Should We Focus Mainly On What We Love?

How should we balance affirmation and criticism?

I read this article on Saturday night and it made me think: How should we balance the attitude of joy and critique in what we encounter (by choice), be it works of art, other people, or ourselves?

The summary of the article is that English and Humanities departments have lost their cultural appeal not because of STEM’s ascendancy but because literature professors no longer “teach what they love.”

The argument is that in the 70s and 80s, professors stopped teaching literature as literature and began teaching “literary theory.” Great books became an occasion for skepticism and negative emotion, for defensiveness. "Reading” transformed from something you did for pleasure to something you did to rectify social evil. I think the author thinks that “theory” is a kind of “hate reading.”

Theory doesn’t enjoy, it problematizes. Literary criticism doesn’t describe why something is wonderful, but why something is limited. Paul Ricouer calls it the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” which means that before sh*posting and trolling hit Twitter it was already a decades old thing in academia.

For me, the question comes down to this: is it possible that texts which are old, and written by the dead, could be wiser or even nobler and better than we the readers? If the presumption is that they can’t, if the presumption is that we know better by virtue of being on “the right side of history” relative to the past, then of course the study of anything old requires a critical (read: negative) stance.

Still, I think the author makes a good point. It’s one thing to be a critical reader, but when you’re a teacher, why lead with the emotion that accompanies being “anti”? Why not start with what one finds exemplary and admirable (even if flawed)?

Putting aside the author’s diagnosis, I’m reminded of the line in Pirkei Avot that “we judge everyone in accordance with their merits,” which I think means that we should focus on the good when we judge people, at least, before moving to negative judgment (which may be inevitable, and, perhaps even necessary).

This leads me to some questions:

1) Do you agree that it’s better to focus on the good in what one chooses to teach, present, share, focus on, especially when one is introducing a topic to a newcomer?

2) Given the effect of social media tends to produce outrage and polarization—since these attract more likes and shares—how would you design experiences and spaces, online or IRL, that focus on what we love rather than hate?

3) How do you make room in spaces ruled by love for critique, without which, the community can become cult-like, authoritarian, elf-assured, and self-referential?

3) When is it appropriate, if at all, to yuck someone’s yum, that is, to argue that what they love is not worthy of it?

Thanks for following along.