While studying for my undergraduate degree I once took an English class on Early American Literature. This course was being taught by a relatively new professor at the school who was revamping its structure. No longer was it sufficient to begin with the works of literature written by the English who had just arrived in the new world; this class began with Zuni myths and other works by indigenous people [even though these tales were of an oral history and the practitioners wrote little of it down and none of it in English.]
As it turned out, the most significant assignment for the quarter would focus on “comparing two separate works by different writers.” [This teacher went as far as to pass out an assignment sheet with a list of works that could be chosen from.] As a believer in “New Criticism” I always found looking at different works and comparing how each work uses language, theme, tone, and imagery similarly or differently to convey either similar of wildly different ideas to be something of a puzzle and certainly an interesting challenge for the one doing the critique.
The day that the assignment was given out, I went to the library and read over large portions of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and found two works on the list that would pose an interesting challenge for critique and set about comparing and contrasting how each piece each written about an apple, used similar themes and images but denoted very dissimilar overall tones and caused the reader to come away from the work with entirely different mindsets.
The next time the class met, we were asked whether we had decided what we would be doing our project on and I let her know that mine was finished. She was a bit taken aback and said that part of the process was going to be to have things approved. I pointed her to the assignment sheet and she agreed that she had neglected to do state this in the assignment and also agreed to look at my paper as soon as I was ready to perform the first review. I handed it to her immediately.
When next we met, the professor told me that she would take some time with me after class to discuss my paper. When class ended, I went with the professor to her office and she pulled out my assignment. After taking a moment to look over her notes she looked at me and said the following: “Well I read your paper and it was very well written. I guess I have to ask you... ‘What is the point?’ You seem pretty clear about what you think the works do here but how does this play into what was happening in the world at the time? “
I sat there politely and then proceeded to explain that the paper was written not as a historiographical approach to the works but rather as the well established form of “New Criticism”. I went on to explain that, as such, any new critical work would obviously not take the happenings of the day into account just as a “Deconstructionist” approach to the paper would not have looked at the works in relation to their rhythm, meter, or metaphors. A New Critical approach will look at the internal aspects of the work itself and eschews the use of external evidence to explain the meaning of a work.
Somewhat skeptically, the professor began to explain that good critique [the idea that ‘good’ is definable only by her somehow never hit her as being a bit self-centered] had to take into account the period and that “anyway” I didn’t even have any citations supporting my viewpoints.
This really stirred things up a bit as I asked whether I had failed to support any of the assertions in my paper. She agreed that my approach was good but that without the support of “experts” she could not say whether any of my ideas were “valid”. I pointed out that she had already, on two occasions in the last few minutes, commented on the validity and clarity of my arguments and then I went on to suggest that the validity of an idea has nothing to do with support of others. If this were the case, no new interpretations would appear to be possible. She began to explain that I perhaps misunderstand her point… It is not that the idea is new; but, rather that the idea is not from an “expert” that dooms it. I asked what it would take, in her eyes, to allow someone to write critiques of their own that need not be “validated” by having been already expressed by someone else and she said that it requires an “advanced degree.”
At this point I knew that my professor was a close minded idiot [incapable of using her own mind to determine whether the ideas of others are valid.] This being the case I stopped my argument and spent the afternoon reading a number of reviews on the subject as well as a history of the time period each poem was written. I threw together a bit of BS about the change in tone being a byproduct of the transitional period between which each work was created and even inserted several quotes from “experts” with “advanced degrees” to “support” my argument [The funny part about this was that the support came in the form of presenting their ideas about what each work meant and then disproving the validity of their arguments—The professor never did realize that in doing it this way I disproved her idea that the “experts” validated my ideas, but rather proved that the “experts” were wrong.]
The new paper was submitted during the next class and it received an A.
This interaction was not the first time I was told that I didn’t have a right to my opinion about something and was certainly not the last one either. It is perhaps the clearest example of the hypocrisy I have run into in my life that is needed to support the misguided belief that others have no right to comment on the things around them. Do I need to be a politician to say when a law is bad? I have been told that I do. Do I need to be a Constitutional Law Professor to say when something is unconstitutional? I have been told this as well. Do I have to be a police officer to tell a rowdy person that they should quiet down? This too, I have been told.
There is, however, no validity to this argument. Any person who takes the time to look at the world around him has a right to participate. I do not have to be a professor of Constitutional law to know that rewording the Constitution [from “public use” to “public purpose”] in as Supreme Court Decision to support the idea that people can arbitrarily confiscate someone’s private property to sell to someone else for increased tax revenue is wrong. I do not have to be a politician to know that explaining that your party is not bad by pointing to bad things done by the other party is wrong as well.
I am the best arbiter of what is right in this world. So are you. We may not agree on everything, but if we can form an opinion and support a belief, we have every right to express it to others. This being the case, I will continue to sit in judgment of the things around me.
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