Moments of Permanence - A curious parallel

From: tevriel.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 02:08 am (UTC) (Link)

Not least, because to my knowledge none of these authors or editors have credentials in literary criticism. If you are trying to view this discussion in terms of literary criticism, their arguments are possibly even worse. Arguing authorial intent based on things which are not only outside the individual texts, but outside the entire canon of their published work (reference to blogging histories, or worse, testimonials about character from people who "know them in real life"), is absolutely rubbish literary criticism. Authorial intent is widely agreed to be meaningless in any case; if the author makes a claim about the meaning of the text which is not provable solely by the content of the text, the author is flailing wildly at justifications for poor communication.

So, no. They shouldn't feel entitled to more points and credence in discussion of literary criticism by virtue of their credentials because their "credentials" are not relevant credentials, and even if they were, literary criticism is an area in which credentials alone will not carry you through poor arguments.

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From: daf9.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 02:56 am (UTC) (Link)

So if the disagreement was with their literary criticism, why didn't commenters call them on that rather than accusing them of racist remarks, which is what happened.

In any case, I'm not certain that the author or her defenders made any claim about the text that wasn't provable solely by the content of the text - I didn't see that the discussion ever got to that point.

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From: raincitygirl.livejournal.com Date: March 22nd, 2009 03:07 am (UTC) (Link)

So if the disagreement was with their literary criticism, why didn't commenters call them on that rather than accusing them of racist remarks, which is what happened.

Um, possibly because the people making those accusations believed they had made racist assumptions and remarks in the course of their literary criticism?

Look, it's a "both / and" thing, as far as I can see. If someone insults me on two different levels (one insulting my understanding of Text A, and one insulting me as a person), I'm probably going to address the person on the level which I find more serious. Not to mention the fact that the literary criticism stuff is intertwined with the racial stereotyping, and has been since the get-go. They can't just be separated out nice and neatly, with "intellectually problematic" in one column and "racially problematic" in another.

Not to mention the fact that this was never an academically rigorous discussion, as tevriel notes in another thread. Any English Lit professor reading the early discussions would have kittens at the idea that this was an academic argument being conducted along academic lines.

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