Literary theory and criticism

Marxist:

A type of literary criticism based on the writings of German philosopher Karl Marx. In its simplest form, Marxist criticism attempts to show the relationship between literature and the social—mainly economic—conditions under which it was produced. Originally, Marxist critics focused on literary representations of workers and working classes. For later Marxists, however, literature became a document of a kind of knowledge and a record of the historical conditions that produced that knowledge. Like cultural criticism, Marxist literary criticism offers critiques of the “canon” and focuses on the ways in which culture and power intersect; for a Marxist critic, literature both reproduces existing power relations and offers a space where they can be contested and redefined. Important 20th-century Marxist literary critics include Georg Lucáks, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Terry Eagleton, Raymond Williams, and Frederic Jameson.

           

Much of what is wrong with the world today is explicable in Marxist terms, i.e., as consequences of allowing profit motivation to determine production and distribution, which is what happens when a few capitalists own all the capital The inevitable result is production of the most profitable things, not the most needed things. In a world where there is enormous inequality this means investment goes into producing consumer goods and luxuries for people in rich countries, while the needs of billions of people are more or less ignored. It means the rich few take most of the available resources because they can pay more for them  it means that much Third World productive capacity, especially land, goes into producing crops for export to rich countries when it should be producing food for hungry people.

Similarly, much that is wrong in the richest countries is explicable in these same terms. We have great need for the production of many goods, such as cheap housing, but these things are not produced while there is excessive production of many luxuries and trivial items -- because this is what maximizes return on private capital.

Unemployment and automation are problems in this economy simply because capital is privately owned. If a better machine is invented the capitalist who owns the factory receives all the benefit, while the workers lose their jobs. So of course there is a problem. In a socialist economy the machine could be adopted without these effects. All would share in more free time or cheaper goods. Similarly the only way a capitalist society can solve the unemployment problem is to find more things for displaced workers to produce, when we already produce much more than we need.

These phenomena are well described by the Marxist term "contradictions". Capitalist society inevitably involves huge contradictions because the forces of production clash with the relations of production. A good example is the fact that the world could easily feed all people yet hundreds of millions are hungry while 1/3 of the world's grain production is fed to animals in rich countries. We have the productive capacity to solve this problem but this is not done because it is not in the interests of those who control capital. They make more money selling the grain for feedlot beef production. In other words, if you allow society's capital to be privately owned then you will inevitably run into this sort of contradiction because often what s most profitable for capitalists to invest in is not what most needs doing. An alternative economy might not necessarily eliminate all free enterprise or private capital, but it would involve control and monitoring of private enterprise to ensure that most investment goes where it is most needed.

       

Eco-criticism:

Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a gender-conscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies.

Ecocritics and theorists ask questions like the following: How is nature represented in this sonnet? What role does the physical setting play in the plot of this novel? Are the values expressed in this play consistent with ecological wisdom? How do our metaphors of the land influence the way we treat it? How can we characterize nature writing as a genre? In addition to race, class, and gender, should place become a new critical category? Do men write about nature differently than women do? In what ways has literacy itself affected humankind's relationship to the natural world? How has the concept of wilderness changed over time? In what ways and to what effect is the environmental crisis seeping into contemporary literature and popular culture? What view of nature informs U.S. government reports, and what rhetoric enforces this view? What bearing might the science of ecology have on literary studies? How is science itself open to literary analysis? What cross-fertilization is possible between literary studies and environmental discourse in related disciplines such as history, philosophy, psychology, art history, and ethics?

Despite the broad scope of inquiry and disparate levels of sophistication, all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it. Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts language and literature. As a critical stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the nonhuman.

Ecocriticism can be further characterized by distinguishing it from other critical approaches. Literary theory, in general, examines the relations between writers, texts, and the world. In most literary theory "the world" is synonymous with society--the social sphere. Ecocriticism expands the notion of "the world" to include the entire ecosphere. If we agree with Barry Commoner's first law of ecology, that "Everything is connected to everything else," we must conclude that literature does not float above the material world in some aesthetic ether, but, rather, plays a part in an immensely complex global system, in which energy, matter, and ideas interact.

Most ecocritical work shares a common motivation: the troubling awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits, a time when the consequences of human actions are damaging the planet's basic life support systems. This awareness sparks a sincere desire to contribute to environmental restoration, not just in our spare time, but from within our capacity as professors of literature. Historian Donald Worster argues that humanities scholars have an important role to play:

We are facing a global crisis today, not because of how ecosystems function but rather because of how our ethical systems function. Getting through the crisis requires understanding our impact on nature as precisely as possible, but even more, it requires understanding those ethical systems and using that understanding to reform them. Historians, along with literary scholars, anthropologists, and philosophers, cannot do the reforming, of course, but they can help with the understanding. Literary scholars specialize in questions of value, meaning, tradition, point of view, and language, and it is in these areas that we are making a substantial contribution to environmental thinking.

In my view, an ecologically focused criticism is a worthy enterprise primarily because it directs our attention to matters about which we need to be thinking. Consciousness raising is its most important task. Ecocritics encourage others to think seriously about the relationship of humans to nature, about the ethical and aesthetic dilemmas posed by the environmental crisis, and about how language and literature transmit values with profound ecological implications.

Psychoanalytic criticism:

Dictionary definition:

a. The method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts, in order to free psychic energy for mature love and work.

b. The theory of personality developed by Freud that focuses on repression and unconscious forces and includes the concepts of infantile sexuality, resistance, transference, and division of the psyche into the id, ego, and superego.

c. Psychotherapy incorporating this method and theory.

Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche.

One interesting facet of this approach is that it validates the importance of literature, as it is built on a literary key for the decoding. Freud himself wrote, "The dream-thoughts which we first come across as we proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in which they are expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by our thoughts, but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes and metaphors, in images resembling those of poetic speech".

Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so forth within what may well be a disunified literary work. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded through principles such as "symbolism" "condensation”, and "displacement".

Despite the importance of the author here, psychoanalytic criticism is similar to New Criticism in not concerning itself with "what the author intended." But what the author never intended is, rep is sought. The unconscious material has been distorted by the censoring conscious mind.

Psychoanalytic critics will ask such questions as, "What is Hamlet's problem?"

The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud spent much of his life exploring the workings of the unconscious. Freud's work has influenced society in ways which we take for granted. When we speak of Freudian slips or look for hidden causes behind irrational behavior, we are using aspects of Freudian analysis. Many literary critics have also adopted Freud's various theories and methods.

Diaspora:

            Definitions of Diaspora – dispersion, homeland orientation, boundary maintenance. This is perhaps too succinct for my purpose as it lacks the crucial aspect of ongoing links in between members of the Diaspora in different locations and also with the homeland. four criteria, which a potential diaspora needs to satisfy in order to be placed within the diaspora circle.

.           Movement from an original homeland to more than one country, either through dispersal or expansion in search of improved livelihoods;

.           A collective myth of an ideal ancestral home;

.           A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time, based on a shared history, culture and religion; and

.           A sustained network of social relationships with members of the group living in different countries of settlement.summarised as:

1.         Dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically;

2.         Alternatively, the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions;

3.         A collective memory and myth about the homeland;

4.         An idealization of the supposed ancestral home;

5.         A return movement or at least a continuing connection;

6.         A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time;

7.         A troubled relationship with host societies;

8.         A sense of co‐responsibility with co‐ethnic members in other countries; and

9.         The possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in tolerant host societies.

         

            If the term Diaspora is to have any analytical value and also retain its descriptive power, it needs to be reserved for particular people living in distinctive relationships with each other and a homeland. Not all migrants become Diasporas and not all Diasporas can be considered as migrants’ .Likewise, not all those who engage in transnational practices are necessarily Diasporas; they may simply be operating as networks of people with limited relationships to any place. Nyberg‐Sorenson suggests that study of transnational and Diaspora can be distinguished by their relationship to place:

Migrants’ transnational practices have been understood to dissolve fixed assumptions about identity, place and community, whereas Diasporas’ identity‐making has been understood to evolve around attempts to ‘fix’ and closely knit identity and community.