John Michael | University of Rochester (original) (raw)
Papers by John Michael
New Literary History, 2011
One peculiarity of cultural life in the United States has been a widespread and remarkably persis... more One peculiarity of cultural life in the United States has been a widespread and remarkably persistent, one might say obsessive, fascination with the question of the nation's identity and character. This might be a symptom of anxiety about the nation's notorious lack of identity or coherence, or it might be a local variant of a more general attribute of modernity, since most nations seem prone to worry about the nature of their communities and to produce more or less imaginary narratives about their special virtues. We Americanists have not generally ...
Identity and The Failure of America from Thomas Jefferson to the War on Terror, 2008
The inadequacies of politics of feeling and positive affect to deal with histories of oppression ... more The inadequacies of politics of feeling and positive affect to deal with histories of oppression in nineteenth and twentieth century U. S.
For many of its practitioners, critique, the rigorous deciphering of discourse or ideology, offer... more For many of its practitioners, critique, the rigorous deciphering of discourse or ideology, offered a way to engage the study of art and culture with the world at large and, frequently, with politics in the interest of reform. Today, neither an untroubled belief in critique’s rigor nor a clear sense of real possibilities for reform remains available. Critique’s fundamental assumption, that the tropes of discourse shape the possibilities of action in the world, suggests that it is time attention were paid to the master trope of critique itself. As a mode of engagement with the specificities of audiences and ends in a radically heterogeneous world, translation serves as a better figure for critique than decipherment.
Where decipherment suggests the recovering or uncovering of preconstituted meanings, translation, as Walter Benjamin and others note, is about remaking and resituating the conditions of meaning making, about moving texts—in all their material and aesthetic density—from one specific context and audience to a different specific context and audience. Such a view of critique, while not necessarily disabling any of critique’s traditional engagements or procedures, alters their grounds. It offers a corrective for the interpreter’s hubris—the critical belief that one can master the text and its situation, expose its meanings, and enlighten the audience—in two ways. The translator functions as the servant of the text and of the audience, and therefore is inhibited from affecting mastery of or superiority over either; the translator, who remains concerned with meaning, knows as well that meaning is not the final goal of translation but only one of its elements. What remains central in any act of literary translation is the confrontation with the limiting conditions of meaning making—the materiality of the signifier and of the situation or context, the concrete aesthetics and visceral density of specific experiences in a heterogeneous world—rather than the universalizing or abstracting pull of the signified or meaning. Literary translation itself presupposes an ethics of engagement with—and of utility to—the text and the audience. It is not that truths or meanings—ethical, economic, even moral—no longer concern the critic (however problematic critique may have rendered all these categories), but the purchase that any version of the truth or the effectiveness that any meaning might have in a given situation, for a particular audience at a specific moment, has become and remains the fundamental issue requiring negotiation. Remembering that what the critic does is closely related to the translator’s task keeps awareness of these opportunities and limitations in the forefront. This more humble but more pragmatically engaged vision o the critic’s task provides more than a corrective of critical hubris, it offers an important positive explanation of why art and critique remain crucially important modes of engagement in today’s radically heterogeneous and increasingly uneven world.
In this essay, I am less interested in the specifics of the on-going polemics around the “new lyr... more In this essay, I am less interested in the specifics of the on-going polemics around the “new lyricism,” than I am in the problematics of historical engagement and ethical implication that subtend them and open onto more general problematics of textuality, history, and interpretation that lyrics often foreground. These problematics do not obviate the importance of historical considerations in lyrical reading, nor do they undermine the crucial importance of history itself in our social and political lives. To refocus critical attention on poetry’s connection with its readers and the world, as in the new lyric studies, also reminds us that lyric has a rhetorical aspect and that the indeterminacies of lyric’s representation of a recollected moment of being or experience cannot be resolved by appeals to history as a ground for interpretation. The meaning of lyric and its engagement with the world exists in the futurity of its reader, the unpredictable phenomenology of its reception. Paradoxically, the historicization of lyric reminds us that history itself has a lyrical aspect. It combines recollection and projection, a statement of a past experience or state of being addressed to the subjectivity of a future reader or audience whose realms of experience and states of being remain indeterminate. Lyric poetry is one artistic form that makes this problematic involution of literature and history especially evident, though critics have traditionally assumed that no literary genre was more distant from its historical contexts.
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 1989
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 2008
American Literature, 1989
... CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Michael, John (b. 1953, d. ----. ... SUBJECT(S): American prose literat... more ... CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Michael, John (b. 1953, d. ----. ... SUBJECT(S): American prose literature; Identity (Psychology) in literature; Belief and doubt in literature; Skepticism in literature; Self in literature; Psychological aspects; Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Criticism and interpretation. ...
New Literary History, 2011
One peculiarity of cultural life in the United States has been a widespread and remarkably persis... more One peculiarity of cultural life in the United States has been a widespread and remarkably persistent, one might say obsessive, fascination with the question of the nation's identity and character. This might be a symptom of anxiety about the nation's notorious lack of identity or coherence, or it might be a local variant of a more general attribute of modernity, since most nations seem prone to worry about the nature of their communities and to produce more or less imaginary narratives about their special virtues. We Americanists have not generally ...
Identity and The Failure of America from Thomas Jefferson to the War on Terror, 2008
The inadequacies of politics of feeling and positive affect to deal with histories of oppression ... more The inadequacies of politics of feeling and positive affect to deal with histories of oppression in nineteenth and twentieth century U. S.
For many of its practitioners, critique, the rigorous deciphering of discourse or ideology, offer... more For many of its practitioners, critique, the rigorous deciphering of discourse or ideology, offered a way to engage the study of art and culture with the world at large and, frequently, with politics in the interest of reform. Today, neither an untroubled belief in critique’s rigor nor a clear sense of real possibilities for reform remains available. Critique’s fundamental assumption, that the tropes of discourse shape the possibilities of action in the world, suggests that it is time attention were paid to the master trope of critique itself. As a mode of engagement with the specificities of audiences and ends in a radically heterogeneous world, translation serves as a better figure for critique than decipherment.
Where decipherment suggests the recovering or uncovering of preconstituted meanings, translation, as Walter Benjamin and others note, is about remaking and resituating the conditions of meaning making, about moving texts—in all their material and aesthetic density—from one specific context and audience to a different specific context and audience. Such a view of critique, while not necessarily disabling any of critique’s traditional engagements or procedures, alters their grounds. It offers a corrective for the interpreter’s hubris—the critical belief that one can master the text and its situation, expose its meanings, and enlighten the audience—in two ways. The translator functions as the servant of the text and of the audience, and therefore is inhibited from affecting mastery of or superiority over either; the translator, who remains concerned with meaning, knows as well that meaning is not the final goal of translation but only one of its elements. What remains central in any act of literary translation is the confrontation with the limiting conditions of meaning making—the materiality of the signifier and of the situation or context, the concrete aesthetics and visceral density of specific experiences in a heterogeneous world—rather than the universalizing or abstracting pull of the signified or meaning. Literary translation itself presupposes an ethics of engagement with—and of utility to—the text and the audience. It is not that truths or meanings—ethical, economic, even moral—no longer concern the critic (however problematic critique may have rendered all these categories), but the purchase that any version of the truth or the effectiveness that any meaning might have in a given situation, for a particular audience at a specific moment, has become and remains the fundamental issue requiring negotiation. Remembering that what the critic does is closely related to the translator’s task keeps awareness of these opportunities and limitations in the forefront. This more humble but more pragmatically engaged vision o the critic’s task provides more than a corrective of critical hubris, it offers an important positive explanation of why art and critique remain crucially important modes of engagement in today’s radically heterogeneous and increasingly uneven world.
In this essay, I am less interested in the specifics of the on-going polemics around the “new lyr... more In this essay, I am less interested in the specifics of the on-going polemics around the “new lyricism,” than I am in the problematics of historical engagement and ethical implication that subtend them and open onto more general problematics of textuality, history, and interpretation that lyrics often foreground. These problematics do not obviate the importance of historical considerations in lyrical reading, nor do they undermine the crucial importance of history itself in our social and political lives. To refocus critical attention on poetry’s connection with its readers and the world, as in the new lyric studies, also reminds us that lyric has a rhetorical aspect and that the indeterminacies of lyric’s representation of a recollected moment of being or experience cannot be resolved by appeals to history as a ground for interpretation. The meaning of lyric and its engagement with the world exists in the futurity of its reader, the unpredictable phenomenology of its reception. Paradoxically, the historicization of lyric reminds us that history itself has a lyrical aspect. It combines recollection and projection, a statement of a past experience or state of being addressed to the subjectivity of a future reader or audience whose realms of experience and states of being remain indeterminate. Lyric poetry is one artistic form that makes this problematic involution of literature and history especially evident, though critics have traditionally assumed that no literary genre was more distant from its historical contexts.
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 1989
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 2008
American Literature, 1989
... CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Michael, John (b. 1953, d. ----. ... SUBJECT(S): American prose literat... more ... CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Michael, John (b. 1953, d. ----. ... SUBJECT(S): American prose literature; Identity (Psychology) in literature; Belief and doubt in literature; Skepticism in literature; Self in literature; Psychological aspects; Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Criticism and interpretation. ...