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Do Literary Studies Have an Ideology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Frederick Crews
Frederick Crews*
Affiliation:
University of California Berkeley
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Abstract

Unlike their counterparts in socialist countries, American literary scholars and critics are generally unaware of an ideological dimension to their work. This very unawareness, however, is suited to the requirements of advanced capitalism. While our literary studies rarely exhibit the patent ideological bias to be found in the social sciences, they are dominated by ideologically congenial habits of mind. The scholarly ideal of shedding prejudice would seem to be well served by a critique of those habits, which often yield implausible or trifling conclusions.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , May 1970, pp. 423 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1970

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Footnotes

*

A shorter version of this paper was read to Forum i at the 1969 MLA Annual Meeting.

References

Note 1 in page 425 Martin Nicolaus, “The Professional Organization of Sociology: A View from Below,” Antioch Review, xxix (Fall 1969), 381.

Note 2 in page 425 See David Horowitz, “Sinews of Empire,” Ramparts (Oct. 1969), p. 42, and Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism (New York, 1969).

Note 3 in page 425 See Rostow, The United States in the World Arena: An Essay in Recent History (New York, 1960), and The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge, Eng., 1961) ; and Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston, 1967). Whether Galbraith is truly naïve in this omission and in some of his assertions, such as that the corporations are now run by their middle-level bureaucrats and engineers and are no longer interested in profit, is hard to ascertain; what is striking is that his book is taken seriously by intelligent liberals.

Note 4 in page 427 See Seymour Melman, Our Depleted Society (New York, 1965). Ironically, even the war contractors have suffered; see George E. Berkley, “The Myth of War Profiteering,” New Republic (20 Dec. 1969), pp. 15–18.

Note 5 in page 428 The alleged unities are often religious, even in some instances where the writer was a notorious scoffer. Such misperception might be traced not only to the critic's personal background, which may have been quite secular, but also to our society's reduction of all problems to questions of personal morality and to its interest in higher rationales for earthly injustice. The heyday of crypto-religious criticism was, naturally enough, the Eisenhower period.

Note 6 in page 428 I have amplified this point in an essay, “Anaesthetic Criticism,” which will form the opening chapter of Psychoanalysis and Literary Process, ed. Crews (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). Further pertinent critiques by others are mentioned in the notes to that essay. See, in addition, James F. Goldberg, “‘Culture’ and ‘Anarchy’ and the Present Time,” Kenyon Review, xxxi (1969), 583–611.