from an atlantic interview with Professor harold bloom:
This attitude of reverence is what sets you apart from many of your colleagues. You don't seem to belong to any particular school of literary criticism.Well, it's such a complex thing. I left the English department twenty-six years ago. I just divorced them and became, as I like to put it, Professor of Absolutely Nothing. To a rather considerable extent, literary studies have been replaced by that incredible absurdity called cultural studies which, as far as I can tell, are neither cultural nor are they studies. But there has always been an arrogance, I think, of the semi-learned.
You know, the term "philology" originally meant indeed a love of learning—a love of the word, a love of literature. I think the more profoundly people love and understand literature, the less likely they are to be supercilious, to feel that somehow they know more than the poems, stories, novels, and epics actually know.
And, of course, we have this nonsense called Theory with a capital T, mostly imported from the French and now having evilly taken root in the English-speaking world. And that, I suppose, also has encouraged absurd attitudes toward what we used to call imaginative literature.
and
You like to tell your students, "There is no method except yourself." What do you mean by that?I believe that very passionately. My friend Paul de Man with whom, as I say, I used to argue endlessly, would tell me that after a lifetime of searching, he had found the method, the "Troot," as he put it—that Belgian pronunciation of "Truth." I would say, "No, dear Paul, there is no Truth. There is only the Self."
What theory did the great critics have? Critics like Dr. Samuel Johnson or William Hazlitt? Those who adopt a theory are simply imitating somebody else. I believe firmly that, in the end, all useful criticism is based upon experience. An experience of teaching, an experience of reading, one's experience of writing—and most of all, one's experience of living. Just as wisdom, in the end, is purely personal. There can be no method except the Self.
So... Bloom is saying that although he's simply restating the Cartesian Cogito, he's really not "simply imitating somebody else?" Descartes had a "T" Theory as much as any french person who came after him. I mean, didn't he?
Now, Dave. Is Bloom ignorant of the fact that the past 50 years of literary thought has been an attempt to recon with the idea that "the self" is not an entirely easy subject to nail down *because* of the culture that impacts "an experience of reading?" Or is Bloom simply electing to ignore thinkers other than himself... you know, imply that they're unimportant by denying their existence?
And while we're at it: What's yer take on Cassavetes?
Posted by: fritz at July 29, 2003 12:42 PM | Permalink to CommentI like what he's saying. Of course, I am both arrogant and semi-learned.
Posted by: jm at July 29, 2003 2:40 PM | Permalink to Commentthe professor enjoys the privelege required to name a split between "criticism" and "theory" (and to do so with such metaphysical abandon). i imagine that his experience as the sterling professor of humanities at yale orders a pretty solid sense of self...
you know, i put this post up without any edit, because i'm really ambivalent about it. to some extent, i share bloom's enthusiasm for both "self" and "experience," otherwise, i'd be writing the wrong dissertation. besides, we've seen what happens when critical theory, and film theory, and marxian theory, and feminist theory, and postcolonial theory, become more like a bad mix of crutch and blinders than an episteme.
however, you're right, fritz, all this railing against french theory comes off as too-easily purchased faith in the fact that hb's explanation of Things is not theory, but "troot." i simply don't know how people get away with insisting that their code somehow transcends the blasphemy of theory; "Theory" becomes a straw man, the silly mental masturbation of a self-destructive class of misanthropes who forgot how to love books. meanwhile, experience becomes some sort of a priori source of meaning. besides, what's up with his invocation of moral certitude -- how, exactly, did all this become "evil"?
cassavetes? a director?
Posted by: dave at July 29, 2003 4:42 PM | Permalink to Commentmore later. but i did want to mention that the thing about cassavetes was a reference to a Le Tigre song. in it this actively feminist post-punk outfit "led" by Kathleen Hanna asks the question and poses possible responses that seem appropo to this discussion.
"We've talked about it in letters
And we've talked about it on the phone
But how you really feel about it
I don't really know
What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?
Misogynist? Genius?
What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?
Alcoholic? Messiah?
What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?
Genius? Misogynist? Alcoholic?
Genius? Misogynist? Messiah? Alcoholic?
What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?"
ah, dave, you know me too well. you have doubtlessly already arrived at the suggestion i'm about to make. but risking the redundant, it would seem that Hanna is suggesting, perhaps, that our reading of Cassavetes and our reading of his films are inextricably linked to each other as they are simultaneously linked to our own systems of value (moral and capital).
but, i know i'm not saying anything interesting or new. and i want to say that i admire your ability to boil this down to what's truly intersting... Bloom's gloomy proselytization.
Ah, nostalgia works hard on old folks and young folks alike. As evidenced by Bloom and JM respectively.
Posted by: fritz at July 29, 2003 8:02 PM | Permalink to Comment