Editor's Turn

Jeff Cebulski

Rebuilding the Burnt Bridges of Postmodern Criticism

As an early 21st Century English instructor and fledgling reviewer, I am becoming more and more aware of what I consider to be the residue of 20th Century educational and literary approaches tainted by postmodernism

One tragic outcome of postmodern literary criticism that has affected both the teaching and reviewing of writing and literature is that the author’s ownership of context has been devalued, so that the writer’s world view becomes secondary to that of the reader’s. My students have been bombarded with such rhetoric, resulting in their incapability of desiring ownership of their own writing. They believe that even though they are doing the writing, the text really belongs to the teacher/reader; yet they are dumbfounded when the teacher doesn’t understand their points merely because they knew what they meant by what they wrote, so why shouldn’t the teacher/reader? The students have also lost interest in the context of other people’s writing, thinking that, since their own writing means only what the reader thinks it means, then they don’t need to try to figure out the writing of others.

Essentially, the nature of postmodern redaction has broken a crucial rhetorical bridge between writer and reader that affects both writing and reading, and anything related to these activities. That bridge is context, which used to be owned by the writer but now seems to be disfranchised in favor of whatever the reader wants to believe.

I am reading in-class essays typed by members of my Introduction to College English class. One student, thoroughly submerged into the sea of secondary script, writes: “College writing is different from high school writing in many different ways.” Besides the obvious redundancy, I see that the only way for this student to hope for a successful essay is to footstool the “many different” reasons. The thesis begs for this treatment. Another student, though, who has been trying to understand what we are calling the “cohesion” style of essay writing, opens her paper this way: “College English demands more from the writer than general high school writing does.” I have higher hopes for this essay. Now every paragraph should talk about something that College English “demands.” Each paragraph therefore belongs to the others, rather than being “different.” This student strikes me as one who will, some day, survive College English, because she seems to “own” the meaning of her paper—she has pointed out a truth that will be the basis of her writing. The other student has become the Emersonian adult who “cannot see” the nature of the subject and therefore cannot possess it nor communicate it.

Not only does postmodern rhetorical residue affect students’ writing, but also their reading. Now when I attempt to explain just what an author was expressing within the time frame of the writing, at least three students will sit there, disengaged, because in their view the meaning of a piece of writing exists only in the eye of the beholder; and, since they have determined that, in this work, there is nothing to find, they have decided not to try. Their line of thinking is this: while we do not know what Mr. Writer was expressing, it does not matter, because we create the meaning, not the author, so why would you try to tell us what he said? And if we don’t want to learn anything, isn’t that within our power as well?

And then you should read their poetry. One young lady who wants to be a writer was pleased with her use of “of,” even though it neither was connected to an object nor was at the end of a line as a dangling preposition. She just liked the way it sounded. I, the reader and coach, wanted it to mean or even suggest something, and her absurd diction wasn’t helping me; it had burned a crucial rhetorical bridge between us.

Yet, she did “own” that poem, and, as both an educator and a reviewer, the quandary of ownership hovers over my every attempt to interpret. But I read in a postmodern literary world, so why should I be so haunted? I suspect I am because, in the depths of my hermeneutic being, I believe that the best-written art is imbued with context (be it personal or historical or literary) and that it is my responsibility to attempt to find it. Whatever truth exists for me to discover is rooted in the mind of the writer who owns that context. And it is not a sin to presume that a writer has, indeed, something to say.

“Truth”: A sign of my devout disavowal of Things Postmodern; my lack of recognition of Things That Exist For Mere Entertainment or Self Definition, where Truth is both relative and irrelevant.

But, without establishing or interpreting some sense of rhetorical purpose, why teach or criticize at all? If we are not looking for those writers who combine context and language in a way that transcends common discourse and understanding, then why should we bother? Further, why should I teach students how to write well? And why should I ask my literature students to find the “meat” of Emerson's literary lobster?

I refer to a favorite classroom exercise. I remember a young sophomore who has just parsed 14 sentences (or pieces of sentences) from 12 paragraphs culled from the writing of one Ralph Waldo Emerson. The assignment was to “pull meat from the lobster,” so to speak, then put the “meat” into a pile (paragraph)—then “eat.” The idea is that, from the great American bard’s work, one could pull most any sentence out of its position and combine it with others in the same way because, for Emerson, context with its appropriate metaphors is the glue of his prose, just like every part of a lobster will smell like…uh…lobster. The young man, upon reading his “pile,” seems impressed with what appears to be a fairly unified tract on the relationship of enlightened man to enlightening Nature. Emerson’s truth has shown upon him. He is now ready to paraphrase it and subsequently create his own Emersonian treatise, taking one person’s truth and creating his own.

If contextual ownership is an important consideration in reading and writing, it seems fair to believe it ought to be an important element in criticism. It seems to me that the first important issue for the critic is to determine the writer’s chosen context of what he or she is reviewing. Sometimes that is simple enough, especially when the writer engages in genre. Yet, even then, the writer can be dealing with deeper issues that transcend the immediate context, and a critic who dismisses or misses such a possibility won’t present a fair criticism.

I was confronted with my own possible miscue as I read stories from Adam Haslett’s You Are Not a Stranger Here. Having entered into my reading with common curiosity muted slightly by prejudice, I began to be bothered by one story about a convoluted sadomasochistic relationship between two high school males. The tale, placed among a collection that were mundane, even pastoral, in comparison, boarded on the sensational, especially with some of its grisly description of violently sexual ritual. It was only when I began to think about the collection as a whole that I was able to appreciate not only the bigger picture of grief that fueled the plot but also the integrity of context that a gay man would bring to such tales. It would have been silly for me to attempt to invent a new context just to create a rhetorical comfort zone.

I realize some may state that the author’s world view should not matter in the adjudication of literary significance, but I cannot agree; the writer should own something that a critic or reader needs to discover, that brings Emersonian child-like curiosity to the work. Gifted writers reward such curiosity and give critics something to find and reveal—the “meat” of discourse, gathered and chewed upon, where one part exudes not only the same rhetorical odor but also nutrients that feed the mind and soul from where a new generation of thought emerges.