MC: Rita Felski: Limits of Critique

In this seminar we will look closely at the rhetoric of critique. "Critique" can refer to a variety of things: the focus of the readings is restricted to forms of critical and suspicious reading that have been widely embraced in literary studies over the last few decades. We will consider critique's reliance on spatial metaphors (the critic's stance being conceived as  one of either "digging down" or "standing back") as well as the stories of detection (the pursuit of a guilty party via the deciphering of clues) that drive exercises in suspicious reading. If time permits, we'll also discuss an interview on the responses that Limits of Critique has inspired, as well as its relation to my recently finished book Hooked and my new project on the contemporary Frankfurt School.

// Prof. Rita Felski (University of Virginia)