In order to show the breadth and growth of this project, I wish to begin my including two brief paragraphs from my initial proposal. It will allow me to revisit the birth of the project and give me a baseline to show how the project progressed:
"What is the overall scope of the project, and the question or problem it seeks to address? Include here a discussion of the methodology or approach you will use in carrying out this project, and the nature of the collaboration between you and your Faculty Mentor.
Sitting in classes, I will often hear competing interpretations of readings. I have seen this both help and hinder discussion. Because of this, I began to ponder the cause of these differences and this process has led me to ask a variety of questions, all centered around writing and reading. I wish to examine where competing interpretations of text come from and how they affect the reader’s understanding of a text. How much does the intended voice and message of the writer matter in the reader’s interpretation? Is there a fear of misunderstanding, and if so, how does this affect the processes of writing and reading? What does it mean to be a good reader? My methodology will be to first gather together a list of citations. I will search for pieces concerned with reader interpretation, author/reader relationship, and as Virginia Woolf asks, ”How Should One Read A Book”. I wish to pull from authors writing about literature as well as politics. I will then work through each piece, writing short critiques for each. I will send these critiques to Naeem Inayatullah and he will give me feedback. Once I familiarize myself with these theories and theorists, I intend to create a dialogue between them, and lastly will attempt to fit my research into my own educational experience by applying the theories of reading to non-theoretical texts.
What in your background/training has prepared you to carry out and succeed in this project? Be specific.
My three years at Ithaca College in both English and Politics classes have prepared and prompted me to pursue this project. Specifically, my seminar in Literary Criticism with Dan Breen introduced me to the "author/reader" dialogue. Throughout the course we read literary critics and writers who discussed their thoughts on authorship and by extension their thoughts on reading. In my final paper for Literary Criticism I used Roland Barthes Death of the Author, Sean Burke’s The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to create a dialogue around modern authorship and the consequences of mass produced texts. This project, while still rooted in the theories read and discussed in class, took on my own needs and desires as a student. I now am more confident in my interests and process and am ready to take on a larger and more self-motivated piece. Additionally, my classes with Naeem Inayatullah have challenged my understanding of what it means to be a good reader. Taking “Writing and Criticism” this semester will sharpen my writing and critical reading skills. This is not enough: I have a need to extend these discussions in this independent study, and it is for this reason that I am applying for Summer Scholars."
Between writing this proposal and beginning the project, my needs shifted and became stronger. Sitting in Writing and Criticism made me increasingly more concerned about offering good critique because the class asks you to engage not just with distanced academic material, but also with close, personal narrative. Participating in Writing and Criticism led me to crave "good critique" not just for myself as an academic but also for myself as a writer and as a person. Having this kind of space is like an addiction, and I began to wonder "what makes these kinds of critiques so strong?". This question is what led me to researching internal critique, a practice used by Hegel and Marx. The basic structure of internal critique might be explained like this: use the internal logic of the piece (piece of writing, piece of theory, etc.), to find the internal contradictions and tensions. This kind of critique is strong because it doesn't rely on ethics or morals might be inconsistent across different reader bases and time. In other words, internal critique doesn’t necessarily rely on my external judgements as a reader, and therefore a good internal critique can better hold up over time and space.
Before jumping fully into this project, I briefly outlined some of my assumptions.
Assumptions:
After familiarizing myself with the concept of immanent critique, I decided the best way to continue with the project was to familiarize with the practice of critique more generally. I decided to split the rest of the project into two parts: the first would be to examine how critique looks in the world of political theory, and the second, how critique looks in literature. I decided to tackle some of the early writings of Marx and then read work critiquing Marx. As a reader, I was trying to decipher what pieces of the author’s analyses and critiques were internal, and which pieces were external to determine the strengths and weaknesses. I then repeated the same method for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I chose this novel in particular for a few reasons. Firstly, it is constantly read and written about by both literary and political scholars, and secondly, its content is centered around colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism, providing some consistency from Marx’s writing to its narration.
I can use this both as part of the theoretical framework for validating internal critique as well as an example of what good reading of Marx looks like
Theoretical framework: what is immanent critique/what does it look like. Stahl lays out the negatives of external critique but is frustrated with the lack of urgency that he finds in both Hegelian and Marxian internal critique.
Buchwalter argues that while many criticize Marx for being too close to Hegelian dialectics in his internal criticisms, they are misreading what Hegelian dialectics and internal critique does. He attacks the notion that dialectics means to excuse existing behaviors or trends and in his conclusion, presses that Marx would be stronger if he even more closely used Hegel in his work.
First encounter with early Marx. He wants to connect sensuousness to essence. This is a critique of German philosophy.
This is the main meat I have for Marx. He begins with his criticism of German philosophy but quickly moves toward his theory of historical materialism (although not explicitly developed due to partial manuscripts). This is my basis for judging whether or not Marx’s critics are engaging in internal critique.
Nice criticism of Arendt’s reading of Marx, but primarily my source for finding what of Arendt’s to read.
Long ramblings critiquing Marx. Much of the analysis seems spot on connecting and separating Marx from the tradition of Western Political thought but her biggest and most damaging faults lie in her fear that Marx allows or encourages totalitarianism in a way that traditional Western Political thought doesn’t. But what if totalitarianism is totally in line with traditional western political thought? Potential bad reading? Maybe…
This piece is a response to the resistance to flow and shows the ways in which we can have engage in precise dialectical work: separating and merging the layers all at once using Hegel, Marx, Sufi stories, and autobiography.
I need to reexamine this piece, but it seems to suck me back into the tragic mode. Maybe we can never read perfectly, but we can try, fail, and try better as Naeem often says. All versions of internal critique seem to lack in some way, although they are still stronger than overtly external critique.
Carver breaks down why and how exploitation is necessary to capitalism through Marx’s theory of labor/labor value
This article details Marx’s shift in support/perspective on British colonization in India.
This is the main text for the literature section. The novel details the story of Marlow’s voyage into the heart of the Congo.
Some beautiful historical tracking for Heart of Darkness and Colonialism.
This text was supplementary and not directly related with the project but keeps reoccurring both with Marx’s view of colonialism and in heart of darkness.
This article is quite famously Achebe’s attack on the novel for its racism. It is possibly the clearest example of external critique that I can find.
Said’s article meets Achebe and Conrad halfway. Said has a crucial moment when he uncovers what is possibly the necessary internal tension in the novel, but falls short in that he underestimates the awareness of the narrative.
While my project has not come to a conclusion, this summer has allowed me to do the brunt of the research for a final paper. I have included a sub section in this portfolio under "Notes, Critiques, and Reflections" that contains a sample of the work I have done this year, but would also like to offer an outline of the future paper that will result from this project. This is subject to change, as I also wish to turn my work into a thesis project.
Introduction: Theoretical Framework and Introducing Immanent or Internal Critique
Political Theory: Marx and his readers
Literature: Conrad's Heart of Darkness
Conclusion: Is it impossible to do "good reading"?
Here I want to leave it a little open. I think now that I'm at the end of the summer, I have realized that the purpose of the research is less to offer an alternative, a universal example of what good reading looks like, and more to show the ways in which even some of the most famous and brilliant minds fail to produce strong critique. What we can do, is try to be more transparent about our processes. How do we come to our conclusions? What are our personal stakes in our arguments? Allowing onself to interrogate these processes might foster more of a need or love for strong critiques and good reading.
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