IVORY TOWER LAWS

(For a history of the term "Ivory Tower" see below)
You should know right away that this post has nothing to do with the many, current college crises and you will not find in it information about speech codes, administrative diktats and the other rules and regulations found on our increasingly censorious campuses. You will find instead some archaic and obscure laws that I found in my old promptuary; the kind of arcane stuff I promised, but have not yet delivered. The only reference that I found which relates to these laws says that they are “atrabilious” which means, ill-mannered, peevish, melancholy - there that should entice you to read on.

CRITICAL THEORY

I will not pretend to know much about literary theory, particularly critical theory, nor do I even know why I copied these laws down over 35 years ago. It certainly could not have been the title of the article that attracted me as you will see. I must have at least recognized them as satirical and some below (like #1 & #5 and, of course #35 - Berra’s Law) are accessible even to me. Apart from acknowledging the author’s sense of humour, one has to admire his prescience. Or perhaps her; I have not been able to identify Thersites Minor. Nor have I been able to find out much about the laws which seem not to have been widely shared. In any case, the humanities seem even more political and polemical these days and for that reason I present them here.

“How to Be a Newer Critic: Metonymic Mumblings or a Generative Lexicon of Apposite Apothegms”, Thersites Minor, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 94, No.5, Comparative Literature, 1979, pp..1188-1198.

The first paragraph sets the tone:

“CRITICAL GAMESMANSHIP: To write the NEWER or HIGHER

CRITICISM it is not so much a matter of pursuing an argument or

exploring a text as invoking the right WORDS. One's critical posture is

almost immediately revealed by the choice of sanctified words and familiar

constellations of phrases. Schools and charters of critical privilege are,

however, frequently dissolved or reorganized, so it is crucial that the as-

piring critic not be caught on the ledge of yesterday's discarded lexicon.

The following basic Do-It-Yourself Kit should suffice to get any newly

licensed critic into the game.

This one shows you that the tone is consistent and it even has Canadian content:

Franchising or the Critical Crock of Gold

Aspiring Newer Critics who do not have the time or energy to develop

their own systems should consider buying into the industry through a

franchising or licensee option. Menus tend to be limited in variety, but the

key to success lies in a careful analysis of the territory, recognition adver-

tising, and volume turn-over. Toronto marketers are still pushing Colonel

Northrop's Fryed Products….”

THE LAWS:

Laws without Order or the Methods of Our Madness

(Tractatus Heautontimoroumenos)  

Although Laws are obviously made to be evaded, the following minimal  collection of principles governing the critical jungle may be of some help to  the aspiring Newer Critic about to set off on the first safari:

1. FIRST  LAW OF RELATIVITY:  Earlier schools of criticism are trivial  (i.e., ridiculous); later schools are deliberately opaque  (i.e., infuriating).

2.  THE  AXIOM  OF  BEGINNINGS:  The  title of a critical essay must  never reveal the subject under discussion.

3.  PASCAL'S PRINCIPLE  OF EXPANSION:  Long essays are written by  critics who do not have time to write short ones.

4.  LAW OF CONSERVATION  OF ENNUI:  The  amount of boredom in  a system increases proportionately to the input of semicolons.

5.  THE  LINGUISTIC  LEMMA: Any critic with a foreign accent (spoken or written) has a  head  start; this lead  increases geometrically with multiple accents.

6.  THE  SECOND  LAW OF  HIGHER  CRITICISM:  Abstraction drives out application; examples are the stigmata of a trivial mind.

7.  MACKSEY'S  MORDANT  MAXIM:  Scientists aspire to write like critics; critics strive to write like scientists.

8.  THE  MAXIMAL  COROLLARY:  Formalization is the opium of the insecure.

9.  THE  PISGAH  PRINCIPLE:  Promise more in your footnotes than you can deliver in your text.

10. LACAN'S  DOUBLE  LEMMA:  Cover your traces; retrodict your references. The  less the reader sees, the more passionately he believes.

11.  MURPHY'S  QUASI-MAXIM:  The  critic might learn from the mathematician the value of the holes in the cheese, the substance of the line of thought to be painfully reconstructed from the relicts of what the critic deigns to print.

12. THE  OCCULT  RAZOR:  In the interpretation of literary texts the  most complex and cumbersome assumption is to be preferred; entities may be multiplied outrageously. (Cf. MESSERKLINGE'S  SECTION)

13. PNIN'S  PARADOX:  Teachers make the best critics, since they have long since stopped listening to themselves.

14.  HUMBERT'S  PARADIGM:  All autogenic criticism seeks either a point of departure (point de d~part) or a point of arrival (point d'arrivee); the trouble is usually in the middle (Mittelpunkt).

15. THE  CRUX  FIDELIS  GAMBIT:  If the textual crux does not exist, it is necessary for the critic to invent it.

16. THE  IRON  LAW OF META-COMMUNICATION:  Respect by fellow critics is in inverse ratio to comprehension.

17. THE  COMMUNICATION  COROLLARY:  Professional success is achieved when fellow critics are afraid to admit this.

18. THE  EXHAUSTION  THEOREM:  When a critical system can produce certifiable disciples, its day is over.

19. THE  EXHAUSTION  COROLLARY:  As soon as -ism is appended to the system, the game is out of the Big Leagues.

20.  THE  IMMUTABLE  LAW OF THE  MARKET  PLACE:  The last critical audience to decline is the export market.

21.  THE  CONGESTION  THEOREM:  Critical production rises in direct proportion to the formation of tenure committees.

22.  THE  TAXONOMIC  AXIOM:  The only safe prefix for a meta-critic  is post-.

23.  THE  PATTER  PRINCIPLE:  In a closed critical system, every critic tends to rise to the level of incomprehensibility.

24.  THE  MORTAL  MAXIM:  Nothing is more deadly to a critical career than too many ideas.

25. THE PLATO PRECEPT: Poets are an embarrassment to critics and

should be banished from the Republic.

26. THE BLOOM/HARTMAN COROLLARY: Failing this exclusion,

critics should pretend to be poets.

27. THE TRISTRAM SHANDY PRINCIPLE: Critics of genius contrive

to have the reader do the work of the author.

28. THE PIERRE MENARD SYNDROME: Careers have been made by

scrupulous repetition in implausible times and contexts.

29. THE MAFIOSO MAXIM: It is better to be attacked by an Insider

than to be praised by an Outsider.

30. THE LOUIS NAPOLEON PRINCIPLE: All great events in critical

history occur twice-first as outrage and second as textbooks. (Hegel

somewhere failed to describe this as the inevitable vector from seces-

sion to parody.)

31. THE EXCESSIVE THEOREM: Every major literary text is semper

ubique at least 85% smarter than its current critic; major critical

theories and methodological resources exist to protect the critic from

this reality.

32. THE OSCAR AMENDMENT: Are Hamlet's critics all made, or only

pretending to be so?

33. THE EPIMENIDES PARADOX: This text does not communicate.

34. THE CRITICAL INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM: All consistent

axiomatic formulations of critical theory (recursive interpretation

systems) include undecidable propositions; therefore, critical readings

are more often true than proved-and no fixed system of interpreta-

tion can adequately represent the complexity of the text interpreted.

35. BERRA'S LAW: You can observe a lot by just watching.

36. THE PRECEPT OF CRITICAL EXTREMITY: When all else fails,

read the text.

[In the next number of MLN there is a brief note indicating that Thersites was not pleased with the editorial abridgement of his article and two more laws are added].

SAYRE’S LAW

All of the above laws can be subsumed under this one. I am sure you will recognize it, although you may not have known the formal name.  The original version: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." That is why academic politics are so bitter."

Or:

"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

Source: For a history of the term "Ivory Tower" see: "The Ivory Tower: The History of a Figure of
Speech and its Cultural Uses," Steven Shapin, British Journal of the History of Science, Vol. 45, No.1, March 2012.