Postcritique and the Problem of the Lay Reader

Bibliographic Data

ID4270301
AuthorsT Skiveren (0000-0003-2221-1063, Aarhus University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume53
Issue1
Pages161-180
Publication date2022-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Literary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/nlh.2022.0006
OpenAlexW4285228175
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited18

This essay examines the figure of the lay reader in recent debates about critique and postcritique. It argues that an attachment to "lay reading" not only fuels the current emergence of countertrends to critical methodologies but also threatens the survival of such postcritical projects. The essay does so by demonstrating, first, how this attachment counterworks an elitist tendency in critical scholarship to regard such modes of reading-and those who value them-as politically dubious (e.g., Bruce Robbins). The essay then shows how this very same attachment also complicates the formulation of viable methodological alternatives to critique: In some cases, it entails a didactic of unschooling that strips literary critics of their status as academics (e.g., Elizabeth S. Anker and Cara L. Lewis); in others, it leads to generic accounts of reading that fail to provide distinct strategies for scholars specifically (e.g., Lucas Thomson and Toril Moi). On this basis, the essay calls for the postcritical project to loosen its attachment to the figure of the lay reader and look to neighboring fields for other ways of moving beyond critique, like, for instance, the current resurgence of Spinozian ethics in affect studies

Art · Art history · Epistemology · Sociology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Computer Science · French Literature and Poetry · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism

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