The Character Of Criticism

by Harpham; Geoffrey Galt

• ISBN13: 9780415971331
• ISBN10: 0415971330
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-07-12
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Why are some critical texts more compelling, memorable, or engaging than others? Can criticism be judged as a discourse of description, explanation, and analysis alone, or do our evaluations reflect other kinds of investments in it? In this book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that the most powerful and effective criticism demands to be read as an expression of a distinctive sensibility, a way of being in the world; it demands, in other words, to be read as a discourse of character. Through a series of detailed and intimate intellectual portraits of leading critics--Elaine Scarry, Martha Nussbaum, Slavoj Zizek, and Edward Said--Harpham unfolds the complex and indirect ways in which human character is expressed in criticism. A final chapter on "Criticism in a State of Terror" assesses the contemporary situation. The Character of Criticism represents not just a snapshot of contemporary criticism but a fresh approach to criticism itself that clarifies the stakes involved for writers and readers ofcriticism alike. It does so not by making difficult thinking easy but by making it stranger--more idiosyncratic, exotic, and singular.

Table of Contents

The Character of Criticism

What Matter Who's Speaking

Criticism as Confession

Griffes of the Great

Criticism as Dream: Elaine Scarry and the Dream of Pain

Criticism as Therapy: The Hunger of Martha Nussbaum

Criticism as Symptom: Slavoj Zizek and the End of Knowledge

As Other

And Otherness

And Others

Criticism as Obsession: Said and Conrad

Emulations

Identifications

Prolongations

Negations Conclusion Criticism in a State of Terror

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