On Civility & Critical Inquiry |

I feel slightly guilty for even engaging with the nutcase otherwise known as Anis Shivani (whom, I?m convinced, gets his rocks off by repeatedly trolling the creative writing community), but I feel the need to do so after reading his essay ?What Should Be the Function of Criticism Today?? in the new issues of Subtropics.

He begins his (terribly titled) essay by immediately positing his thesis:? ?The premise of this essay is that criticism needs to play a central role in the revival of literature.?? This, of course, caught my attention.? (As I am, after all, as Lawrence called me the other night, a ?theory-head.?)? I couldn?t agree more with Shivani?s claim.? He expands:? ?Instead of criticism, what we are seeing from practicing creative writers is a narrow form of appreciation [?] a form of empty praise that doesn?t deserve the name criticism.?? As someone who?s made her frustrations with the workshop model pretty apparent, this is one of the big issues at the heart of what can only be labeled as my academic disillusionment.

More often than not, I leave workshop feeling extraordinarily frustrated.? If a poem works, I want to hear WHY it?s working.? What?s it doing?? What tradition is it engaging with?? What?s the grander statement it?s making and how is it making it?? Why does this poem need to exist in the world?? What?s subversive about it?? What speaks to the state of society (on anywhere from the micro- to macro-levels)?? I want to hear comments that engage with technique and craft and aesthetic and the state of contemporary poetry and the state of the world.? ?OMGGGGG, I LOVE THIS? isn?t academic feedback.? And on the flipside, if my poem isn?t working, I want to hear WHY it?s not working.? What specifically about it isn?t working?? Give suggestions?of craft-focused revisions, of other readings that might help me to improve it, of ways to think differently about the piece.? (My hatred of Reader Response criticism is really coming through here, eh?)

If an individual in a workshop does not take the time and effort to academically engage with a poem, that gives this degree that some of us are actually working for a bad name.? If an individual can get away with writing two sentences that do nothing but either generically trash a poem or generically jerk it off, what is anybody really learning from the process?? Short answer: nothing.? Everyone needs to be engaged for an MFA workshop to be a productive environment?a hardly outrageous expectation, as far as I can see it.

Shivani expands upon this, explaining how the ?writer? (I emphasize this as such as my understanding is that Shivani is speaking of a typical writer rather than of every writer) has placed the production of a consumable artifact as his or her foremost goal.? To connect this back to the workshop experience, too many MFA candidates are concerned with writing their own poems, their own thesis, their own manuscript.? They don?t realize that being a civil, participatory member in a collective society (the workshop, in this case) comes along with being a writer.? They don?t realize that commenting makes you a better writer, that reading makes you a better writer, that engaging with?dare I say it?theory makes you a better writer.

Shivani advocates for a new criticism (note, not New Criticism) that takes on the role of ?honest evaluator of the literary merchandise.?? We must acknowledge that we have an obligation to reveal biases ?toward logic and rationality and patriarchy and empire,? but not just ?leave it at that.?? We must explode the contradictions of Western society, but then also do something about them.? We must refuse to uphold the collective aesthetic of bourgeois realism that ?leaves the state?s politics and policies well enough alone.?? According to Shivani, we live in an age that gives the false appearance of being an age of hyper-criticism.? In order to remedy this, he proposes that literature and criticism must be willing to communicate with one another?as writers, we must also be acute critics?and that as critics, we ?must be giants.?? (Horrible band name pun aside.)

But this where the problem comes in.? If we, as writers, are too concerned with the production of our consumable artifacts, we lose that sense that we have the chance to be giants.? We must instead think of ourselves as doing more than just providing gloss or commentary against (or distraction from, in some cases) vast bureaucratic, empirical, and patriarchal forces.? We must refuse to be cogs in the assimilationist machine?we, as writers, must take up a radically humanistic perspective on our role in society.

What does this mean, practically-speaking?? I think the first thing we must do is stop treating ?intellectual? as though it?s a dirty word, one incompatible with being a creative writer. ?(This does not mean that we all become Thomas-Friedman-esque ?gated intellectuals?? that?s the absolute last thing I?d ever advocate, and is likely a topic for another blog post.)? What we need to do, including at the MFA level, is consider the vast structures of knowledge and power that underlie our work.? We have to stop treating ourselves as conduits for some kind of divine inspiration.? We have to reject the romanticized notions of ?Oh, it just came out that way!? in regards to the choices we make on the page.? We have to acknowledge that, as members of a society, we are influenced by that society?and that, in turn, we also have influence upon it.? Our poems or stories or essays are not only about themselves, just as they are not only about ourselves.? We can?t treat our poems only as self-contained, self-reflexive artifacts.

As long as the MFA workshop exists as a place only for superficial, shallow inquiry, a place that treats poems as artifacts that don?t engage with anything outside of themselves, our places as writers in this society will continue to be discounted.? We have an opportunity to be the figureheads of civil discourse here? to critically and creatively engage with and interrogate systems of knowledge and power.? But if we can?t conduct ourselves civilly and critically in the MFA workshop, how will we ever step up and do it inthe world?

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Source: http://mortonk.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/on-civility-critical-inquiry/

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