On Other Campuses: Postmodern Culture

To The Alternative Orange Collective:

When I read Postmodern Culture's (an on-line journal) call for a review of Zavarzadeh and Morton's Theory as Resistance I saw it both as an opportunity to challenge what is commonsensically understood as a “review”, and as a way to present the arguments contained in Zavarzadeh and Morton's text to a wider audience via the Internet. I had no desire to simply (re)produce the “good/bad” binary of conventional criticism, but to use the review space to direct a challenge to those who would read it. Since I am attending a university where the English department is currently undergoing a similar “restructuring” to that which Morton and Zavarzadeh document, I could see the urgency and necessity in their critique of both the Creative Writing discipline, and the growing acceptance of a “theory plurality” by American Academics. Unfortunately, those in charge of PMC decided to remove this challenge and replace it with an immanent critique which only localizes any challenge that either Theory as Resistance or my review were making.

In the e-mail that Jim English, the review editor at PMC, sent to me to inform me that my review was accepted, he stated that “I made some minor modifications in the review, and it has been further copy edited by the production people at UVA, but basically it is running as you wrote it. I think I would have been a little harder on the book than you were. It seems to me, in particular, that the emphasis on Creative Writing is misplaced. The sciences are a much more significant site of this ideological battle right now; the stakes in Cre Writ. (sic) don't strike me as very high. I think it was just a convenient object of study for Z and M. But I enjoyed your review and am glad it will be published in PMC." While it would be easy to make this critique a “moral” or “ethical” response to the editing practices of Jim English and PMC since I was not given a copy of the changes prior to publication and thus no chance to “fairly” assess them, that would only serve to (re)produce the same kind of local, immanent criticisms that Theory as Resistance makes visible, that is, the reduction of systemic political intelligibilities to professional quibble.

In order to make the review “enjoyable” and something that people would be “glad” to read Mr. English took it upon himself to make some striking changes to my text. While some of the changes are merely questionable, other changes served to dismiss the critique(al) aspects of my review and turn it into “an analysis of discrete individuals while deflecting a systemic and materialist critique of institutional situations as a whole” (Wilkie). For example, one of these “minor modifications” includes changing the phrase “the oppressive nature of capitalism” to “the oppressions of capitalism” thus signifying an immanent criticism of only certain “high stakes” areas of capitalism instead of an ideological critique of capitalism as an exploitative and oppressive system. Another “minor modification” included placing phrases such as “they [Morton and Zavarzadeh] insist” in one of the concluding passages where I intended to push the critique of the American University beyond the review of this one text. This of course serves to “reassure” the “progressive” reader: no longer did the review raise issues concerning the entire university system, but instead it raised Morton and Zavarzadeh's specific critique which could then be dismissed purely on an individual level.

The largest “minor modification”, and the most “serious” of all his changes, was the removal of the last two paragraphs and an entire rewriting of the ending. These changes restructured the entire tone of the piece. Jim English's final line read “Within and against such an institution [the resilient American University System], truly critical theorists face a daunting task. But with Theory as Resistance, Zavarzadeh and Morton have made a good start [emphasis mine]." This final note is “strikingly” similar to the sentiment that Mr. English related to me in his e-mail that the Creative Writing department was an easy target and that the battle has moved on, “but it's a nice place to start”. This view supports the whole argument that Zavarzadeh and Morton were making. The sentiment of Jim English is commonsensical: that Creative Writing is not a “high stakes” discipline when compared to the more “factual” discourse of math or science. But as Morton and Zavarzadeh argue, this is exactly what the American University wants. It is precisely because the Creative Writing department is not viewed as having any particular ideological significance that it is all the more ideologically significant, especially in terms of the esteemed position it holds within the “ludic postmodern university”.

I would like to thank the Alternative Orange for publishing the review in its original, more criti(que)al version and for providing me with the opportunity to critique the changes that were made by Jim English and Postmodern Culture. It is only by making visible and open for public contestation the ideological (re)production and protection of the Status Quo within the “private” sphere that people will be able to understand and challenge an oppressive and exploitative system.

Sincerely,

/s Rob Wilkie