The essays by Warner, Felski and Edmunson in different ways and to different extents constitute a contemporary introspection by literary theorists that I believe to be both laudable and well overdue. These academics are to be commended for their bravery in challenging the virtue of Literary Criticism, which Warner professes is an “invisible norm” that has come to define both the rationale and methodology of those who make the study of literature their vocation - we study literature in order to engage in Criticism, we engage in Criticism in order to study literature.
What these crusaders (Warner et al) are attempting to do is akin to an architect questioning the need for buildings, or perhaps questioning the need for plans to construct those buildings, and thus intellectualizing him or herself out of a role in society. The difference between architects and literary critics is that very few non-architects question the essentiality of that profession. Conversely, try as many literary critics may to hide beneath a rock (or perhaps a mahogany bookshelf stacked with “Penguin Classics”), there is in deed a ‘crisis’ brewing that stems from what Warner observes as “a widely felt disenchantment with the idea of literature.”
Perhaps that last hyperbole was the result of my unrelenting incredulity towards the dicta of literary theory emerging. I am an outsider to this world after all. But reading essays from ‘insiders’ whose sentiments are so congruous with my own has led me to believe that perhaps my suspicions towards the prudence and relevance of Criticism are not as Philistinistic or uninformed as I initially had thought.
Warner posits that a central paradox of Criticism is that it undermines its own role of bringing the reading public ‘closer’ to texts by requiring they disengage subjectively from ‘the text’ entirely and treat it with what Sedgwick insightfully describes as a sense of paranoia. Literary Criticism is prohibitively labour-intensive as a public activity intellectually and emotionally because of the time and institutional resources required. But perhaps it is even more taxing emotionally, as it requires subjects to anaesthetize and de-sentimentalise literature in the almost masochistic sprit of distanciation. So why should anyone continue to endorse it?
The easiest answer to fall back on is Kant’s theory of ‘immature reading’ – that the Literary Critic serves to unhinge the docility of the general, uncritical, reading public. However, Warner tackles this dichotomisation of ‘critical’ reading as pious and ‘uncritical’ reading as dangerous through resurrecting the ignored history of Criticism itself. Predictably enough, he proves that it is really the result of a complex chain of academic, material, technological and social developments which have been funnelled into a paradigm as regimented, yet bizzrely naturalized, as “the fastidious aestheticism and canon worship it sought to replace” (as rather scornfully pointed out by Felski.) The hypocritical doctrinarism of Criticism is further pointed out by Edmunson’s clever indictment of readings, “they’re simply applied like paint to the side of a barn.”
Crucially, Warner also points out that not only is the Kantian model of Criticism contrived, it is also futile. It is impossible to reach a state of total anti-subjectivity because Herrnstein-Smith’s “contingencies” indefatigably meddle with the Critic’s microscope. And the assumption that any form of non-critical reading involves a submission to the indoctrinatory ambitions of some megalomaniac author is self-evidently myopic.
I do not agree with Edmundson that readings should be abandoned, nor do I adhere to Sontag’s vision of “reparative reading” or Felski’s advocacy of “reflective reading.” I do, however, believe that these models should compliment, rather than replace, traditional methodologies in universities. But more than anything, I celebrate the discussion these essayists have catalysed by alerting the profession of Literary Criticism to its straining relationship with the reading public, which itself is declining as a constituency within society at large.
Literary Criticism needs to reinvent itself if plebeians like myself, who are interested, but not engrossed, within the literary sphere, are to continue participating in a discourse which, despite my foibles, I believe to have fundamentally enriched my milieu.
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