acceptable and validated Theorists that students, who sneer at the thought of Canonical works, staunchly defend.
There must be accountability in the classroom, there absolutely must. No more effortless, coarse political cliches that have buoyed discussions for far too long. Such as: "The rational/logic-centered West" versus the more "intuitive and creative" East, or wherever you please. This is insulting. The Chinese philosophers developed a mathematical logic that predated European calculus and analytic geometry by at least a century, Islam produced schools of thought as complex in their philosophical rigor as any other civilization’s, Nagarjuna’s brilliant dialectical methods graced India, and the list continues, on and on. But who has time to discover the stunning output of world civilizations when you’re holed up with puerile academic writers, who dismiss the pursuit of cross-cultural knowledge as "imperialist." Marxist criticism, now very much a hot item on Ivy League-type campuses, cannot speak to most relevant topics in art, aesthetics, literature, and sex. Students with no economic exposure or learning whatsoever can feel free to strike with the neo-Marxist sledgehammer when nothing else comes to mind - it’s an easy option: just bring up "class" and "modes of production" and *POW* you’re doing Marxism! Conveniently free of historical, political, and economic history (thanks to M. Foucault&Co.), these students can’t recall the real consequences and pitfalls that Marxism had around the world. Or that it’s totally inapplicable and useless when analyzing certain societies. Religion, for example, as a cultural force far outshines this chic, misread, watered-down class analysis in discussions about sexuality and Theory.
The "everything is a construct" and "history and science are just narratives" lines that students pull would enrage Derrida himself if he could hear them. Cutesy Leftism has been wedded with snippets of deconstruction to produce this attitude? Most of the articles and discussions in gender and sexuaility regarding film, media, politics, and literature should be retitled "Free Association with Lacan". Cultural Studies should aspire to be truly interdisciplinary methodology and discipline (like, for example, anthropology, which Cultural Studies had free-loaded off of for years). The motto, sadly, has become "let’s treat everything equally superficially". Overspecialization is exactly not what we need. You learn more and more about less and less until you know all there is to know about....nothing at all! The flood of books out now dealing with the perilous state of postmodern Theory attest to the nihilistic, defeated state students are acquiring. Passion is gone and has been replaced by dread. Students deserve better; they deserve to treat themselves better. We can do better. Instead of just another retrospective of stifling, confusing poststructuralism, it is our responsibility to inform ourselves.This superb book is exactly what film theory and Cultural Studies needs. Steven Shaviro, a professor of English at the University of Washington, has written an eloquent, lucid collection of essays on film, sexuality, body politics, and postmodernism while moving beyond the now moribund school of psychoanalytic and semiotic criticism that has been strangling recent discussions about sex and cinema. Shaviro takes a specifically Deleuze-Guattarian perspective in this work, but no prior exposure to Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari’s primary texts) is required to make sense of his writing. This is refreshing; the theory is clearly and elegantly delivered along with the discussions of films, texts, and artists. Shaviro also draws from the writings of Walter Benjamin, Donna Haraway, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Michel Foucault. The second refreshing aspect of The Cinematic Body is that the ideas of these theorists are used judiciously and thoughtfully, with none of the ham-fisted, sloppy treatments all too often paraded around in other critical texts. Foucault’s more compelling ideas are actually enhanced rather than suffocated and vulgarized by Shaviro’s commentary, something I rarely find in contemporary treatments of sexuality and gender.
The preface of the book confesses that it is a personal work, and one that seeks not an impartial and politically meek comprehension of postmodern culture, but rather a visceral and sincerely honest one. Shaviro begins by saying, "Psychoanalytic film theory has taken on all of the attributes of a religious cult, complete with rites and sacred texts. Twenty years of obsessive invocations of ‘lack’, ‘castration’, and ‘the phallus’, have left us with a stultifying orthodoxy that makes any fresh discussion impossible. It is time to recognize that not all problems can be solved by repeated references to, and ever-more-subtle readings of, the same few articles by Freud and Lacan. The psychoanalytic model for film theory is at this point utterly bankrupt; it needs not to be refined and reformed, but to be discarded all together." Alleluia and amen. This is the main thrust of Shaviro’s book.
In the Introduction of The Cinematic Body, Shaviro then discusses Kathryn Bigelow’s movie Blue Steel while expanding and elaborating on his ideas and their relationship to sex, gender, power, and visual fascination. I like the way Shaviro then proceeds to sketch a detailed outline of film theory and its major schools, citing Laura Mulvey, Christian Metz, Andy Warhol, and Kaja Silverman, among others. Shaviro gives a much deserved trouncing to Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking but unfortunate essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and its lineage up to the present day. It is time we introduce a more tactile, sensational, and liberating methodology into our discussions of all artistic genres - film and cinema included. When Steven Shaviro writes how "We are tired of endless discussions of the phallus, the castration complex, and the problematics of sexual representation" I wanted to cheer. I applaud Shaviro for not pandering to the lame school of semiotics and Lacanian verbiage that so many students of Cultural Studies remain mired in. The appendix to the lengthy and valuable Introduction is an overview of Deleuze and Guattari’s theories of sexuality, something that should interest all students of gender and sexuality studies.
The main chapters of The Cinematic Body range from George Romero’s "Living Dead" series, Jerry Lewis and his "Comedies of Abjection", David Cronenberg’s brilliant body politics, an essay on Andre Bresson, and Andy Warhol’s aesthetics. Masculinity, an area shamefully neglected in gender studies discussions, is dealt with by Shaviro in a graceful and happily unselfconscious way. Shaviro isn’t out to make converts or trash colleagues. The chapter on "Masculinity, Spectacle, and the body of Querelle" does wonderful justice to Fassbinder’s film. Overall, I would have to say that the chapter "Bodies of Fear: David Cronenberg" is my personal favorite. It is an excellent antidote to the excessively utopian politics so many critics cling to, and it is also a disturbing, shadow side to Donna Haraway’s popular Cyborg Manifesto. Again, these essays serve not to drown the artists and films in an indignant swamp of theoretical jargon and ideology, but rather intensify the sensory and ambivalent qualities of each piece.
It isn’t only film theory that is choking on its obsessions with ideology and the structure of the signifier. Literary and Cultural Theory both suffer from the same grave ailments. Steven Shaviro’s book is a rare find: challenging and stimulating theoretically, and extremely well written. It should be read by anyone confused by or stuck in the old school Lacanian labyrinth, and it provides a good introduction to the works of Deleuze and Guattari. The Cinematic Body offers both liberating new paths as well as new ecstacies of abjection.
No, Shaviro’s book doesn’t answer all of life’s theoretical questions, and no, it doesn’t include every important topic facing today’s critics. Many topics - race, class, colonization - remain to be explored further and in more detail, presumably in other books and by a variety of authors. But The Cinematic Body’s strength comes precisely from Shaviro’s personal, partial perspective. Theory that is poorly written, even by intelligent people with pertinent ideas, looses out on an important audience. Judith Butler’s book Bodies That Matter comes to mind. Here is an interesting, meaningful text about issues of sexual performativity, materiality, and politics that could have ended the divisive "essence vs. construct" debate that has now become such a massive bore. Unfortunately, Judith Butler cannot write a coherent, lucid paragraph. Julia Kristeva is a philosopher who writes in an engaging, poetic style that is wonderful to read. Yes, About Chinese Women is an irritating, frequently offensive text. Please get over it. Kristeva’s later books, such as Black Sun and Powers of Horror are informative, clearly articulated books that demonstrate but one decent way that Theory could be written. All of the silly objections that Kristeva makes maternity "coercive" and that she’s "phallogocentric" (what??) that other, otherwise informative Theorists raise are easily put aside. Please, who cares? If more people wrote Theory like Kristeva has been doing, there would be a lot more understanding and a lot less stomping and pouting from students. Bell Hooks is another important and vital cultural critic who’s engaging writings I enjoy reading even when I sometimes disagree with her opinions or conclusions. As students, it is in our hands how depressed and anguished we decide to let Theorists make us, and our choice to move on and through, taking what we truly need, leaving dead weight behind, and understanding all of it to the best of our ability. Sartre’s What is Literature?, Colin Falck’s Myth, Truth, and Literature, Gillian Rose’s Dialectic Of Nihilism, and Eric Auerbach’s Mimesis are but four outstanding, positive, well-written examples of texts that raise critical discussions out of the swamp that Theory has become. Students, steeped in resentment over their perceived powerlessness, need to supplement criticism with personal fulfillment and satisfaction in learning, not just this facile "unmasking" of why everything is Bad. It’s time to say good-bye to the glitzy MLA stars and their hollow nattering. Time instead to produce, experience, and contribute something worthwhile: yourself.