The Limits of Critique

Bibliographic Data

ID23398247
AuthorsRita Felski (0000-0001-6493-3668, corresponding author)
Year2015
Publication date2015-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueLimits of Critique (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7208/chicago/9780226294179.001.0001
OpenAlexW2344967523
Open LibraryOL38372715M
ISBN9780226294179
LanguageEN
Citations received455

Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that critic's task is to reveal unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, 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 relationship between artistic works and social world.

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Hermeneutics · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary theory · Literature · Phrase · Reading (process) · Sensibility · Sociology · Unsaid · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Philosophy · Belief and doubt · Criticism · Methodology · Suspicion

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