I recently finished reading a fine book called Humanism Betrayed, by Graham Good, an English professor at UBC. Good dissects what he calls Theory (and what Harold Bloom would call “the School of Resentment), easily and convincingly exposing the many contradictions and flaws in the various critical approaches that compose Theory, and carries the critique into the realm of university administration, where it is no less effective. The book is short, but it is so well written that it does not need to be long.
I wanted to quote a short representative passage, but Good’s writing flows so well and his ideas are so tightly developed that cutting a soundbyte from the text is difficult (as it should be, since some of Good’s argument rests on the idea that the intellectual and critical soundbyte has pre-empted genuine critical understanding). So here is a rather long, but representative passage:
The idea of excellence, of rigorous selectivity, both in the students and in the works being studied, was essential to the liberal idea of culture as attained through effort and education. But now Theory’s concept of culture as what everyone already habitually does is levelling the asesthetic hierachy as as substitute for eliminating the social hierarchy. Since the 1970s, class differentials in most Western countries have increased, at least in terms of income, while aesthetic differentials have eroded through Theory’s reduction of aesthetic value to political interest. Once again, the pseudoradicalism of our era has focused on the sphere of representation, giving priority to changing images rather than to changing reality. Instead of the aesthetic hierarchy and social egalitarianism of postwar liberalism, we now have aesthetic egalitarianism and a new socioeconomic hierarchy.
Cultural egalitarianism is a basic assumption of Theory and cultural studies. As late as the 1950s, one use of the word “culture” was to denote “serious art,” which it is now necessary to call “high culture.” At that time, the phrase “popular culture” had a contradictory or paradoxical air, which it has since lost. Cultural studies have a proclivity for putting mass culture and high culture on the same level. Anthony Easthope and Kate McGowan, in the introduction to their Critical and Cultural Reader, state that “the opposition between teh canon and popular culture can no longer be upheld, not least because it would no be democratic to go on diparaging texts which the majority of people enjoy without having been specially taught to do so” (Easthope and McGowan 1992: 1-2). They thus neatly undermine the rationale for the formal academic study of popular culture.
Whad does need to be specially taught, however, is Theory, particularly the French variety, as Easthope and McGowan acknowledge at the end of their introduction: “Some of it is difficult to follow, partly because it is written in general theoretical terms but often because it argues for views whichare disturbingly unfamiliar. For this reason, as well as an ‘Introduction’ for each section, every text is given an outline summary at the end of the book” (3). Thus, the effort at overcoming difficulty and unfamiliarity, which used to be devoted to understanding and appreciating great literary classics, is now to be expended on Theory. Instead of criticism making difficult works easier to understand, we now have the prospect of Theory making easy works harder to understand. Theory itself, rather than literature, provides the problems for students. To use its jargon, Theory’s purpose is to “problematize” culture, not to make it accessible. High Theory has replaced high culture. (84-85)
