It has been 10 years since I finished my master’s degree at UNCG. Since then, I have been teaching community college composition, literature, and creative writing. I have made it a habit to pitch to my community college students that they minor in English. Many of my students tell me, “Your English class is my favorite class,” or, “If being an English major got me into a higher paying career, I would become an English teacher.” Given that I typically have 50 online students and 50 seated students per semester, I regularly have the opportunity to persuade my community college students to consider studying literature at the university level.

How do I communicate what it is like to study literature at the university level? Last year I wrote a blog entry about what being a literature major added to my life, the voids that it filled in my life. I share this blog entry with my class in hopes that my community college students will go to the university and continue taking literature classes. I want to give my students a realistic picture of the advantages and disadvantages of becoming an English major considering their parents will likely think this is the path to becoming a barista at the local coffee shop.

Yet there is one downside to studying literature has been bouncing around in my head for years, though. Something was off about majoring in literature at UNCW and getting my masters at UNCG. I’ve not yet mentioned this problem to students, because I’ve had a hard time articulating clearly what that problem is. It wasn’t until I recently read Rita Felski’s book “The Limits of Critique” that I was able to identify what I think is off about literature departments today.

The downside is this: if you are considering becoming a literature major be aware of the dominant influence of critical theory over literary studies today. Simply put, being a critic is more widely accepted than being a literary enthusiast or lover. In this post, I address how this critical trend in literary studies diminished my education and continues to diminish the study of literature at the college level.

I’m not suggesting that we cut out critical theory classes or quit reading literary criticism, since it offers a way for students to consider how to interpret literature and to see intersections between philosophy, sociology, psychology, and literature. Yet, when I was in graduate school, I sometimes wondered if we should rename the “master’s in literature” a “master’s in literature and critical theory.” I often felt that to be taken seriously in a literature department, I needed to be an expert on cultural theorists who were in my critical theory textbook. Understanding how to use Michel Foucault to interpret Frankenstein was more important than understanding Mary Shelley’s novel.

When I was in graduate school, if you wanted to sound smart in a classroom discussion, all you’d have to do was find a flaw in the construction of the story, or how the writer has made a false cultural assumption, and argue that this classic piece of literature isn’t living up to its potential.

Here’s how this would go. I would read an entire novel in 7 days. I would enter a classroom full of master’s and PhD students. I would take a lot of notes, but I would be very intentional about what kind of comments I would make when the professor opened up the floor for discussion. I knew I shouldn't sound like I was too excited about what we read; rather, I should make cool-headed critiques of the author’s point of view.

University of Virginia professor Rita Felski describes this classroom vibe like this:

“There is, after all, something perplexing about the ease with which a certain style of reading has settled into the default option. Why is it that critics are so quick off the mark to interrogate, unmask, expose, subvert, unravel, demystify, destabilize, take issue, and take umbrage? What sustains their assurance that a text is withholding something of vital importance, that their task is to ferret out what lies concealed in its recesses and margins? Why is critique so frequently feted as the most serious and scrupulous form of thought? What intellectual and imaginative alternatives does it overshadow, obscure or overrule? And what are the costs of such ubiquitous criticality?”

She uses the words interrogate, expose, subvert, demystify, destabilize, and unravel intentionally. These words are your bread and butter if you want to make an A on a university literature essay today, especially at the graduate level. The impulse is to interrogate the poem, novel, short story, article or speech, searching for a flaw. Bonus points if you’re the first to point out the flaw in the text. To treat literature in this way has become the dominant stance across the field which clearly aims to turn undergraduates into amateur literary critics. (How many undergrads want to become literary critics?)

Let me give an example. Let’s imagine that we are reading Orwell’s novel 1984 and we have decided that it does not apply to American society in 2022. Whoever can most quickly articulate why Orwell’s novel fails to apply to American culture in the 21st century gets to wear the crown of “smartest literature person.” Our thesis statement for our essay should sound something like this: “Orwell’s 1984 paints a picture that absolute freedom is the ultimate goal for a society to achieve, yet his novel fails to consider….”

Felski calls this “ubiquitous criticality,” where we have successfully poked holes in the novel. This is good, to a certain degree. Yet, Felski goes on to say that we can end up training students to take on a reading disposition of “guardedness rather than openness, aggression rather than submission, irony rather than reverence, exposure rather than tact.” This posture toward literature does train students to be critical thinkers; however, it also trains them to be cynical thinkers.

The trend toward cynical thinking can be attributed to the fact that the emphasis on critique has overruled other forms of “intellectual and artistic thinking,” such as the habit of creating space for students to explain what they appreciate or admire about the text.

If our first impulse is to interrogate Orwell’s 1984, we will fail to develop the ability to praise what is truly strong about the novel. Ubiquitous criticism prevents us from asking the question “What can we glean from Orwell’s dystopia?” Orwell’s novel is an excellent warning against totalitarian governments. Taking a critical view of Orwell’s novel is part of what I want to teach my students; that said, I also want them to be able to admit that few of us could ever construct a dystopian novel like Orwell’s. As teachers, we have the opportunity to set the mood to both be critical but also be constructive in what we find inspiring, challenging and incredible about Orwell’s novel in contemporary America. If a student said “I loved what Orwell said on page 123 about freedom,” a good professor understands how to push that student to explicitly identify what they find inspiring about freedom. If critical thinking does not include honest identification of what is good and worthy of praise then it becomes pessimistic and cold.

Offering Students a Style of Thinking That May Lead to Disillusionment

But what about the idea that American masses are often simple-minded and participate in groupthink? Isn’t it better to train students to be suspicious readers in an age when many Americans lack critical thinking skills and the ability to find the root cause of cultural problems? If Americans lack critical thinking skills, aren’t literature departments doing our culture a favor by helping students to become better debunkers?

Well, maybe not. Felski argues that most Americans are bent towards cynical thinking already. She argues here that cynicism and disillusionment are already part of the 21st century cultural mood:

“Thanks to this climate of ‘chic bitterness,’ Peter Sloterdijk argues, the intellectual’s tactics of triumphant exposure have come to seem even more superfluous. The contrast on which this exposure relies—between mass credulity and the brave lone voice of intellectual skepticism—no longer carries much force. Irony and irreverence saturate TV dramas and talk shows, conspiracy theories spawn on the Internet; a nonchalant coolness and world-weariness sets the tone in fashion and music. What is the use of demystifying ideology when people no longer subscribe to coherent ideologies, when there is widespread disillusionment about the motives of politicians and public figures, when ‘everyone knows’ that hidden forces are at work making us think and behave in certain ways? An entrenched belief—indeed, a legitimizing of the status quo through disbelief—pervades contemporary culture, writes Jeffery Goldfarb; cynicism is a shared sensibility among the haves and the have nots.”

If “critical thinking skills” teach us to become more suspicious, then it is possible that literary studies are offering students a skill they may already have, even if it is underdeveloped. As Felski says above, what is the use of debunking ideologies when a large percentage of the American public is no longer interested in coherent ideologies? Teaching “critical thinking” alone could exacerbate our students’ disillusionment with the world, or sharpen their critical thinking skills to the point where they become obnoxious know-it-alls who pontificate when they return home for Thanksgiving break.

Could it be that this “widespread disillusionment” that Felski mentions is something literature departments could attempt to address? How can we promote critical thinking in our classroom discussions without fueling cynicism amongst students?

Philosophy professor Richard Rorty called this trend “knowingness” in his 1996 essay “The Inspirational Value of Great Works.” He feared literature departments would have the same fate as philosophy departments, which were failing to attract students because they were producing the kind of student that was busy “solving problems which no non-philosopher recognizes as problems: problems which hook up with nothing outside of the discipline.” Rorty also pointed out in the mid-90’s that philosophy departments seemed to attract professors with the debunker personality. If the only teacher that students experience is the debunker, then the students will suffer, Rorty explains:

“ . . .they will be short-changed if the only sort of teacher available is the knowing, debunking, nil admirari kind. We shall always need people in every discipline whose talents suit them for understanding rather than hope, for placing a text in a context rather than celebrating its originality, and for detecting nonsense rather than producing it. But the natural tendency of professionalization and academization is to favor a talent for analysis and problem-solving over imagination, to replace enthusiasm with dry sardonic wit.”

Rorty goes on to say that literature departments may produce knowledge, but they may fail to produce hope. Rorty wrote these words nearly 20 years before Felski wrote her book concerning the first impulse of literature students to critique rather than to hope.

The bad news is that professors and PHD students who are seeking full-time literature positions can sometimes put knowledge of critical theory and recently published articles above classic literary texts. As Rorty says above, professionalization and securing a full-time position can ruin the integrity of literature departments. This is largely one of the causes for the mood of ubiquitous criticality that pervaded my experience as a literature major.

The Required Reading of Old Texts

Before I mention the good news, I want to share a story. My sophomore year of college, I took an argument writing class at UNCW. The reading was centered around classic argument essays like “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, an essay by Malcolm X, and “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau. On the day we were assigned to read Thoreau’s essay, I had circled half of the essay. Thoreau’s nonconformist proposals for effecting societal change gave me hope. At 21 years old, I wanted to make a difference in the world, and here I read this man’s words who had clear nonconformist ideas about how to stand up against laws concerning slavery in 1840’s America. I could not wait for our classroom discussion. The margins of my textbook were filled with notes and connections I had made to American culture in 2005 (the year when I read this). I expected a lively discussion especially, since the professor had strong political opinions. I hoped that my fellow students were as excited as I was about what could happen if we all took Thoreau’s point of view in making a change.

But on that day of class, I was met with lethargy in the classroom. The other students were not as excited. I excitedly talked about how mind-blowing Thoreau’s essay was, and I was greeted with a kind of skeptical silence from the rest of the students, blank faces around the room. Did they not read the essay? Did they just show up for class to fulfill attendance? The apathetic response I received from the class could have been the default response from classmates who failed to do the required reading. I’m not sure. But I was disappointed with the lack of response not only from my fellow students, but also from the professor. The next week an outspoken student nicknamed me “Thoreau” for my enthusiasm in class that day, which stuck for the semester. But I was unsure as to why other students were so guarded and seemed somewhat confused by my impassioned comments about required reading.

Here's the good news. Even if the mood of classrooms teaches students to interrogate a text rather than enjoy it, professors who require students to read classic texts will find hope in what they read as I did by Thoreau’s essay and later that semester by reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” So even if the classroom discussion mood is quick to critique, mistrustful of excitement, and fearful of showing too much enthusiasm, we can be sure that reading some of the classic texts will stick with students long-term. Despite my mediocre experiences in the literature classroom, I teach King and Thoreau to my students 17 years after I first read them. If literature professors require students to read the classics, we can gain hope from those in the past despite the current cynical, debunker mood that is prevalent in literature departments today.

If critique is the dominant mode of discussion modeled in the classroom, then we are on the path to training a generation of literary critics. Yet as we’ve seen in Felski and Rorty’s reflections, teaching students critique as the highest form of thinking can lead to “knowingness,” detachment and disillusionment. Do we need that? Not really. We need literature professors who encourage students to be devoted to reading fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—rather than just literary theory. We need the professor who loves Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and Nicole Krauss, not the one who just wants you to apply the theories of Judith Butler. We need the professor who wants the writings of David Foster Wallace to make a deep impression on you, rather than the one who wants you to spend hours trying to understand Jacques Derrida. The professor who openly loves the authors they are teaching is the true enthusiast that Rorty says we need. We need professors who create a discussion space to energetically identify what is worth of awe in literature.