Blog: Finishing Beginning Theory

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For the past eight years or so - ever since I started doing my PhD (which I don't like to go on about) in fact - I have been struggling with Literary Theory. Every time I've been to a conference, or read a book, or talked to academical types it's been all Foucault this, Derrida that and structuralism the other, and I have not had a single clue what anyone was on about.

Well, I say not a SINGLE clue - I did do a bit of due diligence and looked some of the most often used words up, but even then I felt like I was missing the point. I distinctly remember, right at the start of it all, hearing people bang on about Michel Foucault all the time with regards to comics, and yet I could not for the life of me find anything he'd ever actually SAID about them. It was the same with Roland Barthes and all of them lot, while the only Philosopher I could find who ever DID say something about comics - Umberto Eco - wrote a paper RIDDLED with factual errors, in which he claimed for instance that the Marvel comics of the 1960s and 1970s (featuring that famous superhero "Devil", without the "Dare") were examples of the "oneiric climate" where all stories existed in a haze of present with little relation to any past or future. Er... don't think that's quite right Umberto!

Frustrated by my lack of understanding I signed up for a series of PHILOSOPHY SEMINARS at UAL. I thought this would sort me out but it was not great and I ended up not going to any after the first, very annoying, session. I then tried BOOKS, YouTube Videos, and all sorts of things like that but never ever got any closer to understanding what the heck was going on.

I was still moaning about this during the summer this year when I met esteemed colleague and pal Dr Martin Flanagan for a drink. He took this all very calmly and said "We usually recommend students get Beginning Theory" and later sent me details of the book he was on about - "Beginning Theory" by Professor Peter Barry.



COR! This was an EXCELLENT recommendation, for LO! it was EXACTLY what I was after. I started reading it around October and have spent the past couple of months up to my EARS in structuralism, post-structuralism, marxism, queer theory, feminism - THE LOT, basically. It's really really nicely written, with the tone of an ACE Professor explaining it all in a kindly way to a group of undergraduates who he will then take to the PUB once a term and get all the beers in for. In fact, it very much FELT like the dream ideal of what going to college should have been like, and indeed what I THORT it was going to be like when I set off for Leicester Polytechnic all those decades ago.

I had high hopes of LOFTY IDEAS and INTELLECTUAL VISTAS but it actually turned out to be like a not very good sixth form college, and reading this book now I see that that's pretty much what it was! I remember one day we had a lecture where the lecturer said "Oh, and you can also do Marxist critiques or feminist critiques" but didn't explain it properly, or follow it up, or do anything at all. I mean, I know it was Leicester Poly rather than BRIDESHEAD UNIVERSITY or whatever, but looking back now I do feel mildly AGGRIEVED that we were fobbed off with pretty much O Level English again. Think of what I could have WROUGHT if I'd known all this stuff thirty years earlier!

I was also slightly gobsmacked to read the chapter on Marxist Theory and realise that, GOR BLIMEY, that appears to be ME. I keep writing all this stuff about how Comics Studies being ashamed to talk about The Beano is due to class snobbery, or how the culture of production of art is key to understanding it (especially with regards to Marvel comics), but hadn't realised that this is a big chunk of Marxist Theory. All this time and I have been DENIED the Donkey Jacket and annoying little cap that should have been mine all along!

So, three cheers for Martin and Professor Barry, no cheers to the Combined Arts faculty at Leicester Poly as was, and full steam ahead for the literary revolution. Let's go COMRADES!

posted 3/12/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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