Response to Dr. Craig's post on Marxism

When learning about Marxism I thought I knew what it meant to have a Marxist view on the world, and a Marxist literary critique, but I soon found out that I only had a simplified version of what Marxist Criticism is.

Dr. McGuire's further explanation of Marxist theory in class this week, as well as Dr. Craig's post helped make the theory clearer for me.

What I found to be interesting in Dr. Craig's piece was the idea of wage earners and stock owners. When wages are up the stocks will go down because it is seen as cut in profit. The idea that people are more worried about those who are making the money from the stocks instead of those  who work to make the product was very interesting as well, since like Dr. Craig said, most of us our wage earners and not stock owners.  The idea of the people solely becoming a part of production in order to get a profit is something that I believe will still see today, and will always see in a Capitalist society. 

I also have changed my idea on Marxist literary theory because I realize it is more focused on the ideology of the text itself, instead of examining the author, since the author is not really a factor. The idea of oppositional voices in the text that help the critic learn more about the ideology of the text I found to be very interesting as well, since I previously thought it was about the author.

Overall, the post by Dr. Craig has helped my understanding of Marxism and hopefully other guest post will be just as helpful.

Marxism

Marxist theory is the idea that a subject of work is a product of the historical and cultural events happening at the time of its production.  I have to agree with this view of art in a way, since if the reader does not look at the circumstances as to why the author is writing a certain piece, or what they were experiencing while writing it, they won't fully understand why the literary text has any application to them reading it.

One of the points of Liberal Humanism that stuck with me the most is that there should be no preconceived ideas about a text, only ideas that are formed from reading the text itself.  I understand why that idea is practical but I think in opposition to Marxism it does not hold true.  I think that knowing about a certain time period, or knowing where the author is coming from beforehand ie, what social class they belong to, what political and historical events are happening in that time, it is hard for a reader to not have any preconceived ideas.

Knowing about an individual time and social status of an author, it is harder for the reader to separate any ideas whether it be about the author or the work itself.

Thoughts About Theory

To start off, I am an English Communications student at a private liberal-arts college in the middle of Boston. I will be using this blog to go deeper into discussing topics about literary theory and criticism.

Going into a theory class seemed to be intimidating at first, not knowing what to expect or what exactly will be covered. After touching base with literary criticism I feel as though I have more understanding of what theory is.

In order to describe what I think theory is, I must define what liberal humanism is, since the two go hand in hand. For  myself I define liberal humanism as enjoying a piece of work for what the work is, and not what the author intends, or what I as the reader get out of it.  I understood theory as being a combative to liberal humanism. Theories like Marxist, Feminist, and Post-Structuralist theory are ways to look at pieces of works. Whether it is examining a piece due to an authors point of view, or a women's point of view, it is different that liberal humanism because liberal humanism the reader takes the piece of work as is, and does not examine or dissect the reading for other meanings.