Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 18:27:40 -0700 From: Antaeus Feldspar Subject: TECH: Bounds of Critique (fwd) (This is a piece originally posted to WRITERS a few years ago... I thought it would be good to bring it back... if anyone would be interested in other TECH pieces, just drop me a line...) ! -jc IS feldspar@netcom.com ! ! "'Asa Nisi Masa!' How strange! But what does it mean?" ! ! *** Fight spam! Sign up at http://www.cauce.org/ ! *** ! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 08:06:49 -0800 (PST) From: Antaeus Feldspar To: Writers List Subject: TECH: Bounds of Critique One of the perennial questions that comes up on WRITERS is 'How should works be critiqued?' It's a hard question to answer, especially because no one wants to respond simply by stating what's obvious to everyone -- the flip side being that very little indeed is 'obvious to everybody.' In the wake of what many considered to be violations of the boundaries of critique, but by no means solely addressed to those cases that raised the issue: How does one critique a work with controversial subject matter? RULE OF THUMB: Address your comments to the work that was written by the author. Not to the work that you wish the author had written. This is hardly *limited* to controversial works. If the author has written a shoot'-em-up Western, the fact that you don't happen to be in the audience that enjoys shoot-'em-up Westerns doesn't mean that you should criticize the story for being what it is. The same goes for science fiction, when you really don't like science fiction; and for romances, when you don't like romances. And it does go, as well, for political writing when the politics expressed aren't yours. For religious material when you don't share that religion. ALTERING THE RULE TO FIT THE THUMB IN QUESTION Does this mean that you can't comment at all on anything if you don't like its content? No. But it does mean that your comments on the Western shouldn't be aimed at turning it into a romance. It means that your critique of a paean to Socialism shouldn't be aimed at turning it into a tract for the Republicans, or turning the author into a Republican. It's what the author wrote, not what you wish they would write. What *is* open to critique are all the matters of style that go into making the piece an effective one *for its target audience.* Simple matters like misspellings and errors of grammar are obviously fair game. WHAT IF THEY'RE STILL WRONG? It depends on *how* they are wrong. If you don't feel like being very honest with yourself and with the author, then err on the side of caution and stop with critiquing matters of style. But if you want to go farther, you should do so knowing what you're doing. Errors of fact are open to criticism. One piece that I was called upon to critique in an early writing class was a poem that lauded the wonderful feeling that the author had had scuba-diving, down in the water where, unlike up on the land, there wasn't any violence or killing. Simple acquaintance with the food chain will verify that yes, there is a great deal of violence and killing that goes on underneath the sea. In this case, the error of fact is pretty clear. (I got lambasted for it, which does go to show the danger of critiquing controversial work even when you *do* know what you're doing: there is always someone who does NOT necessarily know what they're doing, who will try to second-guess you.) On the other hand, suppose the poem had been about the evils of meat-eaters, who kill chickens and cattle that have the same souls as we humans do? On the surface, this could look like an error of fact -- or, depending on your point of view, a statement of correct fact. It's neither. The question of whether chicken and cattle have souls is one that can never be settled -- the existence of any souls, human or not, is a matter of belief, not a matter of testable, or provable, fact. Where one can go back into the records to find out what is (or at least what is most probable to be) fact, by definition there's no such way to confirm a matter of opinion. THE RIGHT THING FOR THE WRONG REASON Can one criticize the basis by which an author comes to an opinion, or supports an opinion? Starting about 2000 years ago, the ancient Greek philosophers (literally, lovers of thinking) started probing answers to many questions of the cosmos and of human life. One of their more lasting legacies came from their examination of the processes of logic and thinking themselves, trying to figure out if there were correct and incorrect methods of thinking. _Fallacies_ are means of drawing from correct facts a conclusion that can be extremely INcorrect. If the premises of the argument (the starting facts) are correct, but the conclusion is false, this means that the process of logic used to derive the conclusion from the premises is flawed, and therefore, a fallacy. I can't provide a complete list, but I'll try to mention those that I've seen appearing in controversial creative writing. Ad hominem is the best-known fallacy, and one that's less likely to be found in the work being critiqued than in the critique. One argues against an opinion by pointing out or inventing flaws against the person who holds it. Note that this is *not* the same thing as name-calling (not that name-calling is a wonderful thing, either.) This is not an ad hominem argument: "You're a feeble-minded back-stabbing traitor." This *is* an ad hominem argument: "Your political views are nonsense, because you're a feeble-minded back-stabbing traitor." Therefore, the most obvious appearance of _ad hominem_ is in the critique, where the critiquer finds some flaw in the author and bases their criticism of the work upon that flaw. However, it is possible to put ad hominem to work in a poem or a piece of fiction. "George was a religious man. He was gullible and weak and a cheat." That's not ad hominem. (May not be good writing, but it's not ad hominem, yet.) "A long time ago, a bunch of people who were all cheats got together and made up religion. Since then, millions of gullible people have fallen for the scam, mostly because they were weak." That's ad hominem. By taking such a universal approach, the author in essence creates a 'composite believer' to whom certain flaws are universally attributed, to deny that anyone can have better reasons for holding those beliefs. The second and less well-known variety of ad hominem is ad hominem circumstantial: one does not discount another's opinion because of their personal qualities, but because of their circumstances. "Oh, you only believe in those policies because you're white / you're black / you're a man / you're a woman / you're rich / you're poor." This may even be true, but whether true or false, it means nothing about the policies themselves. To declare an opinion 'self-serving' really has no logical consequence in showing the opinion to be right or wrong. Again, this is more likely to be found in the critique than in the work being critiqued, but can be found either way. The existential fallacy is one of the most subtle, and here I'll discuss it in conjunction with the fallacy of begging the question. Both of these fallacies try to evoke support for a particular belief or opinion by treating it as if it were already proven, and using it in arguments to support further conclusions. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is the most widely-known example; it pretends to be seeking information but instead it assumes to be true what may not be true at all: that at some point the person being attacked *did* beat their wife. This example seems obvious because it is well known, but the fallacy is still used widely. How is this applicable to fiction and poetry? In the same way that one can imply things about those who believe X or Y by making those things true of those in your story who believe X or Y, one can establish a quite questionable premise as part of one's story and never have any of the sympathetic characters question it. This is an even greyer area than the use of ad hominem, however, simply because the creation of questionable premises as part of a story occurs quite often without any intent to create controversy. If all the characters have a complete and unquestioned belief that the black people in the town are uncivilized brutes from whom good white people must be protected (as in D. W. Griffith's famous and infamous film _Birth of a Nation_) that work is certainly open to charges of racism, for example. On the other hand, if all the characters in the fantasy novel have a complete and unquestioned belief that the trolls who live in the forest are uncivilized brutes from whom the good human villagers must be protected, this is the author's creation, and who can claim that they are wrong about what they themselves created? And to take an example even closer to the grey border, what about a science fiction novel of the near future where major plotlines center around conspiracies between unscrupulous technological corporations and dictatorial religious empires that some people believe strongly resemble institutions of today? In the interests of keeping the practices of submission and critique generating more actual improvement of writing than drawn-out argument -- to keep it generating more light than heat -- please keep in mind that trying to critique controversial work by analyzing it for fallacies is EXTREMELY difficult, as it involves not just matters of principle but matters of scale. The personalities of five characters may be a cause for complaint where the personalities of three are not. Please remember just how grey the area is, and if in a lot of doubt, don't. If you're fairly sure of your ground, it's still safest to raise the issue in the form of a question rather than an accusation. ("Are you aware that all the characters that you've placed on this side of the questions are all portrayed as unscrupulous?") -jc