I’m surprised you don’t think there could be any more to art history/criticism than either “Look, it’s a picture of a duck” or postmodern babble. There is less postmodern babble in nearly all fields in the humanistic disciplines than most people around here seem to think.
My knowledge of art history specifically is limited to a single college course, but I’ve been exposed to literary criticism in a little more depth. At least in that field, the predominant failure mode seems not to be postmodern babble (there’s some of that in a lot of contemporary work, but it seems more in the nature of a stylistic tic than an actual fixture of thought) but what I might call promiscuous application: that is, readings of a work are decoupled from the needs of readers and writers generally and selected according to what looks fresh and interesting to the literary criticism community. This produces a lot of entertainingly hyperspecialized but ultimately sterile interpretations, a lot of ingroup pandering, and a lot of political grandstanding, but not—as a fraction of the whole—much insight into the actual mechanics of literature.
That’s not to say that I’ve gotten nothing out of it; I have. But it tends to take a lot of digging.
Interesting comment and I do agree. I think it’s only to be expected that in their research-level scholarship, literary critics/theorists are mostly talking amongst themselves (the same is the case with most academic specialties). But like you I’ve struggled to find interesting, accessible, eclectic/broadminded (i.e., not massively argument-driven, or as you put it “hyperspecialized”) readings by legitimate experts that really enhance my enjoyment of (especially) difficult works without trying to draw me down a rabbit hole of topics that are only of interest to lit-theorists.
There is a strange and not obviously sensible blending of cultural theory and literary criticism in academia. So often you end up reading an analysis of a work that exists to illustrate someone’s theory of culture rather than an analysis of a work that exists to illustrate important aspects of that work. Freud gets invoked far too often, too.
My knowledge of art history specifically is limited to a single college course, but I’ve been exposed to literary criticism in a little more depth. At least in that field, the predominant failure mode seems not to be postmodern babble (there’s some of that in a lot of contemporary work, but it seems more in the nature of a stylistic tic than an actual fixture of thought) but what I might call promiscuous application: that is, readings of a work are decoupled from the needs of readers and writers generally and selected according to what looks fresh and interesting to the literary criticism community. This produces a lot of entertainingly hyperspecialized but ultimately sterile interpretations, a lot of ingroup pandering, and a lot of political grandstanding, but not—as a fraction of the whole—much insight into the actual mechanics of literature.
That’s not to say that I’ve gotten nothing out of it; I have. But it tends to take a lot of digging.
Interesting comment and I do agree. I think it’s only to be expected that in their research-level scholarship, literary critics/theorists are mostly talking amongst themselves (the same is the case with most academic specialties). But like you I’ve struggled to find interesting, accessible, eclectic/broadminded (i.e., not massively argument-driven, or as you put it “hyperspecialized”) readings by legitimate experts that really enhance my enjoyment of (especially) difficult works without trying to draw me down a rabbit hole of topics that are only of interest to lit-theorists.
There is a strange and not obviously sensible blending of cultural theory and literary criticism in academia. So often you end up reading an analysis of a work that exists to illustrate someone’s theory of culture rather than an analysis of a work that exists to illustrate important aspects of that work. Freud gets invoked far too often, too.