Saturday, April 9, 2016

Postcolonial (and all) criticism is like trying to see yourself in Portal...[core post 4]

For conceptual reference: Portal is weird.

Something I found myself visiting and revisiting continually throughout every one of this week’s readings is the problem of the critic. The position of the critic is a fundamentally destructive (and deconstructive) one. To acknowledge the limitations implicit in one’s own critical position is to imagine (and assume) a grander epistemological position above oneself; this paradoxically requires the same kind of claim to omnipotence the critic initially tried to avoid in acknowledging her position. Put more simply, to know one is not qualified to speak definitively on a subject due to one’s own cultural upbringing and blindnesses is to claim a kind of broader understanding beyond those very blindnesses that makes them visible to oneself. It is the basic problem of trying to look outside of one’s own vision to understand (and ideally critique) the limits of one’s perceptions. The paradox of the critic is an unsolvable one, but it seems wise to continually address it despite (because of) that.


The paradox of the critic becomes especially evident in the context of globalization and postcolonial theories, which persuasively argue the necessity of making power structures visible as possible. As Shanti Kumar further argues, this should include the global power structures of academic study itself. To avoid a kind of “Western-centric” scholarly imperialism (akin to the very real “media imperialism” Michael Curtain so unconvincingly tries to minimize) seems ideal, but is ultimately futile, for not only has this imperialism already come to pass long ago, but our recognition of that fact is complicated by every academic’s position as critic--and the inherent self-reflexive blindness of that position. No one can critique beyond their line of sight, and no one possesses “global” vision. Including myself, which is why I can’t really say what I just said. Impossible irony, here.


Though there is no way out of this circular logic, I will arbitrarily assert that it remains good practice to try. I appreciate Kumar’s discussion of her critical position on page 148: “My critique of the problematic of global convergence in television and television studies…emerges from my understanding of how a particular kind of discipline essentially shapes one’s self and informs representations of others in one’s own discourse.” Though helpful, such full-disclosure efforts are doomed from the start in a sense. The goal of the critic is perhaps to see beyond the personal, but the instrument of criticism—perspective, language, thought, whatever you want to call this rather mysterious thing--is itself based entirely on the personal. The personal is unavoidable, and in a way all criticism is compromised to begin with. I don’t mean to argue this is a bad thing, or that criticism is useless, but I think it’s important to notice.

4 comments:

  1. I struggled with Kumar's articleas well. I don't know that we've read in this class before an article as entirely based in negation. Kumar's points about the complications and assumptions inherent in Global Television Studies all seem valid, but his conclusion that "global television studies is at once necessary and impossible" (151) seems to be letting both him and that mode of study off the hook. How do we address this contradiction proactively? How do we avoid or build new methodologies upon it?
    To follow your Portal reference: it looks like the Cake (and Global Television Studies) is a Lie.

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    1. This conundrum puts us all in a real Salieri from Amadeus/Stellan Skarsgard from Good Will Hunting sorta situation. That is to say, we are all fairly learned and mindful scholars of our field, yet this knowledge and mindfulness only makes us more aware of all the ways in which we are insufficiently handling the complexity of our chosen subjects.

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  2. Danielle – I appreciate your articulation of the paradox of the critic, especially this claim: “to know one is not qualified to speak definitively on a subject due to one’s own cultural upbringing and blindnesses is to claim a kind of broader understanding beyond those very blindnesses that makes them visible to oneself.” It’s an eloquent summary of what I see as a troublingly paranoid approach in some scholarly work. I wonder (to tangentially build off of Anne’s question about how to build new methodologies in light of the paradox) if, in the end, this scholarly self-consciousness/self-surveillance does much service to the discipline. Are methodologies proactively created and then adhered to, or are they retroactively given a name after a series of works coalesce into an observable pattern?

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    1. Okay Zeke, I've thought an awful lot about your response. While I can't agree ultimately that this trend is troubling or paranoid (I see it as the logical conclusion of a particular line of inquiry that includes the self-as-critic; thus, more unavoidable than troubling per se), I appreciate your description of it as "self-surveillance". Self-surveillance does sound like quite a contemporary, neoliberal phenomenon, but I believe this is a much older problem--at least as old as deconstruction itself. Given that criticism seems to have had no trouble continuing to exist despite this paradox (again, the acknowledgement of which has been around since at least the 1970s), I'm doubtful that any new methodologies even need to be created, or that this paradox is even a "problem" that needs to be solved. Many poststructuralist paradoxes seems to work out this way--naming and recognizing the thing is enough, because there's really not much else one *can* do. Poststructuralist critique undermines itself, yet it keep going anyway, no action needed.

      You may be right that this line of inquiry doesn't benefit scholarship, but I don't see evidence that it's hurting it, either.

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