20% of my grade

Almost forgot!

2007-12-12T16:17:00.000-05:00

It's Wednesday just before five PM and that means blog time: extra credit edition!
So... my final thoughts on theory.
Well, I suppose I find it more useful than I did before. I certainly have a better understanding of it. However, I don't think I'm going to pursue it. As much as I hate to let 9/11 shape the world, I think I would have preferred theory dead anyway. I'm glad I took this class because it's the probably the hardest class I've ever had and yet I did well (pending my term paper and final).
It's interesting that theory is dead, and yet can still be taught. God is supposedly dead, but we still have religion. I think it's just a matter of whether or not something is popular or is without something that supposedly disproves it.
You can't really kill theory. Theories is based on ideals, really. You either agree with the ideas or not, but can you really disprove them? I'll go back to my religion analogy: you can't disprove God. He's supposedly a big invisible dude in the sky we never see or touch so he very well could be there. Actually, this isn't a great analogy. But hey, I typed it. And typing things takes up space and I need this extra credit.
I should have commented more.
And a certain English professor should have posted our actual identities on WebCT like she said she would.
But that's okay, because I'm not Max at all! I've just been using his picture and name to fool you all!
Alright, that's a lie, but wouldn't that be sort of cool? If I could do it all over, I'd do that. But like... with someone else's picture and name, because I actually am Max.

womyn

2007-12-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

Um... I really don't have anything to say off the bat so I'm just going to jump right into the questions.

• How have you tended to define feminism in your own life, and how does thinking about feminist theoretical perspectives and approaches affect your personal definition?
I've never given feminism a negative connotation or seen it simply as men-haters who burn their bras, but I haven't really gone into the theoretical perspective of feminism at all or examined how the patriarchy works. I guess studying the theory just gives me a more precise look at feminists as opposed to a changed perspective.

• Does it make sense to approach texts and culture with this kind of political agenda? Why/why not? Is doing so limiting or does it open up new possibilities? Some combination of the two?
I don't know if it'd call it a political agenda. It's more a mindset, just as Marxism doesn't have to be about wanting to be a Communist because it's a whole mindset that encompasses a variety of texts. As far as the second part of this question... well any theory can open something up and limit it at the same time. You have to follow the guidelines of a certain theory when using it to examine something but at the same time you're using it as a new perspective. You can also use theories in conjunction with other theories, such as Marxist Feminism. And sometimes a theory is just a gateway drug to another theory as well, and sometimes that new theory goes against the previous theory.

• Who can “do” feminist theory? Who can be a feminist? Why do you think so?
Everyone. You don't have to be a woman to fight for female equality and notice the patriarchy within language itself, do you?

• How does feminist theory interrogate and extend other theoretical perspectives you've examined this semester?
I think it goes along with other theories we've looked at that look at language itself like structuralism and post-structuralism.

• Is Mantissa a “feminist” text? How would different feminist theoretical approaches influence a reading of the novel?
Okay, well, I didn't come to conclusion in my presentation about this but I would say it is. It shows women being degraded in a satirical way that to me says the author wants to poke fun at conventions to point out that they're wrong. I think it's easiest to sympathize with Erato and that in the end she is victorious, yet ultimately still at the mercy of Miles' male voice because she is simply a muse.

The author (John Fowles) is dead.

2007-11-13T22:47:00.000-05:00

I just found out John Fowles is dead. How 'bout that?
Alright, so this week's blog... let me first tell you that I'm presenting on this novel Thursday. Presenting on this novel... is that right? Anyway, you get what I mean. So one of two things will happen: either I'll just repeat what I'm saying in this blog or by Thursday I'll have changed my opinion. So if you don't like hearing the same thing twice, you may want to just stop reading.
Alright, so I'm supposed to present Mantissa from a feminist perspective on Thursday, so I might as well just do that here.
"Give me your right hand, Mr. Green."
Frozen, he did nothing, but the doctor took the hand from beneath his head and led it upwards. It touched a bare breast. Once more shocked and horrified, he opened his eyes. Dr. Delfie was leaning over him, with the white tunic open, staring at the wall above his head, as if she were doing no more than taking his pulse. His hand was led to the other breast.
"What are you doing?" -Page 18
Well, we all know where it goes from there, so I won't waste any more space typing it out. I'm cheating a bit by picking this passage because it sums up the mood of most of the rest of part 1. I'm also cheating because I'm going to use the rest of the book to interpret this passage.
So we have a lot of conflicting stuff going on here. We have the main character's supposed horror and protests to the treatment, yet he does not make any action to stop it from happening. We also have the author of the story within the story writing a novel that is deemed by Erato to be pornographic, yet it is not full-on erotica and does have entertainment value to us, the reader. This raises the question of whether within the story Miles intends his story to have entertainment value. I would argue that it does. If we jump ahead to page 159 we see Erato and Miles looking back at the previous pages as though it were all a show for the reader; a play in which they both thoroughly enjoyed playing parts. Yet we know this develops into more of the same struggle throughout the book between them, so this is undermined a bit. Yet we cannot ignore that they at one point treat it all as a show. To contradict myself once more, you can also make a point of saying that the whole point of their interactions are that they cannot be written. So in this light it becomes more of a role playing game.
But wait! Wasn't I supposed to talk about feminism? Yes, me. Yes I was. Well, continuing with the train of thought I was riding on earlier, everything that was previously in the novel may have been just part of a bedroom game the author enjoys. This game, however, incorporates more of Miles' fantasies and puts Erato in a much less dominant position. Also keep in mind that it soon becomes a plot for Miles to transform Erato into his true fantasy: a geisha. But wait, is not Erato victorious in the end? Indeed she is! But wait, is her victory something that leads us to be sympathetic to Miles? Or are we the reader intended to revel in Erato's victory alongside her?
So what is my position? I have none. I'm going to present both sides to the class and hopefully it will lead to a discussion in which people can argue for either side. I hope you weren't looking for some miracle answer. But start thinking, because we're going to be asking you about this. There will be a written quiz worth 40% of your grade for the semester (we haven't run this by Dr. McGuire yet but I'm sure she'll agree to it.)

The young man in the picture below is not attracted to the young lady next to him.

2007-11-07T11:01:00.001-05:00

Well, I half expect to be required to come up with a new topic for my essay, but in the meantime I guess all I can do is pretend that I'm actually writing the essay I proposed. So here's my essay that I proposed:
A QUEER THEORY ANALYSIS OF THE WARRIORS
Alright, now for those of you who have seen The Warriors you might be shocked by this decision because you think The Warriors is a manly film about tough guys who kick ass for a living. Well, the notion of masculinity of the film is a large part of my proposed essay. But how do I go beyond that? Am I just saying that the film has strong gay undertones because the main characters wear vests with no shirt underneath? No, not at all. I really see a lot of metaphors for homosexuality and a variety of instances in the film that can be interpreted as literal homosexuality. And again, all of this is emphasized (and in a way, questioned) by the "masculine" themes in the film of fighting, killing and otherwise being a rough and tough dude.
So why did I choose to do this? Do I just see everything as gay? Am I gay? Well no, but my best friend is gay and he told me I'm allowed to do this essay so it's all good.
The origin of this proposed essay began when I watched The Warriors with my gay friend. Before we watched it he mentioned that the film is featured in a documentary called The Celluloid Closet, which is about the history of homosexuality in cinema. So from the start I had my eyes and ears open for anything homosexual, which I otherwise would not be on the lookout for. In doing this, I ended up finding many connections to homosexuality. One of many examples I can give is that in the realm of all the gangs The Warriors start off as just another group of guys, but when Luthor "outs" them as Cyrus's killer, they are suddenly outsiders who are instantly persecuted. He doesn't even give any proof. Then later one member of The Warriors says they should stop showing off their colors so people won't know they're Warriors and another member scolds him and tells him he should be proud of what he is and not try to hide it. Starting to sound kinda like something else now, huh? See, I told you this wasn't all about the vest with no shirt thing.
Oddly enough, my friend and I rented The Celluloid Closet and the only reference to The Warriors was when they showed a clip of one of the characters saying "faggot". That's all. We felt ripped off because after we watched The Warriors together we had an entire conversation about the many references to homosexuality. And an entire documentary about gay cinema only used the movie in a montage of people saying homophobic slurs. In fact, in my search for sources I didn't find any scholarly sources that used any form of queer theory to analyze The Warriors. So either I'm treading new ground (which would be great) or I just don't know what I'm talking about (which is pretty likely). I guess time will tell.

Happy Bloggoween

2007-10-31T15:53:00.000-04:00

So... Baudrillard...
I don't want to say I like him, exactly, but I think I get it. Or at least the gist of it. It's interesting that I'm posting this blog post now because I usually do it after the reading and before the class discussion. But this one is after the reading and class discussion, though we didn't really go over Baudrillard extensively. Still, I feel more is expected of me in this post. I'll do my best to live up to those expectations.
First of all, I loved Ken Rufo's post. His post was very easy to read and he made what were obviously very complicated idea fairly easy to understand.
I'd have to read more into his argument, but I'm at least amused by Baudrillard's idea of theory just debunking critical theory by saying they're just cookie-cutter models that follow a formula and have a certain predicted outcome that is caused by the mode of analysis itself and not so much the actual text being analyzed. I mean, you have to be amused by a guy who just steps in and tells you the subject you're studying is useless and actually gives you a good argument as to why.
The example given by Mr. Rufo of money being something virtual yet so controlling of our lives was extremely helpful. I already had a good grasp of what Baudrillard was saying about everything being simulated, but that solid example of money example really helped me to get the point.
I'll once again relate a complicated concept to something I kind of understand: movies. In class when I asked if the hyper real was like saying we don't really experience 9/11 as something real because we just associate it with things we've seen that are simulations of reality like Die Hard. This goes along with something I was thinking about the other day. It was the fact that there are so many filmmakers now that make what I call "tribute" films. Unlike Airplane! they parody a genre while simultaneously recreating them. These films also tend to be filled with pop culture references both inside and outside the genre being parodied. The best example I can give is Hot Fuzz. Hot Fuzz in itself does contain a well-thought plotline as well as realistic action. However, it is a comedy that parodies and recreates scenes from action movies. This is a film that could not exist without the other films it is based off of because not only would there be no source material, but we the audience would not understand the joke without a source that is being parodied. So consider what we have now: a movie that is a warped version of another movie which is a warped version of reality. By the time you get to Hot Fuzz you can't reach reality at all because it's been so perverted. This is part of the reason why movies that parody parody movies blow my mind. Not only are they unfunny and unnecessary, but they're so far from having any point or basis in reality that I just can't wrap my mind around them.
So I like Baudrillard. I may or may not agree with him, but I like hearing what he has to say and I like that I sort of get it.

Part 2!

2007-10-24T14:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, I went through the whole class's blogroll and found that no one has written about the blog post I decided to write about.
GOOD.
Okay, so the blog I decided to write about was I Cite's post entitled "All blogging is local". In her post she questions the reader's relationship to a blog author. Here she explores the idea that the reader takes her blog as a way to understand her as a whole, especially her feelings of loneliness. She understands that she's writing something autobiographical and she does indeed write about feeling of loneliness, but states that "I consider writing itself to be my main form of retreat from feelings of loneliness." So here we have the reader projecting, through no real fault of the reader, their own feelings onto the author. Alright, now I'm contradicting myself a bit. As opposed to my previous post, I'm now saying that the author is separate from their identity. But I still hold that the author does make a large contribution to that meaning that reader gets. I think autobiographies are a tricky territory as well. The post is all about the connection the reader has with a blog author as far as a personal connection, but I think that if there is a misinterpretation there then it falls under the category of measuring the author's contribution to their work's meaning. Does that make sense, or does it seem like I'm trying to connect something to something completely different? (Isn't that the best analogy ever? I'm going to print that baby out and tape it to my wall. That's art right there.)

LEAVE AUTHOR ALONE!

2007-10-23T23:36:00.000-04:00

Kill the author? We can't kill the author! Without the author there's no book! And without books I wouldn't even be reading about people talking about the author!
But really, can we kill the author? The idea scares, and not just because I'm a writer. You can't say writing is entirely subject to the author. If I write "then the purple elephant ate some vegetables" you can't reasonably decide that it wasn't an elephant at all, it was actually a walrus and it wasn't purple because perhaps I'm colorblind and it was most likely blue, and what's all this "then" business? I've decided that narrator is a time-traveler and technically this all happened before. You might decide all that, but is it right? I don't think so. Yes, to a certain degree you do fill in gaps and interpret things certain ways. This is how books work and why the book is nearly always better than the movie, because we make it our ideal. If something is "beautiful" in a book then we give it our own personal definition of beauty. However, if an item was described as "purple" then I believe one should just agree with the author because it's their damn story.
The Barthes articles raises the criticism of an author that states that they're just re-arranging words that already exist. Well... yeah, that's what writing is. It's an art form. You follow certain guidelines of that genre, and the guidelines of writing is to use words people will actually understand. It's not scat. Does the fact that the author did not create the words take about from their authorship? I don't think so. Do all painters invent their paints? Do woodcarvers have to breed their own unique species of trees? Of course now I'm treading of the tricky ground of how much individual meaning language actually allows. But I don't think you can just rule out that the author is creating something that they, as an individual, are expressing. Yes, you can make an argument that language limits them, but I believe an individuality exists in this.
Okay, now we're entered the dangerous territory of who the author or even the "self" is. Man this is hard. Everywhere you turn there's someone ready to say "no". I honestly feel a little under pressure at the moment. I want to make my point, but I have to prove a whole bunch of theories wrong. Oh well, I'm just going to press onward.
Killing the author really scares me, because we're killing the author by giving authority to the reader, so we're saying the author isn't giving the text its meaning. Well I don't like that at all! Not one bit! I like certain authors a whole lot and enjoy their body of work and looking forward to what they're going to write next. I don't look forward to projecting myself into their works, I look forward to seeing what they're going to give me.
I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again: MANY things factor into an author's writing. What if they're characters are based on other people? Well yes, it's their interpretation of that particular person, but I don't think you can rule out the original person entirely. I really don't want to kill the author. The author is my friend. Can we please keep the author? I promise to feed it and take it for walks every day, honest.
PART 2 COMING SOON! (Hey, she said we could do this as 2 entries.)

"Lie down on the couch."

2007-10-17T00:03:00.000-04:00

I don't much care for Freud.
There. I said it.
I think most people can disagree that all men just want to eliminate their fathers and be with their mothers and all women wish they had external genitalia. And this isn't just my initial reaction, either. I've given this a lot of thought. Now, I can't speak on behalf of women, but I'm just not feeling the Oedipus complex. Maybe it's because my parents don't actually love each other (I swear they just got drunk one night and woke up married and decided to just go with it) or because my mom is CRAZY and I like to distance myself from her to avoid the screaming. But I haven't seen universal examples of the Oedipus complex in other men, either. Now, a devout Freudian might say that my opposition to the Oedipus complex is just because I don't want to accept it, but really I just don't think it's true. Anyone want to back Freud up? Any ladies out there with a desire for extra equipment? I mean, if that's the case I won't judge. It's 2007 and such things are done.
I know there's more to Freud than just all the phallic stuff, and I believe he's a valid voice in analysis, but I'm just saying that I'm not taking every single portion of his theories as the solid truth. Let's connect ol' Siggy to that handsome tanned devil himself, Mr. Derrida.
"And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself" "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think"
The improvisation quote can be connection to Freud's free association practice. Freud's idea was that the subconscious would sort of leak out if the conscious mind wasn't delayed. So if you define yourself as your conscious mind, then you are not seeing your "self" when it's your unconscious speaking because on a daily basis it's your conscious speaking. Right?
Okay, next quote. I think it can also be related to Freud's idea of thinking underneath thinking. Here if we determine the true self as the unconscious (being that it dictates all actions of the conscious) then a person really resides in a place where their conscious thoughts are not. Err... right?
I feel like someone should step in here and tell me I'm wrong. So if anyone reading this feels the need to do so I encourage you.

This post doesn't have any pretty pictures or funny videos. I'm leaving.

2007-10-03T15:24:00.000-04:00

In a nutshell, here's my interpretation of Post-Structuralism:
THERE IS NO HUMAN NATURE! THE AUTHOR IS NOT THE SOURCE OF MEANING! YOU CAN'T ESTABLISH A DAMN THING FROM TEXTS! THE WORLD IS A BIG SOUP WHERE EVERYTHING FLOATS AROUND FOR NO REASON AND NOTHING EVER CONNECTS TO ANYTHING ELSE!
Everything said above is true of Post-Structuralism, but here it is in less frantic terms:
First of all, the words deriving their meaning from other words aspect of Structuralism is brought into question by Post-Structuralism. Post-Structuralism says that if a signifier is arbitrary and and signified is arbitrary then the connection between the two is brought into question. The quote I chose to examine which further supports this is "the bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary". Well yes, if you can use any word to describe A and any word to describe the meaning behind A then neither the meaning nor the name of A has any worded definition that without a doubt must be used. But still, in our minds we understand the signified and signifier of A. As discussed earlier, you might be able to call even a bus a train at some points but if we define a train with certain arbitrary words then we can have meaning, even if the words are interchangeable. Maybe you can call trains pineapples instead, but they'll still be things that move along tracks as a means of transport.
Post-Structuralism (I'm sick of typing that already, so now I'm going to call is "P-S") does not say that our world is constructed through language, but instead that our world transcends language. P-S makes an effort to point out the countless times that human beings express the limits of language itself. This of course is much like Structuralism's idea that we have a cultural understanding of certain things and define them through it, but instead P-S would argue that our cultural understanding isn't cohesive enough to define anything.
I find the quote about not being able to examine orchids with a bulldozer very interesting. A problem I had with Structuralism is that it did not examine the one text in itself. Though I do really like the way Structuralism compares one text to the collection of texts to which it belongs, I appreciate how P-S examines the one text. However, I don't feel you can actually learn anything from simply picking it apart and saying how things do not connect to other things. In fact, that's why I have a problem with P-S right there. It's always good to question things in whatever way you can, but in this case what do you establish?
As clarified for me in class, P-S doesn't establish anything. It just picks things apart and questions them. And frankly I don't see the fun in that.
I can see how this would be the end of the road for theory as something that questions texts. It's like when I took my Modern Art class and we were examining abstract art and the last thing we got to is a guy who painted white on a white canvas. My professor asked "Well, how can you get more abstract than this painting?" to which I answered "You just don't paint at all." As it turns out, that particular painter ended his abstract painting career with that painting.

Required response to Professor Craig's post

2007-09-26T00:43:00.000-04:00

First of all, I truly am trying not to suck and any degree that this blog entry may suck is not because of laziness. I assure you that I am genuinely stupid if I make a mistake.
I jotted down notes as I read through the entry and I immediately wrote down "Che Guevara shirts" after I read about the Communist Manifesto being in the clothing store, but then Professor Craig made mention of it and explored all the stuff I was going to say. But hey, he didn't talk about this shirt:

Well I really don't have anything to say about this that hasn't been said about the Che Guevara shirt, but it's a good example, right? RIGHT?!
Moving along...
I LOVE the analogy of sports to Marxism's idea of how we feel we're in control when we're actually not. I've been saying for a while now that it's sort of ridiculous that people get attached to teams that they have absolutely no control over. They only "support" them through things that don't actually effect the team's performance such as buying tickets to seeing games and buying clothing with the team's logo. I wish I had more to say about this, but I don't.
I think the most useful thing about Professor Craig's post was him shedding some light about how all texts within a society fits the ideology of that society, even if they rebel against the ideology. My first reaction to this was to think "No way, stuff that rebels is rebelling and furthermore every single thing cannot fit within an ideology." But think about it: we're talking about meaning and meaning is given by an audience within a social structure. So even if it rebels it's measured not by how original it is, but how it differs from the norm. And in being a polar opposite of the norm, it is indeed related to the original. Think of apples and oranges, two supposed opposites according to some people. Well they're both edible fruits, aren't they? They're pretty related even though they're different. But something like getting a strike in baseball is completely different from either an apple or an orange. It's not even a solid object, it's an action unrelated to eating. It's a completely different realm. I'm not entirely sure how this analogy would work for the literary world, but I think I just made an alright point.
Tying in the fact that a text cannot escape an ideology with attempts within a social structure doomed to fail due to the way the structure itself controls people, movies come to mind. So many movies these days that are recognized as important films are some sort of rebellion. Children of Men had a general message about the failures of humanity. Letters From Iwo Jima once more showed us the horrors of war but this time with reasonable motives behind it. Even Casino Royale had a morality. But at the end of the day it's just entertainment and no one does anything to really change the world but feel like they've accomplished something by accepting these rebellious ideals.
The more I think about it, the more futile rebellion comes to mind. The anti-War protest of South Park comes to mind in which at the end they summed up America by saying that it's a place where the government can do what they want but not feel like tyrants because they give the people freedom of speech and make them think they can change the way things are even though they can't. I think that's a truly Marxist view of America.

Straight Outta Trier

2007-09-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Without delving into the material too far, here are some preliminary thoughts on the Marxism reading.
We all have a pretty good idea of Marxism already, right? Redistribution of wealth, capitalism ruins lives, dirty red commies and whatnot? Well with that vague grasp of Marxism in mind I was very curious before doing the reading what exactly an economy has to do with writing, which is an art form. The notion of a painter saying "I live in a capitalist country. I think I'll paint a purple landscape today" seems ridiculous. However, doesn't our economy shape our entire lives? The question is, does it shape our lives so much that it makes its way into our minds and therefore our art?
I was thankful that the book did not give any definitive answer. After all, with individual minds differing so much is it really possible to give one answer to applies to everyone? No. No it isn't. However, if you look at a collection of a population's work you may begin to see answers.
Although the book offers one example of a Marxist reading, I still feel that I could not see a work through Marxist goggles. However, I found that the chapter brought up some interesting points. These are scattered thoughts, so bare with me.
There's the idea that capitalism has no set goal and workers are just easily replaced components in a machine. The Marxist belief is that this results in individuals losing a sense of meaning. Is this true? Perhaps. But isn't it just the human condition to feel like we could be doing more? Don't we all have great dreams we hope to achieve no matter what position we're in?
The Formalist idea of defamiliarisation also appealed to me. I think art that makes things that were once familiar seem new to us is a great accomplishment and I think we're seeing that trend more now in art. However, I also think a great accomplishment art can make is to make something that we can relate to strongly. So I guess I really don't have a final decision on this matter.
Another Russian Formalist concept that intrigued me is the 'alienation effect', with the example given being a director figure sitting on stage during a play. I like to think of this as a way of breaking the fourth wall and I find it especially interesting because when I watch a comedy I always examine how broken the fourth wall is. Works of comedy just have entirely different feels when they've broken the fourth wall and I don't think that audiences appreciate this enough. In a movie like Office Space all the things that happen could actually happen in real life and so the jokes are funnier because we think of them in terms of "this would be funny if I saw it in real life."

Then you have a movie like Zoolander. Immediately you're shown an absurd character and view of the world and you know you're taken out of reality. Subtle jokes no longer work because it's not our everyday life that the characters are dwelling in. However, when something outside of reality like Zoolander stopping a weapon just with a look it's funny because it fits the tone of the film. The same goes for the impromptu musical number in Billy Madison. But perhaps I'm going off topic.
I was pleased to see that the more modern Marxist school of thought seems to take in a lot of factors and also account at least a little bit for an artist's independence outside his or her economy. I don't think an economy shapes every single bit of an artist's work and if they don't want their work to represent their economy then it's unfair to tear it apart and simply look at certain aspects as communist or capitalist. Maybe they just wanted to make art for the sake of art.
It's true that none of us will ever truly separate ourselves from our background. It will always shape our mentality in some way. But I do believe that there is enough detachment in all of us from our economy that every single work we do should not just be looked at as a product our of economy. I know that as I writer I have different motives. Sometimes I want to rebel against the norm for the sake of being the Devil's Advocate. Sometimes I want to do my best to pay tribute to certain works. Sometimes I just want to make people laugh.
My opinions will probably shift a little after an in-depth discussion, but for now this is my stance.

sdrawkcab

2007-09-12T16:29:00.000-04:00

So this should have been first and I apologize.
Hi, I'm Max and this is my blog. I already said what this blog is going to be about me in my About Me.
Okay, so here's how I feel about theory: whenever I go through a theory I hear a lot of points that think "Oh wow, they have a good point." But then we move on to another theory and I start to see things their way. Eventually the class I'm learning theory in ends and I still have my same viewpoint as before. So I think it's good to see things from a different viewpoint, not only to understand the material but to just to understand that viewpoint so that you're more in touch with the world around you. But I've yet to learn the theory that warps my fragile little mind.

On Liberal Humanism

2007-09-10T22:27:00.000-04:00

Alright, I'm writing this before I forget what it's all about.
As I understand it (which could be entirely wrong) Liberal Humanism is to theory as Atheism is to religion. Liberal Humanism strips away any lens that one may see a text through and instead examines it for what it is. This means it disregards related works, works that inspired the text, the author's motives, the time period and location, and so on. At first I guess this might seem like a good idea. But I immediately thought of The Diary of Anne Frank. Without its context, The Diary of Anne Frank is a fairly boring tale of some girl living in an attic. Within text it is one of the most straightforward examples of how the Holocaust shaped the lives of Jews. Even the book at one point seems to hold itself back from saying that Liberal Humanism is a useless way to view something.
The example given in defense is the novel Tristram Shandy, the first of its kind in the literary world. The humor within it still holds funny today regardless of the time that has passed or the region in which it was written. Liberal Humanism may be a decent way to example the novel in particular, but certainly not most novels. Tristram Shandy is revered for being so timeless because it's a rarity that a work withstands the test of time so well. As far as context goes, Tristram Shandy revolves around fairly generic tales of everyday life that few would have a hard time relating to.
In short, so many works represent more than just the words themselves and one would be blinding themselves and ignoring essential parts of the text to simply view it through the blank lens of Liberal Humanism.