The Believing Game
Peter Elbow and "Methodological Believing"
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It took me years to learn the difference between criticizing and critiquing someone’s work. Once I did, my own writing started getting a lot better.
Generally:
Criticism involves explaining why something isn’t good enough.
A critique builds or expands on someone’s work to create something that is interesting in its own right.
We learn to criticize texts early on. It come naturally to us as readers. This is partly because it’s fun to complain about art and partly because the bar for effective criticism is generally pretty low. You don’t need to understand or engage with an author or a text to successfully criticize it.
This doesn’t mean criticism doesn’t have value. Many good critiques begin as criticism.
Sometimes a text or an author has to vex us before we feel strongly motivated to write about them. It can be great to get these thoughts and feelings down on paper, especially in the early stages of the writing process. But we should never settle for criticizing someone else’s work.
For one thing, it’s incredibly draining:
It’s draining for you because you spend all your energy putting the text on trial for everything it does wrong.
It’s draining for your audience because it’s awkward and uncomfortable to watch someone else get attacked for their work in a public forum.
It’s draining for the authors you’re writing about because nobody likes being put on blast and you’re probably not telling them anything they don’t already know.
Additionally, since criticism faults authors and texts for what they didn’t manage to do, it doesn’t expand or add value to the original work. That makes it boring and predictable. This kind of writing still gets published, but it usually isn’t very fun to read.
One of the most common criticisms I see (especially online) is that a writer should really “read so-and-so.” This can be helpful in the early stages of a project, but it doesn’t require much from us as readers.
A critique is a generative reading of someone else’s work. It imbues the original text with new energy and approaches it with a fresh perspective. The best critiques have a clearly defined goal and do more than just explain why someone else is wrong.
A good critique can be positive or critical. You do not need to like everything you critique, but you do need to read it closely, take it seriously, and approach it on its own terms. You also have to be able to explain why the subject of your critique is worth the time and effort you’ve decided to spend on it.
In fact, here’s a great test for whether you’re writing criticism or a critique:
Will your work inspire readers to seek out the text you’re analyzing and read it for themselves? If yes, then it’s likely a critique.
Or will they take what you’ve written as an excuse to skip out on reading the author’s work? If yes, then it’s probably criticism.
Most people don’t like receiving criticism. Even when it’s delivered with good intentions, it usually feels like a list of complaints that doesn’t address anything that’s actually happening in the writing.
However, experienced writers do seek out informed and thoughtful critiques of their work (more on this here). As folks who read and write theory, our goal should always be to transform our initial criticism into a more robust critique that engages with the text and complicates or enriches the experience of reading it. But how do we do that?
The Believing Game
It begins by learning to play what Peter Elbow refers to as the “believing game,” or “methodological believing.”
Elbow introduces the concept of the believing game by comparing it to another game most people already know how to play: the “doubting game.” According to Elbow, the doubting game is what we typically call “critical thinking,” or “the disciplined practice of trying to be as skeptical and analytical as possible” to uncover the “hidden contradictions, bad reasoning, or other weaknesses” of someone’s position.”
The “believing game” is the exact opposite. It involves “trying to be as welcoming or accepting as possible to every idea we encounter” and “actually trying to believe them.” Elbow argues that trying to cultivate this mindset can lead to “a kind of conditional or temporary believing” that can help you identify the hidden virtues in an unpopular or controversial position.
Elbow’s point is that doubt and belief are both methods for improving our thinking and writing. If we can doubt something without rejecting it, why should it be hard for us to believe something without accepting it?
Learning to play the believing game can help us as writers in ways the doubting game does not.
The doubting game emphasizes propositions and teaches us critical detachment and how to refrain from action.
The believing game emphasizes experience. It helps us enter into the ideas of others and introduces possibilities for departing from the status quo.
Neither comes naturally, but learning to play both is important when you’re reading and writing about theory. The believing game allows us to enter more deeply into texts that are at odds with our beliefs and values.
In the context of our writing, the believing game is invitational. It allows us to move beyond more adversarial genres, like the “hot take” or the “call out” post. It also opens up a wider range of persuasive strategies. We can try relating to folks we disagree with, for example, instead of attacking them for the benefit of an imaginary audience.
If you’ve mostly been playing the doubting game your whole life, it can be hard to switch gears and practice “methodological believing.” When I find myself tempted to criticize a text, I play the believing game by asking myself a few questions:
What about this text makes it so appealing to people who do believe it? What would those folks have to change about themselves to give up those beliefs?
Is there anything about this that would have appealed to me when I was younger? Is there anything that might appeal to me when I’m older and more experienced?
How would I describe this text to someone if I was trying to explain why they should read it? How would I describe it to the author?
Good luck with your writing!