The Limits of Critique - Softcover

Felski, Rita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022629403X ISBN 13: 9780226294032

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

A powerful examination of the very idea of critique and its dominance in literary studies

Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that the critic’s task is to reveal the unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, the dominant form of interpretation in literary studies, and situates it as but one method among many, a method with strong allure—but also definite limits.

Felski argues that critique is a sensibility best captured by Paul Ricoeur’s phrase “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” She shows how this suspicion toward texts forecloses many potential readings while providing no guarantee of rigorous or radical thought. Instead, she suggests, literary scholars should try what she calls “postcritical reading”: rather than looking behind a text for hidden causes and motives, literary scholars should place themselves in front of it and reflect on what it suggests and makes possible.

By bringing critique down to earth and exploring new modes of interpretation, The Limits of Critique offers a fresh approach to the relationship between artistic works and the social world.

About this title

About the Author

Rita Felski is the John Stewart Bryan Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including The Limits of Critique; Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies; and Hooked: Art and Attachment; all published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022629403X
• ISBN 13: 9780226294032
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240