The Professionalization of the ‘Intellectuals’

498 GARRY WATSON tic pressures from within our society; nor can creativity be engineered through planned social policy. But one can do the best one can to think without preconceptions. Itis therefore still possible to offer our students a model of thoughtfulness and learning. And, despite the rubbish that any culture is bound to surround us with, it is conceivable that one write as directly and openly as possible. GARRY WATSON The Professionalization of the 'Intellectuals' I will focus my remarks on the professionalization of literary criticism and I'll start offby making use ofthe analogy that Frank Lentricchia has drawn between the practice of the latter and the practice of medicine.1 Noting Michel Foucault's observation to the effect that 'medical statements cannot come from anybody' and his question concerning rights and qualifications ('Who, among the totality of speaking individuals, is accorded the right to use this sort of language? Who is qualified to do so?'), Lentricchia asks the question 'who is qualified, for that matter, to make poetic statements, or statements that will fulfil the conditions of literary criticism?' He then elaborates as follows: A medical doctor will have a degree from a university which is overseen and accredited by professional associations and governmental agencies; furthermore , there will be an institutional site of speaking, a laboratory, a hospital, 'from which the doctor makes his discourse, and from which this discourse derives its legitimate source and point of application....' The analogy with the literary critic is plain. He will, at a minimum, have a PH.D in literature, and preferably from one of a small group of celebrated universities. He will need a university appointment or a position at a small 'respected' college; a letterhead announcing his name, an M.A. degree, and his home address as Commerce, Oklahoma, will constitute a distinct disadvantage. An ambitious literary critic who desires to lodge his statements within our current sense of critical truth would seek 'co-existence,' as Foucault puts it, with certain other disciplines Saussurean linguistics, anthropology in the structuralist mode, deconstructionist philosophies, and so on. And his books and articles will speak from institutionally sanctioned sites: a university press, a scholarly journal, but again this is only minimal, for to be critically dans Ie vraiin 1980is to speakunder the imprimatur of certain preferred presses and journals. Above all, certain doctrines will be paid reverence. But surely - I hope someone will object - there can be no question of anyone's being accorded the right to do literary criticism? And as far as UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 1989 SYMPOSIUM ON PROFESSIONALIZATION 499 qualifications are concerned, it is surely a mistake to think that they are in any way guaranteed by academic degrees. It may be necessary to use a terminology ofrights and qualifications in order to regulate the practice of medicine, but it is perverseto try to apply it to literary criticism. Who cares whether the book reviewer in the local or national newspaper, on radio or the TV, has any kind of academic degree at all? Over and above the limitations and opportunities provided by the number of words available and the kind of audience being addressed, what will determine whether or not it is good literary criticism will be the presence or absence of such qualities as intelligence, knowledge, and sensitivity to language. And the same obviously applies to other forms of criticism. No doubt we all know one or two examples of valuable and even exciting film criticism that is written by academics (easily my own favourite is CineAction, a journal that is produced by a collective based in Toronto), but much of the best of it (Pauline Kael, for example, in the New Yorker) certainly isn't. But Lentricchia is not himself arguing that the 'qualifications' he describes are indeed necessary to the practice of literary criticism. What he is offering is description; he is describing what is in the process of happening to literary criticism: its professionalization and the kind of conformity this entails. (Though he does not himself say so, I think Lentricchia is also describing the latest strategem by means of which the academic - this time much better...