The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

How about some practical knowledge, lit kids?

Skip the theory, guys. Professor Pippin wants you to put down the Freud and Fanon and… well, that’s it.

U of C philosophy professor Robert Pippin, also on the Committee of Social Thought, wrote a blog post for the New York Times arguing for "naïve readings" of literature.

"Call this a plea for a place for “naïve” reading, teaching and writing — an appreciation and discussion not mediated by a theoretical research question recognizable as such by the modern academy," he writes.

Pippin has thrown down the gauntlet.

Read a novel, any novel, and don't, for one second, see what you're reading through any lens. No feminism, no psychoanalysis, no structuralism, no post-structuralism, no deconstruction, no post-colonialism, no new criticism (or old criticism for that matter).

You've taken Critical Perspectives already? Sorry, you're out of the running. Maybe they'll change it to Naïve Perspectives, a course on how to unlearn your quarter-of-a-million-dollar education. Either way, you're still jobless, right?

Good luck.

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