The Death of the Author and the End of Empathy - Literature can now only be read through a victim's lens

[Rob_Zepp]

Political correction has run amok.  In the endless pursuit of being a victim, the next causality has become literature.

 

The Death of the Author

 

FREE SPEECH, LITERATURE

Published on August 2, 2018 

 comments 97

The Death of the Author and the End of Empathy

written by Heather Mac Donald

In 2015, President Obama described the Nation as “more than a magazine—it’s a crucible of ideas.” If it was ever entitled to this descriptor, it isn’t anymore. Academic identity politics may be importing an obsession with phantom victimhood into the business world and the media, but The Nation’s editors are now taking aim at language itself, reducing the complexity of human communication to a primitive understanding of words.

In late July, the magazine’s poetry editors issued a groveling apology for a poem they had published earlier that month. “How-To,” by Anders Carlson-Wee, was an ironic critique of social hierarchies, couched as a manual for successful panhandling: “If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,/say you’re pregnant,” the poem opened. It went on to suggest begging gambits for other presumed outsider groups, including the handicapped: “If you’re crippled don’t/flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough/Christians to notice.” The poem, in its entirety, reads as follows:

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,
say you’re pregnant—nobody gonna lower
themselves to listen for the kick. People
passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee
funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely
to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know
you is. What they don’t know is what opens
a wallet, what stops em from counting
what they drop. If you’re young say younger.
Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t
flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough
Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,
say you sin. It’s about who they believe
they is. You hardly even there.

The word ‘crippled’ and Carlson-Wee’s use of black street dialect set off reader hysteria. Editors Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith penitently announced that the poem contained “disparaging and ableist language that has given offense and caused harm to members of several communities.” (This maudlin invocation of ‘harm’ in response to speech is the fastest growing academic export into the non-academic world.) “We made a serious mistake [and] are sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem,” Burt and Giménez Smith continued. They had originally read the poem, they said, as a “profane, over-the-top attack on the ways in which members of many groups are asked, or required, to perform the work of marginalization.” No more, however: “We can no longer read the poem that way.”

Anders Carlson-Wee (Pic: Twitter)

Leaving aside their mannered High Theory rhetoric, Burt and Giménez Smith’s original reading was accurate. How do they read “How-To” now and what textual or extra textual evidence persuaded them to change their minds? They do not say. (They did not respond to a request for clarification.) There is zero chance, however, that Carlson-Wee intended “How-To” as an attack on the handicapped or any other official victim group. Its point of view, target audience, and Carlson-Wee’s own background as an outlaw skater who used to hang out with the homeless all refute such a possibility. Yet these poetry editors, who of all people should understand irony, now reject the role of authorial intention in creating meaning in favor of a naive view of language, whereby a word itself, regardless of how it is being used, has the magical power to inflict harm.

Their new reading is both literarily and linguistically illiterate. The meaning of language arises in a particular context and with reference to authorial intention, implicit or explicit. In the victim universe, however, dare to use a forbidden word, no matter how bracketed by irony, and the mob now has the power to declare you a witch or heretic, with shunning to follow. Nuance and ambiguity are prohibited. Authors are reduced to choosing from the official list of approved words and avoiding taboo items. Only the victims and the gatekeepers of victim culture, whose ideological purity is beyond reproach, are allowed irony. ‘Crip studies’ is a recent sprout in the fertile fields of victim studies, referring not to the sociology of gangs, but rather to the allegedly artificial construction of disability. Its practitioners may use ‘cripple;’ uncertified white male poets may not.

Abandoned by his editors, Carlson-Wee issued his own fawning mea culpa on Twitter, announcing that he was “reevaluating what it means to make art . . . from a place of privilege.”

View image on Twitter

Anders Carlson-Wee@AndersWeePoet

 

 

 

9:28 AM - Jul 24, 2018

•  
  99
•  
  444 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

 

 

 

With blood now in the water, the mob was not about to be placated. The anti-ableism group, Disabled & Deaf Uprising, tweeted in response that the poem was also “problematic in regards to HIV+ status” and lambasted Carlson-Wee’s use of “eye-opening” in his apology tweet. The list of forbidden phrases grows by the minute.

Anders Carlson-Wee@AndersWeePoet

 · 24 Jul

 

pic.twitter.com/GyRhf0LJ02

Disabled & Deaf Uprising@DisDeafUprising

 

your poem is also ableist & problematic in regards to HIV+ status & so there is more to say than just "oops, sorry I was racist." the harm you caused is multi-faceted.

& we note your use of "eye-opening," we note ableism inherent in (your) language.

7:42 PM - Jul 25, 2018

•  
  29
•  
  208 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

 

 

 

The elaborate rituals around the ‘n-word’ evince the same double standard regarding authorial intention. According to existing conventions, whites may never use the full word without elision, even if they are doing so not to refer to anyone but as reported speech. Its mere presence in the mouth of a white person launches a nuclear bomb against blacks; the transgressor will be punished accordingly, as the founder of Papa John’s pizza discovered after using the full word as an embedded quote from chicken impresario Colonel Sanders. Blacks, however, can use the word in toto to refer to actual people, because their intentions matter and it is assumed that blacks are incapable of racist intent. Black Twitter users used the n-word 6.2 million times in one month, according to a 2015 study; it is ubiquitous in urban vernacular and in rap music, with black entertainers like Jay Z, Beyoncé, and Kanye West tossing it off with impunity.

It was a breakthrough in philosophy, starting with Plato, to recognize the conventional nature of language—that a linguistic sign is not the same thing as the signified. That understanding opened the way for the sophisticated study of language and interpretation, known as hermeneutics. A return to a belief in word magic, however, whereby words directly impinge on their referents, radically limits human expression and imagination.

As for the ignorant conceit of ‘cultural appropriation,’ it is equally limiting and equally primitive. Roxane Gay, a frequent contributor to the New York Times’s editorial pages, tweeted: “Don’t use AAVE [African-American Vernacular English]. Don’t even try it. … Know your lane.” The anti-cultural appropriation crusade views racial and sexual identity as something that can be stolen, if a writer from an allegedly privileged group has not been granted ‘permission’ (from whom is never clear) to imagine the life of someone from an official victim group. Publishers are at present rejecting manuscripts of novels and stories because their authors entered into the forbidden territory of victim identity.

Anyone who believes, however, that human beings are incapable of grasping the experience of an allegedly oppressed Other has never read literature, with its stunning insights into, say, female psychology (see, inter alia, The Slaves of Solitude, by Patrick Hamilton) and the lash of stigma (see Esther Waters, by George Moore). Harriet Beecher Stowe, Twain, Thackeray, and countless other authors who have expanded the radius of human sympathy could not be published today. Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, and William Faulkner, among others, used dialects in their novels; who is to say whose languages are off limits? Here, again, the rules are asymmetrical. Members of official victim groups are encouraged to expound on and portray the lived experience of ‘white privilege’ and ‘toxic masculinity.’

Fittingly, the “How-To” saga circled back at the end to its academic origins. Burt and Giménez Smith concluded their retraction in a paroxysm of self-abasement modelled on the fulsome utterances of contrition that college presidents and deans have perfected when confronted with a phony race crisis: “we are grateful for the insightful critiques we have heard, but we know that the onus of change is on us, and we take that responsibility seriously. In the end, this decision means that we need to step back and look at not only our editing process, but at ourselves as editors.” The Cultural Revolution was hardly more efficient in its shaming rituals.

This confession of guilt was insufficient, however. An English professor at California State University, Fresno, demanded that all white editors everywhere resign. It’s time for white editors to “STEP DOWN and hand over the positions of power,” wrote Randa Jarrar on Twitter. “We don’t have to wait for them to &^@# up. The fact that they hold these positions is &^@# up enough.” Never mind that one of the Nation editors was Hispanic; apparently she had no agency. (Jarrar had previously garnered negative publicity in April for gloating over the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush.)

White editors will demur from Jarra’s demand that they step down, of course. Instead, they will keep their positions of authority and compensate for their whiteness with ever more exacting tests of who gets to say what. Such barriers around the human imagination spell the end of literature and the end of empathy.

 

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Diversity Delusion, forthcoming in September. You can follow her on Twitter @HMDatMI

 

 

 

[nuckin_futz]

[MikeyBoy44]

What's worse is how easily this dude bowed down. Stop apologizing. Every apology only enables this political corrective bullcrap. Tell them to get bent and find a better hobby. 

[Rob_Zepp]

23 minutes ago, nuckin_futz said:

Willie's works will soon be forbidden as well one would think.   Thomas Hardy.    The list will be long.    

 

Sad times brought to you by the perpetually offended.

[xereau]

 

Yep, its long.  It will also open your eyes as to what your kids are being taught in school, and who is funding it.

[Solinar]

Ah, soon we'll be unable to say certain words, and you can't be negative towards any popular movement.  I just can't wait for the imprisoning!  You spoke out against our Supreme Leader and hurt his/her/it's feelings!

[Nuxfanabroad]

Hmm..sounds remarkably close to Winston Smith's daily task in 1984.

 

This PC-libt*rd culture/lingo is so tiresome. I'd imagine if one can't be bothered keeping up, trouble will result, sooner or later.

[nuckin_futz]

16 minutes ago, xereau said:

 

Yep, its long.  It will also open your eyes as to what your kids are being taught in school, and who is funding it.

 

What your children learn in school should only be part of their education. It is also up to parents to educate their kids.

 

Lazy, dumb parents breed lazy, dumb kids. It's the circle of life.

[Mr.DirtyDangles]

The pot will boil over soon then the true damage will be seen.  The last decade of human programming has set society on a path that is destined for a fiery end.  The soft pliable weak minds of the now have no mental fortitude, they will be savagely destroyed by archaic outdated morally damaged yuppies who have been sipping on the toxic kool aid since the 90's

 

There are no actual right ideas or actions on either side. Just vile hate and ignorance.

[JM_]

Lots of things to unpack on this one for sure.

 

I dislike the censoring of any literature, if you do that then whats the point of having it at all? Its fine to criticize it too, thats fair free speech also, nothing wrong with the either. But to stop it or self-censor, yikes. 

 

But I think the reaction to whats going on can be equally over the top - the description of MacDonald's book e.g., seems really over the top to me, there's lots of room for diversity that has nothing to do with being a constantly triggered censor, it doesn't have to be  one or the other. Yes there are extremists on the left but its hardly the whole group or sum of things going on.

 

And it goes on from both sides of the spectrum. I don't see a lot of difference between Trumps "enemy of the people" shtick trying to control the media with triggered far left over-reactions - they're both forms of attempted censorship and both wrong. 

 

[48MPHSlapShot]

Hot take. Political correctness is the road to fascism.

[richado]

It's funny how their notion of 'tolerance' is becoming 'forcing people to act and speak differently'.

[JM_]

1 hour ago, 48MPHSlapShot said:

Hot take. Political correctness is the road to fascism.

Nah, you're free to ignore people that try to censor you. We're not there yet. 

[Isam]

3 hours ago, Solinar said:

Ah, soon we'll be unable to say certain words, and you can't be negative towards any popular movement.  I just can't wait for the imprisoning!  You spoke out against our Supreme Leader and hurt his/her/it's feelings!

You sir are a wordist. How dare you use it's

[48MPHSlapShot]

1 minute ago, Jimmy McGill said:

Nah, you're free to ignore people that try to censor you. We're not there yet. 

That's why I said "road to". We're free to ignore for the time being, but it becomes a different story when the offended tries to get the government involved to regulate speech. 

[Rob_Zepp]

1 hour ago, 48MPHSlapShot said:

That's why I said "road to". We're free to ignore for the time being, but it becomes a different story when the offended tries to get the government involved to regulate speech. 

Like Canada’s Bill C-16?

[48MPHSlapShot]

3 minutes ago, Rob_Zepp said:

Like Canada’s Bill C-16?

My understanding of C-16 is limited to what I've picked up from Jordan Peterson interviews, but from the little that I know it it, yes.

[Rob_Zepp]

8 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

I don't see a lot of difference between Trumps "enemy of the people" shtick trying to control the media with triggered far left over-reactions - they're both forms of attempted censorship and both wrong. 

100%.   I have been saying this all along and it sure does seem to "trigger" some people.   Careful, you are now a Trump supporter for implying any potential similarities with the loony left.

[189lb enforcers?]

39 minutes ago, Rob_Zepp said:

100%.   I have been saying this all along and it sure does seem to "trigger" some people.   Careful, you are now a Trump supporter for implying any potential similarities with the loony left.

And what actually is a Trump Supporter? 

A Conservative; a bad person with no feelings, or brains. 

This is branding.

 

I laugh, but in a sad way, when I see how the people consume their media and respond like the puppets they’ve been raised, and “educated”, to be. 

 

People say they don’t like Division Politics, but it’s literally all people talk about, especially in this forum.

 

The social engineering success of turning the west into a cesspool of infantile, regressive preoccupation is frightful. What’s worse, most have no clue that they are sheeple; pathetically predictable and trainable due to their connectivity into whatever agenda the media happens to be running at the time.

 

Why fear a future with a threat of Artificial Intelligence when people are volunteering to be programmed by the media and to do the bidding of others? Seems like that kind of drone is already here. 

 

 

[JM_]

45 minutes ago, Rob_Zepp said:

100%.   I have been saying this all along and it sure does seem to "trigger" some people.   Careful, you are now a Trump supporter for implying any potential similarities with the loony left.

well thats quite the twist 

 

the equivalence is censorship imo. Trump wants to censor any opposition, and people who tweet horrible things like that English prof want to censor anyone that doesn't agree with her too.

 

I don't believe that there are anywhere near as many people on the "left" that would agree with her as those on the "right" that can find a way to support Trump but thats just my opinion, can't back that up with a stat. 

 

 

@189lb enforcers? And what actually is a Trump Supporter? 

A Conservative; a bad person with no feelings, or brains. 

 

It someone that voted for Trump, what else would it be? I do think you have to be willfully ignorant, or simply just don't care, about his lies and crappy things he does to still support him so put that in whatever box fits, but there doesn't seem to be any line of decency that can be crossed that his conservative base cares about.