The Politics of Interpretation

"Between the lines of the following pages you should be able to hear the voices of Whigs and Tories, Goldwater Republicans and New Deal Democrats, orthodox and maverick Marxists, utopian socialists and third world Maoists, masculists and feminists, wishy-washy liberals and committed revolutionaries....Mitchell introduces a collection of essays exploring the proposition that criticism and interpretation have a deep and complex relationship with politic-that the arts of explanation and understanding are inseparable from the structures of power and social value that organize human life."

W. J. T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry.