Smith, Barbara Hernstein. Contingencies of Value.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988.
Summary by Sarah K. Wilson
Chapter 1:
Fixed Marks and Variable Consistencies: A Parable of Value
Evaluating
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
There
are really no universal standards for evaluating literature; rather, criteria
for evaluating literature is contingent on culture, and, as she illustrates
with her personal experience with Shakespeare’s sonnets, evaluation in
contingent on personal history and feelings. Really, anyone who writes, publishes, purchases, or reads
literature is making an evaluation by saying that certain material is worth
being written, published, purchased, or read (3).
Critical Problematics
A
work’s inclusion in anthologies and reading lists and the amount that it
is cited and quoted by others all serve to “promote” and
“create” the value of the work (9-10). Until something is discovered and valuable to someone, it
cannot be valuable at all (10).
“In accord with the changing interests and other values of a
community, various potential meanings of a work will become more or less
visable (or “realizable”), and the visibility -- and hence value --
of the work for that community will change accordingly” (Smith 10).
There
are overt acts of evaluation, too, often made verbally. In overt evaluation, we are: 1) estimating the value of the work for
ourselves and others; 2) estimating its ability to fulfill a particular
function (classifies the work); and 3) estimating its value based on our
cultural conventions and assumptions (Smith 13-14).
“The
reason our evaluations of its probable value for other people may be quite
accurate is that the total economy of their existence may, in fact, be quite
similar to that of our own” (Smith 16).
Chapter 2:
The Exile of Evaluation
The
topic of evaluation, particularly the acknowledgment of its contincent nature,
has been largely avoided until Smith (18). Traditionally, the thought has been that “literary
value was a determinate property of texts and that the critic, by virtue of
certain innate and acquired capacities (taste, senibility, and so forth, which
could be seen as counterparts to the scholar’s industry and erudition),
was someone specifically equipped to discriminate it” (19). Critics like Arnold, Eliot, Yvor
Winters, and F. R. Leavis practiced under these assertions (19). Then critics like A. J. Ayer and
Rudolph Camap (in 1930s-40s) said evaluative statements did not
“reflec[t] or produc[e] genuine knowledge” (19). I. A. Richards (in the 1920s) attempted
to show relativism in criticism (20).
Northrop Frye later said that evaluation could not be a part of
criticism at all (21). In The
Anatomy of Criticism (p.18), he said that for criticism to be a
“field of genuine learning,” critics must have “no organic
connection” with the work” (21). Shortly later (in 1968), E. D. Hirsch argues that evaluation
is knowledge (essay “Evaluation as Knowledge”), just as valuable as
any other form of criticism (22).
And so the debate has continued throughout the century. Now, most criticism focuses on
“language- and interpretation-centered theories, movements, and
approaches” (23). So far,
though, there hasn’t been a good noncanonical theory of value and
evaluation.
The Politics
of Evaluative Criticism
To
now acknowledge the contingencies of evaluation and to instead ignore
evaluation altogether is to then assume that the judgements of the past are
“correct” and should stand as such. This is problematic in a diverse, different society.
The
Alternative Project
We
should not seek objectivism in criticism.
We should instead acknowledge the contingencies of value of past
judgments as well as present ones (28).
Evaluation is a social act, a social transaction. There are several
social, political, and personal variables that are at work in making
evaluations.
Chapter 3:
Contingencies of Value
Matters of
Taste
The
endurance of a work is not a constant means by which to evaluate literature
(36). Some believe that there are
standard or universal tastes which please us “naturally” and which
provide a “standard” by which to judge literature. These also believe that most people are
substandard and cannot appreciate literature which does meet qualities of
universal taste (37).
If many people value a book it is then valued by “individual
subjects who interact as members of some community” and therefore several
of the contingencies under which they operate will seem as noncontingencies”
(40).
Even when a community believes in the noncontingency of value, there
will always be those who force the critics to support their claims -- people
(usually uneducated ones) will question the critics’ choices! When contingencies are standardized, it
implicitely conveys that 1) the literature is performing its ordained function;
2) the conditions under which people interact with literature are standard;
and 3) the people canonizing are qualified to make the decisions (and unbiased)
and others’ tastes are substandard.
Processes of
Evaluation
The
art we come into contact with has been pre-evaluated and pre-classified by the
author, the publisher, the bookseller, the reader, the purchaser, etc.
(43). Once a work has been
classified as “worthy” in this environment, the task is then to
ensure the longevity of the canon by presenting it in school as a means of
promoting and teaching good taste (43-44). Authors, readers prizes, anthologies, publishing, curricula,
etc. all produce of destroy literary value (45-46). Anthologies make and maintain certain qualities of good
literature and the definition of literature itself (47).
Dynamics of
Endurance
The
“properties” of a work that caused it to be canonized at all are
subjective to the reader; all who follow after and feel the same way toward the
particular work feel so because they are in a similar culture (or perhaps the qualities
of the culture have been maintained) (48). Valuable works can lose value and unvaluable works can gain
value as they fulfill a need in a later cultural environment (49). If a canonical work continues to
perform some function well (whether it is its original or
“ordained” function or not) it remains a commodity often produced,
cited, etc. (49). Canonical works
are more likely to remain so amidst changing cultures and amidst new literature
because authors “ ‘save the text’ by transferring the locus
of its interest to more formal or structural features” or by appealing to
“universal” standards (49).
“We
make texts timeless by suppressing their temporality” (50). Canonical works “shape and
create” the culture assigning value because the works are mimicked,
idolized, and set a standard for “great” (50). Other cultures, however, may not value
Shakespeare because his works “do not have value for them” (53).