Critical Theory, Today

I attended an unusual college, some time ago now, called St. John’s College. I studied on the Annapolis campus, while there is a second campus in Santa Fe. The St. John’s “Program,” as it’s called, comprises a four year set curriculum for all students, based on a chronological reading of the “Great Books" (of Western Civilization) across many fields. It is a rigorous and intense classical liberal arts education, that the college explains thusly:

If the St. John’s program were to be analyzed by credits into major and minors it would correspond to two majors, one in history of mathematics and science, and the other in philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, and political theory. The minors would be in classical studies and comparative literature. Beyond these fields, students also explore language, history, politics, law, economics, music, art, theology, math, science, and psychology.

It is no humblebrag to mention it; on the contrary, it is a prideful boast that I have a degree from this school; it was one of the best decisions I have made in my life.

No undergraduate experience is perfect, however. For instance, I knew well that I was interested in pursuing a study of, and production experience in, film, when I matriculated, but there were no film classes. There were no real electives, except on a small scale. My campus had around 400 undergraduates, which I’ve come to understand is a very small number. And the curriculum more or less ends well before the mid 20th century.

As I eventually found my way back to school—I earned an MFA in Film Directing from CalArts, with the intention of one day teaching—and since then, as I began a teaching practice, I have read many more texts on media and cinema than I encountered as an undergrad, when I could only read them in my minimal spare time. As my interest in my field has grown and as I have pursued more teaching and research opportunities, I have recognized a need to begin building on the foundation of college a bridge into the realm of today’s academic discussions. By “today’s” I mean “the 20th century” and beyond. I have a lot to catch up on.

A couple of months ago I posted a query on the subreddit r/CriticalTheory, asking for advice in continuing my education and received a number of gracious and hugely useful responses. (In all seriousness, Reddit is my favorite place on the Internet and, by far, the best and most useful “social media.” Due to user moderation it is actually possibly to have pleasant and interesting exchanges with like-minded people on any imaginable topic.) Following up on those suggestions, but not wanting to dive directly into any specific thinker’s work without a bit more context, I found a well-regarded introductory textbook.

Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide earns its subtitle. For someone who read Freud and Marx in school (25 years ago) but did not follow up from there to feminism to structuralism to queer theory to post-colonialism to all of the many, many ways scholars have chosen to interpret texts in the last hundred years, this is precisely the book I was looking for. It builds on what I have read and hugely expands my understanding so I can begin comprehending academic writing on film and literature with somewhat less confusion—not to mention grasp some of the basic ideas that have saturated the worldview of the chattering classes for many years.

One of the most helpful aspects of the book—which strikes a perfect balance of introduction and depth—is Tyson’s use of The Great Gatsby as a common text to which to apply each type of criticism she describes. So far I have read a psychoanalytical interpretation, a Marxist and a feminist reading, and will get to many others. I reread Gatsby recently in preparation for Tyson’s book which, apart from being a great classic, is also quite short, comprehensible and broadly interpretable.

Critical theory is often maligned by partisans (who fail to understand its uses) and misunderstood by well-educated generalists who have found in it a new orthodoxy of the left, in my opinion. I see both responses online and offline daily, in culture war skirmishes, moral panics and rigid political ideologies. But, to me, the endless varieties of critical theory are but a tool, a collection of many frameworks for interpreting the world. More than merely mental exercise, these frameworks prove exceedingly useful in cracking open texts and developing cultural and political understanding.