Reconstruction 10.4 (2010)
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What is Outsider Criticism
<1> In 1979, Jean-François Lyotard published the results of a study he was commissioned to write for the Conseil des universités du Québec in which he made the claim that, in a university system devoted to functionalism rather than experimentation, “it is safe to assume that responsibility for [experimentation] will devolve upon extrauniversity networks.” This proclamation may have been shocking to university administrators, who have often equated the university with knowledge as if such a linking were inevitable, but from Lyotard’s perspective of a growing, capitalist-fueled technocracy, and now ours, in which this technocracy has grown in size and nature (with the Internet) along with a university system that has, at all levels, devoted itself both to an increased integration with corporations and structural moves towards adjunct “plebocracies,” the prophecy seems relatively inevitable now. So, the university has more and more ceased to exist as such, as a separate entity, and thus even knowledge produced “within” the university structure cannot be precisely located there.
<2> To be “outside” the university does not necessarily, however, have a plus or minus value attached to it. Knowledge produced in this outside is not inherently subversive or a product of capitalist imperatives. Nevertheless, it may be interesting to explore the possibilities in Lyotard’s statement not from an alarmist perspective, but from an opportunistic one Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, for instance, was started by two graduate students (Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Davin Heckman) ten years ago without the support of a university institution. And by support, I mean funding. Since then, our readership has grown to over 1500 individuals per day in over 110 countries. Its web pages have featured graduate students, full professors, Guggenheim fellows, and a postal worker who has been publishing “proletarian” literature for over 25 years. Of the current five editors (many of our affiliate editors and readers being far more “esteemed” than we) on the masthead of Reconstruction, only one is in a tenure track position, thus receiving “official” recognition of his work in the journal. The others do their work for free, and while they have university affiliations (for the most part) they do not receive “credit” from their institutions for their editorship in the form of pay raises, promotion, tenure, etc. So as much as we benefit from the university, we also are examples of those who willingly and happily work outside the university’s reward system. This is a success of the collective effort of Reconstruction and its editors that does not require university support to do its work and, while it may or may not welcome such affiliations in the future, does not view them as central to its mission. Reconstruction is worth publishing outside of the confines of promotion and tenure.
<3> The current issue of Reconstruction brings this question to the fore with a section entitled “Outsiders,” although outsiders are to be found throughout the issue. It begins with an article written by a 67 year old Chemical Engineer who, while holding a Ph.D., has never published an academic article. Furthermore, he publishes outside his “field” and thus has nothing to lose by producing minority points of view, by writing outsider criticism. In “Evolution, Popular Culture, and the Nature of Scientific Knowledge” James H. Clinton points out what is obvious to those who work within the biological and chemical sciences but is often, for political reasons, suppressed—evolutionary science is in many ways like any other science, full of debate, unanswered questions, and ideological pressures. In other ways, it is not like other sciences in that it seeks to produce knowledge which is metaphysical in nature, having to do with origins and thus bearing little relation to popular culture’s association of science with “fact” in the Baconian/Newtonian tradition. That evolution has become the flashpoint of debates concerning science and religion has as much to do with evolutionary scientists’ conscious or unconscious doubts about the nature of their questions and methodologies as it does with primary school curriculum and Creationist theme parks.
<4> “Whose America [or world] is this anyway?” asks Mike Dubose in his essay of the same title. Do Guns n Roses and Living Colour have as much to say about identity politics and questions of class as academic critics? The debate concerning these things is especially interesting in Dubose’s essay because not only are the aforementioned bands outsiders in the sense that they are disenfranchised from the academic community as such, or those who “have authority to analyze” rather than just entertain or “muse,” they are doubly disenfranchised because they represent a genre of music (mainstream hard rock) which has, arguably, less intellectual caché than any other Yet, argues Dubose, Guns n Roses’ song “One in a Million” and the debates that occurred between them and Living Colour are worthy acts of criticism in their own right, regardless of whether any of the parties involved have read bell hooks or Pierre Bourdieu. They are not just “artifacts,” but participants in cultural studies criticism whether or not this is recognized by those with tenured positions in Cultural Studies. Reading Dubose’s essay reminded me of a statement made (only half-jokingly) by Gregory L. Ulmer in an interview I did with him in Reconstruction 9.2:
Britney Spears was rated as the number one hit on the Web recently, so perhaps is our Socrates [for the digital age]. . . . The upskirt shot of Britney exiting a sports car on the way to a club (sans panties) is probably to us what Socrates demanding a definition from one of his interlocutors was to literacy. Both actions horrified their respective worlds, and that is important to remember. . . . In Britney’s defense, and as Socrates would tell you, it is not easy being the bearer of a new standard of identity.
For the outsider critic, identity must be self-fashioned in a way that is not required for those who operate in institutions that have been legitimized by the larger culture. Perhaps this is what accounts for 73 year-old Barie F. Barringten’s strange, irresistible, self aggrandizing narrative “Urban Passion.” Barringten is a strange character, one of those submitters who sends 5 essays and asks me to “pick one.” His CV seems to hold in equal esteem a degree in Architecture from Yale and a Texas Real Estate Broker’s license. Despite these eccentricities, things that led me to almost dismiss him (even the author of a piece entitled “Outsider Criticism” has his limits), there is no doubt that he has interesting things to say, that he has urban passion: “I’d put my bare foot onto the red brick steps to descend to the glittering cement sidewalk. This was my first urban act when I touched the city and I could feel it under my feet.” From that first urban act, Barringten weaves together a tale that includes the exploration of sewers and abandoned huts, pencil and paper sketches of various urban scenes both possible and impossible, the use of a Victrola to cure his stuttering, encounters with Robert Venturi and John Cage, the Constitution of Eritrea, extended stays in gypsy camps, and an itinerary in which fog is as likely to transport you from one place to another as any other vehicle.
<5> Outsider criticism always takes the form of a question, and it is always local. What is outsider criticism in this issue of Reconstruction is the only question I will try to address.
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Outsider criticism comes from African-American preacher women who must laugh like the Medusa: “though these traits [audacity and boldness] do not come naturally for me, I have felt their security, while shaking in my shoes with uncertainty and paradox” (“One Calling, Two Loyalites?”)
Outsider criticism believes in “Some transient motive in the motiveless inert” (E.P. Thompson)
Outsider criticism believes in magick: “I entered an all night trance to try and conjure a particular woman from the hospital, which required looking in two directions, out of the twin bug eyes of my apartment towards the hospital and onto the floor of the hospital’s map—which consisted of literal diagrams of the space this woman was haunting, traditional divinatory devices, keepsakes of her including photos and writings, and the written map I spent from night time until well in the morning producing.” (“Hauntology”)
Outsider criticism trades in secrets, and does not reveal its identity (“Due Process”)
Outsider criticism is poetry
written by a 19 year old woman
who like Rimbaud plans to give it up and go into international relations
Outsider criticism is written on a scarf made of red leaves, which then “begins to slowly slip and the sepia silence breaks into vivid cries as the women shout in Arabic,” and then is used to “wrap her bloodied hand before getting on the bus” (“The Migrant Homemaker”)
Outsider criticism lies elsewhere.