Einherjar86
Active Member
Another good Aeon piece:
https://aeon.co/essays/why-a-moratorium-on-microaggressions-policies-is-needed
This is a good example of why humanities critics are wary of importing psychiatric, or ego psychological, knowledge into their scholarship. "Microaggression" is an example of a psychiatric term that is now being applied to sociological studies and symptoms, and it's inappropriate to the context. Those who claim to experience microaggressions may need some form of treatment or attention at the individual level, and this could yield some insight into potential systemic issues; but too often their complaints are targeted prematurely at the institutional level, which results in the kinds of contradictions that the author is describing.
Something I've learned from my dissertation advisor is that many people outside academia (and occasionally some within) too often see the kinds of arguments that emerge from humanities departments as prescriptive critiques of society at large. That is, they read books (or paintings, movies, music, buildings, etc.) and map those books onto the world in order to diagnose an ailment that needs correcting. My advisor has reminded me on more than one occasion that our work is descriptive, not prescriptive. We're not psychologists or philosophers, we're critics--and although critics can identify social ailments in cultural texts, it isn't our job to prescribe corrections to them.
To connect this back to the piece above, a novel can be seen as a microaggression when handled psychologically; but it isn't the critic's job to make the novel disappear (that shouldn't be anyone's job). The critic's job is to present the text in an expanded field (context, scale, etc.) so that we can better understand the reasons for our reactions, as varied as they might be.
If someone has a personal problem with a book, it's their job to talk with a specialist about it; not to have it removed from the syllabus.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-a-moratorium-on-microaggressions-policies-is-needed
This is a good example of why humanities critics are wary of importing psychiatric, or ego psychological, knowledge into their scholarship. "Microaggression" is an example of a psychiatric term that is now being applied to sociological studies and symptoms, and it's inappropriate to the context. Those who claim to experience microaggressions may need some form of treatment or attention at the individual level, and this could yield some insight into potential systemic issues; but too often their complaints are targeted prematurely at the institutional level, which results in the kinds of contradictions that the author is describing.
Something I've learned from my dissertation advisor is that many people outside academia (and occasionally some within) too often see the kinds of arguments that emerge from humanities departments as prescriptive critiques of society at large. That is, they read books (or paintings, movies, music, buildings, etc.) and map those books onto the world in order to diagnose an ailment that needs correcting. My advisor has reminded me on more than one occasion that our work is descriptive, not prescriptive. We're not psychologists or philosophers, we're critics--and although critics can identify social ailments in cultural texts, it isn't our job to prescribe corrections to them.
To connect this back to the piece above, a novel can be seen as a microaggression when handled psychologically; but it isn't the critic's job to make the novel disappear (that shouldn't be anyone's job). The critic's job is to present the text in an expanded field (context, scale, etc.) so that we can better understand the reasons for our reactions, as varied as they might be.
If someone has a personal problem with a book, it's their job to talk with a specialist about it; not to have it removed from the syllabus.
