Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History

Literary Criticism
JOSEPH N O R T H
Literary Criticism
A Concise Political History
HI Harvard University Press

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, A N D L O N D O N , ENGL AND 2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: North, Joseph, 1980- author.
Title: Literary criticism : a concise political history / Joseph North.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibli
ographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046677 | ISBN 9780674967731
Subjects: LCSH: Criticism— History—20th century. | Criticism— History—21st century.
Criticism— Political aspects. | Neoliberalism.
Classification: LCC PN94 .N67 2017 | DDC 801/.950904—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/20l6046677
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 The Critical Revolution Turns Right 21
2 The Scholarly T urn 56
3 The H istoricist/C ontextualist Paradigm 81
4 The Critical Unconscious 124
Conclusion: The Future o f Criticism 195
Appendix: The Critical Paradigm an d T . S. Eliot 213

N otes 219
Acknowledgm ents 247
Index 249
Preface
I n T H IS BO O K , I offer a rapid, synoptic overview o f the basic paradigms

th at have governed the academic criticism o f literature in m uch o f the
English-speaking w orld for the last century or so. If this is n o t the m ost
pressing m atter o f our tim e, it is n o t the least pressing one, either. The study
o f literature is a test case— just one test case, b u t an im portant one— for a
larger question th at m any people, I take it, acknowledge as central: the ques
tion o f how and to w hat extent the societies in w hich we live allow us to
cultivate deeper m odes o f life.
People write histories o f m any different kinds, and for m any different rea
sons. It may therefore help readers to frame and evaluate the book if I begin
by saying a few words about the kind o f history it is intended to be. Clearly,
it is not an exhaustive history. N o attem pt has been made to cover all— or
even m ost— o f the m ajor figures and m ovem ents in the history o f literary
criticism. Some im portant figures and movements do appear, o f course— in
fact, the book is largely structured around a very short list o f individual
figures— b u t m any that were obviously central to the history o f literary
studies appear only in the notes, if indeed they appear at all. Nor, I am afraid,
is it a particularly illustrative history: it has little interest in painting a rich and
detailed picture o f the periods it describes, nor in bringing the reader into
close imaginative contact w ith the m inds o f historical actors. Lastly, it is
no t an evaluative history o f the kind sometimes w ritten by professors o f
viii P RE F ACE
literature: readers will find that I have m ade few attem pts to come to any
broader assessment o f the lasting value or significance o f the figures con
cerned, beyond m aking the (often somewhat ruthless) judgm ents necessary
for the task at hand. C ertainly I would be disappointed if anyone understood
the book as a belated attem pt to assemble some kind o f “canon” o f criticism,
in w hich role it w ould serve very badly. In this regard, it is w orth stating from
the outset that I have made no program m atic attem pt to recover the work o f
thinkers who have been ignored or marginalized because o f their subject posi
tion. That w ould have been an entirely different book; I leave it to readers to
decide w hether or n o t it w ould have been a better one.
If the book is none o f these things, w hat is it? It is perhaps better thought
o f as an attem pt to write a strategic history: a w orking analysis o f existing
tendencies in the present situation, as indicated by past trajectories. H istory
o f this kind is explicitly m otivated by present concerns: one has som ething
like a goal and som ething like a plan for reaching it, and so one turns to the
past n o t “for its own sake,” as is sometimes said, b u t in order both to clarify
the goal and to identify tendencies in the present that seem likely either to
help or hinder ones attem pts to reach it. O ne therefore reflects on the past
less for the sake o f seeing the “full picture” and m ore for the sake o f discov
ering its m ain lines o f force; and n o t even for the sake o f discovering all the
forces th at were relevant at the tim e, b u t instead lim iting oneself to those
lines o f force th at still seem to condition w hat occurs today. In this sense, the
objects o f the analysis here are n o t really the various historical periods
through w hich the discipline has passed, b u t the present lines o f force them
selves. In such an analysis, a lean account has certain advantages over a thick
one. In observing this, I am n o t attem pting to exempt the w ork from cri
tique, merely asking th at the necessary critique is m ade w ith a sense o f the
au th o rs aims in m ind. It is o f course right to note th at more flesh could be
p u t on the skeleton, b u t to see this as a crippling flaw is to assess the his
tory by another standard than th at w hich it is trying to meet. The m ore
serious critiques will be those th at draw attention to the flaws in m y m odel
o f the skeleton itself. For at this level, one m ust do m ore than simply p o int
to additional local complexities— one m ust bind those local complexi
ties into a convincing general account. It is against the existing general
account, w hich lurks unacknowledged w ithin the w ork o f so m any who
claim the privilege o f speaking only about local cases, that m y argum ent is
principally ranged.
PREFACE ix
Accordingly, m y basic m ethod has been to step back from individual

figures and m ovem ents in order to bring into focus the basic paradigms
th at have determ ined the developm ent o f Anglo-American literary studies
th roughout its history, and th at therefore seem likely at least to condition its
possible lines o f developm ent in the future. Thus, the particular thinkers
assembled here have been selected n o t because I recom m end them , nor in all
cases because o f their actual influence, fortunate or unfortunate, on the sub
sequent history o f literary study, b u t for the quite different reason that they
provide convenient emblems for the larger paradigms that are m y real objects
o f analysis. C onsidered together, they offer a means by w hich to sketch a
historical plan o f the basic structures o f assum ption underlying some o f the
central w ork in the discipline throughout the century o f its developm ent.
Pursuing an end o f this kind naturally involves m aking claims at a high level
o f generality, and has thus risked p u ttin g me at odds w ith those w ithin the
discipline w ho still pride themselves on their com m itm ent to particularity
per se. I have felt this to be a risk w orth taking.
W hile w riting, I have had the sense o f addressing two audiences rather
different in nature. O n the one hand, at m any m om ents I have attem pted to
find a tone appropriate to addressing readers w ithin and around academic
literary studies: those w ho already have an obvious stake in the history and
future o f the discipline, can be expected to be familiar w ith m any o f the
figures to w hich I refer, are versed in at least some o f the m ethodological
debates that have surrounded “close reading,” the “aesthetic,” and so on. O n
the other hand, there are also m any m om ents at w hich I have attem pted to
find a tone appropriate to addressing readers on the radical left, which I
understand as indicating the collective, or incipient collective, o f those who
have found themselves in the difficult and vexed position o f trying to artic
ulate and even to live a critique, n o t merely o f the excesses o f capitalism in
its current form , b u t o f capitalism itself. T hirty years o f quite public debate
about the “politicization” o f the discipline notw ithstanding, the area o f
overlap between these audiences is in tru th rather slight. This has m eant that
the choice o f a dual m ode o f address has carried w ith it certain risks, and has
indeed led to certain failures. Readers w ithin the discipline w ho are not on
the left in the sense I indicate here m ay find themselves som ewhat at odds
w ith the political sensibility, and associated ranges o f tone, at work in certain
parts o f the book; readers on the left who are not w ithin the discipline
m ay need m ore convincing th at there is really som ething at stake, for the
PREFACE
larger m ovem ent, in an extended discussion o f m atters literary, aesthetic,

and m ethodological.
M y reason for nevertheless persisting in trying to address both audiences
is th at I am seeking to expand the area o f overlap between them . Indeed,
from a certain angle, one m ight see this as the burden o f the book as a whole:
one o f m y larger claims is th at m any o f the deeper interests o f these two
audiences w ould be the same, if only we could come to recognize them as
such, in th at the incipiently materialist account o f the aesthetic th at lies at
the root o f the discipline, and continues to m ark its central practice o f “close
reading,” is properly understood as part o f a longer history o f resistance to
the econom ic, political, and cultural systems th at prevent us from culti
vating deeper m odes o f life. It is therefore a m atter o f some intellectual and
political im portance to try to find a tone th at will speak to both audiences,
in the hope that each will com e to recognize at least some part o f its own
image in the whole form ation. I cannot say I have succeeded, b u t readers
should at least know w hat I understand m yself to be attem pting. I hope not
to try their patience too m uch, wherever on this particular spectrum o f views
they happen to sit.
This question o f audience brings me to another charge th at I probably
ought to m eet head-on: the charge o f w riting an interested, rather than dis
interested, history. In this respect, I should p u t on record from the outset m y
sense th at a history o f this kind need make no general claim to m ethodolog
ical objectivity or neutrality, and w ould indeed be com prom ised were it to
do so. It is a nice historiographical question to consider w hat a truly disin
terested historical inquiry w ould look like, since we have yet to see one: w hat
we keep getting instead are inquiries in w hich the claim to disinterestedness
masks the real interests at stake. Rejecting the old historians principle o f
neutrality in this way does n o t am ount, as is still sometimes said, to the
claim th at one can make anything one likes o f the past; nor I th in k is there
anything inherently dishonest or intellectually spurious about a history
m otivated by real interests. The idea th at having interests— paradigmatically,
political interests— makes one less willing to acknowledge the force o f tru th
is a trick o f the dom in an t liberalism about w hich I shall have more to say in
the pages th at follow. It seems better to ask where ones will to acknowledge
the force o f tru th comes from , since it can then be seen th at one s interests—
even ones political interests— are w hat m otivate and give m eaning to the
PREFACE xi
search for truth. For in fact the dem and to identify the true contours o f a
situation is m ost pressing w hen one is in active pursuit o f some desired
objective. The task o f w riting a com m itted history thus holds the historian
to as high a standard as does the attem pt to write a purportedly objective
history, though in a different way.
I hope th at readers will forgive me if I close this preface by confessing
some o f m y personal hopes for the book, such as they are. First, I hope that
interested general readers may find here a useful overview o f some o f the
central ways in w hich the dom in an t parts o f the English-speaking w orld
have m anaged to conduct serious collective thinking about literature in
recent times. Second, I hope th at readers w ith a more directly institutional
interest in the literary— chiefly, students and professors o f literature— may
find here a new account o f the discipline’s present situation, and one that is
troubling enough to convince them , if they need further convincing, that we
need to w ork o ut how to do things differently in future. If it does nothing
else, I hope th at the book will at least help graduate students in the literary
disciplines to understand w hat m ay be at stake w hen their supervisors
encourage them , under the sign o f either “scholarship” or “politics,” to pro
duce yet another historicist/contextualist paper, article, dissertation. If they
resist doing this, and are then som ew hat confused by the speed w ith which
the rhetoric o f the m arket (“job m arket”) arrives to enforce the norm , then
perhaps at least they will be better equipped to understand why.
B ut the final w ord really ought to be addressed to m y friends on the left,
w ho cross all these categories. I hope th at those o f you who read this
book will find w ithin it a history o f literary criticism that is properly atten
tive to political concerns. I hope also to convince you that, for all the prob
lems o f the history o f the discipline thro u g h o u t the tw entieth and now the
twenty-first centuries— chiefly, its continual default to the m ainstream o f
liberalism— there is m uch at stake here for the left. For the struggle is being
fought, m ust be fought, on the terrain o f sensibility. N o t on the terrain o f
sensibility alone, o f course— a mistake th at keeps being m ade— but never
entirely outside it. If we continue to surrender our ability to fight on that
ground, we cannot win.
Literary Criticism
Introduction
I
To m any w ho observe it, the field o f literary studies appears quite
heterogeneous— perhaps even fractious. I th in k this is wrong, and that in
fact, for m any decades now, A nglo-Am erican literary studies has been pro
ceeding on the basis o f a fairly firm consensus: a consensus broad enough,
and also generally unrem arked enough, to constitute som ething like a
K uhnian paradigm . We m ight call this the “historicist/contextualist” para
digm , by w hich I simply m ean th at alm ost all o f the m ost influential move
m ents in literary studies since the 1980s have proceeded on the assum ption
that, for academic purposes, works o f literature are chiefly o f interest as diag
nostic instrum ents for determ ining the state o f the cultures in w hich they
were w ritten or read. If one is prepared to take this form ulation in a fairly
broad sense, then it describes the vast m ajority o f w ork in the field at present.
It was n o t always thus. A m ong those who w rite the history o f the disci
pline, there is a tolerably general agreem ent th at for the first three-quarters
o f the tw entieth century— w hich is to say, up until the crisis decade o f the
1970s— literary studies was n o t unified under a single paradigm , b u t rather
split between two rather different paradigm s sometimes thought to be com
peting w ith one another and at other times th ought to be complementary.
The fields central axis o f dispute was between literary “scholars” and literary
“critics,” the key distinction being between those w ho treated the study o f
LITERARY C R I T I C I S M
literature as a means by w hich to analyze culture and those w ho treated the

study o f literature as an oppo rtu n ity intervene in culture.1 From this central
opposition, a whole range o f further oppositions followed, any o f which
could be taken as defining the central axis o f the dispute at a given m om ent:
specialists and generalists; professionals and amateurs; objectivity and sub
jectivity; understanding and appreciation; facts and values; the sciences and
the hum anities; producing knowledge and cultivating taste; wissenschaft and
bildung— and so on. A dispute so broad and mobile naturally involved m uch
confusion, yet for the m ost part, those involved were still able to identify it
as a coherent dispute between two clearly opposed paradigms— a dispute
significant enough to be considered characteristic o f the structure o f the
discipline as a whole.
Yet once we arrive at the last three or four decades, this dispute seems to
fade o u t— replaced either by debates over “theory,” or else by the claim that,
in the words o f John Guillory, “for us it s n o t scholars versus critics. . . . [For
us] scholars and critics . . . inhabit the same body.”2 I th in k we are now
in a position to see th at neither o f these answers is really correct. O n the
contrary, the central fact o f the disciplines developm ent over the last
generation— a fact so central it keeps being overlooked— is th at at some
p o in t in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the literary “scholars” effectively w on
the dispute. This makes our own period— the period since the early 1980s—
rather an exceptional one, since for the first tim e in the history o f the disci
pline, one o f the two paradigm s has m anaged to dom inate the field. Indeed,
in the longer view, one o f the defining features o f our period has been the
relative absence o f “criticism” in anything quite like the sense used by earlier
thinkers. There has been w hat I will call a “scholarly turn,” by which
“scholarly” approaches, w hich have tended to treat literary texts chiefly as
opportunities for cultural and historical analysis, have replaced “critical”
approaches, which, in their day, had tended to treat literary texts as means o f
cultivating readers’ aesthetic sensibilities, “aesthetic” here o f course being
understood in a range o f rather different senses. If m ost o f those who study
literature now prim arily see themselves as professionals in the field o f cul
tural and historical analysis, this is because for the first tim e in the history o f
literary studies, alm ost all o f them are “scholars.” For better or worse, one
h alf o f the discipline is all b u t gone. It is in the context o f this “scholarly
3
tu rn ,” and the associated demise o f “criticism,” that we m ust see the rise o f
our current historicist/contextualist paradigm .
A num ber o f questions then im pose themselves. Given that the “schol
arly” and “critical” tendencies had existed side by side for the first three-
quarters o f the century, w hat particular arrangem ent o f forces led to the
eventual victory o f the form er in the late '70s and early '80s? W h at was the
political character o f those forces? W h at is then at stake in the disciplines
continuing com m itm ent to the historicist/contextualist paradigm? O r else,
on the other side o f the coin, m ight there now be some reason to call for a
m ovem ent tow ard another paradigm , one quite different in nature? Even if
one has set aside any residual tem ptation to be nostalgic about a lost “heroic
age” o f criticism in the m id-century— a “heroic age” we are right to be glad
to have seen the end o f—m ight there nevertheless be reasons to feel a
renewed com m itm ent to som ething like the project o f criticism today?3
Criticism , th at is, viewed as a program m atic com m itm ent to using works o f
literature for the cultivation o f aesthetic sensibility, w ith the goal o f m ore
general cultural and political change.
I th in k there are such reasons, and it is largely in an attem pt to give some
substance to them th at I have w ritten the book that follows. Literary C riti
cism: A Concise Political H istory is an introduction to the lost “critical”
paradigm in literary studies, as well as an overview o f the historicist/contex
tualist “scholar” paradigm th at has replaced it. The aims o f the history are
three: to account for the rise to dom inance o f the present consensus, to offer
a prelim inary assessment o f the political character o f th at consensus, and to
suggest th at those o f us w ho are in search o f alternatives m ight begin by
reconsidering our inherited views o f the political character o f older critical
modes. The book is therefore n o t w ith o u t its political elements. Perhaps the
simplest way to summarize these is to observe that, though the tu rn to the
historicist/contextualist paradigm has generally been understood as a local
victory for the left over the elitisms o f m id-century criticism, this has been
largely an error. In fact, it is better to say that the opposite is true: in its m ost
salient aspects, the tu rn to the current paradigm in the late 1970s and early
1980s was sym ptom atic o f the w ider retreat o f the left in the neoliberal
period and was thus a small part o f the m ore general victory o f the right.
Seeing the m atter in this light has the benefit, not only o f accuracy, b u t o f
re-opening the question o f how the left should organize its thinking about
literature— a question th at has lain d o rm an t for too long.
O ver the last three decades, the discipline has tended to assume that any
attack on the historicist/contextualist paradigm m ust originate in cultural
conservatism, particularly if the offending party makes use o f such terms
as “criticism ,” “aesthetic,” “sensibility,” and similar. This assum ption has
allowed m uch to pass for progressivism, even for radicalism, that under
other circumstances w ould have been seen m ore clearly for w hat it was. But
the political failings o f the m id-century critics are now self-evident, the dis
cipline having repeated its argum ents against them , in ever-less-nuanced
form , for the last three decades. W h at needs now to be emphasized is the
critical paradigm s potential as a source o f alternatives to the presently dom
inant m ode. As neoliberalism enters into crisis, literary study, am ong other
things, will once again be re-oriented, and alternatives will have to be found
if the left is to have a h and in determ ining w hat that orientation m ight be.
M y hope is th at this book, w ith its exploration not only o f the histori
cist/contextualist paradigm b u t o f the rather different critical paradigm
th at it replaced, m ay be o f assistance to those trying to rethink w hat useful
contributions literary studies m ight be able to make to the struggle for a
better society in this new period, beyond the “scholarly tu rn .”
II
B ut w hat is “literary criticism”? The phrase has m any m eanings, and it is
perhaps w orth taking a m om ent to specify w hich o f them I intend to rely on
here. O utside the academy, the phrase usually refers to literary journalism o f
an evaluative kind— book reviewing in particular. I will n o t be using the
phrase in quite th at sense, though the history o f literary journalism is bound
up in im p o rtan t ways w ith the history o f “literary criticism” traced here. N o r
will I be using the phrase in the way it is usually used w ithin the academy
today, as indicating the whole research activity o f disciplinary literary studies.
If one is trying to understand how the current paradigm in literary studies
relates to the longer history th at preceded it, then this rather sweeping use o f
the phrase creates some confusion, since m ost o f w hat literature professors
now do w ould best be described as “literary scholarship” if using the older
terms. The “literary criticism” that will be the central concern o f this book
5
was o f course never entirely separable from the various discourses that sur
rounded it, b u t nonetheless it had a real claim to be considered its own dis
tinctive thing.
W hat, then, is “literary criticism” w hen one speaks o f it in this sense? O ne
way to begin to grasp w hat “literary criticism” once represented is to th in k
o f it as a significant intellectual discourse that, from about the 1920s through
to about the early 1970s, provided a crucial bridge between literary jo u r
nalism on the one h and and literary scholarship on the other— though o f
course it connected to m any o ther discourses, too. The prim ary institutional
site o f “literary criticism,” taken in this sense, was the academy, where it
justified itself by reference to the distinctiveness o f its research program and
classroom m ethods, both o f w hich were grounded in its founding innova
tions: “close reading” and “practical criticism.” Yet if “criticism” was an
academic discourse in the first instance, it was nevertheless one defined pre
cisely by the strength and directness o f its connection to the w orld outside
the academy. H ere the old caricatures can come to assist us: where the arche
typal “scholar” was a highly specialized professional researcher— and thus
susceptible to caricature as dry, anxious, dusty, myopic, and fixated on small
details o f language or etymology to the exclusion o f broader, m ore w orth
while concerns— w hich is all to say, profoundly out o f touch w ith the n o n
specialist life o f the general public— the archetypal “critic” was a generalist,
sometimes even a “public intellectual,” and was thus susceptible to caricature
n o t only as an am ateur and dilettante, b u t also as a mere journalist, popular
ize^ or “educator.” That last charge is perhaps w orth reflecting on, as a way
to measure the difference between the older discourse o f criticism and any
thing th at goes on w ithin the upper reaches o f the literary disciplines today:
for better or worse, the discourse o f criticism was once the site o f the disci
pline s strongest and m ost explicit ties, b oth intellectual and institutional, to
education at the prim ary and secondary levels— ties th at no longer exist in
any significant form.
The history th at follows does n o t attem p t to track the developm ent o f all
these elements o f the discourse— I am afraid th at readers looking for a his
tory o f disciplinary criticism s classroom m ethods, or its changing institu
tional sites, or its ties w ith journalism , or its role in prim ary and secondary
schooling, will n o t find it here. Instead, this book is concerned specifically
w ith the intellectual paradigm th at once defined and justified “literary
criticism” in the eyes o f its practitioners. The m odern university being w hat
it is, this has m eant focusing on its research program above all. To m odern
eyes, perhaps the m ost striking elem ent o f th at research program is its strong
com m itm ent to evaluating the aesthetic m erits o f specific literary works,
typically via “close reading” or “practical criticism.” But criticism, in its day,
was also m ore than this— like any long-standing disciplinary paradigm , it
pursued a research program th at was necessarily quite diverse. Thus in the
hands o f its various practitioners, “criticism” also involved the developm ent
o f new herm eneutic and interpretative m ethods; sociological research into
the present state o f the culture; advanced pedagogical theory; extended
enquiries into the nature o f educational institutions; philosophical enquiry
into the nature o f the “literary,” the “aesthetic,” “language,” “culture” itself,
and so on. It was this com plex array o f interlocking projects that constituted
the paradigm for “literary criticism” in the academy. W h at held all these
diverse elements together? In a sense, the answer to that question occupies
m uch o f this book, b u t one can frame a rapid, provisional answer by
observing simply th at “literary criticism” was an institutional program o f
aesthetic education— an attem pt to enrich the culture directly by cultivating
new ranges o f sensibility, new m odes o f subjectivity, new capacities for
experience— using works o f literature as a means. O f course, all these terms
cry o u t for elaboration; for now, I offer them simply as signposts pointing
away from the project o f scholarly cultural analysis th at occupies so m uch o f
the discipline today.
Ill
Very few people, it seems to me, start reading a novel by Virginia W oolf w ith
the prim ary aim o f learning m ore about British cultural life in the 1920s.
M ost o f those w ho do are scholars. W h at nonspecialist readers are looking
for in literature is rather less easy to define: perhaps the best we can do at the
outset is to say th at they are looking for som ething to go on w ith, som ething
th at will help them live their lives.
Few resources now exist w ithin the discipline o f literary study that can
help us to respond to this observation, such as it is. A whole range o f m id-
tw entieth-century critical practices th at once tried to p u t literature into con
tact w ith these kinds o f vague and capacious terms, the central example
7
perhaps being F. R. Leavis’s neo-A rnoldian “criticism o f life,” now operate

w ithin the discipline only in residual, discredited, and nostalgic forms. In
their place, todays m ost influential m ethodologies for literary study are all,
in their various ways, historicist/contextualist, not only in the broad and
welcome sense th at they see literature in other than transcendental, univer
salizing, ahistorical terms, b u t also in the rather more specialized sense that
they treat literary texts chiefly as opportunities for producing knowledge
about the cultural contexts in w hich they were w ritten and read. Recent
efforts to break new ground— “N ew Form alism,” “Surface Reading,” “Dis
tan t Reading”— have been, in this sense, repetitions o f the same.4 In contrast
to the nonspecialist reader, the m ajority o f todays literary scholarship is
m ost interested in W oolf for w hat she can teach us about her tim e and place.
Thus if one were to try to nom inate a single slogan for the historicist/con-
textualist paradigm in its entirety, one could do little better than by selecting
Fredric Jam esons slogan “Always historicize!” w hich I take as the horizon
beyond w hich the disciplines o f literary study have so far been unable to see.
It has certainly proved a very productive slogan. M any o f the advances
m ade by the discipline in the 1980s and 1990s were made by those acting in
its spirit, if only rarely directly under its banner— the paradigm atic advance
being the m ovem ent from those m id-century critical practices th at treated
works o f literature as repositories o f timeless and universal hum an values, to
our contem porary scholarly practices th at treat texts, in the broadest sense o f
“texts,” as deeply em bedded in particular histories. Yet it has seldom been
noted th at our periods governing injunction to historicize is by no means a
unitary one, and has in fact concealed w ithin itself two rather different
dem ands, neither o f w hich is logically necessary to the other. O n the one
hand, it has called on us to dem onstrate the historical and cultural contin
gency o f categories elsewhere taken as timeless, essential, or universal; yet on
the other hand, it has called on us simply to write cultural history. The two
projects are quite distinct, and neither is im plied in the other: just as one
can, if one likes, write history from a universalist standpoint, one can also
critique essentialisms w ith o u t having to act as a historian.
W here it is understood at all, the tu rn in the 1980s to the current histor
icist/contextualist paradigm is generally understood as a political victory
for progressives over the relatively conservative criticisms o f the mid-century,
o f w hich the N ew Critics (in the U nited States) and the Leavisite critics
(in the U nited K ingdom ) once proved such convenient emblems— open to
the charges o f universalizing, essentializing, dehistoricizing, depoliticizing,
elitism, K antian idealism, and so on. This view that the tu rn to our current
paradigm was a victory for progressive th o u ght has some plausibility. C er
tainly, p rom inent conservatives have, in effect, agreed w ith it: it was in the
1980s and 1990s that, m ost notably in the U nited States, the right wing o f
liberalism adopted a “culture wars” strategy, taking the discipline o f English,
in particular, as a central target and decrying its hijacking by progressives,
relativists, m ulticulturalists, postm odernists, and so on, all o f w hom were
taken to have refused their proper role o f transm itting, via the study o f Great
Books, the virtues o f traditional W estern culture. The left-liberals subjected
to these attacks have also agreed, in the sense that they have tended to see
the discrediting o f m id-century criticism and the tu rn instead to histori-
cist/ contextualist analysis as a sign o f liberal progress. Accordingly, in this
period, the left-liberal core o f the discipline has celebrated the various ele
m ents o f the historicist/contextualist paradigm — particularly the opening
up o f the canon, the refusal o f the traditional emphasis on the cultivation
o f aesthetic judgm ent, the dem otion o f the category o f the “literary,” and
the consequent proliferation o f objects o f analysis— as welcome signs o f a
broader dem ocratization o f literary study. Thus both wings o f liberalism— in
the US lexicon, b oth “conservatives” and “liberals”— have seemed to agree
th at the tu rn to our current paradigm was a victory for the latter.
A victory for left-liberalism, then. Was the tu rn to our current paradigm
also a victory for the left proper: those whose com m itm ent to equality runs
beyond the boundaries set by the liberal consensus? W e are n o t w ithout
reasons for thinking so. For as we shall see, the tu rn to our current paradigm
was in fact first and m ost powerfully argued for by those on the radical left,
the lines o f influence flowing from R aym ond W illiams, Pierre Bourdieu,
and M ichel Foucault, respectively, being perhaps the central examples. A nd
indeed, once one steps back for a m om ent to try to characterize the broader
political constitution o f the discipline since the late 1970s, one is struck by
the fact th at it was in this period that, for the first time, a significant propor
tion o f the truly m ajor figures were M arxists o f one kind or another: first,
R aym ond W illiam s himself, b u t then also Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson,
Gayatri Spivak, Franco M oretti. N or, for the m ost part, did these radical
figures propose an orientation for literary studies fundam entally at odds
9
w ith th at proposed by the liberal m ainstream . Rather, the discipline seemed

willing to com e w ith them , at least a certain part o f the way: in this period,
the substantial political differences between M arxist and left-liberal work
w ithin the discipline stood o u t only against the background o f a shared
com m itm ent to a single paradigm , argued for first and m ost strenuously
by the M arxists, in w hich the assumed goal o f literary study was cultural
and social analysis. The liberal center o f the discipline holds, o f course—
there can be no serious suggestion th at the field as a whole has embraced
M arxism, even in its m ore academic forms. Yet it remains true that in our
period, even while being continually m isunderstood, misrepresented, and
subjected to stern critique, Marxists nevertheless have managed to secure a
fair p roportion o f the m ore p rom inent places in the disciplines im agina
tion: places from w hich it has been possible for them at least to aspire to
guide the w ork o f the discipline as a whole. Searching the annals o f intellec
tual life in the English-speaking world, one struggles to find another disci
pline, still less another period in the history o f the discipline o f literary
studies, in w hich this has been true to an equivalent extent, for an equivalent
length o f time.
Thus w hen we come to assess the political valence o f the “scholarly tu rn ”
in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the m atter seems entirely clear: it was a pro
gressive turn, and perhaps even in certain respects a tu rn to the m ore radical
left. B ut this is strange. For was it n o t in just this period that neoliberalism
established itself as an unquestioned global hegemony, leaving the left in
disarray in every sector? H ow was literary studies able to absent itself from
this general movement? More: how did literary studies manage, n o t merely
to hold firm against the tide, b u t to move strongly against it? Everywhere
else, the left in retreat; b u t w ithin literary studies, a historic advance. If one
is a literary academic on the left, this story o f a local victory against all his
torical odds is a cheering one. Is it true?
Jam esons slogan— from The Political Unconscious (1981)— comes to us
from the tu rn in g point: the p o in t at w hich our current paradigm began to
assume its present dom inance.5 W e can see som ething o f the complexion
o f this m om ent by observing Perry A nderson in 1982, opening his first
W ellek Library Lecture at U .C . Irvine.6 N o t w ithout a certain perfor
m ance o f archaism, A nderson begins by looking back to Leavis, rem inding
his audience th at
literary criticism, whether “practical” or “theoretical,” is typically just that,

criticism— its irrepressibly evaluative impulse spontaneously tending to trans
gress the frontiers of the text towards the associated life beyond it. Social
theory as such paradoxically lacks a comparable discriminatory charge built
into it. (9, emphasis in original)
H ere at, or perhaps just after, the inception o f the new historicist/contextu-
alist paradigm , it was still possible for A nderson to speak in the old way,
as if it were generally understood th at “criticism” were som ething distinct
from and even opposed to “social theory,” and th at the form er were pri
m arily a m atter o f form ing judgm ents about the relative aesthetic merits o f
literary works— judgm ents th at w ould then be taken to have some bearing
on the rest o f “life.” This was about the last m om ent in the history o f the
discipline w hen one could speak in these kinds o f terms and hope to be
widely understood. O ver the next thirty years, the terms “criticism” and
“social theory” w ould both be absorbed into a single project o f histori-
cist/contextualist analysis, m aking them all b u t interchangeable. Today
“literary critics” read texts in order to understand and theorize the social.
The specific sense o f “criticism” th at A nderson relies on here has vanished
from view.
B ut in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the two categories were still so
clearly distinct from one another th at it was possible for Terry Eagleton to
outline a provocative strategy for tu rn in g “criticism” into “social theory,” or
as he p u t it, “cultural analysis.” In 1983, Eagleton w rote that:
Such a strategy obviously has far-reaching institutional implications. It would

mean, for example, that departments of literature as we presently know them
in higher education would cease to exist. . . . Whatever would in the long
term replace such departments . . . would centrally involve education in the
various theories and methods of cultural analysis. . . . The genteel amateurism
which regards criticism as some spontaneous sixth sense has not only thrown
many students of literature into understandable confusion for many decades,
but serves to consolidate the authority of those in power.7
If one could no longer outline this strategy today, th at is because it has

succeeded: over the last three decades, departm ents o f literature have indeed
11
exchanged the project o f evaluative criticism, w ith its “genteel am ateurism ,”

for the very different project o f “cultural analysis.” This profound transfor
m ation o f the field was justified, in the end, on political grounds: “criticism”
as a project had merely “serve[d] to consolidate the authority o f those in
power.” Since then, the shift has widely been seen as continuous w ith a
broader dem ocratization o f literary study th at was felt to have been occur
ring in the discipline since the m id-1960s. O ne can then understand w hy it
has seemed to m any th at the instituting o f “Always historicize!” as the
guiding injunction for literary study over the last three decades has repre
sented a dram atic success for the left.
Yet even at the outset, the politics o f this tu rn away from criticism and
tow ard historicist/contextualist cultural analysis were n o t so clear. A year
later, Eagleton ran the old distinction in a new way, observing that:
The problem of the Victorian man of letters is one which has never ceased to
dog the English critical institution, and is indeed quite unresolved even today:
either criticism strives to justify itself at the bar of public opinion by main
taining a general humanistic responsibility for the culture as a whole, the
amateurism of which will prove increasingly incapacitating as bourgeois soci
ety develops; or it converts itself into a species of technological expertise,
thereby establishing its professional legitimacy at the cost of renouncing any
wider social relevance. . . .8
From where we now sit, it is possible to see that som etim e in the late
1970s or early 1980s, literary studies opted for the second path. For in the
A nglo-Am erican w orld, the literary disciplines are now quite evidently dis
ciplines o f professional scholarship, o f “technological expertise,” m uch along
the lines o f the social sciences, and quite as a result o f the tu rn from criticism
to cultural analysis th at Eagleton him self was calling for. O n the whole,
those w ho study literature at the higher levels o f the academy no longer try
to safeguard or intervene in the “culture as a whole,” and they certainly do
n o t define themselves as “am ateurs.” Instead, they see themselves as specialist
scholars, charged w ith the m ore obviously professional task o f producing
historical and cultural knowledge for an audience o f other specialist scholars.
If the tu rn to “cultural analysis” was a tu rn to the left, it was also the
m om ent at w hich the discipline agreed to transform itself into a discipline
o f observation, tracking developm ents in the culture w ithout any broader

m andate to intervene in it.
Perhaps we can now see som ething o f the dual political character o f our
p eriods governing injunction to “historicize.” Insofar as it has led to a cri
tique o f the essentialisms and universalisms o f an old elite, it has been pal
pably o f the left. Yet insofar as it has also asked literary thinkers to give up
the w ider social function to w hich “criticism,” for all its m any faults, at least
aspired, and has taught them instead merely to observe the culture, however
“critically,” by w riting cultural theory and cultural history, it has been a
depoliticization: in th at sense, o f the right. O nly the first o f these aspects o f
the historicist/contextualist paradigm has been well publicized. Literary
studies was once a discipline that, at least on paper, proposed detailed and
intellectually rigorous m ethods both for analyzing the culture and for taking
action to change it. In contrast, the scholarly turn, for all its explicit com
m itm en t to politicization, has left us w ith a discipline o f cultural analysis
alone. In our period, there is o f course no dearth o f avowed political com
m itm ent, yet even those whose explicit goal is to intervene in the culture
seek to do so by providing further and better analyses. A situation o f that
kind tem pts some to claim th at cultural analysis itself constitutes interven
tion. Yet today, it ought to be clear th at analyzing the culture through a
political lens takes one only so far; a coherent body o f techniques and
m ethods by w hich to change th at culture w ould be som ething else entirely.
W ith o u t the second, the first is o f little use.
IV
In past decades, m any o f those who reflected on the history o f the tw entieth
century considered it as falling naturally into two periods, w ith the crucial
break occurring somewhere around its center: a beak between pre- and post-
1945, for example; or a break between “m odernism ” and “postm odernism ”;
or else, as was once thought, a break to the left in the 1960s. Yet in recent
years these tw o-part periodizations have com e to seem less tenable. N ow that
the century is behind us, it is easier to see th at its m iddle decades were in
m any ways a period o f relative continuity. As a result, the term “postm od
ernism ” no longer answers clearly to present concerns, and the 1960s, for all
th at they have continued to attract the enthusiasms o f a generation, have
13
come to seem merely the prelude to a m uch m ore significant crisis, best
symbolized by the term inal crisis o f Keynesianism in the 1970s and the sub
sequent tu rn to global neoliberalism in the 1980s. Thus nowadays thinkers
addressing the history o f the tw entieth century m ore often tend to break it
into three periods: a first period stretching from somewhere around 1914 or
1917 through to the Great Depression o f the 1930s— a period continually
haunted by the specter o f an end to liberalism, riven and confused by the
revolution in Russia, the stock m arket crash o f 1929, and the two world
wars; a second, m ore stable period m ost easily discernible from 1945 to the
early 1970s, b u t w ith clear roots stretching back to the N ew Deal politics o f
the 1930s— a period in w hich the forces o f labor and those o f capital
reached a Keynesian or welfare-statist com prom ise not unrelated to the
ideological pressures o f the C old War; then a decade o f crisis in the 1970s
leading into a third or neoliberal period, clearest in its outlines from the late
1970s/early 1980s through to somewhere in or around 2008— after w hich
a further crisis, still to be resolved.9 N aturally there is m uch disagreement
about the details.
W h at does this new clarity about the history o f the tw entieth century
m ean for literary study? For the m ost part, the literary disciplines’ sense o f
their own history is still stuck in the older tw o-period m ode, and as a result
fails to capture the quality o f our present m om ent. Today, if one asks literary
scholars to identify the m ost significant break in their disciplines recent
history, they generally th in k for a m om en t and then say “theory”: an answer
w hich, w hen pressed on the central question o f historical causation, gener
ally reduces either to “postm odernism ” or “ 1968”— the two favored term s o f
the older periodization. O u r own period is then continually thought through
only in the im poverished term s o f “after theory,” continuing the old line
from the 1980s w hen, in the absence o f a com pelling analysis o f the present,
everything was simply designated “post-.” Thus the questions asked w ithin
literary studies have tended to be o f the old tw o-period kind: w hat was
“theory,” really? W h at were its real politics? H ow can we proceed in its after-
math? Are n o t all bonds now broken and all certainties lost? These questions
now seem o f rather lim ited interest, deriving as they do from decades in
w hich it seemed impossible to say w hen we were, only w hen we weren’t.
“Theory” names the m om ent o f crisis in the discipline, it is true, b u t it tells
us very little about the character o f the neoliberal order that established itself
w ithin literary studies in the wake o f the crisis. To understand that, we need
to reconsider the history o f the discipline from the ground up.
Bearing in m ind this larger problem o f periodization, let me take a
m o m en t to outline the structure o f the book th at follows. In the first chapter,
I tell the story o f the largely lost project o f “criticism.” In the second and
th ird chapters, I tell the story o f the rise to dom inance o f the newly singular
historicist/contextualist “scholar” paradigm th at replaced it. In the fourth
and longest chapter, I examine the m ore recent history o f the discipline in
an attem p t to find there the seeds o f a renewed left critical paradigm that
m ight replace, com pete w ith, or sim ply supplem ent the presently dom inant
historicism /contextualism . Considered as a unit, these four chapters track
the developm ent o f the discipline throughout the tw entieth and twenty-first
centuries, focusing particularly on w hat I take to be three o f the m ost
im p o rtan t strands w ithin it: first, the project o f literary criticism, as distinct
from the project o f literary scholarship; second, the history o f the various
positions in philosophical aesthetics th at have been th o ught to underpin
th at project o f criticism; and third, the history o f the changing m ethodolo
gies th at have functioned as criticism s “w orking edge,” particularly the var
ious reading m ethods th at have sheltered under the names “close reading”
and “practical criticism.” W h en we track these three lines o f thinking as they
develop through the century, treating them as central to the discipline,
som ething rather surprising emerges: it begins to look as though the history
o f literary studies since the 1920s falls roughly into three periods— three
periods th at m atch rather closely those o f w hat I have called the “new
periodization.”
An extremely rapid sum m ary o f th at history may be helpful here. In the
first period, I. A. Richards inaugurated all three lines o f thinking, putting
the project o f criticism on a disciplinary footing by developing for it both a
philosophical foundation in an incipiently materialist account o f the aes
thetic and a w orking tool in the m ethodologies th at came to be called “close
reading” and “practical criticism .” Today, m uch o f Richards' w ork is misre-
m em bered w ithin the discipline, largely due to our tendency to conflate it
w ith w hat followed it: in the U nited States, this has chiefly m eant conflating
it w ith the N ew Criticism ; in the U nited K ingdom , w ith Leavisite criticism.
Against this, I try to recover the distinctiveness o f this early critical work. In
particular, I show th at the m ethodological innovations Richards proposed in
15
fact derived from his earlier philosophical innovations in the field o f aes
thetics. For it is n o t often enough rem em bered nowadays that Richards first
arrived at the m ethods th at w ould become “close reading” and “practical
criticism” as a result o f his sweeping critique o f the m ainstream tradition in
philosophical aesthetics: for Richards, the aesthetic was to be understood
n o t in the idealist sense, current since Baum garten and Kant, as an autotelic
repository o f final value, b u t in an instrum ental sense, as indicating the
whole range o f our social practices for encountering value. O ne m ight then
say th at the “critical” tendency w ithin Anglo-American literary studies has
its roots in an instrum ental or even a m aterialist aesthetics. Certainly criti
cisms characteristic m ethods o f “close reading” and “practical criticism,” at
least, were originally designed as the w orking edge o f such an aesthetics,
helping readers, each from their own specific m aterial situations, to use the
aesthetic instrum ents o f literature to cultivate their m ost useful practical
capabilities. Yet w hen Richards’ w ork was taken up by later thinkers, m uch
o f this philosophical basis was ignored or deliberately cordoned off, and
criticism was then effectively recovered into the m ainstream tradition o f ide
alist aesthetics, though its characteristic m ethodologies continued to bear
traces o f their origins in an aesthetics o f a different kind.
In the second period, extending through the m id-century up to the
1970s, the project o f disciplinary “criticism” was taken up by the N ew
Critics in the U nited States and by the Leavises and their circle in the U nited
K ingdom , and turned to purposes alm ost directly opposed to those for
w hich it originally had been intended. Specifically, the incipiently m ateri
alist aesthetic foundation for criticism was transform ed into an explicitly
idealist one, and the m ethodologies o f “close reading” and “practical criti
cism” were redirected so th at their emphasis lay n o t on cultivating the aes
thetic capabilities o f readers, b u t on the cultivation o f aesthetic judgm ent,
w hich all too often reduced to the mere ranking o f the relative aesthetic
values o f particular texts. The distinctive emphases o f the first period were
then forgotten, and the project o f criticism, together w ith its array o f tools,
came to be associated instead w ith a m ore conservative cultural politics.
Thus, for example, in the discipline today one can observe the widespread—
and, I think, m istaken— sense th at “close reading” has its origin in a Southern
N ew Critical renovation o f C hristian herm eneutic practices. This period
continued through the m iddle o f the century: even where they differed in
other ways, the m ost influential m id-century hum anist criticisms largely
accepted the assum ptions o f this second, m ore conservative, version o f “crit
icism.” In the latter part o f the century, this began to lead to the sense that
“criticism” as a project was necessarily conservative in its politics, and thus to
the transition to w hat I am calling the third period— our own.
In this third period, w hich began in the late 1970s or early 1980s and
continues through to the present, the project o f “criticism” was rejected as
necessarily elitist, dehistoricizing, depoliticizing, and so forth; the idea o f the
“aesthetic” was rejected as necessarily K antian, idealist, and universalizing;
and the central m ethods o f “close reading” and “practical criticism” were
transform ed into means o f producing historical and cultural knowledge on
the basis o f small units o f text. Viewed as part o f the longer history o f the
discipline, the m ost striking feature o f this third period is that literary “schol
arship,” w hich had always accom panied literary “criticism” w ithin the disci
pline, gradually came to replace it and increasingly came to define the w ork
o f the discipline as a whole. W hen the current consensus around a scholarly
historicist/contextualist approach to literature first began to be p u t together,
it was in large part justified by the argum ent, offered initially by leftist
thinkers such as R aym ond W illiam s, or (differently) the followers o f Pierre
Bourdieu, or (differently again) the followers o f M ichel Foucault, that crit
ical and aesthetic approaches to literature m ust be rejected. It was this rejec
tion o f the project o f criticism, by way o f a rejection o f the category o f the
aesthetic, th at cleared the way for m any o f the m ost im portant move
m ents in literary studies th at w ould follow, from the cultural studies and
cultural m aterialist approaches th at explicitly took W illiams as their emblem,
through the influential ideology critique o f Frederic Jam eson and those who
followed him , to other less obviously related movements including the new
historicism , postcolonial literary scholarship, and m ost recently, m uch o f
“digital hum anities” and quantitative literary studies.
O ne m ust o f course add that, in its day, the disciplines argum ent against
critical and aesthetic approaches had its m erits as a means o f showing the
lim its o f b o th the Leavisite and the N ew Critical positions. Yet, as the first
p art o f this history shows, it was in fact quite w rong to reject the project o f
criticism as if its m otivating concept, the aesthetic, could only ever be
th o u g h t through in idealist terms. W h at was being elided here was the fact
th at m odern disciplinary criticism had been founded on an aesthetics o f just
17
the opposite kind. In our own period, this historical amnesia has allowed a
program m atic retreat from the critical project o f intervening in the culture,
back toward the project o f analyzing the culture, w ithout any m andate for
intervention— an ironic and indeed dialectical reversal, given the fact that
the tu rn to cultural analysis was argued for initially by thinkers on the rad
ical left o f the discipline.
Viewed in this way, the history o f literary studies finally falls into the
same three rough periods as does the history o f the tw entieth century more
broadly. First o f all, we have an early period between the wars in w hich the
possibility o f som ething like a break w ith liberalism, and a genuine move to
radicalism, is m ooted and then disarmed. Second, we have a period o f rela
tive continuity through the m id-century, w ith the two paradigms o f “criti
cism” and “scholarship” b oth serving real superstructural functions w ithin
Keynesianism. The Keynesian period then enters into a crisis in the 1970s— a
crisis registered in the discipline in a famously confused debate over “theory,”
w hich in effect acts as cover for the underlying shift from two paradigm s to
one— and finally, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, we see the establishm ent o f
a new order: the unprecedentedly com plete dom inance o f the “scholar”
m odel in the form o f the historicist/contextualist paradigm . If this congru
ence comes as som ething o f a surprise, it is also quite unsurprising: w hat
w ould one expect to find except th at the history o f the discipline marches
m ore or less in step w ith the underlying transform ations o f the social order?
It w ould o f course be unwise to pretend th at the schematic view I offer
here is anything other than provisional— like all schematics, it leaves o u t a
great deal. N o d o u b t some o f w hat it leaves o u t will prove to be im portant
in ways I have n o t m anaged to acknowledge— and here, as a w arning against
m istaking the schem atic as a com plete m ap, it is perhaps w orth repeating
once again th at the story I tell here is largely the story o f literary criticism,
rather than the quite different story o f literary scholarship, w ith w hich it is
obviously closely intertw ined. A history th at tracked the developm ent o f the
latter, from its roots in nineteenth-century philology, through m id-century
literary history, biography, and bibliography, all the way to our current his-
toricist/contextualist forms, w ould be very welcome, and no d o ubt w ould
have m uch to say th at w ould adjust w hat I have w ritten. Nevertheless, taken
w ith a due sense o f its lim itations, it seems to me th at the three-part period
ization I have offered here at least provides a better heuristic through w hich
to understand the discipline s developm ent than the tw o-part periodization

usually adopted— silently, o f course. It certainly brings some o f the broader
contours o f the disciplines history, and thus the particular impasses and
opportunities before it in its present situation, into sharper relief.
V
A final rearticulation o f the m ain argum ent may help to make explicit the
stakes o f the book as a whole. H istorians o f literary studies have told us that
the central axis o f dispute w ithin the discipline since its inception has been
th at between criticism and scholarship. Against th at background, I here sug
gest th at our period has been an unprecedented one in the sense th at since
the early 1980s, one party has m anaged to dom inate the field. I also suggest
th at the effaced project o f criticism once represented the disciplines stron
gest line o f connection to a longer history o f materialist practice, and that
the currently d om inant m ode o f historicist/contextualist scholarship, for
all that it was argued for by the left, has in its m ost salient aspects constituted
a depoliticizing retreat to cultural analysis as a result o f the spread o f neolib
eral forces in the wider econom ic and political sphere.
O nce one has articulated this, it becomes possible to state further that the
absence o f the project o f criticism in our period— the absence o f any pro
gram m atic com m itm ent, not just to analyzing and describing the culture,
b u t to taking action to change it— needs ultim ately to be seen as a sym ptom
o f the broader political situation o f the radical left under neoliberalism, strug
gling, as it has since the late 1970s, to continue in the absence o f any broader
m ovem ent to support it. As Perry A nderson noted in his now-famous edito
rial on the occasion o f the relaunch o f the New Left Review in 2000:
Ideologically, the n ovelty o f the present situation stands ou t in historical view.

It can be p u t like this. For the first tim e since the R eform ation, there are no
longer any significant op p osition s— that is, system atic rival ou tlook s—
w ith in the thou gh t-w orld o f the W est; and scarcely any on a w orld scale
either. . . . W hatever lim itations persist to its practice, neo-liberalism as a set
o f principl es rules undivided across the globe, the m ost successful id eology in
w orld history. (1 7 )10
As Susan W atkins, the new editor o f N LR , noted in 2010 on the occasion
o f the journ als fiftieth anniversary, the events o f the ten years from 2000 to
2010— m ost im portantly, in the wake o f the 2008 financial crash, the near
com plete lack o f any serious positing o f alternatives to neoliberal capitalism
by those in power— seemed to confirm this view.11 N o real reform, let alone
revolution, seemed on the horizon. Given this situation, the question for
thinkers on the left was, as W atkins p u t it: w hat can be achieved by intellectual
w ork “in the m eantim e”? The kinds o f projects offered in response should, I
hope, strike the reader as b oth powerful and familiar: our “first com m itm ent
m ust be to an accurate description o f the w orld” (Anderson 14), w hich is to
say, to “attend to the developm ent o f capitalism” (Anderson 17), to “attend
to the developm ent o f actually existing capitalism” (W atkins 23). For the left
in this period, everywhere prevented from proceeding into action, further
and better analysis has again and again been the answer. It is thus no surprise
to find th at the 2000 volum e also contains Franco M oretti s paper “C onjec
tures on W orld Literature,” in w hich the famous argum ent against the final
rem nant o f criticism, “close reading,” first appears, nor that w hen Anderson
and W atkins come to discussing the study o f literary and artistic phenom ena
from a left perspective, both recom m end Jameson.
In the face o f such a consensus it is a little d aunting to observe th at for the
left today, politics m ust be a question, n o t just o f taking reckonings in the
service o f some longed-for victory in the future, b u t o f taking action in
the present: o f fighting to develop for ourselves and others lives at least m in
imally rich in capabilities and sensitivities. For we do not live “in the m ean
tim e,” we live in the now; and it is only from these continually present
struggles th at any chance o f a hum ane future may someday come. If, w hen
W atkins was w riting in 2010, “no real reform, let alone revolution, has
seemed on the horizon,” the worldwide events o f 2011 im m ediately p u t this
view to the fire: a global echo-cham ber o f protest and dissent; reforms from
above, still no; “revolutions” from below, yes. N aturally these protests and
“revolutions” have been o f highly problem atic kinds, and in m any cases have
led to results about which one can only weep. Nevertheless, for m any on the
left, they have seemed am ong the first o f m any signs that neoliberalism m ay
have entered a series o f cascading crises from which it will not recover—
none o f them , to be sure, the term inal crisis o f capitalism, b u t considered
together perhaps the term inal crisis o f its neoliberal phase. It remains to be
seen w hat form capitalism will take on the other side o f the crisis. In any
case, it seems as if for the first tim e in a generation there is a chance, however
slim, th at the left may be able to halt its thirty-year retreat and tentatively
begin to advance once again.
H ow m ust the academic study o f literature reconstitute itself in order to
m ake a contribution in this new era? N ot, I think, by continuing in its
present m ode, for in our new situation the old slogan “Always historicize!”
will no longer serve. I f the historicist/contextualist paradigm has been
adopted locally for the best o f political reasons, it has also been pushed into
position by m ore general political, econom ic, and institutional forces o f a
m uch harsher kind. O n the one hand, the tu rn to scholarship has m eant a
genuine rejection o f easy universalisms and essentialisms, as well as, in the
best cases, a sophisticated intellectual com m itm ent to the material rather
than the ideal. O n the other hand, it has also involved a rarely examined and
professionally enabling assum ption th at our im m ediate task as higher stu
dents o f literature is the production o f new and better cultural analysis,
rather than the developm ent o f new m ethods for cultivating subjectivities
and collectivities. In this latter respect, its m ain effect has been to prevent us
from taking action. In search o f a balanced assessment o f “Always histori
cize!” then, the best we can say is th at it has been a very good banner under
w hich to conduct a retreat.
W h at banner for a truly critical paradigm on the left? This crucial ques
tion can only be answered collectively; I will be vastly pleased if the book
does anything to make it m ore widely asked. But I hope readers will forgive
m e if I offer, as a prelim inary thought, a distorted echo o f M arxs m ost fre
quently quoted maxim: the m axim th at everyone quotes b u t th at almost no
one in literary studies really seems to believe. H itherto, literary scholars on
the left have tried merely to interpret the world. We are now entering a new
situation. M ight there n o t be a case for a systematic attem pt to change it?
C h ap ter O ne
The Critical Revolution

Turns Right
A doST OF T H O S E w ho have w ritten at length about the history o f

literary studies have agreed th at m odern literary criticism was effectively
born at C am bridge in the 1920s, at a m om ent that has come to be called the
“critical revolution”— b u t o f course, it did n o t come entirely out o f nowhere.
Already at the fin de siecle one can observe a discipline split into som ething
like the binary structure it m aintained until the scholarly tu rn o f the late
1970s and early 1980s: we have two camps, w ith the professional philologist
the em blem o f the first, and the am ateur belletrist the em blem o f the second.
O n e can get a good sense o f the character o f these two camps, and the
strength o f the historical consensus th at attests to it, by com paring the terms
used by the better historians. Thus Chris Baldick tells us th at the key conflict
in the period ru nn in g from 1890 to 1918 was that between “academics” and
“aesthetes”: between “scholarly and scientific objectivism on the one side,
and aesthetic or ‘impressionistic’ subjectivism on the other; th at is to say
between a professional Knowledge o f literature and an am ateur Taste for it.”1
For G erald Graff, who takes the relevant period as extending from 1875 to
1915, the conflict is between “investigators” and “generalists”: between those
w ho stood for “scientific research and the philological study o f m odern
languages” on the one hand, and the “dissenting tradition” o f those who
“defended appreciation over investigation and values over facts” on the
other.2 O r again, for John G uillory the period extends from 1880 to 1920,
and the relevant conflict is th at between “philologists” and “belletrists.”3A nd

so on. The precise terms chosen differ, b u t the picture they give us is m uch
the same: in both Britain and the U nited States, we have a discipline divided
into two rough camps th at already bear m ore than a passing resemblance to
the “scholars” and “critics” o f the m id-century. So the scholar/critic divide
certainly had its antecedents, and to m odern eyes, if they are willing to
squint a little, the “critical revolution” can even be read as a m om ent o f con
tinuity rather than rupture.
B ut in a m ore im p o rtan t sense, the critical revolution o f the 1920s came
entirely as a surprise. For whenever we manage to tu rn off our hindsight and
instead consider the institutional battles o f the fin de siecle w ith som ething
like the eyes o f a dispassionate contem porary observer, it becomes clear that
one side— th at o f the belletrists— is going to lose. They are determ ined am a
teurs in a game th at is speedily tu rn in g professional. They are unscientific: in
eschewing the w orld o f “verifiable facts” and instead opting to com m it
themselves to the w orld o f “interpretations and values,” they seem destined
to confirm to the w ider university th at their practices o f aesthetic apprecia
tion, in G raffs words, have “no objective basis and therefore [do] n o t qualify
for serious academic study.”4 In G uillory s words, they will have “failed to
m aintain a link to the scientificity th at alone w ould have assured [their]
disciplinary status in the constellation o f disciplines.”5 In short, they are
clearly, even proudly, unsuited to the tw entieth-century research university
th at is rapidly springing into being around them .
Thus during the 1910s, one w ould have been hard-pressed to predict that
a new paradigm for literary criticism, and one that prioritized aesthetic expe
rience rather than philological learning, was about to enter w hat m any later
observers have term ed a “heroic age.” The critical revolution o f the 1920s
was a sharp tu rn away from w hat seemed the discipline’s obvious trajectory.
It allowed the distinctive belletristic emphases on aesthetic appreciation, on
cultivating the subjectivity o f the reader, and on the connection between
tastes and values to be taken up and insisted upon in a thoroughly new way,
thereby laying the foundations for a new paradigm for criticism: a paradigm
rigorous and scientific enough for the m odern research university. This
m ethodological revolution is n o t well understood today, even by those who
w ork in the field, b u t its scale and im portance were quite clear to m any o f
those involved, and rem ained clear throughout m uch o f the mid-century.
23
Taking just one example from the m any available, in 1947 the American
critic Stanley Edgar H ym an was able to open his book The A rm ed Vision: A
Study in the Methods o f M odern Literary Criticism as follows:
The literary criticism w ritten in E nglish over the past quarter o f a century is
qualitatively different from any previous criticism . W hether you call it the
“n ew ” criticism , as m any have, or “scientific criticism ,” or “w orking criticism ,”
or, as this b o o k does, “m odern criticism ,” its o n ly relation to the great practi
tioners o f the past seem s to be on e o f descent. (3 )6
The dram a o f this opening did n o t derive from any novelty o f the argum ent:
H ym an was offering a firm restatem ent o f an accepted view. The rupture was
widely, and I th in k quite accurately, understood as a very com plete one. The
belletristic criticism o f the fin de siecle had been transform ed into som ething
genuinely new.
The effects o f the break were felt well beyond the bounds o f university
literature departm ents. By the late tw entieth century, w hat m ight have
seemed merely a m ethodological innovation w ithin the discipline o f English,
and thus simply a m atter for academics, had had significant and even at
tim es transform ative effects on so m any other institutions, sectors, fields,
and spheres o f h um an concern in the English-speaking w orld that it is diffi
cult to find a term th at will encompass them . I will confine myself to a few
examples, chosen m ore or less at random . It is the critical revolution o f the
1920s th at we m ust praise or blam e for the leftist or leftish character o f the
adult education m ovem ents th at were significant features o f the cultural
landscape o f Britain and some parts o f its diaspora throughout the tw entieth
century, and the subsequent birth o f a left “C ultural Studies” as an intellec
tual and institutional m ovem ent. The critical revolution is also, at root,
responsible for the continuing distinctiveness, in w orld terms, o f high school
literature education in m uch o f India, G reat Britain, Australia, the U nited
States, Sri Lanka, C anada, South Africa, N ew Zealand— an education in
literature that, at least in principle, still asks students to cultivate som ething
like a “personal” relationship to specific literary texts by means o f extended
and careful reading, rather than, say, asking them to study the facts o f lit
erary history, as do students in m any other parts o f the world today. C o n
tinuing our heterogeneous list, we can trace the direct effects o f the critical
revolution on m any significant forms o f Anglo-American cultural jo u r

nalism, both “higher” and “lower,” from the early tw entieth century through
to the present; on a range o f effective campaigns, in the second half o f the
tw entieth century, against disciplinarian pedagogies in prim ary schools; on
the relative enthusiasm w ith w hich, during the 1960s and 1970s, the literary
portions o f the US academy im ported continental philosophies derived
from the “linguistic turn; also, if you really w ant to push your luck, on m any
o f the scripts for Doctor Who.7 O f course lists o f this kind fail to do the thing
justice, since the effects that can be traced clearly are naturally less inter
esting than the subterranean ones— effects less im m ediately visible, perhaps,
b u t also deeper— the kinds o f w ide-reaching effects that the disciplined
training o f m ultiple generations o f m inds can have on so m any fields and
sectors; the effects th at a sustained institutional com m itm ent can have,
w hen th at com m itm ent is to a transform ation o f the culture, o f the public,
or o f the com m on. In this regard, one m ight say that the m ost im portant
effects o f the critical revolution were at the occluded b u t profound level o f
the idioms, habits, and sensibilities by w hich the social body creates, under
goes, and reflects on experiential forms. For the historical materialist, there
are o f course levels at w hich such idiom s m ust be held accountable to deeper
determ inations; nevertheless, whatever adjusts them bears quite directly on
the very character o f social life. In any case, the break toward the m odern
critical paradigm was n o t merely a m atter for academics. It was to have a
range o f significant effects on the social order at large.
W h at was the nature o f the break? W h at m ade the m odern forms o f crit
icism different from the old? In answering these questions, the key point to
observe is th at the break required a m ovem ent away from subjectivist
im pressionism in aesthetic m atters and tow ard exactitude, meticulousness,
and som ething approaching “scientific” precision. The central innovation
th at allowed this m ovem ent was the developm ent o f the rigorous m ethod
ology o f textual analysis th at soon came to be know n as “practical criticism”
or “close reading.” The fact th at the developm ent o f “close reading” was the
central enabling condition for the critical revolution has been noted by
alm ost everyone who has studied the period: Baldick is typical o f the field
here in his declaration th at “noth in g distinguishes tw entieth-century literary
criticism m ore sharply from th at o f previous ages than this close attention to
textual detail.”8 Yet I do n o t th in k th at the full ramifications o f this have
25
really been thought through. For if close reading was the central advance,
then the politics o f the critical revolution in its early m om ents look rather
different than is usually assumed.
As we will see in later chapters, the disciplines “scholarly tu rn ” to its cur
rent paradigm in the late 1970s and early 1980s was in large part justified on
the basis o f the argum ent th at the m odern critical paradigm had been, at
root, a conservative one. O ne can certainly see the plausibility o f this reading:
the figures m ost often wielded as emblems o f the early critical paradigm are
T. S. Eliot (“classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in
religion”), F. R. Leavis (for w hom the target is often coded as “mass civilisa
tion”), and the N ew Critics (broadly speaking, C hristian conservatives
defending w hat they understood as traditional Southern— initially “Southern
Agrarian”— values). B ut if one sees the developm ent o f close reading as the
founding innovation, then one m ight expect the politics o f the m om ent to
have been otherwise, for the m ethod actually originated in the work o f fig
ures w ho were rather differently placed politically: I. A. Richards and
W illiam Em pson were b oth left-liberals w ith occasional radical leanings,
rather than conservatives; both were internationalists rather than localists in
the m anner o f Leavis or, differently, the N ew Critics; and both were secu
larist or atheist rather than religious— Em pson stridently so. In later chap
ters, we will observe m any o f the key thinkers o f our own period yoking
these quite different figures together as if they were all conservatives, in order
to claim th at the critical paradigm was conservative in essence. The historical
scene being so mixed politically, the yoking together is problem atic. The
diagnosis o f an essential conservatism begins to seem especially problem atic
once one notices th at the specific innovation th at did m ost to define the
m odern critical paradigm , close reading, was developed initially by the fig
ures farthest tow ard the left.
Today it ought to be possible to assess the political character o f the critical
revolution m ore accurately, as part o f a rethinking o f the political history o f
the discipline as a whole. Thus in this chapter, I will emphasize the critical
revolutions political ambivalence, especially in its earliest stages, and the
ways in w hich this ambivalence was subsequently captured and determ ined
for conservatism by the right. To see this, one needs to understand m ore
clearly the history o f the key innovations “close reading” and “practical crit
icism”— a history w hich has become quite m uddled. For as we shall see in
later chapters, Richards’ and E m psons characteristically left-liberal innova

tions in this field were soon to becom e conflated w ith the rather different
politics o f those w ho followed them : in the U nited States, “close reading”
was rem arked, and is now usually rem em bered, as a N ew Critical innova
tion, and in Britain, “practical criticism” came to be associated m ost strongly
w ith Leavis. I shall therefore begin this concise to u r o f the history o f criti
cism by disentangling the left-liberalism o f Richards in particular from the
relative conservatism o f those w ho followed him , addressing first the New
Critics, and then Leavis and the Scrutiny scene. The case o f T. S. Eliot is
som ewhat different, and points us away from our m ain story; those particu
larly interested in it can refer to the Appendix.
First Period: Criticism Established

M odern criticism was founded, in large part, on the new m ethodology o f
“close reading.” But where did it “close reading” come from? W ith in the
U nited States, debates about “close reading” often proceed as if the m ethod
were first developed by the N ew Critics. M ore historically sensitive accounts
sometimes acknowledge th at “close reading” really began on the other side
o f the Atlantic, w ith I. A. Richards and W illiam Em pson, b u t often do so in
such a way as to assimilate Richards and Em pson to those who followed
them by treating them as “early N ew Critics,” “A nglo-” New Critics, a “pro
logue” to the history o f close reading, or similar.9 To understand the origins
o f “close reading,” and w ith it the origins o f the m odern critical paradigm as
a whole, we have to see th at b oth these kinds o f accounts are mistaken. For
“close reading” as conceived and practiced by Richards and Em pson and
“close reading” as subsequently taken up and dissem inated by the New
Critics were quite divergent m ethods, directed toward opposed ends. To
show this in any thorough way, one needs to examine the history w ith an eye
to the kinds o f positions in philosophical aesthetics being proposed, and I
will certainly proceed to th at in a m om ent. But to begin with, it is w orth
pointing out th at one can also begin to suspect it simply by considering the
nature o f the intellectual form ations involved. Richards and E m pson were,
am ong other things, Cam bridge League-of-Nations liberals, internation
alist, cosm opolitan, and secularist. The N ew Critics were, for the m ost part,
Southern US C hristian political and cultural conservatives seeking a return
THE CRITICAL R EV O L U T IO N TU R N S RIGHT 27
to the “traditional Southern values” o f family, religion, and an agrarian way

o f life. O nce one reflects on this, the widespread assum ption that the N ew
Critics represented a continuous, rather than at best radically dialectical,
developm ent o u t o f the w ork o f Richards and Em pson comes to seem rather
surprising. C an we really expect a m ethod developed by one o f these groups
to be taken up by the other w ith o u t undergoing fundam ental change? The
Southerners claimed Richards and Em pson as forefathers, and we have
largely believed them — yet Richards and E m pson both emphatically dis
avowed the connection, Richards claim ing th at he didn't “know m uch about
the Am. N ew Critics and never w anted to acknowledge any relation, w hat
soever, to whom soever they are,” and Em pson calling one o f their central
tenets “dogm a” and “absurd.”10 W h at was really going on?
The real story, in its broad outlines, runs as follows. Richards and Em pson
p u t together w hat m ight fairly be called an incipiently materialist practice o f
close reading, based in an instrum ental or (loosely speaking) pragm atist aes
thetics, directed tow ard an advanced utilitarian m odel o f aesthetic and prac
tical education. This was taken up and co-opted by the N ew Critics, who
rem ade and institutionalized it as a thoroughly idealist practice, based in a
neo-K antian aesthetics o f disinterest and transcendent value, directed toward
religious cultural conservatism. This m ay seem like an abstruse or m inor
point, b u t it is in fact a fairly m ajor one, since, as we shall see in later chap
ters, lack o f awareness about this early reversal in the political and philo
sophical orientation o f w hat is often celebrated as our m ost central and
characteristic disciplinary practice continues to have some rather unfortu
nate effects on literary studies today. O n e o f them is the widespread sense
th at “close reading” has its origins in C hristian herm eneutic practices, and
th at rejecting it may therefore seem som ething o f a progressive act— we will
see this particularly in C hapter 3, w hen we come to address the w ork o f
Franco M oretti and the associated rise o f quantitative literary studies. The
effacement o f the origins o f the practice has given m any the impression
th at it is somehow, at root, a practice o f autonom ous or idealist aesthetics,
and as such, originally or even necessarily decontextualizing, dehistoricizing
a n d /o r depoliticizing. However, once we take a closer look at the history o f
the discipline, it becomes apparent th at close reading is now being critiqued
on the grounds o f its purp o rted origins in the very kinds o f positions in
philosophical aesthetics it was built to oppose.
LI T E R A R Y C R I T I C I S M
M ore generally, the effect o f the new critical co-opting o f “close reading,”
and the forgetting o f the earlier history, has been to m otivate the widespread
conviction th at “critical” and “aesthetic” justifications for literary study m ust
ultim ately be rejected, since they can only be m ade in idealist term s o f the
kinds favored by the N ew Criticism and cognate m ovements. The early his
tory o f the discipline shows th at this is n o t so: the case o f the early critical
paradigm dem onstrates, n o t only th at another kind o f aesthetics is possible,
b u t th at it once existed, and was indeed responsible for the developm ent o f
m any o f the disciplines characteristic m ethods and concerns. O f course, I
hasten to add th at one w ould n o t w ant to resurrect I. A. Richards’ particular
brand o f aesthetics today, even if one could: flawed in its day in ways th at we
shall shortly note, it w ould no d o u b t continue to fail to serve our needs in
the present. B ut perhaps being rem inded o f a left-liberal, rather than C hris
tian conservative, version o f the aesthetic— and one that in m any ways
reached beyond liberalism by explicitly trying to break w ith the idealism
th at had been the d o m in an t strand in bourgeois aesthetics since K ant—
m ight help us to appreciate the possibility o f taking it further, to build
instead a genuine aesthetics, and a m aterialist aesthetic criticism, for m ore
radical purposes w ithin the discipline today.
I. A. Richards, Close Reading, and Practical Criticism

Accounts o f the history o f close reading th at treat it prim arily as a New C rit
ical practice often begin w ith Richards’ Practical Criticism (1929), on the
grounds th at there Richards pays attention to very small units o f language in
short lyric poems in a way th at led directly to the New Critics’ emphasis on
“the poem in itself,” and their associated rejection o f the analysis o f any kind
o f historical or political context. W h at is m uch less often acknowledged is
th at Richards’ m ethodological innovations were based on, and enabled by,
his earlier theoretical innovations: the clearing out o f old aesthetic theories
th at Richards, C. K. O gden, and James W ood undertook in The Foundations
o f Aesthetics (1922); Richards’ and O gden’s systematic study o f linguistic
m isunderstanding in The M eaning o f M eaning (1923); and, in particular,
Richards’ developm ent, in Principles o f Literary Criticism (1924), o f a sophis
ticated answer to the fundam ental question o f w hat literature is good for.11
The last o f these is o f m ost direct relevance to us here.
29
In the simplest terms, we m ight say th at Richards’ argum ent in Principles

o f Literary Criticism was th at the m ost im p o rtan t thing about works o f liter
ature was their aesthetic potential, by w hich he m eant not their formal
beauty as an end in itself, b u t their ability to act as means by w hich readers
could cultivate m any o f their m ost useful practical faculties. His account o f
w hat this signifies for literary study generally is a complex one, but we can
catch the general tenor o f it as it comes through into Practical Criticism in
his line: “It is less im p o rtan t to like good’ poetry and dislike ‘bad,’ than to
be able to use them b oth as a means o f ordering our m inds” (327). The w ork
o f literature, for Richards, was to be a kind o f therapeutic technology, and
the critic was therefore to be som ething like a doctor o f applied psychology,
helping us to use th at technology to improve our minds. It was on the basis
o f this kind o f aesthetic thinking, w hich sees the aesthetic as a m ode o f
instrum ental, rather than final, value that Richards began to develop the
practice o f close reading.
It is w orth taking a m om ent to examine the philosophical foundations o f
this view. O ne o f Richards’ chief goals in Principles o f Literary Criticism is to
try to develop a general answer to w hat he takes to be the fundam ental
question for criticism, and for aesthetics generally, viz.: “W h at is the value
o f the arts, w hy are they w orth the devotions o f the keenest hours o f the
best m inds, and w hat is their place in the system o f hum an endeavours?”
(3) Clearly, this is a large question, and n o t a new one. Richards’ attem pt
to answer it begins w ith a trem endously am bitious ground-clearing exer
cise: a dismissal o f the entire body o f writings on philosophical aesthetics
since Kant.
The title o f Richards’ second chapter, The Phantom Aesthetic State, suffi
ciently indicates the m ain line o f attack. Richards thinks th at K ant led the
whole tradition o f philosophical aesthetics into a dead end by positing the
existence o f a special “aesthetic state” w hich we m ight describe, loosely, as a
m ode o f experience radically divorced from practical m atters such as
inquiring and desiring. In rejecting any such state, Richards’ m ost im m e
diate target is the art-for-art’s-sake aestheticism o f the 1890s— he cites
Vernon Lee’s The Beautiful (1913); Oscar W ilde and W alter Pater are also
clearly on his m in d — b u t his description is also intended to fit a vast range
o f aesthetic thinking, before and since, th at tries to use the K antian division
o f the faculties to set up the “aesthetic” as a special or privileged m ode o f
experience, divorced from experience o f b oth intellectual/cognitive and

desiring/m oral kinds.
In view o f the ways his w ork was later taken up by thoroughgoing Kan-
tians, it is w o rth dwelling here on the fact th at his rejection o f this K antian,
idealist aesthetics is m ade in the strongest terms. H e tells us that Kantian
aesthetics “has h ad an influence upon speculation which w ould be ridicu
lous if it had n o t been so disastrous. It is difficult even now to get out o f ruts
w hich have been seen to lead now here” (8). W hile he broadly accepts m any
o f K ant’s claims outside the realm o f aesthetics, he inform s us that within
aesthetics, K antian idealism has led to “calamitous distortions” (9). W h at
ever the m erits o f this line o f argum ent as a critique o f K ant— and we should,
I think, be at the very least suspicious o f any thorough critique o f K ants
aesthetics th at does n o t understand itself as necessarily underm ining m uch
o f the other two parts o f the system— it is hard to miss the fact that Richards
is in earnest here.
Against these idealist philosophies o f the distinct aesthetic state, he offers
us w hat it seems fair to call an incipiently m aterialist view o f the aesthetic: a
view o f aesthetic experience th at vigorously insists on its continuity w ith
experience o f norm al, practical kinds. H e insists that:
W h en w e lo o k at a picture, or read a p oem , or listen to m usic, w e are n o t

d oin g som eth in g quite unlike w hat w e were d o in g on our w ay to the gallery
or w h en w e dressed in the m orning. The fashion in w h ich the experience is
caused in us is different, and as a rule the experience is m ore com p lex and, i f
w e are successful, m ore unified. B ut our activity is n o t o f a fundam entally
different kind. To assum e that it is, puts difficulties in the w ay o f d escribing
and explaining it, w h ich are unnecessary and w h ich n o on e has yet succeeded
in overcom ing. (12)
Richards, then, is p u ttin g together his theory specifically to oppose any

attem p t to set up the aesthetic as a self-sufficient category insulated from the
rest o f life. This becomes m ost explicit at the end o f the chapter, w hen
Richards turns to show th at his critique o f the art-for-art s sake philoso
phies o f the 1890s is also a critique o f the m odernist aestheticisms o f his
contem poraries in the 1920s:
THE CRITICAL REV OL U TIO N T UR NS RIGHT 31
A further objection to the assum ption o f a peculiar aesthetic attitude is that it

makes sm ooth the w ay for the idea o f a peculiar aesthetic value, a pure art
value. Postulate a peculiar kind o f experience, aesthetic experience, and it is an
easy step to the p ostulation o f a peculiar unique value, different in kin d and
cut o ff from the other values o f ordinary experience. ‘To appreciate a w ork
o f art w e need bring w ith us n o th in g from life, n o know ledge o f its ideas
and affairs, no fam iliarity w ith its e m o tio n s.’ (C live Bell, A r t, p 25) So runs a
recent extrem e statem ent o f the A esthetic H ypothesis, w h ich has had m uch
success. To quote another exam ple less drastic but also carrying w ith it the
im plication that aesthetic experiences are su i gen eris , and their value is n o t o f
the sam e kind as other values: “Its nature is to be n o t part, nor yet a copy, o f
the real w orld (as w e c o m m o n ly understand that phrase), b u t a w orld in itself
independent, com plete, au ton om ou s” (A. C . Bradley, O x fo r d L ectu re on
P oetry ; p. 5).
This view o f the arts as providing a private heaven for aesthetes is, as w ill
appear later, a great im p ed im en t to the investigation o f their value. . . . / ^ \ r t
envisaged as a m ystic, ineffable virtue is a close relative o f the ‘aesthetic m o o d ,’
and m ay easily be pernicious in its effects, through th e habits o f m in d w hich,
as an idea, it fosters, and to w h ich , as a mystery, it appeals. (13; I have tried to
reproduce the change o f fon t on “Art” in the original)
If this had been published in the U nited States in 1983 rather than in the
U nited K ingdom in 1923, it w ould surely have been unreadable except as a
full-scale assault on the lingering legacy o f the New Criticism . In direct
opposition to the kinds o f positions th at it will come to be m istaken for,
Richards’ theoretical project is to break the aesthetic o u t o f the K antian loop
o f self-sufficiency and redundancy and instead to p u t it back into contact
w ith the m aterial concerns o f life. For him , this means shifting the emphasis
away from the supposedly “objective” aesthetic or formal qualities o f the
w ork o f art considered in isolation, and onto the nature o f the relationship
between the artw ork and its m ost im p o rtan t context— its audience. “We are
accustom ed to say th at a picture is beautiful, instead o f saying th at it causes
in us an experience w hich is valuable in certain ways” (15); “We continually
talk as though things possessed qualities, w hen w hat we ought to say is that
they cause effects in us o f one kind or another” (16): Richards’ aesthetic
theory continually asks us to turn our attention away from the artw ork “in
itself” and to focus instead on the nature o f the relationship between art
works and their audiences. H aving effected that shift, m uch o f the rest o f
Principles o f Literary Criticism is devoted to trying to show how m uch o f life
th at relationship involves. M orals and capacities for morals; pleasures and
capacities for pleasure; opportunities and capacities for cognition and
analysis— the aesthetic, considered in this contextual and instrum ental
sense, comes to overrun all the borders th at K ant erects to divide the facul
ties. Morals and the will, tru th and cognition, beauty and the capacity for
pleasure: Richards’ account o f the aesthetic tries to throw lines o u t to them
all. If we had th o u g h t that Richards was a kind o f proto- or Anglo- New
Critic, then reading Principles o f Literary Criticism should set us straight
fairly quickly: in philosophical aesthetics, at least, Richards holds views o f
just the opposite kind.
By the tim e he comes to w rite Practical Criticism (1929), then, Richards
is doing som ething rather different to w hat readings o f his w ork back
through the lens o f N ew Criticism suggest. Famously, Practical Criticism is
an account o f an experim ent Richards conducted in the 1920s, in w hich he
had his Cam bridge English students write com m entaries on various poems
w ith o u t being told anything about them in advance.12 From the vantage
p o in t o f the late tw entieth- or early twenty-first century historicist, a cursory
glance over the history o f the discipline will all too often light first upon
Richards’ removal o f the poem s’ titles, dates o f publication, the poets’ names,
and so forth, and assume on th at basis th at it is witnessing the opening salvo
in the New Critical war on context. This reading misses the core o f Richards’
project. A m ore sustained look at the disposition o f the forces reveals that
Richards is really firing in the opposite direction: far from trying, in proto-
N ew C ritical fashion, to strip works o f their contexts in order to encourage
a close attention to literary language “for its own sake,” Richards is in fact
trying to find the m ost rigorous and precise way he can to p u t works o f lit
erature into a productive relation w ith their contexts o f reception.
H is com m itm ent to “context” in this sense is in fact rather deep. Before
anything else, Practical Criticism is an attem pt to examine as precisely as pos
sible the actual relationships existing between works o f literature and their
m ost im portant context: their readers.13 O nce we have p u t aside the idea that
Richards is an early N ew Critic, we can begin to see that he is concerned
everywhere to p u t the text into some productive relationship to its context o f
reception. For present purposes, it is im portant to note two parts o f this

project in particular: w hat I am going to call the “diagnostic” and the “thera
peutic” parts. The first part o f Richards’ project— the diagnostic part— is to
propose the use o f works o f literature, in concert w ith readers’ responses to
them , as sensitive instrum ents w ith w hich to determ ine the state o f feeling in
contem porary culture. Or, as he puts it, poetry can serve as
an em in en tly suitable b a it for anyone w h o w ishes to trap . . . current op in ion s

and responses . . . for the purpose o f exam in in g and com paring th em , and
w ith a view to advancing our k now ledge o f w hat m ay be called the natural
history o f hum an op in ion s and feelings. (5—6, italics in original)
In this capacity, he tells us, Practical Criticism should be considered a “record

o f a piece o f fieldwork in com parative ideology” (16). C ontem porary histor-
icist/ contextualist scholars often overlook this diagnostic aspect o f Richards’
project, though it is one w ith w hich one m ight have thought they w ould
have some sympathy.14 Indeed given its strong resemblance to the general
project o f cultural analysis th at the historicist/contextualist approach posits
as the m ain goal o f disciplinary literary studies, it is really not at all incom
patible w ith current modes. Later, we will examine R aym ond W illiam s’
w ork as an early example o f cultural analysis in the current m ode; here, it is
w orth noting th at Richards is proposing, in passing, som ething n o t at all
unlike W illiam s’ m ethod, in w hich works o f literature are taken as indices o f
“structures o f feeling” operating w ithin culture generally, the key difference
between the two being that, where W illiam s directs our attention to the
context o f production, Richards directs our attention to the context o f
reception.15
O f course, one needs to say in the same breath that, having once outlined
this diagnostic aspect o f his project, Richards did not go on to carry it o u t in
any systematic way: nowhere in his w ork can we find rich and coherent his
torical and cultural analysis o f the kind we find in the best o f our contem po
rary historicisms, from W illiam s onward. Indeed, from the vantage-point o f
the best scholarship on the left o f the discipline today, it is n o t hard to see
th at Richards is naive about the nature o f the political and econom ic con
texts his “fieldwork in com parative ideology” is seeking to analyze, and
indeed th at this is a naivete characteristic o f the tradition o f utilitarian
hum anist liberalism from w hich he springs. It w ould certainly be possible to

make m uch o f this failing, w hich folds a flaw into all o f Richards’ m ost
useful theoretical and practical tools, from the early analysis o f language and
m eaning, through the science o f m isunderstanding, the practical aesthetics
and the associated m ethod o f reading, all the way through to the cluster o f
w ork on “Basic English”— a flaw th at makes them unable to stand up to the
real historical, cultural, and (especially) political and econom ic forces on
w hich they are designed to be set to work. Indeed, one m ight then go on to
trace the ways in w hich Richards’ B entham ite enthusiasm for technological
or “applied psychology” solutions to w hat are really econom ic and political
problem s led directly, in a way th at is n o t often enough remembered, to the
developm ent o f new and pernicious techniques o f mass m anipulation in
fields such as advertising, m arketing, and public relations: precisely those
cultural elements o f capitalist m odernity th at m uch o f the later critical par
adigm was to react so strongly against.
B ut this is to take Richards at his weakest. For present purposes, the more
im p o rtan t p o in t is that, from the outset, a central part o f Richards’ project
is m otivated by a will to use literary texts, together w ith contem porary
readers’ responses to them , as diagnostic instrum ents to determ ine the state
o f culture. A m ore thoroughgoing com m itm ent to cultural and contextual
analysis, o f m uch the kind we have today, w ould thus be consistent w ith
Richards’ m ore general position. In realizing th at Richards was proposing
the use o f literary texts, n o t as aesthetic objects gloriously isolated from all
possible uses and contexts, b u t as diagnostic instrum ents for “fieldwork in
com parative ideology,” we realize th at he was a lot m ore like us than he is
generally thou g h t to be. H e was, in fact, clearing new ground for histori-
cist/contextualist scholars o f culture, though did not yet have the tools to
w ork it.
That m uch for the diagnostic part o f Richards’ project. The second part
o f Richards’ project— w hat I am calling the “therapeutic” part— takes us
into rather different territory. For a large part o f the interest o f Richards’
approach to literary studies— and certainly a large part o f its difference from
otherwise similar approaches today— lies in its com m itm ent to proceeding
on from diagnosis and into treatm ent, as it were: to proceed from “fieldwork
in com parative ideology” in the service o f a “history o f hum an opinions and
feelings,” into a full and systematic effort actively to intervene in that history.
Thus Practical Criticism was intended to provide “not only an interesting
com m entary upon the state o f contem porary culture, b u t a new and pow
erful educational instrum ent.”16 The larger goal o f Richards' study o f mis
understanding, his aesthetics, and his m ethod o f “close reading” was to
improve on the historicisms o f his contem poraries by developing a way to
use literature, n o t just to analyze cultures, ideologies, and psychologies, but
to improve them . This is a crucial part o f w hat w ould come to distinguish
literary “scholarship” from literary “criticism” throughout the m id-century:
where the form er tried to use literature as a means through w hich to analyze
culture, the latter tried to set literature to w ork on the aesthetic sensibilities
o f readers, w ith the aim o f bringing about some larger change in the culture
as a whole.
There had, o f course, been “criticisms” o f som ething like this kind before.
Since the beginning o f aesthetic discourse proper in the late eighteenth cen
tury, m any had tried, under the sign o f “criticism,” to call on literature, or
else on the aesthetic generally, as a way to intervene in the state o f culture.
H ere one m ight list again the names o f the classic nineteenth-century “m or
alists” or cultural critics: M ill, Carlyle, A rnold, Ruskin, M orris. Yet until
Richards none had yet been in a position to develop for “criticism,” to the
standard required by the m odern university, b oth a philosophical founda
tion and a sophisticated practical methodology. Even in his own day,
Richards was n o t alone in seeing the need for a general project o f aesthetic
education, n o r was he alone in seeing th at a real com m itm ent to aesthetic
education w ould m ean developing a m ethod for teaching aptitudes and
sensitivities o f the broadest and m ost general, as well as m ost unreliable,
tenuous, intuitive, and idiosyncratic kinds. H e was, however, virtually
unique in his insight th at this new era, in w hich the study o f English
Literature was being institutionalized, could support, and w ould in fact
require, these aptitudes to be taught by a m ethod that was repeatable, reli
able, and precise enough to take its place am ong the disciplines. In this
sense, the developm ent o f “close reading” was a genuine advance. The effect
o f Richards' w ork here was to p u t literary criticism, considered as an active
attem p t to use literature as a tool o f aesthetic education in the service o f
broader cultural change, on som ething like the scientific footing required in
order to qualify it as a discipline w ithin the m odern research university,
alongside— and even sometimes in com petition w ith— literary scholarship,
philology, and literary history. O nce it crossed the A tlantic, however, close
reading, w ith its foundation in an anti-idealist aesthetics, was to becom e
quite a different thing.
Second Period: Criticism Turns Right

The N ew Criticism: Close Reading fo r K a n t
W h en one moves from Richards and Em pson to the N ew Critics, the first
thing one notes is a dram atic shift in world-view and ideology. It is w orth
dwelling on th at shift for a m om ent, since it did so m uch to determ ine the
fate o f “close reading,” and thus, in tim e, o f m odern criticism itself. The best
place to look for an account o f the N ew C ritical worldview is probably T il
take M y Stand: The South a n d the Agrarian Tradition (1930), the Introduc
tion to w hich was effectively the m anifesto o f the Fugitives, the m ovem ent
o f w hich the N ew Critics were alm ost all, in their early days, a p art.17 The
guiding question there is: “Just w hat m ust the Southern leaders do to defend
the traditional Southern life?” This emphasis on the defense o f a specific
“tradition” leads quickly enough into education: “W h at policy should be
pursued by the educators w ho have a tradition at heart?” It seems fair to say
th at the d om inant feeling in the m anifesto is a frustrated sense o f entitle
m ent— the particular kind o f frustration, and associated antim odern resent
m ent, that arises w hen an intellectual form ation feels that a new order is
denying it rights and privileges th at an older, now idealized order w ould
have granted to it as a m atter o f course. In the case o f the Fugitives, the cur
rent order is “Industrialism ,” seen as “N orthern” and (somehow) “C o m m u
nist”; the older order is th at o f the traditional agrarian South, idealized
chiefly through the elision o f any serious engagem ent w ith the system o f
slavery on w hich th at order had been based; and the rights and privileges
being denied are those due to these m en as men— as white m en— or rather,
m ore precisely, as w hite male C hristian property owners brought up as the
inheritors o f a certain concept o f culture. O f course m any o f the New Critics
moved on from this initial position w hen, for various historical reasons, it
began to seem unconscionable, b u t the traces o f the structure o f feeling are
everywhere in their m ajor work, and m ust be borne in m ind w hen we
evaluate it.
37
O thers have given m uch fuller accounts o f the ideological conditions

w ithin w hich the N ew Critics first form ed their views.18 I will draw attention
to just one elem ent, albeit one th at seems to determ ine m uch o f their posi
tion: their very insistent (I am tem pted to say obsessive) anti-com m unism .
[I] t m ust be insisted that the true Sovietists or C om m u n ists— if the term
m ay be used here in the European sense— are the [N orthern] Industrialists
them selves. They w ou ld have the governm ent set up an eco n o m ic super
organization, w h ich in turn w ou ld b ecom e the governm ent. W e therefore
lo o k u p on the C o m m u n ist m enace as a m enace indeed, but n o t as a R ed one;
because it is sim ply according to the b lin d drift o f our industrial develop m en t
to expect in A m erica at last m u ch the sam e eco n o m ic system as that im posed
by violen ce u p on Russia in 19 1 7 . (xli—xlii)
This is a kind o f view w ith w hich those o f us w ho watch the U nited States
are only too familiar today: “D em ocrats are com m unists!” and so on. O ne o f
m any sad reflections available to us at this point is th at the N ew Critics’ best
insights occasionally approached those o f the com m unists they so detested:
in particular, their quite radical insistence, in the face o f conventional edu
cational hum anism , on the fact th at “the trouble w ith the life pattern is to be
located at its econom ic base, and we cannot rebuild it by pouring in soft
materials from the top” (xliii-xliv). This seems to me som ething like a good
M arxist diagnosis o f the chief weakness in the m ain liberal response to the
problem s o f industrialism — a diagnosis o f liberalisms failure to adm it the
determ ination o f the superstructure by the base. H aving m ade that diag
nosis, though, the N ew Critics did n o t see the need to proceed to anything
like a serious analysis o f the “econom ic base.” Instead, they retreated pre
cisely to the kind o f localist and individualist positions that had been devel
oped by the dom in an t liberalism in its m ost conservative forms: “The
responsibility o f m en is for their own welfare and that o f their neighbours;
n o t for the hypothetical welfare o f some fabulous creature called society”
(xlvi). It is in form ulations like these th at their defense o f “com m unity,”
w hich m ight seem to resemble a Leavisite defense o f an “organic com m u
nity” in England, in fact collapses very quickly into a som ething very like a
libertarian defense o f the rights o f the individual. In this way, their fixation
on the threat o f com m unism ensured th at they rem ained out o f touch w ith
the political and econom ic realities o f their time. This lack o f political and
econom ic realism m ade itself felt particularly in the ungrounded optim ism
o f their m ore constructive assertions, including, crucially, their view that “an
agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous indus
tries are n o t allowed to rise against it.” They discovered the unrealism o f this
position soon enough.
This structure o f feeling could n o t b u t have a profound effect on Richards’
project as it was translated across the A tlantic. The easiest way to sum m a
rize this effect is to note that, while the N ew Critics happily took up m any
o f Richards’ practical innovations and m ade them into core com ponents
o f literary study in the U nited States, and thence elsewhere, they did so in a
way th at split them off from their theoretical foundations in an incipi-
ently m aterialist aesthetics and then reoriented them such that they began to
p o in t in the opposite direction— back toward Kant. In shorthand, one
m ight say th at the determ inedly anti-K antian theoretical project o f Princi
ples o f Literary Criticism was dropped, and the m ethod prepared for in
Practical Criticism was kept, the latter text therefore being read in a rather
distorting light.
W e can see this by considering the case o f C leanth Brooks. H is rem inis
cences about his first encounters w ith Richards’ work— entitled, signifi
cantly enough, “I. A. Richards and Practical Criticism ’— insist on just these
distinctions. H e was, he said, “happy to give in full measure to the prac
tical critic w hat I have w ithheld from the theoretician” (594).19 H e tells us
th at he found m uch o f Richards’ theoretical apparatus, “particularly in
Principles [of Literary Criticism] ,” “distasteful” or “difficult” (589). The latter
two term s seem particularly significant as markers o f the N ew Critical
response to the w ork o f the C am bridge critics. Surely this is precisely w hat
one expects to see w hen a set o f practices developed by one intellectual
form ation is taken up by a very different one, operating both w ith a very
different ideology (“distasteful”) and a very different level o f intellectual
sophistication (“difficult”). The theory seems somehow at once at odds w ith
and irrelevant to one’s own real concerns, and as such is both resisted and
m isunderstood.
Brooks gives us a m ore thorough account o f this response in the first few
paragraphs o f the paper. H e begins by contrasting Principles o f Literary
Criticism and Practical Criticism. A fter praising the latter, he writes:
W ith P rin cip les I encountered m ore difficult going. W h at Richards had to say
was exciting, but I resisted the n ew psychological term inology as w ell as the
con fid en t p osition o f the author. N evertheless the b ook cou ld n o t be dis
m issed. I had to cope w ith it— to try to form an adequate answer to it— or
else capitulate.
The result was that I read P rin ciples perhaps a dozen tim es during that first
year o f acquaintance— and profited from the experience. For the kind o f read
in g that I practiced in trying to find a sou n d basis for rejecting w hat Richards
had w ritten was intense reading, the sort from w h ich on e learns. I f I did n ot
gain an understanding o f Richards’ w h ole system , an understanding so clear
that it com p elled acceptance, I d id at least sharpen m y insight, ways o f per
ceiving, and m ethods o f analysis. (586)
Brooks, to his credit, has no qualms about telling us that his difficulties in
understanding the w ork form ed no im pedim ent to his rejection o f it.
O n the contrary: it is his “attem p t to find a sound basis for rejecting”
Principles— his sense th at to agree w ith Richards here w ould be to
“capitulate”— th at leads him to try to understand it, again and again.
W h at in Richards’ theory struck Brooks, and the other New Critics, as so
objectionable? O n the surface, the problem seems to have been w ith some
thing called “psychological machinery.” Here, w ith this m uch reiterated
phrase, we again encounter the sym ptom s o f a situation in w hich one intel
lectual form ation fails to understand another: Brooks rather disarm ingly
adm its th at “m y rejection o f it sprang from no theoretical sophistication on
m y part: instead, such m achinery simply seemed irrelevant as well as m ysti
fying” (591). “Irrelevant” and “mystifying” here go quite nicely alongside
“distasteful” and “difficult” earlier: Brooks strongly dislikes the “psycholog
ical machinery,” b u t it is at the same tim e n o t quite clear to him w hy he
should care.
But, to pursue the question a step further, w hat was the problem w ith
Richards’ “psychological machinery?” It is tem pting to say th at the emphasis
is on the n oun, and th at Brooks and the other N ew Critics were simply
rejecting Richards’ scientific bent: they were, after all, the source o f a great
m any influential restatem ents o f w hat we m ight take to be a traditional
R om antic opposition between science and poetry. But this does little to
solve our problem : one could just as easily observe th at the N ew Critics
tended to call anything they disliked “machinery,” and to contrast it w ith
their own m ore “organic” approaches, even if they were in fact rejecting it
for quite other reasons. A nd there are other aspects o f Richards’ scientific
approach to w hich Brooks does n o t repeatedly object: his tight, “scientific”
focus on specific details o f language in lyric poems being the obvious
example. N o, surely we m ust say instead that the emphasis is n o t on
“m achine,” b u t on “psychological,” and th at w hat is really being rejected
here is the reader, as a form o f context th at the N ew Critics w ant to insist is
strictly irrelevant to the pure aesthetic text.
This is w orth examining, since it is largely from this kind o f interpretation
that we derive our current sense that “close reading” originated in an attem pt
to focus attention on “the text itself” rather than on the reader o f the text, as
well as the long-standing characterization o f Richards as a “psychological”
critic first and foremost— a rather misleading characterization. The m ost cel
ebrated and derided instance o f this New Critical rejection o f the reader is, o f
course, W im satt and Beardsleys “Affective Fallacy,” which, together w ith
their “Intentional Fallacy,” sought to cut off both reader and writer from the
literary work; b u t those texts have been m uch discussed elsewhere.20 Instead,
let us observe Ransom m aking the same move in a m ore sophisticated fashion
in The N ew Criticism (1 9 4 1).21 For m any decades now, this has proved a con
venient and popular book for those looking to learn som ething about this
particular phase in the history o f the discipline— no doubt in part because
the title seems to promise a clear summary. Ransom treats Richards at length
in his opening chapter, first claiming him as a founding father for N ew C rit
icism, b u t then moving to offer a rather dam ning critique. It is in no small
measure as a result o f Ransom s account o f Richards here th at m any students
and scholars, particularly in the U nited States, have been given the impres
sion that the w ork o f the early critical revolution was reasonably contiguous
w ith that o f the N ew Critics, rather than opposed to it in central respects.
R ansom s m ain effort in The N ew Criticism was to show that the N ew
Critical effort to sever the text from its various contexts in order to enable it
to be treated purely “in itself” had n o t yet gone far enough. W ithin this he
had two m ore specific concerns: “psychological” and “m oral” considerations
in criticism.
Briefly, the N e w C riticism is dam aged by at least tw o specific errors o f theory,

w h ich are widespread. O n e is the idea o f using the psychological affective
41
vocabulary in the hop e o f m aking literary judgm ents in terms o f the feelings,
em otion s, and attitudes o f poem s instead o f in terms o f their objects. The
other is plain m oralism , w h ich in the n ew criticism w o u ld indicate that it has
n o t em ancipated itself from the old criticism . I sh ou ld like to see criticism
unburdened o f these dregs, (xi)
It is to be noted th at in b oth these cases the concern is ultim ately to

ensure that valid considerations about texts in themselves are distinguished
from invalid considerations about their effects, psychological or m oral, on
their readers. Richards is R ansom s example o f the former, and Yvor W inters
is his example o f the latter, b u t Richards, w ith his theory o f how literature
can be used to cultivate, am ong o ther things, richer and m ore ethical psy
chological responses, could just as easily have been critiqued as an example
o f both. The fact th at he is not critiqued as an example o f both errors gives
us a prelim inary indication o f how strangely Ransom construes Richards—
he seems to th in k o f Richards’ criticism as based in a rather simplistic theory
o f affective response, w hich is n o t the case. H ere he is on Richards:
Probably the m ost stubborn popular error w h ich aestheticians are agreed
u pon in fighting is the n o tio n that the w ork o f art deals im m ediately w ith the
Richards is well aware o f this chapter o f aes
passions, instead o f m ediately . . .
thetic theory; which begins with Kant and has gone through several equivalent
versions since. H is peculiar interest in the attitudes or consequences o f the
cognitive stim ulus takes som e o f the em phasis o ff the em otions. W h at is left
is an unfortunate, and, I judge, unconscious evasion o f the cognitive analysis.
He employs a locution which is very modern, and almostfashionable, but never
theless lazy and thoughtless. He refers to the distinctive emotion o f a poem instead
o f to its distinctive cognitive object. (16—17; m y italics)
These— “lazy” and “thoughtless”— are strong terms, made stronger by the
fact th at the term s th at m ight seem intended to qualify them — “m odern”
and “fashionable”— are am ong the m ost dam ning in Ransom s lexicon.
W h at is it about Richards’ “reference to the distinctive em otion o f a poem ”—
if th at is, in fact, w hat Richards provides— th at incites such a reaction? Is
Ransom ’s just a grum py rejection o f the “new-fangled”? Again, it is tem pting
to pair this w ith Brooks’ resistance to Richards’ “new psychological
machinery,” and p u t them b oth dow n to Southern Agrarian anti-m odernism ,
b u t once again, this actually tells us rather little.
It tells us more, perhaps, to note the real strangeness o f Ransom s invoca
tion o f Kant. “Richards is well aware o f this chapter o f aesthetic theory,”
Ransom tells us, “w hich begins w ith K ant and has gone through several
equivalent versions since.” Ransom here seems to be saying: “Richards is well
aware o f w hat the authorities have said about this issue; why, therefore, does
he ignore them ?” But this is to proceed as if Richards had intended to bow
to the authority o f Kant. Given the clarity, explicitness, and ferocity o f
Richards’ assault on K ant in the opening chapters o f Principles o f Literary
Criticismy it is difficult to know w hat to make o f this. Is it simply that
Ransom has n o t read Principles and is instead proceeding solely on the basis
o f a reading o f Practical Criticism? B ut th at seems a serious charge. I think
perhaps we m ust say instead th at Ransom , like Brooks, has read Principles
b u t found it “mystifying.” To say this is n o t to accuse either o f a merely per
sonal failing, for w hat we are really encountering is a fundam ental difference
in the nature and ideology o f the two intellectual form ations. The thinking
o f a Richards or an Em pson develops w ithin a specific milieu, in w hich it
is assumed th at to engage w ith an authoritative text is at least in part to
critique it, even if sometimes only for the purposes o f intellectual one-
upm anship. As a shorthand description o f the milieu, we could do worse
than simply observing th at often enough they could both be found attending
m eetings o f the C am bridge “Heretics Society,” a liberal lecture and debate
society th at particularly sought to host speakers who challenged traditional
sources o f authority, especially religious authority. In contrast, for thinkers
brought up in the Southern U nited States, w ho then came to see it as their
task to reaffirm and defend a conservative cultural and religious tradition
under threat from an encroaching modernity, it was m uch m ore natural to
assume th at one reads a text prim arily in order to expound its authority or
to come to an assessment o f its relation to other textual authorities. Ransom
writes as he does here because, for thinkers form ed w ithin this very partic
ular structure o f feeling, it really is not quite imaginable that another thinker
in aesthetics, raised w ithin a very different structure o f feeling, m ight set
him self the task o f questioning the authority o f Kant.
So again we observe th at the encounter between two very different intel
lectual form ations is resulting in some real confusion— often, at root, o f a
43
rather simple kind. For present purposes, the substantive point is simply
that, seemingly w ithout know ing it, Ransom effects a com plete reversal o f
the theoretical orientation o f the kinds o f practice that Richards had initi
ated: to b oth the “error” o f m aking literary judgm ents on the basis o f judg
m ents about affective states, and the “error” o f “plain m oralism ,” R ansom s
response ultim ately will be to appeal to the authority o f Kant. R ansom s
K ant authorizes the famously radical N ew Critical attem pt to secure the
autonom y and self-sufficiency o f the aesthetic object: w hich is to say, an
attem p t to defend precisely w hat Richards had critiqued as the “phantom
aesthetic state.” “Close reading” was now being set to w ork as the practical
arm o f the very kind o f aesthetic thinking th at it had been built to oppose.
Consequences fo r Literary Study
This reversal in the philosophical orientation o f w hat w ould go on to becom e

the discipline’s characteristic m ethod had a range o f effects on the discipline
as it proceeded. W e can see one o f the im m ediate consequences o f it by
returning briefly to Brooks’ reminiscences. There, w ithout false modesty, he
tells us th at “In m y own use I greatly extended Richards’ concepts and
pressed their im plications.” W h at m ight Brooks be thinking o f here? A para
graph later, he tells us:
It was possible, I believed, to set up a kind o f scale: at the b ottom , poem s that
relied heavily on the principle o f exclusion, left o u t too m u ch o f hum an expe
rience, and so were th in and over sim ple. T hey tended accordingly toward
sentim entality and general vapidity. Toward the top o f the scale were poem s
that used successfully a h igh degree o f inclusion. (590)
W ith som ething o f the air o f a great discoverer, Brooks here unveils a thought
th at surely w ould have seemed evident enough to any o f Richards’ more
com m itted readers: the thought th at some o f Richards’ observations— here,
his w orking distinction between m ental states that achieve stability by
excluding complexities and contradictions, and those that do so by including
and balancing them — could, if one were so inclined, be used to prop up a
hierarchy o f aesthetic values. Richards him self already had been so inclined:
the whole th ru st o f his project in both Principles o f Literary Criticism and
Practical Criticism is to try to find a way to assess works o f art on the basis o f
the potential value o f the experiences that they could make available to their
audiences. A t times, it is true, this had even led him to make blanket state
m ents about the superiority o f some forms or m odes over others: his cham
pioning o f tragedy, in the very chapter o f Principles to w hich Brooks is refer
ring, being the central example. But the m ajority o f the time, Richards can
be found running a line quite opposed to this: emphasizing instead the great
com plexity o f the question o f the value o f different m ental states, the ten u
ousness o f our grasp o f the nature o f the relationship between artw ork and
audience, and thus the provisionality o f any kind o f aesthetic judgm ent. H e
is very chary indeed o f any claim to set up once and for all a canon or hier
archy o f aesthetic values, even on psychological grounds, and he is explicitly
opposed to any attem pt to set one up on som ehow “intrinsic,” “formal,” or
other nonpsychological grounds.
Given this, it seems th at Brooks is m istaken in his view that he “greatly
extended Richards’ concepts and pressed their im plications”; rather, the pos
sibility he glimpses is one th at Richards him self had th ought through and
largely rejected. For our purposes, the m ore im portant p o in t is that Brooks
here is typical o f the m ovem ent o f w hich he is a part in his enthusiastic
embrace o f the idea o f a hierarchy, coupled w ith his rejection o f Richards’
characteristically liberal attem pt to find a m ore material justification for it in
the realm o f psychological value. For him , as for the other N ew Critics, the
key move in adopting Richards is to rescue the aesthetic from the realm o f
practical, m aterial, and instrum ental values, where Richards had tried to p u t
it, and instead p u t it back into the K antian and idealist realm o f transcen
dental value where it seemed to belong. From this po in t onward, “aesthetic
value” was to be th o u g h t o f as residing, n o t in anything the text could be
used to achieve in the m in d o f the reader, b u t som ehow solely in the text
itself. Thus w hen Ransom — in w hat is perhaps his m ost famous single essay,
“C riticism , Inc.” (1937)— came to argue for the establishm ent o f a rigorous
institutional com m itm ent to literary criticism, as distinct from literary
scholarship, he quite naturally spent tim e defending criticism against the
philologists’ claim th at aesthetic appreciation was strictly for amateurs,
because insufficiently rigorous— and yet he also saw fit to spend alm ost as
m uch tim e defending “the autonom y o f the work itself” against “m oralist”
critics such as “N ew H um anists” and “Leftists” who were seeking to bring
45
ethical or political considerations to bear on literature, in an effort assess its

effects on the m inds o f actual readers.22
This shift o f emphasis from an incipiently materialist aesthetics to a
thoroughly idealist one, and the accom panying shift from “extrinsic” to
“intrinsic” criticism, was to have considerable consequences for literary
study thro u g h o u t the m iddle decades o f the tw entieth century. W ith it, we
have arrived at the largely sterile concern w ith hierarchy and canonicity that
will occupy m uch o f A nglophone literary studies throughout the C old W ar
period: a series o f ultim ately unresolvable debates about the exact constitu
tion o f a universal canon, as if one could determ ine w hat was “good” art and
w hat was “bad” art w ithout any reference to w hat the art m ight be good or
bad for. O n e can only speculate about w hat literary studies, and literary
education m ore broadly, m ight have looked like throughout the m id-century
if the discipline had instead been able to follow Richards’ more liberal, in the
better sense, and certainly m ore m aterialist aesthetics: the kind o f aesthetics
th at led him to state th at “It is less im p o rtan t to like ‘good’ poetry and dis
like ‘b a d / than to be able to use them both as a means o f ordering our
m inds.”23 P utting this line side by side w ith Brooks’ claim to have discovered
the possibility o f “set [ting] up a kind o f scale,” it is hard to avoid com ing to
the same judgm ent as Richards’ biographer, John Paul Russo: “In m any ways
the N ew Critics sought to cut Richards dow n to their size.”24
It is certainly true, and has long been noted, that Richards and Em pson
on one side o f the A tlantic and the N ew Critics on the other shared a funda
m entally Rom antic sense th at m odernity (and particularly industrial m oder
nity) posed a range o f threats to the continuity and richness o f cultural
life— though to the questions o f w hat those threats were, and w hat a rich
and worthw hile cultural life m ight look like, they had very different answers.
It is true, too, th at they shared a sense th at the scholarly m odel o f literary
studies as a discipline o f knowledge production, w hether “literary-historical”
or “philological,” was a sym ptom of, rather than a genuine response to, this
kind o f negative m odernity; and, accordingly, both Richards and the New
Critics were particularly alive to the dangers o f p u ttin g too great an emphasis
on the im portance o f a text’s context o f production.25 But surely too m uch
has been m ade o f these similarities. For the C am bridge liberals, the solution
to the problem o f m odernity was education. For the Southern Christians,
the solution was piety. The “practical” in Practical Criticism had, in Richards’
usage, m eant som ething like “directed towards the practical end o f culti
vating readers’ sensibilities”; later, under the New Criticism , it was to mean
“directed towards the practical’ end o f assessing the value o f poems against
th at o f other poem s.” T hrough the latter, spread far and wide by the cultural
force o f the superpower o f w hich they were a part, the goal o f so m uch crit
ical w ork in the discipline became, for a long time, n o t to educate the reader,
b u t to adulate the text.
Richards' Reception w ith in B ritain: E R. Leavis
So far our story has led us from Richards’ Cam bridge in the 1920s to the
U nited States in the 1950s. In order to continue our story into the 1970s
and 1980s, we m ust first return to Britain, for in that later period, too, it was
from Britain th at the really m om entous changes in the nature o f A nglophone
literary studies were to come. W ith in Britain, Richards’ setting up o f literary
criticism on a disciplinary footing had its m ost dram atic effects through the
m edium o f F. R. Leavis and the Scrutiny critics.26 Despite the evident differ
ences between Leavisism and N ew C riticism , this reception led to develop
m ents th at were in m any ways analogous to those we have just traced. For
Leavis, despite the fact th at he never had any explicit com m itm ent to an
idealist or K antian aesthetics, nevertheless m anaged to effect a crucial shift
o f emphasis w ithin the discipline in Britain and m uch o f its diaspora,
turning criticism away from Richards’ concern w ith the value to readers o f
the aesthetic experiences th at literature could provide, and toward a more
hierarchical concern w ith evaluating and ranking the relative value o f the
texts themselves. This was despite his saving emphasis on the deep connec
tion between literature and terms such as “Life,” the “Living Principle,” and
similar. Richards’ particular innovations, including “practical criticism”
itself, were then rem arked as Leavisite in a way that concealed their real ori
gins, such th at even today the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and
Criticism describes Richards as “Leavis’s C am bridge collaborator”— an odd
reversal, b u t typical o f a broader pattern o f reception, as we shall see.27
In Leavis’ early work, Richards is clearly the foundational figure. His
first truly m ajor work, the pam phlet m anifesto “Mass Civilisation and
M inority C ulture” (1930), begins w ith an epigraph from M atthew A rnold
th at is bowed to and then quickly set to one side as the product o f a less
THE CRITICAL R EV O L U TIO N TU R N S RIGHT 47
problem atic age. In its place, as a key contem porary articulation o f w hat
Leavis takes to be the A rnoldian tradition, he offers us an extended passage
from Richards’ Principles o f Literary Criticism (1924)— a passage th at Leavis
tells us “should by now be a locus classicus.” It is w orth quoting this passage
from Richards in full, so as to see m ore clearly the particular uses to w hich
Leavis puts it:
B ut it is n o t true that criticism is a luxury trade. The rearguard o f Society

cannot be extricated until the vanguard has go n e further. G o o d w ill and in tel
ligence are still too little available. The critic, as w e have said, is as m u ch
concerned w ith the health o f the m in d as any d octor w ith the heath o f the
body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge o f values. . . . For the arts are
inevitably and quite apart from any in ten tion s o f the artist an appraisal o f
existence. M atth ew A rnold, w h en he said that p oetry is a criticism o f life, was
saying som eth in g so obvious that it is constantly overlooked. The artist is
concerned w ith the record and perpetuation o f the experiences w h ich seem to
h im m ost w orth having. For reasons w h ich w e shall consider . . . he is also the
m an w h o is m ost likely to have experiences o f value to record. H e is the p o in t
at w h ich the grow th o f the m in d show s itself. (1 4 4 )28
M uch o f this language is o f course jarring by todays standards, in part

because o f the confidence w ith w hich Richards announces his sense o f the
social im portance o f the critics therapeutic role: to those w ho know how
the story turns out, confidence o f this kind is b o und to look blithe at best, if
n o t indeed simply elitist in the m ost obvious sense. For this reason Leavis,
w ho took up just th at emphasis and p o unded it repeatedly in ever m ore
resounding a fashion, is usually reduced to a caricature in todays literary
scholarship, on the rare occasions w hen one encounters him at all. The
reduction is n o t entirely unfair, since Leavis does m uch to render him self so
reducible. Here, for instance, he isolates a passage in Richards that, taken
ou t o f its original context, w ould seem to propose the idea o f an A rnoldian
vanguard “extricating” a benighted “rearguard” from moral and intellectual
squalor, and he then uses it to authorize his own distinction between a
“m inority” possessed o f true “culture” and a “mass civilisation” th at would
seek to swamp it. That this emphasis is n o t typical o f Richards at his best
ought to be clear— indeed, even in this problem atic passage there are other,
better emphases, as we shall see w hen we return to it at the end o f this

section— yet reading Richards back through Leavis, one cannot help b u t feel
th at one is encountering here the root o f the later, fundam entally conserva
tive defence o f m inority “standards.” The early critical paradigm then seems
an irredeem ably elitist phenom enon, and one is tem pted simply to dismiss
it as reactionary.
A t this point it w ould be possible to move quickly to the task o f m aking
firm distinctions between the earlier left-liberal w ork o f Richards and
Em pson, w ith its buried, com prom ised, b u t still not negligible radical ele
m ents, and Leavis’ later, m ore evidently conservative work. This is to say
that, if one is trying to recover some o f the prom ise o f the early critical par
adigm, as I am, then one has a strong urge simply to jettison Leavis entirely
as a lost cause— and certainly th at seems the approach m ost likely to con
vince, since he attracts so little sym pathy today. Yet for better or worse I find
m yself unwilling to take so short a road. For I take it that the widespread
reduction o f Leavis to a caricature has been a serious collective error on the
part o f the discipline— Leavis unm istakably represents a tu rn to the right,
b u t n o t merely or solely a tu rn to the right; he also has m uch deeper
emphases. H ere it is instructive instead to hold in m ind the classic critiques
o f the Leavisite position offered by the M arxist left, Perry A nderson’s and
Francis M ulhern’s in particular— critiques th at knew very well the sophisti
cation o f the argum ent they were dealing w ith, and were thus unw illing to
be simply cavalier. I certainly hold no brief for Leavis, b u t no one w ho
understands w hat the dem ands are can dismiss him lightly. In fact, at the
risk o f alienating all possible sources o f support, I will add th at Leavis’ w ork
strikes me as fuller o f possibilities today than ever before, n o t because his
position has grown m ore acceptable over tim e— very far from it— b u t pre
cisely because tim e has brought the position dow n so completely that his
deeper, grounding insights now lie intact under the ruins, free o f the weight
o f the old edifice, simply w aiting to be found. A m ong the m ajor early critics,
Leavis is distinctive for his tendency to offer both the deepest and the shal
lowest thoughts in the closest proximity, and the fact that the shallowness o f
the latter is now self-evident to m ost serious observers has the odd effect o f
rendering his fundam ental insights m ore available for use. Moreover, those
insights are often o f just the kind to w hich literary studies today tends to be
m ost blind.
49
For Leavis, the key figure in the longer history o f criticism was M atthew
A rnold. Let us then observe him articulating his own account o f the task o f
criticism by way o f a parsing o f A rnolds phrase “criticism o f life”:
Pressed for an accou n t o f the in ten tion b ehind the fam ous phrase, w e have to
say som eth in g like this: w e m ake (A rnold insists) our major judgm ents about
poetry by bringing to bear the com p letest and profoundest sense o f rela
tive value that, aided by the w ork judged, w e can focus from our total experi
ence o f life (w hich includes literature), and our ju d gm en t has in tim ate
bearings on the m ost serious choices w e have to m ake thereafter in our living.
(S c ru tin y 7, 5 8)
If Leavis sees a path back to A rnold here, it is because the ground around
him has been cleared by Richards— the Richards who insisted that, even
w ithin the newly professionalizing w orld o f academic criticism, engaging
w ith questions o f “relative value” in literature was im portant chiefly because
it w ould help us to engage w ith questions o f “relative value” in life. In inher
iting th at conception o f the literary, Leavis inherited a whole position on
education and on culture m ore broadly, though o f course he changed the
term s o f it in ways th at were to prove very significant later on. If one really
wants to emphasise the continuities between the two projects, one can
observe, as crucial instances, th at Richards’ placing o f literary criticism on
a disciplinary footing enabled Leavis’ characteristic insistences on English
Literature as a “distinctive discipline o f th o u g ht” (35); th at Richards’ con
ception o f literary study as the prim ary therapeutic w ing o f liberal education
largely enabled Leavis’ characteristic insistences on the centrality o f the lit
erary disciplines to the university as a whole; and, in turn, that Richards’
view o f liberal education as one o f the prim ary therapeutic means through
w hich the w orst sym ptom s o f m odernity could be treated in the w ider cul
ture did m uch to prepare the ground for Leavis’ whole position on the cen
tral role o f literary criticism in society at large.29 O n this note, it is also w orth
observing th at b o th thinkers shared a com m itm ent to the view that, in
another o f Leavis’ famous phrases, the “constitutive function” o f the univer
sity is, or should be, “to create and m aintain an educated public” ( l l ) . 30 I
note in passing th at this places b oth thinkers at a significant distance from
our m odern “progressive” consensus th at the university’s highest intellectual
task, to be defended against the philistines w ho merely seek profit, is “the
production o f knowledge.”
Perhaps m ost im portantly, Leavis also took up Richards’ grounding
insights into the nature o f language, became inward w ith them , and then
brought them forward into fluency in w hat can only be called an exception
ally brilliant way. To see this, let us first return to the final line in the quote
from Richards above, w hich posits the artist— and particularly, it turns out
later, the literary artist— as “the p o in t at w hich the grow th o f the m ind
shows itself.” This m ay seem merely jargon, b u t really the phrase points to a
m ore subtle achievem ent o f th o u g h t than m ight first appear. O ne o f the
defining (in the end, crippling) weaknesses o f the critical paradigm , even in
its early form , was its lack o f a serious engagem ent w ith the philosophy o f
history, yet there is som ething like a shade o f Hegel here. There is in Richards
a deep appreciation o f the fact th at our capacity for rich experience is n o t
prim arily individual, b u t social and historical. For him , our prim ary instru
m ent o f thought and feeling is the necessarily collective one o f language, and
this language is itself the sedim ent o f the countless ordinary efforts o f prac
tical thought and feeling th at make up a whole society’s historical life. In the
sentence I have just quoted, Richards is telling us that the artist’s attem pts to
articulate the value o f experience are historical in nature, regardless o f the
extent to w hich the artist understands or acknowledges this, and th at to the
extent th at they succeed, they figure for a m om ent w hat is really a collective
historical achievement. This is n o t a position that sits easily w ith liberal indi
vidualism in its cheaper forms. If one wants to make it look conservative,
one can call the position Burkean; if wants to uncover its m ore radical ele
m ents, one can call the position collectivist and materialist, and note that it
is continuous in im p o rtan t ways w ith m uch o f M orris, back through Ruskin,
to the tradition o f the R om antic revolt. In any case it is, I think, quite a deep
insight into the necessarily social character o f experience, into the role o f
language in history, and therefore into the essentially collective and linguistic
character o f w orthw hile historical change.
It is this insight that Leavis took up and turned to his own ends in the
m ost sophisticated and dem anding manner. Thus M ichael Bell, one o f the
best sym pathetic readers o f Leavis I have encountered, treats Leavis’ sophis
ticated understanding o f language as his strongest claim on our thought, and
indeed as the “basis o f his whole endeavour.” H e also notes that the usual
51
critiques o f Leavis tend to ignore this: “The fundam ental point, and the area
in w hich Leavis is a powerful analyst, tends to be passed over as unproblem
atic or as if it were n o t there” (133). H e accordingly goes on to show that
Leavis' conception o f language is a kind o f native English equivalent to the
“linguistic tu rn ” th at determ ined the course o f so m uch continental philos
ophy, and th at is often taken as the line o f dem arcation between Anglo-
Am erican and continental thought. It seems to me that Bell is right about
this; I only w ant to add that, in view o f the longer history, one needs to see
the sophistication o f Leavis' view o f language as one o f the foundation stones
o f the critical paradigm itself. This is too large a p o int to be dem onstrated
concisely, b u t as a way o f p ointing tow ard it, let me simply take one o f
Leavis' form ulations about language: a phrase th at Leavis utters in passing,
as it were, on the way to other things.
The phrase I have in m ind appears in the essay “Thought, Language and
Objectivity,” where Leavis refers to language as “the heuristic conquest won
ou t o f representative experience” (44). This is only part o f a m uch longer
sentence, b u t it is a part w orth dwelling on since, both in its density and in
the casualness w ith w hich it is uttered, it shows how fluently Leavis was able
to render Richards' insights. In saying this, I do n o t m ean to reduce the one
to the other— m y p o in t is th at the new fluency is itself a kind o f advance. As
Leavis uses it, “heuristic” gives us the instrum ental view o f language that
Richards had developed w ith C. K. O gden: a view that characterised lan
guage as an always provisional means by w hich hum an beings pursue partic
ular ends in in specific contexts, as distinct from a view that w ould charac
terise language prim arily as an attem p t truly to m irror the world, or as a
mere vehicle for m eaning in any simple sense.31 “C onquest w on out o f . . .
experience” gives us Richards' account o f language as the sedim ent o f a col
lective historical effort to come to term s w ith the world. A nd “representative
experience” gives us Richards' account o f the particular character o f that
collectivity, a character th at I am even tem pted to call— w ith great caution
w hen speaking in Leavis— dem ocratic, since the underlying insistence is on
w hat is shareable in th at experience and on w hat is therefore at least p o ten
tially com m on to all.32
This is just one way o f observing that, even at some o f the deepest levels
o f his thinking, Leavis was an inheritor o f Richards' project, though o f
course in certain crucial respects he carried it further, w ith effects that were
felt around the globe. B ut having observed that, we need to go back and
note also the specific ways in w hich Leavis redistributed Richards’ emphases.
H ere it is instructive to return to the passage w ith w hich Leavis opened
“Mass Civilisation and M inority C ulture”: the passage from Richards that
began “B ut it is n o t true th at criticism is a luxury trade. The rearguard o f
Society cannot be extricated until the vanguard has gone further.” Leavis
uses this as a starting point from w hich to launch his own defense o f “stan
dards,” yet w hen one reads the passage in its original context— a chapter o f
Richards’ Principles o f Literary Criticism entitled “Art and M orals”— one
finds th at it is n o t really an attem pt to distinguish between the enlightened
elite and the benighted masses, b u t is rather a step in a quite different argu
m ent: an argum ent against traditional and religious views o f morality, which
Richards sees as an obstacle to the construction o f a m odern society. Richards’
argum ent in this chapter is for a “naturalistic m orality”: one that under
stands the problem o f m orality in earthly term s as the “problem o f how we
are to obtain the greatest possible value from life,” and understands “value”
in psychological or behaviourist term s, such that the “m ost valuable states
o f m ind are those w hich involve the widest and m ost comprehensive co
ordination o f activities and the least curtailm ent, conflict, starvation, and
restriction” (53—54). This, he claims, is where the artist helps us, because the
experience o f art, rightly undergone, helps us to cultivate co-ordination o f
th at kind. The argum ent is dem ocratic in spirit: against those w ho w ould ask
us to be content w ith society as it is, Richards insists that it is possible to
create a society in w hich “no m an should be so situated as to be deprived o f
all the generally accessible values” (54). For Richards, our failure so far to
achieve this in the realm o f morals is owing to the fact that, “instead o f rec
ognizing th at value lies in the ‘m inute particulars’ o f response and attitude,
we have tried to find it in conform ity to abstract prescriptions and general
rules o f conduct” (55). For him , the achievem ent o f a decent society w ould
require “the clearing away from m oral questions o f an ethical lum ber and
superstitious interpolations” (54). O nly by m oving beyond these tradition
alist m oral dogmas could we extend the value o f art to all.
Thus w hen we come to the passage Leavis quotes, Richards’ opening
declaration th at “criticism” is n o t a “luxury trade” is distinctive for its dem oc
ratizing flavor. The strongest emphasis in the passage is on the idea that
“such apparently ‘unpractical’ activities as art or criticism,” w hich may seem
irrelevant to the broader project o f constructing a decent society in liberal

terms, are in fact central to it (54). As a point o f com parison, it may help
those m ore familiar w ith the Am erican scene to th in k o f Dewey here, rather
than o f Leavis— or at least, rather than o f Leavis as he is usually received. In
any case, Richards is showing the deep role art m ight be taken to play in a
utilitarian or consequentialist morality, and setting it against w hat he takes
to be arts ultim ate irrelevance in a K antian or deontological one. O r if you
prefer, the argum ent is for a secular m aterialism, and the enem y is religion
and superstition. In any case, it is by no means a nostalgic or anti-m odern
call for a return to “organic com m unity,” such as some o f those associated
w ith Leavis (notably Denys Thom pson) were w ont to m ake.33 Q uite the
contrary, the authority being appealed to is m odernity itself, in the form o f
a kind o f materialism; the emphasis is on the value o f ordinary experience
m ade accessible through art and unencum bered by traditional conceptions
o f duty and morality; and the goal is to find a way to extend th at value as
widely as possible throughout the society as a whole. W hen Richards
writes th at “The rearguard o f Society cannot be extricated until the vanguard
has gone further,” Leavis reads “rearguard” as “mass civilisation,” b u t w hat
Richards means is som ething closer to religious conservatism. To be clear,
Richards’ argum ent here obviously has its problems, perhaps first am ong
them its com plete elision o f politics per se, and I certainly do n o t defend it.
I merely emphasise th at in its early forms, the argum ent for criticism is that
o f a m odernising left-liberalism in a dem ocratic m ood, whereas later, in
Leavis’ hands, the argum ent takes a profoundly antidem ocratic tu rn .34 O nce
again, the liberal ambivalence o f the early critical paradigm has been deter
m ined for the right.
These are all questions o f professed cultural politics, and they have their
im portance. Just as im portant, however, are the more buried politics that
reside at the deeper level o f m ethod— in effect, here, the politics o f one’s
theory o f the aesthetic. Here, too, Leavis turned the project o f criticism to
the right. O ne can see this by returning to Leavis’ parsing o f A rnold’s phrase
“criticism o f life.” “ [W ]e make . . . our major judgments about poetry by
bringing to bear the com pletest and profoundest sense o f relative value
th at . . . we can focus from our total experience o f life”; “\O \ur judgm ent has
intim ate bearings on the m ost serious choices we have to make thereafter in
our living.” H ere, the question o f “relative value” has undergone a shift
closely analogous to the shift it underw ent in the U nited States in the same
period. Richards had tried to encourage us to compare the relative value o f
the different psychological states m ade available by poems. Leavis here wants
us to make a similar com parison, this tim e between the relative value o f the
different modes o f “Life” th at the poem s testify to and instantiate, b u t his
new emphasis on the scene o f critical judgm ent threatens to tu rn this into a
com parison simply between different poems. For Richards, it was reading,
engaging w ith, and being acted upon by texts that enabled them to influence
our living; for Leavis, it is judging them . “ [O jur judgm ents . . . the work
judged . . . our judgm ent.” W here the emphasis had once been on the value
o f the readers experience, now the emphasis is on the scene o f judgm ent that
allows the reader— or rather, ideally, the critic— to assess the relative value o f
literary works. There is a great risk, then, o f losing the initial emphasis on the
instrum ental value o f literary works, their value as means to further ends,
and com ing to see them instead in idealist terms, as ends in themselves, as
repositories o f final value. This, in turn, threatens to override the saving
emphasis on education. C rudely pu t, the critics task, w hich had once been
envisioned as the use o f works o f literature as instrum ents o f aesthetic edu
cation, is all too often reduced simply to the ranking o f works.
In Leavis, and in the tradition th at followed out o f and reacted against
him , this emphasis on criticism as a scene o f judgm ent rather than o f educa
tion can at times become very pronounced. Leavis’ m ost positive endorse
m ent o f A rnold’s w ork as a critic runs follows:
[W ]h at has to be stressed is his relative valuation o f the great Rom antics:

W ordsw orth he p u t first, then Byron (and for the right reasons), then Keats,
and last Shelley. It is, in its indep en d en ce and its soundness, a m ore remark
able critical achievem ent than w e can easily recognise today. (63)
W h at can one say about this reduction o f criticism to facile questions o f

rank?35 It is awfully tem pting to joke th at it has some deep relation w ith the
peerage, except th at the m id-century Am erican critics do it too. Certainly
this is a particularly egregious example, though it is hardly an isolated one,
as anyone w ho has read m uch criticism o f this period knows. M ore im por
tantly, the sense o f the project o f criticism being taken for granted here,
together w ith the position in aesthetics implied, make themselves felt
55
throu g h o u t Leavis’ work. Responding to critics who approach W ordsw orths

poetry from a biographical perspective, Leavis tells us that he is “interested
in explanation and genetic accounts only insofar as they enable one to appre
ciate m ore intelligently and fully the creative achievem ent and to realise the
im portance o f the poet”; w hich is to say, he supports biographical accounts
o f W ordsw orth only insofar as they prom ise to lead us to “a better percep
tion o f the nature o f his genius and so to a fuller realisation o f the value o f
w hat he achieved” (25, 30; m y italics). These form ulations may seem more
acceptable, b u t are really quite akin to his tables o f precedence: we are here
dangerously close to the kinds o f sterile circularities w hich will come to
encum ber so m uch o f m id-century hum anist criticism, in w hich the w ork is
im p o rtan t chiefly as a testam ent to the genius o f an author w ho could write
such an im p o rtan t work, and all th at is left to the critic is the task o f sorting
out, on some mysterious basis, w hich works and authors are really o f the
highest rank.
Relatively secure in the intellectual space carved out for him by Richards’
aesthetics, Leavis fam ously refused to enter into debates about philosophy,
preferring instead to insist on the autonom y and independence o f literary
study as a discipline.36 As a result, he now here felt the need explicitly to
engage w ith Richards’ aesthetic claims, and certainly never consciously took
up the m antle o f K ant in the m anner o f the N ew Critics. In the end, though,
the effect was n o t dissimilar: in Britain, as in the U nited States, Richards’
early attem pt to p u t criticism on som ething m ore akin to a m aterialist basis
by way o f an aesthetics o f instrum ental value— an aesthetics o f means— is
co-opted by a later notio n o f criticism th at largely reverts to an idealist aes
thetics o f final value— an aesthetics o f ends. In Britain as in the U nited
States, “criticism” was to move in a direction precisely opposite to th at indi
cated by Richards’ guiding injunction th at “It is less im portant to like ‘good’
poetry and dislike ‘bad,’ than to be able to use them both as a means o f
ordering our m inds.”
C h a p te r Two
The Scholarly Turn
W it h T H E B E N E F IT o f hindsight, it is n o t hard to see that once the

idea o f “criticism” had been taken up by forces o f this kind— the idea o f
criticism, together w ith the philosophical aesthetics that underpinned it and
the m ethods o f “close reading” and “practical criticism” th at were its w orking
tools— a critique from the left was b o u n d to come. W hen th at critique did
come, it came on m ultiple fronts. Powerful and life-changing fem inist anal
yses; brilliant and dam ning insights into the workings o f race; trenchant
reassertions o f the w orth o f the colonized in the face o f colonial oppression;
and also, in tim e, fundam ental dissent from the far-reaching dom inion o f
reproductive heteronorm ativity— the aggregate effect o f these was a broad
critique o f a wide range o f elitisms, essentialisms, and false universalisms,
am ounting in the end to a collective rejection o f the m id-century m ode. In
search o f the means by w hich to make this critique, m any in the discipline
ended up turning to continental thinkers w ho had been trained in quite
different traditions, and thus all these forces were at once flanked and o u t
flanked by continental “Theory,” especially in its various poststructuralist
forms. Existing accounts usually identify the proxim ate cause o f this break
w ith the old m ode as the entry o f the generation o f 1968 into the academy,
and it is certainly true th at m uch o f the spirit and m any o f the key terms in
these critiques were provided by the various left and left-liberal social move
m ents o f the late 1960s and 1970s, in concert w ith w ider decolonial
57
struggles. In fact, as m any have noted, the disciplines rejection o f m id

century criticism was p art o f a m ore general shift to the left in Anglo-
Am erican intellectual life th roughout the period— a broad current running
in a progressive direction in m any disciplines, decried by the right as the
tenuring o f ’60s radicals, celebrated by the left as a “C ulture in Contraflow.”1
For all the m any complexities o f the period, there seems little d o ubt th at the
general tendency was a dem ocratizing one, at least in the short term . An
obvious sign o f this was that, for the first tim e, m any o f the prim ary ques
tions being asked w ithin literary studies were political ones.
Even today, one has only to intone the best-know n names— taking a
random sample from across the relevant generations, w ithout m uch claim to
representativeness, say M illett, Showalter, M oi on gender; M orrison, Hall,
Gates Jr. on race; Achebe, Said, N gugi on colonialism; Rich, Butler, W arner
on sexuality; Lacan, Foucault, D errida on textuality tout court— to sum m on
a storm o f explicitly political questions. W h at were the origins o f patriarchy,
and w hat was its relationship to capital? W h at was “whiteness,” and how had
it come to acquire its brutal force? H ow precisely had imperialisms managed
to re-present their violence as the advance o f civilization? Was the question
o f gender oppression even thinkable w ithout the question (the prior ques
tion?) o f sexual preference? A nd in w hat ways was our thinking on all these
questions necessarily b o u n d up in the particular texts, idioms, norm s, and
socialities in w hich it was being thought? Q uestions o f these kinds were not
new, o f course, b u t in the 1960s and 1970s they were substantially new to
the research program o f Anglo-Am erican literary studies. Their arrival at the
center o f the discipline was understood by m any as a cyclonic force, throw ing
all the old assum ptions into disarray.
H ow are we to keep our bearings in such a storm? It seems best to declare
at once that I am n o t going to try to assess each o f these lines o f critique on
its own term s. To any reader who w ould have preferred an extended treat
m ent here, I apologise: the disciplines history having been told in the way it
usually has, it is perhaps only natural to expect that a book o f this kind
w ould center itself on the various political critiques that were born o u t o f the
1960s. I am afraid this is an expectation th at I can only disappoint, since my
argum ent is precisely th at m any o f the mistakes w hich m ar the disciplines
sense o f its present political character derive precisely from its continued
insistence th at it is these critiques on w hich the historian ought to remain
focused; th at it was these critiques, born o u t o f the 1960s and clearly progres
sive in their general character, th at determ ined the trajectory o f the disci
pline th at followed— as if there had been no later reorientation and retreat.
The m agnetic appeal o f the 1960s still throws compasses out. For in fact the
foundations o f the discipline’s current paradigm were really laid m uch later,
under the pressure o f quite different circumstances— circumstances that
m any have misrecognized. Today, w ith the benefit o f hindsight, it is perhaps
easier for us to see the real gains o f the period— nothing less than civil rights
locally and decolonisation globally— n o t simply as victories for the left, but
also, and at the same tim e, as deeper reconfigurations in preparation for a
subsequent, and m uch m ore decisive, tu rn to the right.
Thus it seems better, w hen confronted w ith this new storm o f political
questions, simply to step back out o f it, so as to read it entire against the sky.
For in the longer view, the whole tem pest reveals itself as a sym ptom — a
sym ptom o f the crisis o f m id-century criticism, breaking out in precise syn
chrony w ith the crisis o f the Keynesian liberalism that had underpinned it.
The sym ptom is interestingly doubled. In the first place, the fact that ques
tions o f this order— political questions— were being asked in such an insis
ten t m anner, across m ultiple fronts, was a new developm ent w ithin the dis
cipline in the late 1960s and the 1970s, and was noted as such by many,
w hether in praise or blame. From a left perspective, one can only celebrate
the fact th at the depoliticizing deadlock o f m id-century criticism had finally
been broken, and perhaps one may then go on to read this breaking o f the
deadlock as a guarantee o f the progressiveness o f the tendency as a whole.
T hat has certainly been the d om inant reading.
A nd yet, having read the sym ptom in this way, one m ust then return to
read it again, for if the questions being asked were im portant ones, there
were also other new and im p o rtan t questions, n o t within the research pro
gram, b u t about it: questions about the political character o f the new
critiques themselves. To w hat extent were second-wave fem inist critiques o f
the welfare state likely to secure basic structural changes, and to w hat
extent were they w orking to replace a materialist politics w ith a mere politics
o f recognition, thereby serving, albeit often inadvertently, as the “h an d
m aidens o f neoliberalism?”2 W hich o f the new race critiques were genu
inely challenging to the existing racial order, and w hich were in fact
expressions o f th at racial order in its newly “diverse,” “m ulticultural,” and
59
U S-expansionist form?3 W hen did the critique o f past colonialisms lead to

a break w ith colonial oppression in the present, and w hen did it instead
etherealize or render merely “representational” w hat ought to be m ateri
alist concerns?4 If queer theory had obviously raised itself above mere “iden
tity politics,” largely on poststructuralist foundations, had it n o t sometimes
thereby left itself floating above deeper structural determ inations, too?5
For as so m any observers noted, poststructuralist “Theory” itself was by no
means simply or uncom plicatedly progressive in its politics. Was decon
struction activist or quietist, and w hat political weight ought we assign to
the so-called “ethical tu rn ”? To w hat extent was the tu rn to Foucault a turn
to the left and to w hat extent a shift to the right— specifically away from
Marxism? Was Foucault a radical, really— or merely a neoliberal in disguise?6
A nd so on. There was reason to suspect each o f the new forces in the field o f
serving m ore than a single master. If n othing else was certain, one can nev
ertheless say w ith confidence th at the crisis o f m id-century criticism was a
confusing one.
Thus even from the outset the politics o f the supposed turn to the left in
the late 1960s and 1970s were n o t so clear: if there were radicalisms o f m any
different kinds, there were also liberalisms, and in each case it had yet to be
determ ined w hich w ould gain the upper hand. M id-century criticism had
certainly entered into crisis— th at m uch was clear— b u t the political char
acter o f the new regime th at w ould come to replace it was not yet apparent.
H ere I am tem pted to venture a general principle for cultural analysis, w hich
w ould state that in order to perceive the true contours o f any historical crisis,
it is necessary to examine n o t only the features o f the crisis itself, b u t also the
character o f w hatever new order establishes itself in its wake. The crisis o f the
1970s was im portant, o f course— indeed, for a long tim e now histories o f
literary studies have treated it as virtually all-encompassing— b u t w hen one
views it in relation to the longer history o f the discipline, it becomes apparent
th at its prim ary significance lies in the fact th at it effectively masked and
enabled a m ore epochal change: the collapse o f the discipline s central struc
turing principle. For now, for first tim e since the 1920s, the discipline
seemed to be m oving into a w orld beyond the “scholars versus critics” debate.
By collapsing and obscuring the old distinctions, the crisis o f the 1970s was
eventually to clear the way for the rise to dom inance, in the early 1980s, o f
a singular, scholarly, historicist/contextualist paradigm.
The question o f continental “Theory” is perhaps the central example here,

and it may therefore justify a short digression. In the late 1960s, and then
even m ore clearly throu g h o u t the 1970s and 1980s, m any debates w ithin
the discipline began to be fram ed in terms, n o t o f “critics” versus “scholars,”
b u t o f a hazily defined “Theory” versus an even m ore hazily defined “every
thing else.” Today m ost observers still tend to assume that “Theory” was
w hat debates in that period were really about, and yet I w ould ask those who
are strongly com m itted to this view at least to consider the possibility th at it
is m istaken. C ould it n o t be th at this assum ption obscures the real lines o f
developm ent w ithin the discipline? The extraordinary vagueness o f the battle
lines draw n by the parties m arching under and against the banner o f
“Theory” seems to indicate the plausibility o f this. O ne obvious indicator
here is the fact that, thro u g h o u t the period, the key term “literary theory”
could be used in any num ber o f different, and often opposed, senses. It
m ight refer, for instance, to historical or cultural analysis o f a basically schol
arly kind (indeed, we will see R aym ond W illiams using the term in this way
in just a m om ent). O r else it m ight refer to the newly sophisticated structur
alist approaches to poetics th at tried to consider literary genres as form ing a
coherent system in their own right. O r it m ight perhaps refer to archive-
based cultural analysis in a Foucauldian vein. O r again, it m ight refer to
deconstructive practices o f setting the text to w ork that had m ore in com m on
w ith the project o f “criticism” than they did w ith any “scholarly” historicist
approach. A nd so on. N o serious observer has failed to note this confusion,
w hich is characteristic (even constitutive?) o f the “Theory” debate— yet it
has n o t been so easy to offer a serious account o f the broader historical trans
form ations th at this confusion served.7
It is at this point that the difference between older two-period accounts o f
the tw entieth century and newer three-period accounts becomes so telling. For
if one believes, as so m any once did, that the 1960s represented a historically
decisive break to the left, then it makes sense to tell the story o f literary studies
in the second half and the twentieth century as it is usually told: as a contin
uous democratization or liberalization o f literary studies from the 1960s to the
present, beginning in the dark days o f the new criticism, or else o f Leavis-ism,
and then breaking outw ard into a glorious heterogeneity o f progressive modes.
As I noted in the Introduction, this is a very pleasing story for those on the
liberal left o f literary studies, yet it seems to me that as time has gone by, the
61
justifications for believing it have w orn keep getting thinner and thinner. Was
the tw entieth century really split in two by a decisive break to the left in the
1960s? Surely not. N ow that we are able to survey the century in its entirety,
the brief step to the left in the 1960s and early 1970s reveals itself as the pre
lude to a m uch more decisive break to the right in the late 1970s and early
1980s— a break so decisive that it was to inaugurate a whole new period.
To illustrate this point, let us briefly com pare two m om ents in the w ork
o f Perry Anderson. In 1990, A nderson’s seminal essay “A C ulture in C ontra
flow” had identified a range o f left and leftish forces newly active in British
intellectual life in the 1970s and 1980s, m aking parallel advances across a
wide range o f key disciplines. His diagnosis, in its essentials, was that fires o f
1968 were now being carried, torch-like, into the academy— the same diag
nosis th at m any were m aking w ith respect to contem poraneous develop
m ents in the U nited States. So far, so left. Yet to understand the w ider his
torical significance o f this observation, one m ust read it in the context o f
A ndersons subsequent declaration, ten years later, that forces m ore basic
than “culture” had proved decisive: in the year 2000, he famously announced
th at the “only starting p o in t for a realistic Left” was a “lucid registration o f
historical defeat.”8 B oth observations have their tru th , b u t the local tru th o f
the first m ust be m easured against the m ore general tru th o f the second. As
A ndersons initial m etaphor already suggested, an oppositional intellectual
culture can flow counter to the wider current only for a tim e— and in fact,
as it happened, it did n o t take very long in historical terms for the more
general shift to the right to prove irresistible.
Accordingly the story I shall be telling in b oth this chapter and the next
is the story o f a local break to the left th at is rapidly and inexorably dragged
to the right. T hough stories o f th at kind are familiar enough, this one will
have its unfam iliar elements, largely because it avoids the usual reference
points. For one can see the broader pattern o f the discipline’s developm ent
m uch m ore clearly if one is w illing to take full advantage o f the benefit o f
hindsight by setting to one side the whole tangled crisis o f the late 1960s and
1970s— all the m ovem ent figures, activist scholars, and continental theorists
w ho are so often presum ed to be the proper objects o f our attention—
thereby focusing instead on the birth o f the new paradigm itself. N aturally
there are m any ways to docum ent the birth o f that paradigm: I have chosen
to examine a single figure in depth, taken as an em blem for the rest. This is
a dangerous course— can any single figure really be taken as representative?

O nly w ith m any provisos. B ut the obvious alternative— to survey m any fig
ures, schools, or tendencies, b u t each m ore briefly— carries the danger o f a
superficial treatm ent th at w ould miss the complexity and ambivalence o f the
m om ent, and it is precisely the ambivalence o f the m om ent that I am seeking
to dem onstrate.
W hich figure, though? Save perhaps queer theory, w hich arrived on the
scene som ewhat later, each o f the m ain lines o f progressive critique offers
m any candidates. Thinkers on gender, race, and colonialism all played
im p o rtan t parts in the critique o f m id-century criticism and o f the idealist
aesthetics and universalizing hum anism on which it was based— and as we
have just noted, it is difficult to overstate the role played here by poststruc
turalist theory, both w ithin and w ithout the m ore overtly political camps.
Yet we see the real lines o f developm ent m uch m ore clearly, and certainly
m ore concisely, if we bracket for a m om ent the continental critiques that
were im ported from quite a different context and focus instead on im m a
n en t critiques: critiques o f the disciplines functioning that were m ade in
term s largely developed w ithin the discipline itself. A nd to my m ind, the
m ost sophisticated and influential figure w ho came forward w ith a critique
o f th at kind, and certainly the m ost instructive for our purposes, was the
British socialist thinker Raym ond W illiams.
Raymond Williams
T hough he seems often to have understood him self as marginal, R aym ond
W illiam s is better thought o f as exemplary, in two senses: both the sophisti
cation and the representativeness o f his w ork have been underestim ated. His
thinking thus provides us w ith a uniquely illum inating case study o f w hat
was really a m uch broader tendency. Trained at C am bridge w hen the influ
ence o f Leavis was approaching its postwar peak, W illiams’ initial positions
were labeled, by both admirers and detractors, a “left-Leavisism.”9 The story
o f his origins in th at particular form ation is n o t well-known in the U nited
States, where he is rem em bered m ostly for his later w ork as a founding figure
in cultural studies, b u t this is a pity, since W illiam s inheritance from Leavis
and, through him , from Richards remains a determ ining one throughout his
63
work, even if he eventually came to critique key elements o f it in the stron

gest terms.
There are really two stories we need to tell about W illiam s’ intellectual
developm ent o u t o f the Leavis tradition and into the figure w ho did so m uch
to shape the discipline in our period. The m ost im portant is the story o f the
radical break w ith th at tradition w hich he effected through his wholesale
rejection o f the task o f “criticism,” his sweeping critique o f the category o f
the “aesthetic,” and his attem pt to replace both w ith a practice o f fine
grained historicist/contextualist scholarship. For our purposes, the key
po in t here will be th at by the tim e W illiam s came to make that break, the
strident anti-K antian ism o f Richards’ aesthetics— w hat I have called his
“incipient m aterialism ”— had been buried under a weight o f N ew Critical
K antianism and Leavisite idealism-in-effect, encouraging W illiams to try to
sweep the field o f aesthetics entirely clear, instead o f differentiating between
idealist and m ore m aterialist forces w ithin it. This allowed an argum ent
against a specific strand o f aesthetic thinking— admittedly, the dom inant
strand since K ant— to pass for an argum ent against aesthetics tout court, and
thus paved the way for the rejection o f criticism and its wholesale replace
m en t by scholarship, leading in tu rn to the dom inance o f the scholarly
m odel th at we see in the discipline today. But in order to appreciate the
subtleties o f that story, it is necessary to tell also the rather m ore complex
story o f the largely hidden continuities between even W illiam s later posi
tions and the Richards/Leavis tradition that did so m uch to form his
thinking. Let us begin there.
Continuities between Leavis a n d W illiam s
O ne o f the best sources we have for understanding W illiam s’ intellectual

developm ent is Politics a nd Lettersy a book-length interview w ith him con
ducted by the editorial board o f the N ew Left Review in 1979.10 A brief
w arning to begin w ith: the title o f the book creates the potential for some
confusion, since W illiam s had also been a cofounder o f a journal o f the same
nam e in the late 1940s. In Politics and Lettersy the book, W illiams sum m a
rized the attraction th at Leavis had held for the founding editors o f Politics
a n d Lettersy the journal, as follows:
The im m en se attraction o f Leavis lay in his cultural radicalism, quite clearly.

That m ay seem a problem atic description today, b u t n o t at the tim e. It was the
range o f Leavis’ attacks o n academ icism , on Bloom sbury, on m etropolitan
literary culture, on the com m ercial press, on advertising, that first to o k m e.
You m ust also allow for th e sheer ton e o f critical irritation, w h ich was very
congenial to our m ood .
Secondly, w ith in literary studies them selves there was the discovery o f
practical criticism . That was intoxicating, som eth in g I can n ot describe too
strongly. . . . A t the tim e w e th ou gh t it was possible to com b in e this w ith
w hat w e in ten d ed to be a clear Socialist cultural p osition . In a w ay the idea
was ludicrous, since Leavis’ cultural p osition was bein g spelt ou t as precisely
n o t that. B ut I suppose that was w h y w e started our ow n review, rather than
q u eu in g up to becom e contributors to Scrutiny.
Finally, there was Leavis’ great stress on education. H e w ou ld always
em phasise that there was an enorm ous educational job to be done. O f course,
he defined it in his ow n terms. B ut the em phasis itself seem ed com p letely
right to m e. (66)
C ultural radicalism, practical criticism, and stress on education: is it too

m uch to say th at this could pass for a description o f the key elements o f
Leavis’ inheritance from Richards? Perhaps. Certainly the “tone o f critical
irritation” seems distinctive o f Leavis: w hen anticipating opposition,
Richards was always m ore likely to seem by turns earnest, superior, and
amused. B ut it seems fair to observe at least th at positions w hich, in C am
bridge in the 1930s, w ould have seemed the particular innovations and
emphases o f Richards were now, by the late 1970s, being rem em bered and
responded to as Leavisite. This refiguring was to have significant conse
quences. “Practical criticism” in particular, and then through it “criticism”
generally, came to be seen as m arked w ith Leavis’ distinctive brand.
W e can see this clearly later in the same book-length interview, w hen
W illiam s describes the influences to w hich he was responding w hen he
w rote his first book, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952).11 H ere W illiams
remarks on a com m on tendency w ithin and around literary studies simply
to equate “practical criticism” w ith Leavis, on the grounds that Leavis’ w ork
was the “m ost powerful exemplar” o f the m ethod. W illiams calls this a “cru
cial m istake” and rightly rem inds us th at the m ethod began w ith Richards’
w ork in the 1920s. But we m ight be forgiven for w ondering w hether
65
W illiam s was not, in fact, m aking a version o f the same mistake, and so
underestim ating the effect o f Leavis’ influence in this period, on him as well
as on others. “W hy do people close-analyse w ithin the m ain practical-critical
tradition?” he asks himself. “In order to clarify their response as evaluation ’
(193, m y italics). The emphasis here is the distinctively Leavisite one on
practical criticism as the staging o f the scene o f aesthetic judgm ent, and the
same emphasis returns whenever he discusses the m ethod. This is perhaps
clearest in W illiam s’ paper “Literature and Sociology: In M em ory o f Lucien
G oldm an,” and particularly in the section entitled “The Limits o f Practical
C riticism ,” where practical criticism is clearly equated w ith Leavis and cri
tiqued accordingly. So m any o f the m ain elements o f Leavis’ position appear
in W illiam s’ description o f practical criticism here: the appeal to “sincerity”
and “vitality” via an invocation o f Lawrence; the “inform ed critical m inority”;
the attack on “scientism”; the refusal to enter into philosophical debate
about key concepts. M ost im portantly, there is the distinctive emphasis on
judgm ent: on m aking the “distinction o f good literature from the mediocre
and the bad.” It is interesting to ask w hether W illiams w ould be able to dis
miss “practical criticism” in this way were it n o t possible to characterize it in
these specifically Leavisite terms. In any case, it seems fair to say that, his
provisos notw ithstanding, W illiam s is reading the history o f “practical criti
cism” back through the lens o f Leavis.12
In this respect, W illiams is n o t an isolated case, b u t the clue to a more
general tendency. Moreover, the Leavisian emphasis was seen as attached not
just to the particular m ethod o f “practical criticism” or “close reading,” b u t to
the project o f criticism more generally. For in fact, throughout so m uch work
in this period, references to the project o f “criticism,” w hether in the m ode o f
praise or blame, carry just this emphasis on aesthetic discrim ination and
judgm ent. O ne o f W illiam s’ interviewers in Politics and Letters expresses the
com m on assum ption succinctly w hen he refers to “the process o f discrimina
tion and evaluation that has traditionally been thought to be the central func
tion o f criticism” (334). N o one dem urs from this, yet as we have seen,
Richards’ initial account o f the central function o f disciplinary “criticism”
had carried a very different emphasis: an emphasis precisely not on “discrim
ination and evaluation,” if by th at we m ean learning to distinguish “good”
works from “bad,” b u t instead on education toward “better ordering our
m inds.” By 1979, though, that earlier project had been effaced: instead,
Leavis’ emphasis on the staging o f critical judgm ent was simply accepted as
the necessary emphasis o f any project o f “criticism.”13 This is to say that the
general project o f literary “criticism” has become for all intents and purposes
fused w ith Leavis’, and then also the N ew Critics’, idealist and ultimately
conservative emphasis on judging the relative merits o f literary works w ith a
drive toward establishing some sort o f final hierarchy o f aesthetic values.14
W illiams, in his critique o f these positions, dem onstrably shared the same set
o f starting assum ptions, his typically scrupulous rem inder that it was a “cru
cial mistake” to equate “practical criticism” w ith Leavis notw ithstanding.
W illiam s Break w ith Leavis
W e see then th at the m ain line o f continuity between W illiams and the
m id-century critics w ho preceded him was this emphasis on the idea that
criticism was necessarily a m atter o f staging the scene o f critical judgm ent.
O bserving this emphasis puts us in a better position to understand the real
significance o f W illiam s’ break w ith those critics— the break that was such a
turning p o in t for the discipline as a whole. For in fact it was this particular
set o f assum ptions about the necessary conservatism and idealism o f the
project o f “criticism” th at eventually led W illiams to feel it was necessary to
reject it entirely, together w ith the whole field o f aesthetic thinking on w hich
it had been based.
To observe this in action we have to turn to W illiams’ classic w ork Marxism
a nd Literature (1977), one o f the m ost im portant o f the works that we in the
discipline today are often, w hether knowingly or unknowingly, relying on
w hen we assume that aesthetic justifications for literary study have been dis
credited as merely ideological.15 H ere we can see how W illiams’ powerful and
necessary critique o f the idealist strand o f aesthetic thinking, dom inant since
the coining o f the term in the late eighteenth century, is marked and even,
one m ight say, deform ed by his felt need to respond to the more local history
o f criticism w ithin the discipline. O r rather— to p u t the m atter perhaps more
bluntly than it deserves— we can see that in M arxism andLiterature^i\\\& m s
purports to make w hat is really a local critique o f the Leavisite and N ew C rit
ical models o f criticism, and o f the associated Kantian or neo-Kantian model
o f the aesthetic, stand as a rejection o f “criticism” and “aesthetics” tout court.
Overtly, W illiam s’ was an argum ent against the concept o f the aesthetic
in its entirety. The core o f the argum ent is the claim th at any attem pt to
67
draw a clear distinction between “aesthetic” situations and “other” situations

is deeply problem atic, since it involves us in the positing o f a suspect “aes
thetic state,” “aesthetic response,” or “aesthetic function.” For W illiams, the
positing o f any such state or function is an unw arranted abstraction and
specialization from the m ultiplicity and variety o f actual social practices. The
fact th at this idealization from m aterial practice is ultim ately ideological in
nature should lead us to reject the term “aesthetic,” and the associated tradi
tion o f thinking, entirely:
[Under capitalism] Art and thinking about art have [had] to separate them
selves, by ever more absolute abstraction, from the social processes within
which they are contained. Aesthetic theory is the main instrument of this
evasion. (154)
These are broad terms, so it is w orth n oting th at w hat W illiams really means
w hen he says “aesthetic theory” is idealist aesthetic theory— or rather, we
m ight say m ore precisely th at W illiam s’ argum ent is th at there can be no
other kind. W hy does W illiam s feel the need to reject all aesthetic theory as
idealist? We can approach an answer by observing the term s in w hich
W illiam s articulates the idea o f an “aesthetic response”:
Art, in clu d in g literature, was to be defined by its capacity to evoke this special
[aesthetic] response: initially the perception o f beauty; then the pure c o n tem
p lation o f an object, for its ow n sake and w ith o u t other (“external”) consider
ations; then also the perception and con tem p lation o f the “m aking” o f an
object: its language, its skill o f construction, its “aesthetic properties.” (150)
These are indeed the approxim ate terms o f the idealist m ainstream o f
aesthetics, b u t the emphasis here is being derived from threats in W illiam s’
m ore im m ediate environm ent— from the N ew Criticism and cognate move
m ents. This is at its clearest in the case o f form ulations like “the pure con
tem plation o f an object, for its own sake and w ithout other (external’)
onsiderations.” As we shall see, it is w ith argum ents o f this kind th at W illiams
takes care o f the idealist core o f aesthetic thinking— argum ents th at derive
m any o f their terms, and certainly m uch o f their force, from a local need to
reject conservative forces active in the discipline during the period. This
local argum ent is then offered as an argum ent against aesthetic thinking
per sey as if the aesthetic could n o t be thought through in other term s than
those the period offered.
Yet as we have seen, the aesthetic can be thought through in other terms,
and was in fact thought through in other terms at the origin o f the disci
pline. Further, now that we have traced at least the broad outlines o f the early
history o f the disciplines treatm ent o f the category o f the aesthetic, we are in
a position to observe that W illiams is repeating an older move here. For
though he would n o t have liked us to say so, w hat W illiams is offering us
here is som ething very m uch akin to Richards’ critique o f the aesthetic, and
in particular Richards’ critique o f the “phantom aesthetic state.”16 W hen we
note the differences between the two projects, we m ust do so against the
background o f this m ore basic similarity: both figures inaugurate a new
period in the history o f the discipline by way o f a sweeping rejection o f
idealist aesthetics. It is only against this background that we can appreciate
the real significance o f their com ing to very different conclusions about
aesthetics in general. For Richards the critique o f idealist aesthetics was to
be considered a clearing operation, on the way to a reconstruction o f the
aesthetic in other, m ore materialist, terms. In contrast, for W illiams— or at
least for W illiams as he has been received in the discipline ever since— the
critique o f idealist aesthetics ended w ith a wholesale rejection o f aesthetics,
and its replacem ent w ith a thoroughgoing historicism. The political differ
ence between the two thinkers is, o f course, very evident: W illiams transposes
the terms o f the critique o f idealist aesthetics from liberalism to socialism,
w ith all the losses (close attention to the specific contours o f individual psy
chological states) and gains (a m ore sophisticated account o f the economic
and political order in which individual psychologies take their place) which
that shift so often implies. If one is on the left, then once one has noted
this political difference, it is perhaps tem pting to conclude that W illiams’
m ore com plete rejection o f the aesthetic is the more politically advanced.
This, I think, w ould be a mistake. For seen in the context o f the longer his
tory o f the discipline, W illiams’ move to reject the aesthetic in the nam e o f
contextualist/historicist cultural analysis acquires quite a different political
significance.
To see w hat is really at stake in th at m ovem ent toward a specifically
scholarly historicism , we need to begin by noting that W illiams, unlike
Richards, encountered the problem o f aesthetics, n o t essentially as a problem
69
o f critical praxis, b u t as a problem o f description or analysis. If for W illiams

it is a problem th at the concept o f the aesthetic involves an abstraction
from real social processes, then this is because such abstractions make
it difficult to perform accurate cultural analyses. W illiams’ project has
become so thoroughly our own th at it is difficult even to rem ark on this
w ith o u t risking redundancy, b u t here we should: as a student o f literature he
is trying, first and foremost, to produce knowledge about culture. This in
itself represents a proposal for a fundam ental shift in the orientation o f
the discipline. In m any places, we m ust read his m oving and character
istic emphasis on the analysis o f “actual practices” as an attem pt to negotiate
this shift.
Few rem ark on it, b u t from our present perspective it seems that the insis
tence on literary study as cultural analysis, in the face o f perceived or actual
threats from other possible orientations, is one o f the central them es o f
W illiam s’ later work. Thus, for instance, W illiams concludes his critique o f
the aesthetic by draw ing the principle that:
The key to any analysis, and from analysis back to theory, is then the recogni
tion o f precise situations in w h ich w hat have been isolated, and displaced, as
‘the aesthetic in ten tio n and ‘the aesthetic response’ have occurred. (157)
The task is “analysis,” following w hich one proceeds, not forward into
action— whatever th at m ight m ean— b u t “back to theory.” The “practice”
being assumed is analysis. It is specifically in his capacity as a literary scholar.;
then— a cultural historian, cultural theorist, and sociologist— that the aes
thetic strikes W illiam s as such a powerful and pernicious source o f obfusca
tions. H e rejects idealist aesthetics n o t in the old way— on the basis o f its
lack o f utility for the purposes o f training readers, cultivating sensibility,
creating and m aintaining an educated public, or similar— b u t on the basis o f
its inaccuracy as a tool for cultural analysis. H is argum ent for a more th o r
oughly historicized version o f literary studies is prim arily an argum ent for
literary scholarship.
W ith this in m ind, we can begin to see th at m uch o f W illiams’ critique o f
the whole tradition o f philosophical aesthetics is in fact directed toward a
target m uch closer to hom e: “criticism.”
The replacem ent o f the disciplines o f gramm ar and rhetoric (w hich

speak to the m ultiplicities o f in ten tion and perform ance) by the discipline
o f criticism (w hich speaks o f effect, and on ly through effect to in ten tion
and perform ance) is a central intellectual m ovem en t o f the bourgeois
period. (149)
The charge th at “criticism” is com plicit in capital is clear enough. It is

perhaps less clear exactly w hat is at stake in W illiam s’ invocation here o f the
replaced “disciplines o f gram m ar and rhetoric.” It helps if we realize that,
though he w ould n o t have used these term s, W illiams is calling our atten
tion to these “disciplines” precisely as forms o f scholarship— here, forms o f
inquiry th at take as their goal the production o f accurate knowledge about
language and language use— and trying to rem ind us o f the losses literary
and cultural study sustained w hen these properly scholarly forms were
replaced by criticism, w hich, by speaking only o f “effect,” has tended to
obfuscate the conditions (and especially the political conditions) under
w hich the literature was first produced.17 Moreover, his critique o f criticism,
like his critique o f the “aesthetic,” is here being offered as a broad one even
though it is really being m ade in m ore local terms. W illiams critiques “criti
cism” as a long-standing historical phenom enon (“a central intellectual
m ovem ent o f the bourgeois period”), b u t he is really thinking about the
term in a m uch m ore local sense: specifically, he is thinking o f criticism o f
an early-to-m id-tw entieth century C am bridge kind, w ith its program m atic
insistence on “speak [ing] o f effect, and only through effect to intention and
perform ance”— the kind o f criticism in w hich he was trained. W illiam s’
sense th at this kind o f criticism is characteristic o f the whole bour
geois period really derives from Leavis— specifically, Leavis’ backdating o f
“criticism -as-judgm ent” to M atthew A rnold.
All these emphases becom e telling in an oft-overlooked passage in
M arxism a n d Literature. H ere W illiam s tells us that potentially liberating
creative forces were “specialized” and thus “contained” in the concept o f
“literature,” and th at this process was:
decisively reinforced by the con cep t o f “criticism ”: in part the operative

procedure o f a selecting and con tain in g “tradition”; in part also the key
shift from creativity and im agination as active productive processes to
TH E SCHOLARLY T U R N 71
categorical abstractions dem onstrated and ratified by conspicuous h um anistic

consum ption: criticism as “cultivation,” “discrim ination,” or “taste.”
N eith er the specialization nor the contain m en t has ever been com pleted. . . .
B ut each has d on e significant harm, and in their d om in ation o f literary theory
have becom e major obstacles to the understanding o f b oth theory and prac
tice. It is still difficult to prevent any attem pt at literary theory from being
turned, alm ost a p r io r i, in to critical theory, as i f the on ly major questions
about literary p roduction were variations on the q uestion ‘h o w do w e ju d g e ?
(1 4 6 , em phasis in original)
In light o f the previous chapter, it is I hope a little easier to observe that

w hat W illiam s is m ost im m ediately objecting to here are Leavis’ particular
emphases: first on “tradition”; then on “cultivation,” “discrim ination” and
“taste”; and last on the centrality to literary study o f this question “how do
w e judge? h e r e taken as the founding question o f criticism per se. But we
also need to notice, in th at second paragraph, the ways in w hich the basic
term s o f the inquiry have changed. For w hat is at stake in W illiams’ claim
th at criticism’s dom inance over “literary theory” has become a m ajor obstacle
to “to the understanding o f both theory and practice”? W hen we encounter
form ulations o f this kind, it is all too easy for us to note only that W illiams,
in the face o f those who w ould emphasise “theory” alone, is m aking a typi
cally careful attem p t to give equal weight to both “theory” and “practice.”
W e think, perhaps, o f the figures th at appear so often as targets o f critique in
W illiam s’ w ork— figures like the ideological Oxbridge don, or the airily the
oretical academic M arxist, b oth o f w hom , for W illiams, are divorced from
any actual “practice”— and then, depending on our own views on the matter,
either we feel the force o f the critique or we reject it. But w hat we need also
to notice here is th at this careful balancing, w hich seems an argum ent for a
kind o f “practice,” is in fact being perform ed in the service o f a rather dif
ferent argum ent: the argum ent th at the w ork o f the cultural scholar is the
analysis of, rather than intervention in, culture. Earlier, we saw that W illiam ’s
own scholarly “practice” is a practice o f analysis. Here, for W illiams, the task
o f literary study is “the understanding o f both theory and practice”— in other
words, precisely n o t practice, b u t the understanding o f practice, w hich all
too easily reduces to the production o f knowledge about practice. This is
the crucial break he makes w ith the tradition that began w ith Richards,
b u t was then co-opted by Leavis and the N ew Critics: the break w ith literary
study as a direct intervention in culture; the break toward literary study as
the mere analysis o f culture. It is W illiam s’ characteristic and repeated
emphasis on the im portance o f “practice” th at allows him to negotiate this
difficult tu rn .18
W e can observe this argum ent becom ing explicit in the next line, in
w hich W illiam s warns us th at “literary theory”— w hich for him really means
literary study as cultural analysis— is still being threatened by the regressive
force o f “critical theory”— w hich for him m eans literary study as a training-
ground for the faculty o f judgm ent. W illiam s is worried that his attem pts to
make literary study into a practice o f cultural diagnosis may even now, at
this late stage, be hijacked by those w ho still see literary study in the old way,
as a form o f liberal/conservative cultural treatm ent. H e does not make use
o f the opposition between “scholarship” and “criticism” to understand this,
b u t this is w hat he means. The key argum ent in the book, though it never
appears as such, is th at the whole project o f criticism, together w ith its foun
dation in philosophical aesthetics, needs to be rejected as bourgeois, and
replaced by a thoroughly scholarly historicist/contextualist m odel o f lit
erary study. The force o f the argum ent derives from the assum ption, bred
into the discipline by long decades o f relative conservatism, that neither
criticism nor the aesthetic can be thought through in other than idealist
terms. The fact th at Richards had founded the discipline on a criticism
and an aesthetics o f rather another kind has been forgotten. The force o f
W illiam s’ critique o f conservative forces in his im m ediate environm ent had
the effect o f bringing forward into a new period the assum ption that the
therapeutic, as opposed to the merely diagnostic, function o f the discipline
could only be th o u g h t through in idealist terms— ultimately, a conservative
assum ption. The project o f “criticism” did n ot survive it.
A n U nfinished Project o f the N e w L eft
Yet it w ould be m isleading to tell the story o f the demise o f criticism as if

W illiam s were the villain. It is m ore accurate to say th at W illiams, in a
genuine attem pt to grapple w ith conservative forces around him , overem
phasised his critique in ways th at were then seized upon by later thinkers—
seized upon, indeed, by the very political forces that he had done so m uch
THE SCHOLARLY T U R N 73
to teach us how to understand, if n o t exactly to confront. This is a key

turning poin t in our story: W illiam s’ rejection o f criticism is both an instance
and an em blem o f the “scholarly tu rn ” th at inaugurated the current period
o f literary study. For this reason, it is w orth pausing for a m om ent to reflect
on the broader intellectual m ilieu in w hich W illiam s’ move toward scholar
ship took its place. D oing so will help us to read the history that followed
w ith a better sense o f w hat was really at stake in it. W h at I will be suggesting
is th at W illiams, and then the “scholarly tu rn ” more generally, represents a
missed o p portunity— and yet an opp o rtu n ity that we can see opening up
around us again today, as a result o f the crisis o f neoliberalism. W hether we
manage to take it this tim e remains to be seen.
Let us then briefly set the story o f the demise o f criticism in a new con
text: that o f the intellectual w ork o f the British N ew Left. O ne o f the foun
dational projects o f the N ew Left, especially as it initially coalesced around
the w ork o f Raym ond W illiams, E. P. T hom pson, and Richard H oggart, was
to bring together, on the one hand, the aesthetic tradition o f Rom anticism ,
w ith its emphasis on the value o f hum an experience, and on the other hand
the m ore strictly political and econom ic insights o f M arxism, socialism, and
cognate m ovem ents on the radical left. In m any ways, the key figure for this
aspect o f the project was W illiam M orris, w ho seemed to represent the point
at w hich these two streams o f critique converged.19 But w ithin literary criti
cism, the m ore local battle w ith Leavis and the N ew Critics— the need to
clear the ground o f this sort o f criticism— led to a change o f emphasis and,
ultimately, we m ight say, to a deform ing o f this project. W illiams’ wholesale
dismissal o f criticism and too-sweeping critique o f the aesthetic led, in the
w ork o f those who followed him , to a near-com plete replacem ent o f criti
cism by scholarship, w ith unfortunate results for literary studies generally—
and for literary studies on the left, in particular. As we shall see in the next
chapter, W illiam s’ local critique o f Leavisite and New Critical versions o f the
project o f criticism and o f the aesthetic continues to be repeated by later
scholars in very different and indeed quite opposite situations, long after the
threat it was form ed to deal w ith has passed away.
Yet W illiam s him self was a m uch subtler thinker than m any who came
after him . Characteristically, he was far-sighted enough to anticipate, at least
to a certain degree, the danger o f his critique being taken up in other cir
cumstances in such a way th at it w ould become a hindrance, rather than a
help, to the left. “Criticism ” was to be offered no quarter, and here I w ould
respectfully fault his foresight, b u t w ith respect to the aesthetic he offered
two “saving clauses,” as I shall call them — two qualifications, both too often
forgotten, to tem per the force o f his otherwise sweeping critique. The first
was this, w hich opens his chapter on “Aesthetic and O th er Situations”:
Yet it is clear, historically, that the definition o f ‘aesthetic’ response is an affir

m ation , directly com parable w ith the d efin ition and affirm ation o f ‘creative
im agination,’ o f certain hu m an m eanings and values w h ich a d om in an t social
system reduced or even tried to exclude. Its history is in large part a protest
against the forcing o f all experience in to instrum entality (‘utility’), and o f all
things in to com m od ities. This m ust be rem em bered even as w e add, necessar
ily, that the form o f this protest, w ith in definite social and historical co n d i
tions, led alm ost inevitably to n ew kinds o f privileged instrum entality and
specialised com m odity. The hu m an e response was nevertheless there. (151)
I m ust say I find this rather a m oving passage, and n o t because I agree
w ith the term s in w hich it holds up the aesthetic for praise. O ne cannot read
W illiam s’ early work— particularly his classic Culture and Society (1958)—
w ith o u t feeling th at he has thought his way very deeply through w hat one
m ight, as a shorthand, call the tradition o f the Rom antic revolt: he feels the
force o f it deeply, “in his living,” as he m ight have p u t it, and by a constant
effort o f th o ug h t and feeling he has m arshalled and cham pioned it w hen
others w ould have given it up.20 Now, w ith characteristic even-handedness,
he celebrates a crucial part o f th at tradition as a prelude to letting it go.
H e celebrates the aesthetic, th at is, in the K antian term s offered by the
R om antic revolt— as a “protest against the forcing o f all experience into
instrum entality”— b u t only as a prelude to dismissing it in the same terms.
If there is a certain joy and even exultation in his embrace o f som ething
m ore akin to a traditional M arxism here (in his introduction, he tells us that
“this book is the result o f [a] period o f discussion, in an international con
text, in w hich I have had the sense, for the first tim e in m y life, o f belonging
to a sphere and dim ension o f w ork in w hich I could feel at hom e”) there is
also a real ambivalence: he is pushing away a set o f beliefs that were once, for
him , deeply held (4—5). Perhaps this partly explains the force w ith which he
rejects the aesthetic here. A t any rate w hat he does n o t do— and this was to
75
prove crucial in the subsequent history o f the discipline— is to reserve a

space for any “protest against the forcing . . . o f all things into com m odities”
th at w ould see the aesthetic precisely in instrum ental terms.
This is unfortunate, because the clues that could have led him to such a
view were there to be found. For there had in fact been those w ho had tried
to break w ith this idea that the aesthetic m ust always be only a protest against
instrum entality, and for the N ew Left, they were very close to hom e indeed:
W illiam M orris, for example. It w ould o f course take us too far out o f our
way to examine M orris’ thought in depth here, but it is well w orth pausing
for a m om ent to reflect on one o f its characteristic tendencies, since doing so
will shed light on some o f the features o f R aym ond W illiams’ own thinking,
and thereby illum ine the face that literary studies has borne since. M orris was
no m ore fooled than W illiams was by the grand claims o f idealist aesthetic
theory: having learned first from Ruskin and then from the Marxist tradition
to recognise the ways in which culture was materially determ ined, M orris
happily condem ned bourgeois aesthetics as “the num erous schemes by which
the quasi-artistic o f the m iddle classes hope to make art grow w hen it has no
longer any root.”21 Yet this rejection o f bourgeois approaches to art did not
lead him to surrender the field o f aesthetics entirely. Instead, it led him to try
to construct a new approach to art: one that w ould take into account the
econom ic realities o f w orking life. For him , this m eant rejecting any claim
that the aesthetic realm was to be understood as a standing critique o f utility
and instead insisting on it precisely as a deeper k in d o f utility— thus “N othing
can be a w ork o f art which is n o t useful.”22 In M orris’ best thinking, this
deeper kind o f utility w ould itself be part o f the “root”, since it would be
inseparable from the m aterial production o f “utilities” norm ally so called.
Thus the society M orris felt he was fighting for was one in which:
w e should have so m uch leisure from the production o f w hat are called ‘utilities,’
that any group o f people w ould have leisure to satisfy its craving for w hat are
usually looked on as superfluities, such as works o f art, research into facts, litera
ture, the unspoiled beauty o f nature; m atters th a t to m y m in d are u tilities a lso P
This argum ent is so consistent w ith R aym ond W illiam s’ general emphasis
th at it is hard, if one forgets for a m om ent the actual conditions under which
his thinking developed, to believe th at he did not make it himself. W ithin
historical materialism, W illiam s was once m ost controversial for his critique
o f the base/superstructure m odel— famously, he tries again and again to
dem onstrate the ways in w hich the highest elements o f the superstructure
(say, as a very imprecise shorthand, “culture,” and similar) end up under
pin n in g some o f the m ost fundam ental elements o f the base (say, again
very imprecisely, “econom y” and similar). W ith this in m ind, could there be
a m ore W illiams-esque argum ent than M orris’ claim here that supposed
“superfluities” like “works o f art, research into facts, literature, the unspoiled
beauty o f nature” and so on are all actually “utilities”? It strikes me that this
view o f the aesthetic is precisely w hat the N ew Left’s running together o f the
Rom antic and Radical streams o f revolt ought to have achieved in the field
o f aesthetics: on the one side, an aesthetic confrontation w ith the M arxist
critique o f political economy, w hich w ould force it toward a wider and m ore
open engagem ent w ith the deepest and richest forms o f hum an life; on the
other, a confrontation w ith bourgeois, idealist aesthetic thinking which
w ould force it to grapple w ith the fact that processes in the “higher” cultural
sphere are largely determ ined by the blunt facts o f material production, and
therefore by the historical developm ent o f a class society. M orris should have
been recognised as the clue to the fact th at the latter project needed to be
carried out, n o t by dismissing the aesthetic entirely, b u t by refram ing it in
instrum ental and m aterialist terms.
T hat clue had been taken up by others. Across the Atlantic, the pragm a
tist tradition had m anaged to take up M orris’ emphasis on the instrum en
tality o f art, after a certain fashion.24 A nd o f course, we have already seen
th at I. A. Richards, another adm irer o f M orris, had built disciplinary literary
criticism on the basis o f an aesthetic theory o f som ething like this kind. But
though these thinkers w ent on to develop aesthetic positions th at were m uch
m ore sophisticated than M orris’ in other respects, both were liberals rather
than leftists, and neither w ould prove capable o f addressing the problem o f
m aterial production as seriously as he had— seriously enough, th at is, to
break aesthetics from the m ain line o f bourgeois liberalism w ithin w hich it
had originated. W illiams, if only he had followed this path, w ould have been
capable o f that.
So the clue was there to be taken up— and was in fact taken up, b u t n o t
by socialists. M orris’ breakaway aesthetic insights were re-gathered into
the m ainstream o f bourgeois thought, and the trail he blazed was not
77
followed by any m ajor figure w ithin the socialist tradition. The question
then becomes why? W hy did the N ew Left, for w hich M orris was such a
crucial figure, n o t seize upon this possibility— the possibility o f developing
an aesthetic theory th at em phasized the usefulness, rather than the glorious
uselessness, o f the w ork o f art? It w ould have been entirely characteristic o f
W illiam s to argue for a version o f the aesthetic that w ould posit it, n o t as a
protest against instrum entality, b u t as a deeper form o f instrum entality.
W hy did he instead feel it was necessary to reject the whole field o f aesthetic
inquiry, as if the questions posed there could only ever be answered in liberal
terms? W hy did he n o t carry through his general emphasis into the field o f
aesthetics, w hich was ostensibly the field w ith w hich he was m ost directly
concerned?
In the context o f the history we have outlined, it seems clear enough that
the explanation lies precisely in the fact th at aesthetics was the field w ith
w hich he was m ost directly concerned. W illiam s felt so strongly the need to
respond to pernicious aesthetic argum ents w ithin his im m ediate purview—
w hich is to say, w ithin disciplinary literary criticism— that he was unable to
carry through his general emphasis there, and instead moved to reject the
discourse in its entirety. Speaking m ore broadly, we m ight say that the felt
need to reject the Leavisite and N ew Critical positions then dom inant w ithin
the discipline was simply too strong for the N ew Left to be able to carry its
distinctive emphasis through into this crucial area. Instead, the New Left s
general position on aesthetics became deeply m arked by the need to respond
to th at specific threat, and it remains so m arked even today w hen the specific
threat has long since passed. P utting this differently, one m ight say that the
N ew Left, and after it the discipline as a whole, learned how to assault ide
alism in the field o f aesthetics, b u t did so w ith out learning how to occupy
the territory so cleared.
There is a final p o in t to be m ade about W illiams, and it is perhaps the
m ost im p o rtan t one. It is th at W illiam s was farsighted— or should we say
ambivalent?— enough to anticipate m any o f the problem s th at were bound
to arise as a result o f his sweeping dismissal o f the aesthetic. In M arxism
a n d Literature, and then again m ore explicitly w hen pressed in Politics and
Letters, he softened his critique by offering a crucial qualification— w hat I
shall call his second saving clause for the aesthetic. His initial version o f it
runs as follows:
[W ]e can n ot rule ou t, theoretically, the p ossibility o f discovering certain

invariant com b in ation s o f elem ents w ith in this group [o f inten tion s and
responses that have traditionally been clustered around the term “aesthetic”] ,
even w h ile w e recognise that such invariant com b in ation s as have hitherto
been described dep en d on evident processes o f supra-historical appropriation
and selection. (156)
This is n o t W illiam s at his clearest, and indeed the retreat into abstraction
m ight itself be read as a sign o f the ambivalence to w hich I am trying to draw
attention. Ambivalently, then, W illiam s is telling us that even though he
rejects the aesthetic in all the term s in w hich it has so far been articulated—
idealist term s— he nevertheless does n o t rule o u t the possibility o f one day
discovering a properly m aterialist account o f it. In Politics and Letters he
makes the p o in t again in som ew hat clearer language, and com bines it w ith a
projection o f future work. The interviewers have pressed him , questioning
his (seeming) argum ent in M arxism a n d Literature that the allied concepts o f
“literature” and “the aesthetic” m ust be abandoned. They suggest instead
th at in rejecting those, W illiam s is surrendering too m uch valuable ground.
W illiam s responds:
W ell this is difficult. W h at I w ou ld hope w ill happen is that after the ground
has been cleared o f the received idea o f literature, it w ill be possible to find
certain n ew concepts w h ich w ou ld allow for special em phases. O therw ise
there is obviously a danger o f relativism or m iscellaneity, o f w h ich I am very
conscious. That w ill have to be done— it w ill be a necessary stage. Even w ith
the category o f the aesthetic, I say it is w h o lly necessary to reject the n otion o f
aesthetics as the special province o f a certain k in d o f response, but w e can n ot
rule o u t the p ossibility o f discovering certain perm anent configurations o f a
theoretical kind w h ich answer to it— as w e certainly d on’t rule ou t conjunc-
tural configurations o f a historical kin d in w h ich the category effectively
obtained. . . . The m istaken assum ptions w h ich lie hid d en in the old concepts
have to be cleared away for us to be able to begin searching again for a m ore
tenable set o f em phases w ith in the range o f w riting practices. (3 2 5 - 3 2 6 )
W illiam s’ second saving clause for the aesthetic, then— and it is a large
one— is th at his wholesale critique o f it, together w ith his insistence on
79
tearing down the distinction between the “literary” and the “non-literary,” is
ultim ately to be considered a clearing operation, and th at once the field has
been cleared o f the influence o f Leavis and the N ew Critics, a new aesthetics,
together w ith a new m odel o f the “literary,” will have to be constructed
along m ore properly m aterialist lines. This proviso has been forgotten, pre
sum ably because it does n o t sit at all easily w ith the disciplines current
consensus th at “aesthetic” justifications for literature necessarily serve con
servative purposes— indeed, it has presum ably been forgotten in large part
because M arxism a n d Literature is so often assumed to offer a justification
for just th at consensus. B ut W illiam s was right to offer it, even in the course
o f a necessary critique o f idealist aesthetics, and he was also right to reiterate
and confirm it w hen pressed. H e was also, I think, right to foresee that there
w ould com e a tim e w hen we w ould again need the thing he was so anxious
to reject in the late 1970s.
In m aking w hat has proved to be an extremely influential critique o f ide
alist aesthetics, W illiam s was tearing the “criticism” o f his day up by its phil
osophical roots and planting in its place the seeds o f w hat w ould become a
whole tradition o f historicist and contextualist scholarship. I hope that by
this stage, it is also clear th at he was at the same tim e repeating the very
ground-clearing exercise th at founded “criticism” in the first place. For once
we appreciate W illiam s’ full position, in w hich the critique o f idealist aes
thetics is to be seen as a clearing operation on the way to a m ore m aterialist
reconstruction o f the term , we can see th at it is in fact rather startlingly
congruent to R ichards.’ The differences th at rem ain between the two are
those between liberalism and socialism on the one hand, and those between
criticism and scholarship on the other— differences th at do n o t line up in
the way th at the left o f the discipline in recent times has believed. If in
Richards’ hands the aesthetic was only partly reconstructed, and then was
used as a foundation for a liberal m odel o f criticism, relatively naive about
the broader econom ic and political determ inants that were eventually to
make it impossible to achieve even in its own term s— a m odel that was thus
easily recovered by the m ain tradition o f bourgeois aesthetics— we should
n o t therefore dismiss aesthetic criticism entirely. Even that flawed liberal
m odel gave us “close reading,” w hich is still, in its various forms, the m ost
useful tool in the discipline today. M ore im portantly, w hat the example o f
Richards dem onstrates, I think, is th at contrary to the com m on assum ption

th at “criticism” and “aesthetics” are necessarily creatures o f the right— an
assum ption bred into the discipline th roughout the m iddle part o f the
tw entieth century— another kind o f criticism, based on another kind o f aes
thetics, is possible. If W illiam s’ initial project— to “unite radical left politics
w ith Leavisite literary criticism” was, as he later p u t it, “ludicrous,” then this
was because o f Leavis, n o t because o f literary criticism. Seeing this, one sees
som ething like a path tow ard a left aesthetic criticism today.
C h ap ter T h ree
The Historicist/Contextualist
Paradigm
L / E T U S T H E N return to our story proper by addressing the third and

m ost recent period in the history o f literary studies— our own. The central
point to be made here is that m uch o f the m ost im portant work performed by
the discipline over the last three decades, particularly by the left, has really
am ounted to a w orking-through o f the initial critique o f criticism— the cri
tique for which I have offered W illiams as an emblem. Observing this allows
one to see more clearly the complex character o f the disciplines current para
digm. To the extent that W illiams’ critique, and others like it, remains a
welcome corrective to idealist tendencies w ithin the discipline, this working-
through has been a productive one. Yet for the m ost part todays histori-
cist/contextualist paradigm has neither taken into account W illiams’ saving
clauses, nor tried to correct for his overlooking o f the incipiently materialist
aesthetics that lay at the roots o f the discipline. Truly to dem onstrate the extent
o f the range over which this generalization holds would no doubt require a
whole new book; I will make the p oint m ore concisely by focusing on the
w ork o f just four key figures/movements on the left o f the discipline: Terry
Eagleton, the New Historicism, Fredric Jameson, and Franco M oretti. Again,
I do so w ith some misgivings, since this small sample o f key figures hardly
covers the field— and yet even so, it seems better to examine a few figures in
depth, rather than risk the superficiality o f a wider survey. I will have more to
say on the question o f their representativeness at the chapter’s close.
Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton, W illiam s’ student, offers us our first and earliest example o f
w hat was quickly to become a general tendency. O ne may summarize the
position he took in the 1980s and 1990s by saying that he critiqued the
categories o f “literature” and the “aesthetic” as elitist mystifications, rejected
the associated practice o f “criticism” as necessarily Leavisite or New Critical,
and recom m ended the restructuring o f departm ents o f literature around the
central goal o f “education in the various theories and m ethods o f cultural
analysis” (186).1In other words, his position was that o f W illiams in M arxism
a n d Literature, w ith o u t the rider th at all o f this was to be seen as a provi
sional clearing operation on the way to a reconstruction o f “literature” and
the “aesthetic” in m ore m aterialist terms. We m ight say that Eagleton’s ver
sion o f the argum ent was the m ore successful: as I noted in the Introduction,
today’s departm ents o f literature are indeed largely structured, not around
the concept o f “literature” in the old aesthetic sense and the seemingly ide
alist project o f its “criticism ,” b u t around “cultural texts” and the seemingly
m ore m aterialist project o f their analysis, w ithout any general sense that this
structure should be considered merely a tem porary phase in a longer plan.2
O ne sees how thoroughly the story o f the origins o f “criticism” had
become m uddled by this poin t w hen one reads Eagleton’s chapter on “The
Rise o f English” in his influential Literary Theory: A n Introduction (1983), or
his treatm ent o f the same in his subsequent volum e The Function o f Criticism
(1984).3 In both o f these works, Eagleton’s discussions o f the origins o f
“practical criticism” and “close reading” assume that we understand Leavis as
the dom in an t figure, w ith Richards introduced belatedly as a kind o f fol
lower o f Leavis, and a “link between C am bridge English and the American
N ew C riticism .”4 In other words, by this stage in the discipline’s history the
refiguring o f “criticism” as Leavisite or N ew Critical in essence had pro
ceeded to such a degree th at it am ounted to a simple mistake in chronology.
The mistake is understandable: as we have seen even W illiams, who had
been nuanced enough to w arn us o f the error o f conflating “practical criti
cism” w ith Leavis, had nevertheless fallen into that error in effect.
H aving offered influential restatem ents o f W illiam s’ argum ents against
both the concept o f “literature” and the project o f “criticism,” Eagleton w ent
on to elaborate W illiam s’ prim ary argum ent against the “aesthetic.” His The
83
Ideology o f the Aesthetic (1990), a com m odious w ork that ranges through a
heavy list o f aesthetic thinkers from Baum garten and K ant onward, m ight
seem to have been offered as a break w ith W illiams— as a kind o f defense o f
the aesthetic against sweeping attacks by historical and cultural materialists:
I . . . have in m y sights those on the political left for w h o m th e aesthetic is

sim p ly ‘bourgeois ideology,’ to be w orsted and ou sted by alternative form s
o f cultural politics. The aesthetic is indeed, as I h op e to show, a bourgeois
con cep t in the m ost literal historical sense, hatched and nurtured in the
E nlightenm ent; but o n ly for the drastically undialectical th ou gh t o f a vulgar
M arxist or post-M arxist’ trend o f th ou gh t cou ld this fact be an autom atic
con d em n ation . (8 )5
Yet the continuity w ith W illiam s’ argum ent soon becomes clear, for
Eagletons central positive claim for the aesthetic is the same in all its m ajor
elements as w hat I have earlier called W illiam s’ first saving clause. Eagleton:
This con cep t o f [aesthetic] au ton om y is radically double-edged: if o n the on e

hand it provides a central con stitu en t o f bourgeois ideology, it also marks an
em phasis on the self-determ ining nature o f hum an powers and capacities
w h ich becom es, in the w ork o f Karl M arx and others, the anthropological
fou n d ation o f a revolutionary op p osition to bourgeois utility. The aesthetic is
at on ce, as I try to show, the very secret prototype o f h um an subjectivity in
early capitalist society, and a vision o f hum an energies as radical ends in th em
selves w h ich is the im placable en em y o f all d om inative or instrum entalist
thou gh t. (9)
This is precisely W illiam s’ account o f the aesthetic as that elem ent in bour
geois thought th at functions as a “protest against the forcing o f all experience
into instrum entality.” C onsidered as a defence o f the aesthetic, it really only
ever am ounts to a rem inder that, in Eagletons words, “From The Communist
Manifesto onwards, M arxism has never ceased to sing the praises o f the bour
geoisie” (8). O ne m ight be forgiven for finding this kind o f praise a little
underw helm ing. W h at is missing here is any real sense that it m ight be
possible to break w ith the bourgeois tradition o f aesthetics w ithout
surrendering the category entirely: to clear away the idealist emphasis on
“autonom y,” “self-determ ination,” and opposition to “utility,” and rebuild

the aesthetic on som ething m ore like materialist— w hich here w ould m ean
instrum ental— grounds.
In a w ider sense, such critiques drew their force from a feeling th at the
concepts o f “literature,” “criticism” and “aesthetic value” were, at root, hier
archical and elitist ones, each serving an im portant legitim ating role for
m any o f the m ost hierarchical and elitist elements o f the bourgeois order. In
Britain in 1988, Eagleton could p u t it as bluntly as this: “D epartm ents o f
literature in higher education, then, are part o f the ideological apparatus
o f the m odern capitalist state” (174). This is true, o f course, and im portant
to note, b u t the crucial question is as to the extent to w hich it is true. For
considered as a question o f strategy, it is crucial to know, on the one hand,
w hen and in w hat kinds o f contexts the disciplines o f literature function
as legitim ating institutions for oppressive forces, and on the other hand
w hen and in w hat kinds o f contexts they function as means by w hich we
are able to resist those forces. O nly rarely has this kind o f claim been made
w ith the necessary degree o f historical specificity. O ne m ight take for
example Eagleton’s com m ents in the 1996 preface to the second edition o f
Literary Theory:
W h at is truly elitist in literary studies is the idea that works o f literature can
on ly be appreciated by those w ith a particular sort o f cultural breeding. There
are those w h o have ‘literary values’ in their bones, and those w h o languish in
the outer darkness. O n e im portant reason for the grow th o f literary theory
since the 1960s was the gradual breakdown o f this assum ption, (viii)
It is perhaps too “nice” a critical poin t to note here that the shift from present
to past tense is o f considerable interest: w hat “is” truly elitist today, in 1996,
“was” an assum ption th at began to break dow n in the 1960s. M ore im portant
is the question th at this observation allows us: were these particular forms o f
literary elitism, which, we are told, began to break down in the 1960s, really
still the m ost salient target for critique in 1996, w hen Eagleton was writing?
In 1996, was the distinction between the literary and the nonliterary, the
cultivated and the uncultivated— in effect, the category o f the aesthetic—
still the chief means by w hich literary studies served a role in the ideological
apparatus o f the m odern capitalist state?
THE H IS T O R IC I S T /C O N T E X T U A L IS T PARADIGM
I th in k the answer is no, and here o f course there is a great deal to be said
th at w ould take us away from our m ain story. Yet it seems w orth at least
noting this: th at surely if the last three decades have taught literary studies
anything about its relationship to the capitalist state, it is that the capitalist
state in its current phase o f developm ent does n ot w ant us around. U nder a
Keynesian funding regime, it was possible to th in k that literary study was
being supported because it served an im portant legitim ating role in the
m aintenance o f liberal capitalist institutions. The steady and now nearly
com plete w ithdraw al o f state funding for literary studies during the period
o f neoliberalism should convince us th at we are now in quite a different
situation. R eturning to Eagletons argum ent, and trying to be generous to it,
it seems fair to allow that, specifically w ithin Britain, a certain kind o f cul
tural conservatism still takes refuge behind som ething like the terms under
critique here— and yet one m ust then add th at this is decreasingly the case,
and th at today, any serious analysis surely w ould have to conclude that the
dom in an t forms o f legitim ation are now elsewhere.6 At any rate, whatever
view we form about the situation either at present or as it stood in 1996, the
salient poin t is that, w ithin the discipline as it stood in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, it was evidently still possible to feel th at these kinds o f large-
scale assaults on the concept o f “literature,” on literary study as “criticism”
and the associated m ethods o f “practical criticism” and “close reading,” and
on the concept o f the “aesthetic” m ore generally, were being directed at a
genuine target on the right— namely, the last vestiges o f the Leavisite and
N ew Critical forces o f the 1950s, as they continued to spring up in all sorts
o f less precise forms o f hum anistic criticism over the decades that followed.
In the context o f a discipline th at continued to feel the influence o f these
conservative m ovem ents, it was easy to feel th at the advancing o f critiques o f
this kind was a politically progressive act.
B ut as the critique spread to other times and places, these conditions,
such as they were, no longer obtained. If class exploitation in Britain was
still, in the 1950s and— residually— in the 1970s and 1980s, legitim ated in
part by pernicious forms o f elitism about “cultivated” and “uncultivated”
classes, a liberal insistence on a hierarchy o f aesthetic tastes, and so on, the
same could n o t be said o f the U nited States in the 1980s and 1990s, where
pretended attacks on “elite” regimes o f taste were the very stuff o f right-
liberal discourse, as indeed they remain. W ith the turn to finance capitalism
and full neoliberalism, the term s o f the cultural debate shifted: the dom i
n an t classes w ithin capitalism were now being legitim ated, n o t by their pre
tensions to highbrow taste, b u t precisely by their m im ing o f a critique o f
highbrow taste. M ore broadly, and across m any different regions, it is true
th at the old m id-century liberalisms had often sought to justify themselves
by appealing to their aesthetic sophistication, on the assum ption that the
aesthetic high ground and the m oral high ground were the same; yet after
the crisis o f the 1970s, the situation largely reversed itself, the new liberal
isms instead tending to pose as dem ocratic levellers o f aesthetic distinctions.
From the early 1980s onw ard, the dem ocratic, enlightened, free-market
view, operating at m any levels o f the new liberal sensibility, was that any
recourse the idea o f aesthetic value was to be dismissed as simple snob
bery; instead, it was insisted, we ought to acknowledge that w hat we were
really dealing w ith were individual consum er preferences— mere “m atters o f
taste.” In this changed historical context, W illiam s’ critique o f the aesthetic,
repeated again and again, assumed quite a different political character.7
The New Historicism

It is instructive here to tu rn to a tendency that held a significant sway over the
discipline in the late 1980s and 1990s, and that continues to influence m uch
o f w hat goes on in it under other names at present, though m ost often in the
sense that scholars understand themselves (often wrongly, I m ight add) to be
reacting against it. The N ew Historicism was a very varied tendency, and so
o f course m uch o f w hat I say about it here will have to be qualified when
dealing w ith specific cases. Yet w ithout attem pting to come to an assess
m ent o f every figure im portant to the tendency, we can at least trace some o f
the broad outlines o f its treatm ent o f the category o f the aesthetic, and in
so doing arrive at some sense o f its political character, in its context. In par
ticular, it is im portant to observe the ways the New Historicists took up
W illiams’ critique o f the aesthetic, in a context in w hich the political effect
o f that critique was bound to be very different. O ne could go to the early
w ork here, b u t I th in k perhaps the m ost concise way to make the point is
by referring to Stephen G reenblatt and C atherine Gallaghers Practicing
N ew Historicism (2000), the closest thing to a manifesto the m ovem ent
produced— albeit a manifesto produced, som ewhat oddly, in the wake o f the
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v icto ry , rath er th a n as an in itia l call to a r m s.8 In th is c o n n e c tio n it is w o r th

r e c a llin g th a t G r e e n b la tt h a d b e e n W illia m s ’ stu d e n t fo r a tim e , th o u g h for
b o th G r e e n b la tt a n d G a llagh er, th e m o r e c en tra l in s p ir a tio n w a s F o u c a u lt. In
a n y case, w h a t se e m s m o s t sa lie n t a b o u t th e te x t is th e w a y in w h ic h th e le ft
c r itiq u e o f th e a e sth e tic — w h ic h h a d b e g u n to d e v e lo p in th e 1 9 5 0 s a n d
1 9 6 0 s , b u t a c h ie v e d its m o s t c o h e r e n t a n d rad ical fo r m in th e 1 9 7 0 s — c a m e
th r o u g h in t o th e N e w H is to r ic is m o f th e 1 9 8 0 s a n d 1 9 9 0 s in a m e d ia te d
fa s h io n , as a reserv a tio n a b o u t c a n o n ic ity : a reserv a tio n th a t is really v e r y m ild
in c o m p a r is o n w it h th e c r itiq u e s m u c h m o r e fo r c e fu l early fo r m s.
Nevertheless, G reenblatt and Gallagher w rote o f it as if it were a striking
innovation. W h en reading the m anifesto, one is im m ediately confronted by
lines like this one: “H aving im petuously rushed beyond the confines o f the
canonical garden, we stand facing extraordinary challenges and perplexing
questions” (14). W h a t is the tone here? O n e tries to read generously, and
these are obviously fine writers and deep thinkers, yet I m ust adm it th at I
am at a loss w hen trying p u t m yself into a positive relationship to it. If one
takes the note o f rapture seriously, the line becomes a N ew H istoricist paean
to N ew Historicism , and is thus hard to accept as other than em bar
rassing; if one instead treats it as coyness— or, in G reenblatt and Gallagher s
terms, “h alf facetiousness”— then one is left w ondering w hat, beyond self
dram atization, it is m eant to achieve. Trying to be fair, the best I find myself
able to say is th at the tone suggests, while being prepared if necessary to
deny, th at the N ew H istoricist “rush beyond the confines o f the canon”
really was radically new, exciting, and transgressive (even a little bit titil
lating, since this is the garden o f Eden, after all, and there is presum ably
nudity involved). So far, so good. But then we m ust go on to ask: was it in
fact radically new, exciting, and transgressive? A nd if it was, then w hat was
really at stake?
W ith regard to the question o f stakes, we could do worse than to take a
closer look at the chosen topos: an escape (not expulsion) from Eden. Given
the history th at we have traced in this chapter, it is tem pting to say th at the
move here to frame the N ew H istoricist critique o f the canon as a daring
escape from a theocratic authority is being m ade available by the equation
between aesthetic approaches to literature and New Criticism th at by now
had becom e alm ost reflexive. Indeed, as we shall see later, in this respect it
lines up quite nicely w ith M o rettis claim, also m ade in 2000, th at close
reading should be rejected because “at bottom , its a theological exercise,”

and th at now “w hat we really need is a little pact w ith the devil.” N oting this
im plied equation gives us our first h in t as to w hat G reenblatt and Gallagher
m ight see as the stake here. Perhaps they are on their way to m aking a kind
o f political claim: the claim being that, if policing the boundaries o f the
canon, and insisting on an aesthetic distinction between the literary and the
nonliterary, makes one a stodgy old C hristian conservative, then “rush[ing]
beyond” those “confines” m ight be thought properly secularist, liberal, and
perhaps even bit progressive.
The m ost explicitly political m om ent in the introduction to Practicing
N ew Historicism is an im plied analogy between the New H istoricist “im pet
uous rush beyond the confines o f the canonical garden” and the radical
political m ovem ents o f the 1960s. Let us examine each part o f that analogy
in turn, in an effort to determ ine the precise kinds o f political claims on
offer. In the first part o f the analogy, G reenblatt and Gallagher expand on
their claim to have gone beyond the boundaries o f the canon in a new and
exciting way. They begin w ith the rhetoric o f left radicalism, b u t quickly
shift to a celebration o f liberal pluralism:
There has in effect been a social rebellion in the study o f culture, so that fig
ures hitherto kept outside the proper circles o f interest— a rabble o f half-
crazed visionaries, sem iliterate political agitators, coarse-faced peasants in
hobn ailed boots, dandies w h ose w ritings had been discarded as ephem era,
im perial bureaucrats, freed slaves, w o m en novelists dism issed as im p u d en t
scribblers, learned w o m en excluded from easy access to the materials o f sch ol
arship, scandalm ongers, provincial politicians, charlatans, and forgotten aca
dem ics— have n ow forced their w ay in, or rather have been in vited in by our
generation o f critics. (1 0 —11)
The initial phrase “social rebellion” gives som ething o f a radical cast to
this, b u t this is corrected for by th at last shift from “forced their way in” to
“or rather have been invited in by our generation o f critics” w hich rem inds
us th at actual political struggles— the kind th at involve a group, or class,
“forcing” its way into som ething— do n o t take place w ithin the w orld o f
scholarship, where the agency remains, sadly b u t necessarily, w ith the
THE H I S T O R IC I S T /C O N T E X T U A L IS T PARADIGM 89
scholars. In this structure o f feeling, it w ould be very naive indeed o f us to

assume th at a “social rebellion in the study o f culture” w ould have any direct
relation to events norm ally th o u g h t o f as political: on the contrary, “the
study o f culture” is conceived o f as a project th at goes on entirely w ithin the
academy. O nce we have rejected naivete o f th at kind, however, we can begin
to make m ore reasonable political claims: the im plied claim here being that,
in “inviting” these figures into the study o f culture, the New H istoricist
scholar is at least acting in a dem ocratic and inclusive spirit; the kind o f
spirit th at we m ight find acceptable for political reasons.
This particular view o f the political stakes o f academic w ork becomes
m ore explicit in the second part o f the analogy, w hen G reenblatt and
G allagher go on to claim th at there really is a relationship between, on the
one hand, N ew H istoricism as a m ovem ent w ithin the academy and, on
the other, actual political struggles outside the academy, fem inism in
particular— a historical relationship:
It is hardly an accident that this broader vision o f the field o f cultural inter
pretation, w h ich had been m ooted for m ore than a century, to o k h o ld in the
U n ited States in the late 1960s and early 70s. It reflected in its initial period
the recent in clu sion o f groups that in m any colleges and universities had h ith
erto been m arginalised, h a lf h idden, or even entirely excluded from the
professional study o f literature: Jews, A frican A m ericans, H ispanics, Asian
A m ericans, and, m ost significantly from the p o in t o f view o f the critical fer
m ent, w om en . W o m en s studies, and the fem inism that m otivated its form a
tion , has served an im portant, if little acknow ledged, m od el for n ew histori
cism in that it has inspired its adherents to identify n ew objects for study,
bring those objects in to the light o f critical attention, and insist u pon their
legitim ate place in the curriculum . It has also served to politicise explicitly an
academ ic discourse that had often attem pted to avoid or conceal partisan or
polem ical com m itm en ts, and it unsettles familiar aesthetic hierarchies that
had been m anipulated, consciously or unconsciously, to lim it the cultural
significance o f w om en .
This u nsettling o f the hierarchies does n o t seem revolutionary— w e are n ot
in clin ed to confuse a change in the curriculum w ith a fall o f the state— but it
does feel dem ocratising, in that it refuses to lim it creativity to the spectacular
achievem ents o f a group o f trained specialists. (11)
The last note here sounds in the same key as “have been invited” earlier: it
insists, against the perceived threat o f other, m ore explicitly political
views, th at it w ould be naive to th in k th at academic w ork can effect polit
ical change in anything like a direct fashion. To th in k that it could w ould
be to “confuse a change in the curriculum w ith the fall o f the state.” This
sentim ent has m uch to do w ith the political m ood o f the 1980s and
1990s, the decades in w hich N ew H istoricism rose to prom inence. Again,
the claim is th at once we have seen the naivete o f those (“revolutionary”)
kinds o f views, we can move on to a m ore m odest, b u t m ore realistic
(“dem ocratising”) political project— the project o f “unsettling hierarchies”
by “refusing] to lim it creativity to the spectacular achievements o f a group
o f trained specialists.”
In a m om ent, I shall return to ask w hat k ind o f historical relationship is
being posited here, and how it sits w ith the m uch m ore evident historical
relationship between views o f this political tenor and the political tenor o f
the period in w hich they came to light. For now, though, let us simply try to
understand the argum ent being offered us, starting w ith the quotes final
phrase, “trained specialists.” To w hom does it refer? If we are to understand
and celebrate the N ew HistoHeists’ new “dem ocratising” political project,
then we m ust first find o u t w hat kind o f “hierarchies” they are claim ing to
“unsettle,” w hat kind o f “trained specialists” it is to w hom “creativity” was
previously seen as “lim ited.” A nd we will have to try to parse this quite care
fully, because it is by no means obvious. At first it m ight seem as if we are
still talking about the entry into the academy o f previously m arginalised
groups: “Jews, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans . . . w om en.”
In th at case, the claim w ould be that the N ew H istoricism brought about a
new dem ocratization o f scholarly work, and the “group o f trained specialists”
w ho resisted this w ould then be the stodgy old gentile w hite male scholars
w ho previously dom inated the academy. But this w ould be rather a strange
way to p u t it, first because one does n o t im m ediately associate stodgy old
scholars w ith “spectacular achievements” o f “creativity”— that sounds as if
we are talking about literary or “creative” writers, rather than scholars— and
second, since, while the opening up o f the academy to new groups was cer
tainly a challenge to entrenched prejudices o f m any kinds, it is not norm ally
th o u g h t o f as a challenge to scholarly specialization per se. People from m ar
ginalized groups w ho entered the academy and became scholars were, in
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tim e, no less “trained specialists” than the gentile w hite m en w ho had tried
to keep them out.
O u r first attem p t to parse the political project having resulted in a certain
incoherence, let us try a second. Perhaps we should instead read these lines
in relation to the paragraph we read a m om ent ago— w hich is to say, we
should understand the N ew H istoricist project o f “dem ocratising” and
“unsettling hierarchies” by “refusing] to lim it creativity to the spectacular
achievements o f a group o f trained specialists” as a further reference to the
“invitation” th at the N ew Historicists claimed to have extended to “figures
hitherto kept outside the proper circles o f [academic] interest.” The “hierar
chies” being unsettled w ould then be, specifically, the hierarchy o f aesthetic
judgem ents th at previously determ ined the curriculum , keeping it canonical
in a narrow sense by restricting the range o f objects o f study, and the “unset
tling” w ould be a “change in the curriculum ,” namely the “im petuous rush
beyond the confines o f the canonical garden” that invited in the new
objects o f study: the “rabble o f half-crazed visionaries, semi-literate political
agitators, coarse-faced peasants” and so on. This w ould certainly provide a
referent for this phrase “spectacular [creative] achievements”— the New H is
toricists w ould be claim ing to have broken a m onopoly on creativity previ
ously held by dead w hite male authors o f canonical literature. But again, this
w ould be very strange way to p u t it, for the claim is that the New Historicists
have refused “to lim it creativity to the spectacular achievements o f a group
o f trained specialists,” and surely one does n o t norm ally th in k o f Shakespeare
and W ordsw orth, say, as “trained specialists.” The claim remains very puz
zling. Just who are those “trained specialists”?
It seems very difficult to determ ine w hat the claim to be acting as a
“dem ocratising” force really consists of, unless we conclude, as I th ink we
m ust, th at the claim is in fact a rather hazy one, useful for rhetorical rather
than intellectual purposes, and th at the anxiety about “trained specialists” is
intru d in g on it from somewhere else entirely. The hazy claim lies somewhere
in the analogy being draw here between the list o f heterogeneous figures we
just discussed— the “rabble” “invited in” to academic research by “our gen
eration o f critics” in the 1980s and 1990s— and the list o f marginalized
groups w ho were “recently included” in the academy in the 1960s and
1970s. In the 1960s and 1970s, m any m arginalized groups were able to
enter the academy for the first tim e; in the 1980s and 1990s, a new and
heterogeneous range o f figures were m ade available as objects o f study w ithin

literary studies; the m anifesto superim poses one on the other, the palimpsest
seeming to im ply som ething like a causal connection. This rhetorical
m anoeuvre allows the scholarly m ovem ent to associate itself w ith earlier pro
gressive struggles, thereby seem ing to deliver a political m andate for this
form o f scholarship, b u t the argum ent th at w ould support such an associa
tion never appears.
Were such an argum ent to appear, w hat w ould it look like? We could per
haps phrase it as follows: since feminist activists fought for, and then secured,
the establishm ent o f W om ens Studies w ithin the academy, and W om ens
Studies in turn “served as a m odel” for the N ew Historicism, the New Histor-
icism can claim descent from progressive forces in the political sphere. It is
n o t at all clear to me how N ew Historicism gets to take part o f the credit for
radical feminist activism here, b u t it seems to do so. But even if we accept the
argum ent in this form, we find that it gives us no reason to accept the idea
that N ew Historicism functioned as a “dem ocratising” force in its own polit
ical context, decades later. Here we can return to the question o f the precise
kind o f historical relation being proposed. For w hat is at stake in this kind o f
periodization, which claims that the political context o f the 1960s and 1970s
is the m ost im portant one for understanding a m ovem ent that grew to dom
inate the field in the 1980s and 1990s? Is this n o t a rather curious move for
such careful historical and contextual thinkers to make, to try to identify the
external political factors that gave im petus to their m ovem ent by focusing on
the decades o f progressive radicalism that preceded it, rather than on the
decades o f conservative hegem ony in w hich it actually appeared? Perhaps
there is a case to be m ade that the sensibility o f the scholars w ho built the
N ew Historicism was form ed in the earlier, more progressive period. But
surely any analysis ought then to go on to consider how that structure o f
feeling later either changed, or changed its valence, w hen the surrounding
circumstances changed so completely. In the absence o f any genuine histor
ical analysis o f this kind, it is difficult n o t to suspect that G reenblatt and
Gallagher were eager to get the benefit o f an assumed association w ith the
past radicalisms o f the 1960s, while turning attention away from any attem pt
to account for the real political character o f the tendency in its present.
O nce we start to feel this way about the N ew Historicism , the pressing
question becomes as to the specific contem porary circumstances that
TH E H I S T O R IC I S T /C O N T E X T U A L IS T PARADIGM 93
conditioned, and even to a certain degree determ ined, the real political char
acter o f the m ovem ent, and here I am afraid that the particular range o f
styles and emphases em ployed begins to appear quite problem atic. It begins
to seem, for example, th at the coyness o f the G reenblatt and G allaghers
tone— the faux naivete, the “half-facetiousness” (124)— may exist, both here
and th roughout m uch o f the w ork o f the m ovem ents central figures, chiefly
to manage a problem derived from the wider context: the problem faced by
scholars w ho, for com plex reasons, explicitly disavow themselves o f any
com m itm ent to the idea o f academic w ork as radical political praxis, b u t
w ho nevertheless w ant to try to get ahead in a discipline where grappling
w ith live, as opposed to merely analytic, political questions, and thus the
m aking o f political claims for ones own work, has become a necessary
requirem ent for advancem ent. The claim that the stakes are genuinely polit
ical is im plied constantly, b u t whenever th at claim threatens to break out in
the direction o f actual political practice, the coy tone returns to im ply that
we shouldn’t take it all so seriously. A ppreciating this helps one to under
stand the popularity o f the m ovem ent. A rhetoric o f this kind, w hich by
turns avowed and disavowed intentions th at could be described, or critiqued,
as “political,” m ust have seemed appealing to m any in the academy who
were nom inally on the left b u t whose m aterial interests, and associated real
com m itm ents, in fact lay w ith the newly neo-liberalized institutions that
seemed to prom ise to support them .
R eturning to the specific history we have been tracing, we can observe
th at G reenblatt and Gallagher were able to im ply that their m ethodological
priorities had a progressive political valence only by relying on the assum p
tion, ironed into the discipline over the preceding decades, that challenging
the aesthetic privileging o f literary texts over nonliterary texts, and o f some
literary texts over others, som ehow am ounted to a challenge to “privilege”
m ore generally. As we have seen, th at assum ption had once been an argu
m ent, and the argum ent had been form ed as a genuine response to a very
different set o f circumstances. W illiam s, for his part, had been confronting
an entrenched form o f social conservatism in Britain that took refuge behind
the term “culture,” the spectrum “cultivated/uncultivated,” and their asso
ciated abstractions and elitisms. A t least in the Britain o f the 1940s, ’50s,
and early ’60s, this form o f social conservatism was very m uch a live one,
and m uch o f its intellectual justification was being provided continually by
a set o f views associated w ith the disciplinary and paradisciplinary study o f

English Literature. W illiam s’ stern critique o f the project o f “criticism,”
together w ith his associated critiques o f the “aesthetic,” the category “litera
ture,” and the m ethod o f “practical criticism ,” was born o u t o f this felt need
to confront active conservative forces w ithin his im m ediate political envi
ronm ent. N o analogous circum stances obtained in the U nited States in the
late tw entieth century. It is this kind o f recognition th at we m ust set beside
our acknow ledgm ent o f the charisma, the real rhetorical excitements, o f
m uch N ew H istoricist work. The results o f such a weighing seem clear
enough: it is sim ply very hard, from our present standpoint, to see the New
H istoricism in other term s than as a repetition o f W illiam s’ project that
sought, in an am biguous b u t unm istakable response to specific local condi
tions, to p u t on its progressivist trappings while systematically em ptying it
o f real political force.
A t this point, no doubt, m any o f the old guard will protest; it therefore
seems im p o rtan t at least to p o in t to some o f the m ore detailed consider
ations th at m ight lead one to take this view, though o f course one does not
w ant to spend the rest o f the book debating about the political valence o f the
N ew H istoricism . I will sim ply provide three quick examples. First, it seems
to me that the m uch-vaunted New H istoricist claim to have rocked the
foundations o f m aterialism by bringing to bear on it poststructuralist
insights into the all-pervasiveness o f representation was, to a considerably
larger extent than they were usually willing to acknowledge, a continuation
o f W illiam s’ well-known critique o f base and superstructure— in his words,
his attem pt to “replace the form ula o f base and superstructure w ith the m ore
active idea o f a field o f m utually if also unevenly determ ining forces.”9 The
figuring o f this continuation as a break had im portant political implications,
since it m eant th at W illiam s’ critique, w hich had been advanced in unequiv
ocally political terms, in the nam e o f a com m itted socialism, could now be
re-presented as a relatively apolitical act o f professionalized scholarship, or,
at best, in the nam e o f a m uch less dem anding left-liberalism.
This leads m e to m y second example, w hich centers on just this question
o f professionalization, institutionalization, and the relationship between the
increasingly specialized w ork o f the scholars and the nonspecialist public on
whose behalf it was ultim ately being produced. H ere again the N ew H istor
icism reiterated a key elem ent o f W illiam s’ project— in this case, his repeated
95
w arnings about the dangers o f academic specialization— while tending to

em pty it o f its live political content. W illiam s had everywhere insisted on the
central im portance o f a w ell-theorized practical resistance to the worst effects
o f academic specialization, disciplinarity, and professionalization, and he
had traced this strand o f his argum ent back to the origins o f cultural
studies in the specific para-academic, and even para-institutional, context o f
workers’ and adult education in Britain. I will quote at length, since the
great distance between the situation W illiam s describes and our situation
w ithin the neoliberal university today threatens to render this crucial argu
m ent nearly incom m unicable:
[T ]he local self-educating organisations o f w orking people and others . . . had

been based . . . on [the] principle . . . that intellectual questions arose w hen you
drew up intellectual disciplines that form bodies o f know ledge in contact w ith
p eop les life-situations and life-experiences. . . . Academ ics took ou t from their
institutions university econom ics, or university English or university p hiloso
phy, and the people w anted to know w hat it was. This exchange didn’t collapse
into som e sim ple populism : that these were all silly intellectual questions. Yet
these students insisted (1) that the relation o f this to their ow n situation and
experience had to be discussed, and (2) that there were areas in w hich the disci
pline itself m ight be unsatisfactory, and therefore they retained as a crucial prin
ciple the right to decide their ow n syllabus. . . . [People] have far m ore than a
right to be tested to see i f they are follow ing [disciplinary norms] or if [their
views] are being pu t in a form w h ich is c o n v e n ie n t. . . in fact they have this
m ore basic right to define the questions. These people were, after all, in a prac
tical position to say “well, i f you tell m e that question goes outside your
discipline, then bring m e som eone w hose discipline w ill cover it, or b loody well
get outside o f the discipline and answer it yourself.” (1 5 6 -1 5 7 )
M uch could be said about this passage; for present purposes, its signifi
cance is simply th at it indicates the extent to w hich W illiam s’ project was
one th at strove to rem ain at a distance from the specializing and profession
alizing dem ands o f the higher education system, w ith w hich it nevertheless
had to w ork in close proxim ity.10 The N ew H istoricism eagerly took up
som ething like this rhetoric o f resistance to specialization— in so m any
places in the w ork o f the m ain figures, one finds repeated (and often curi
ously out-of-place) critiques o f “trained specialists,” one o f w hich we have
already exam ined— b u t this rhetoric was never advanced into an active cri
tique, for the simple reason th at by this stage in the history o f literary study
they were the “trained specialists.” This was politically uncom fortable but,
the key N ew H istoricists often seemed to feel, sadly inevitable, since for
scholars w ho w anted to function in the new academy, there could o f course
be no question o f actually m o unting a challenge to that kind o f specializa
tion. Their repeated rhetorical attacks on “trained specialists” are, I think,
the sign o f this discom fort. To this end, w hat in W illiams had been an
attem p t to operate sim ultaneously both inside and outside the academy, for
expressly political purposes, was reduced, in the N ew H istoricist m im ing o f
th at rhetoric, to a celebration o f “interdisciplinarity”— w hich is to say, a
resistance to specialization within the academy.
W ithin that narrowed space for critique, the distances crossed were not
perhaps as large as they could have been, since w ithin the academy, the New
Historicists most often chose to celebrate an interdisciplinarity between literary
history and . . . disciplinary history. O nly in quite thoroughly professionalized
terms could this be seen as a live challenge to academic specialization. M ean
while, the real and ongoing advance o f specialization at other levels— from the
general movement by which academic work was hived off from those on whose
behalf it was nominally being produced, to the m uch more local hardening o f
distinctions between specific intradisciplinary fields and subfields— was simply
accepted as an unavoidable part o f m odern scholarship. Thus, for example, it is
only in passing that Greenblatt and Gallagher, in their introduction to Prac
ticing New Historicism, refer approvingly to their own “conservative interest in
periodization (for each o f us had been trained to be a specialist in a given area
and to take its geographical and temporal boundaries seriously)” (7). It seems
that amidst all the rhetoric o f rejecting specialization, there was never any felt
need to produce an intellectual justification for specialization o f this kind: they
were specialists simply because they had been trained that way. There could
never, in these terms, be any question o f m ounting a challenge even to this kind
o f intradisciplinary specialization, let alone confronting, in the way Williams
had tried to do, the related but more intrinsically significant form o f specializa
tion that continually divides intellectual work from the people on whose behalf
that work is nominally being produced.
B ut m y third example is the m ost crucial for present purposes: the way
in w hich W illiam s' critique o f the aesthetic itself was taken up by the N ew
97
Historicists in a m anner, and in a context, in w hich its political character

was bou n d to be very different. As we have seen, in 1977 W illiams had
already offered a wholesale critique o f the aesthetic th at sought to strike at
the very root o f the ideology o f canonicity. Two decades later, G reenblatt
and Gallagher claimed th at the N ew H istoricism had led to a “drastic broad
ening o f the field” in w hich
[w]orks that have been hitherto denigrated or ignored can be treated as major
achievem ents, claim ing space in an already crow ded curriculum or d im in ish
in g the value o f established w orks in a k in d o f literary stock market. (10)
W h at had begun, in W illiam s, as a wholesale rejection o f the traditional

basis o f canonicity— a wholesale rejection o f the category o f the aesthetic,
and w ith it the idea o f a special aesthetic value or aesthetic state— is here
recoded as the prom ise o f a mere reshuffling o f the canon; or m ore precisely,
to follow G reenblatt and G allaghers m etaphor, the prom ise o f a new and
exciting volatility in the aesthetic m arket. The intellectual poverty o f the
m arket m etaphor, together w ith its inescapably political valence, is a clue to
the fact th at w hat we are witnessing here is the rolling back o f w hat had
been, in its tim e, a profound reform.
A t an intellectual level, the difference between the two responses really
stems from the difference in their depths o f engagem ent w ith the history o f
philosophical aesthetics, a difference th at can in tu rn be traced back to forces
operating in the w ider political and cultural spheres. W illiams, because his
scholarly w ork was being p u t together as a clarifying response to the various
pressures o f his vexed disciplinary and national situations, had felt the need
to engage seriously w ith the tradition o f philosophical aesthetics, w ith results
th at we have seen. Eagleton, residually, had felt the need to devote a book to
continuing that engagem ent. The fact th at nowhere in the key works o f N ew
H istoricism can we find any similar engagem ent is an indication o f the fact
that, w ithin the U nited States, by th at stage in the history o f the discipline,
the specific forms o f liberal ideology th at had traditionally been seen to
cluster around the term “aesthetic” were sim ply no longer being employed
by any forceful agent. The d o m in an t forms o f legitim ation were now else
where. The corollary o f this w ithin the discipline was that, for US literary
scholars such as G reenblatt and Gallagher, there was no felt need to develop
a significant response to the problem s posed by idealist philosophical aes

thetics, for there was no one to force a deeper engagement. This explains the
curious inertness o f the N ew H istoricist treatm ent o f the term . The force o f
their critique o f the aesthetic, such as it is, was really derived from the spectre
o f N ew Criticism:
The risk [o f our op en in g-ou t o f the canon], from a culturally conservative

p o in t o f view, is that w e w ill lose sight o f w hat is uniquely precious about high
art: n ew historicism , in this account, fosters the w eakening o f the aesthetic
object. There is, w e think, som e truth to this charge, at least in relation to the
extrem e claim s routinely m ade by certain literary critics for the uniqueness o f
literature. W orks o f art, in the m ore perfervid m om en ts o f celebration, are
alm ost com p letely detached from sem antic necessity and are instead deeply
im portant as signs and em b od im en ts o f the freedom o f the hum an im agina
tion. The rest o f hum an life can on ly gaze lon gin gly at the con d ition o f the art
object, w h ich is the m anifestation o f unalienated labor, the perfect articula
tion and realization o f hum an energy. The art object, ideally self-enclosed, is
freed n o t on ly from the necessities o f the surrounding w orld (necessities that
it transforms m iraculously into play) but also from the in ten tion o f the maker.
The closest analogy perhaps is the C ath olic E u ch a rist. . . . (1 1 —12)
The version o f the “aesthetic” under critique here assumes an “art object”
th at is self-enclosed, free from instrum ental and contextual concerns,
divorced from authorial intention, and cast in religious terms. This is to say
that, though a generation has passed, once again the critique o f the aesthetic
in general is actually a critique o f idealist aesthetics in particular: specifically,
the neo-K antian aesthetics o f the N ew Criticism , here offered, perhaps nec
essarily, in som ething o f a caricatured form. But if the general form o f the
critique has rem ained the same for twenty-five years, the historical context
in w hich it is being offered has not: we are long decades past the N ew Critics
here. W here W illiam s’ critique o f the aesthetic had been an attem pt to con
front powerful conservative forces active in the culture around him , the N ew
Historicists’ “weakening o f the aesthetic object” was, in their own words, an
attem p t to confront “the extreme claims routinely m ade by certain literary
critics . . . in [their] m ore perfervid m om ents o f celebration.” It seems fair to
observe th at by this stage in our history the significance o f the target has
been reduced.
99
I do n o t w ant to press this p o in t endlessly, b u t it is an im portant one.

“R outinely m ade” nevertheless seems to im ply that, if this target was small,
at least it was a live one. But were aesthetic positions o f this N ew Critical or
pseudo-N ew Critical kind still a serious threat to the discipline in 2000— or
even in the 1990s, w hen the influence o f the N ew H istoricism was at its
height? In the 1980s, perhaps, w hen m any o f the later N ew Historicists were
trained? The answer, by and large, is no. In this respect, we m ight com pare
the chronology offered by Frank Lentricchia tw enty years earlier, in his
widely influential A fter the N ew Criticism (1980): “By about 1957, the m or
ib u n d condition o f the N ew Criticism and the literary needs it left unful
filled placed us in a critical void” (4).11This may be too early a date for some,
and there were, o f course, residual form ations, b u t in the m ain, the scienti-
zation o f the hum anities, at an institutional level, and W illiam s' critique and
others like it, at an intellectual level, had long since effected the shift away
from such forms o f criticism. By the m id-1990s, the historicist/contextualist
paradigm had been the d o m in an t m ode for at least a decade.
In fact, by 2000, the “aesthetic” seemed to pose so little threat to histori
cist scholarship w ithin the discipline th at the central N ew Historicists could
even dem onstrate their inclusiveness by inviting it back in, albeit in an
im poverished sense. To see this, let us observe the phrases in w hich the term
is deployed in the introduction to Practicing N ew Historicism. M ost are pos
itive: “aesthetic pleasures,” “aesthetic polish,” “ [aesthetic] wonder,” “aesthetic
pleasure,” “aesthetically gratifying,” “aesthetic appreciation.” An ungenerous
reader m ight observe th at in none o f these cases does the phrase m ean m uch
m ore than “good looking.”12 These kinds o f form ulations are available to
thinkers o f this caliber only because, in the absence o f any engagem ent w ith
a live enem y using the term , the term “aesthetic” can be deployed in an
im poverished way. The contrast w ith W illiam s' sophisticated use o f the term
is then quite stark.
To summarize, W illiam s' sweeping critique o f the project o f “criticism”
and o f the associated categories o f “literature” and the “aesthetic,” w hich at
least in its early stages had been directed at a genuine target to the right,
was turned to quite different ends w hen it was taken up in the very dif
ferent environm ent o f the U nited States in the 1980s and 1990s, at a
m o m en t w hen neoliberal forces w ithin the university were systematically
favoring the scholarly over the critical m odel o f literary studies. In this newly
professionalized and scientized context, the scholarly m odel o f intellectual
100 LITERARY C R I T I C I S M
inquiry— intellectual w ork as know ledge-production, now usually con

ceived o f w ithin the discipline as the production o f historical knowledge—
was simply assumed to constitute the central task o f literary study. For if it
was true th at the N ew H istoricism felt no need to engage w ith the long
history o f aesthetic thought, it was also true that it felt no need to produce
a sustained critique o f the project o f “criticism.” As we have seen, both
W illiam s and Eagleton had found it necessary to attack Leavis and the New
Critics as critics, by way o f explicit critiques o f the project o f criticism itself.
These argum ents had cleared the ground for the establishm ent o f a newly
historicized, and newly scholarly, m odel o f literary study. But in the rapidly
neoliberalizing university system o f the U nited States in the 1980s and
1990s, this m odel o f scholarship as the production o f knowledge for special
ists no longer needed an explicit defense. The N ew H istoricism could estab
lish itself as the d om inant force in the discipline w ithout it.
R eturning to our broader history, it is then o f m uch interest to try to reg
ister the changes that occur in the critique o f the category o f the aesthetic in
this period, now that the critique o f the project o f criticism no longer needs
to be m ade alongside it. For w hat begins to occur rather often is that w ithin
the discipline aesthetic thinking is critiqued on the grounds that it treats as
universal things that ought to be treated as particular, and thereby leads to
inaccurate, because ideological, knowledge. In the context o f the longer his
tory o f the discipline, this critique seems curiously to miss its mark, since the
critics w ho originally had m aintained a com m itm ent to the aesthetic had
never seen their task prim arily as one o f knowledge production. The fact that
the critique is nevertheless advanced as if they had is a new and intriguing
developm ent, and one th at cannot finally be separated from changes in the
institutional conditions under w hich the disciplinary work is taking place.
Fredric Jameson
This is an appropriate m om ent to tu rn our attention to the dom inant figure
o f the discipline s m ore thoroughly politicized wing in this period: Fredric
Jam eson. Unlike the N ew H istoricists, he certainly registered the need to
engage w ith philosophical aesthetics— or at least the need to justify refusing
the engagem ent. Yet the pressures o f his situation were never such as to
require from him a critique o f the project o f criticism. In this sense, he is
typical o f our period. There is a great deal to be said about the utility and
intelligence o f Jam esons particular analyses, the m ost central o f w hich have
been his m ethodological innovations in the field o f ideology herm eneutics
and his identification o f the postm odern as the cultural logic o f late capi
talism, b u t I will n o t be able to do justice to either o f these here: our story
requires a different emphasis. For while Jam esons m ajor analyses gain m uch
o f their force and interest from having been developed in explicit opposition
to other w ork w ithin the discipline, his critique o f philosophical aesthetics is
o f m ost interest to us precisely because it articulates so precisely the set o f
assum ptions on w hich the discipline in this period was able to proceed. In
this sense Jam esons critique o f the aesthetic is no less central to his work for
being left implicit. O n the contrary, it is central just as one o f the m ost
im p o rtan t enabling assum ptions, com m on to all the m ajor contem porary
figures w ithin the discipline, th at allowed even w ork as radically iconoclastic
as Jam eson’s easily to be recognizable as disciplinary.
W h at follows are perhaps his clearest and m ost succinct com m ents on the
m atter o f philosophical aesthetics, m ade in the context o f a lecture on the
concept o f “W orld Literature”:
O n e o f the problem s that m isleads us [in our attem pt to understand the idea
o f “W orld Literature”] is the philosophical problem o f aesthetic value— in m y
op in ion , a false problem . It masks, indeed, a far m ore thorny philosophical
problem — a real on e this tim e— w h ich turns on the op p osition betw een the
universal and the particular. For w h en hum anist critics raise th e q uestion o f
Value,’ w hat they really have in m in d is ‘universal value,’ and it’s ou t o f the
n o tio n o f ‘universal value’ that an antiquated and unserviceable n o tio n o f
‘W orld Literature’ has always com e. I th in k this em phasis on universal value
is w rong, and m isguided; it is unproductive even w ith in the W estern C anon,
giving rise to all kinds o f false questions and problem s, like the follow ing: is
Faulkner greater than H alldor Laxness, or vice versa? Is either greater than
Tolstoy? W h ic h is m ore universal, I P rom essi Sposi or R e d C h a m b e r D r e a m ?
I w on ’t pursue these silly questions any further. . . . [T ]h e q uestion o f
value is itself a historical on e, w h ich arises on ly after the fact, and does n ot
involve classification according to a p r i o r i categories.13
Here, casually put, we have the principled critique o f neo-K antian aes
thetics, idealist m odes o f criticism, and em pty hum anist pieties that has
been one o f the m ost valuable contributions o f radical leftist thought to

disciplinary literary criticism, side by side w ith the reflexive tu rn to the
project o f analysis, description, and classification that again and again has
crippled it. As should be clear by now, this is W illiam s’ critique— his critique
o f Leavis and the N ew Critics, whose repeated restaging o f the scene o f crit
ical judgm ent had taught the discipline its obsession w ith hierarchy and
canonicity, and thereby hobbled so m uch o f its m id-century work. It is
therefore also in a certain sense Richards’ critique, as well as Eagleton’s cri
tique: this critique o f idealist aesthetics th at the discipline keeps repeating
and repeating, though each tim e for different purposes. Though it cannot be
said th at Jameson’s version o f the critique is inherited from W illiams— any
serious attem pt to trace the m ajor influences on Jameson’s thought w ould
have to head into very different territory, beginning perhaps w ith Sartre and
M arcuse— W illiam s’ version o f the critique is the m ost directly relevant for
us here. As we have seen, th at version had first taken shape in the 1950s and
1960s, and had achieved its m ost developed form in 1977 w ith M arxism and
Literature. Three decades later— Jam eson m ade these com m ents in 2008—
it has becom e reflexive. Notably, b oth o f W illiam s’ saving clauses have now
been dropped. There is little sense here th at the aesthetic has been an
im p o rtan t elem ent in the bourgeois protest against the tu rn in g o f all things
into com m odities; nor, m ore im portantly, is there any sense th at for the left,
the critique o f the aesthetic should be considered a clearing operation, on
the way to a m aterialist reconstruction o f the term .
W illiam s’ critique o f the aesthetic had been m ade in the context o f a cri
tique o f the project o f criticism, and had done m uch to allow its replacem ent
by cultural analysis. To understand the terms in w hich Jameson is now
m aking the critique, we need to see that, for him , at a later tim e and in
another national context, literary study is cultural analysis— there is no
longer any live question o f literary studies as criticism in the older sense.
Jam eson proceeds as m ost o f those in literary studies do today: by assuming
th at his task as a scholar is the analysis o f culture, by w hich is m eant—
p u ttin g things now in bluntly positivistic term s— the production o f accurate
knowledge about our cultural history and present cultural situation, together
w ith the developm ent o f m ethods and theories to aid in the production o f
th at knowledge. It is in part a m ark o f his disciplinary affiliation that he
thinks o f his role as an intellectual o f the left in the same way: the role o f the
103
M arxist theorist o f culture is, for him , a diagnostic one, and the actual treat
m ent, if or w hen it comes, m ust take the form o f political praxis guided by,
b u t n o t itself a part of, the m ore strictly academic endeavour.14 W e see this
readily enough w hen we ask ourselves w hat m ore positive sense o f the term
“value” Jam eson is encouraging us to prefer by so roundly rejecting the “uni
versal value” o f the hum anists. His positive claim is that “the question o f
value is itself a historical one, w hich arises only after the fact, and does n o t
involve classification according to a priori categories.” A t this particular
p o in t in Jam esons position, the term “value,” w hich he is able to th ink
through very deeply elsewhere, is effectively reduced to diagnostic value:
speaking loosely, evidentiary value— value for the purposes o f accurate anal
ysis. In other words, value to scholarship in the special sense in w hich I am
using th at term here.
A rm ed w ith this observation, we can then return to his critique o f the old
aesthetics to ask: is the “problem o f aesthetic value” really reducible to the
“opposition between the universal and the particular”? W hat would this
mean? To understand this argum ent, we need to take into account the fact
that, when Jameson looks at the earlier hum anist critics’ model o f “universal
aesthetic value,” he is really thinking o f “value” in this new, specifically schol
arly sense. Against the background o f this new set o f disciplinary assump
tions, the materialist critique o f the aesthetic now runs as follows: “aesthetic
value” m ust m ean “universal value,” because th at is w hat it m eant to m id
century hum anist critics; and in tu rn “universal value” is unacceptable because
it elides historical particularities, and thereby obstructs the production o f
accurate knowledge about culture. But were the critics w ho invoked the “aes
thetic” as a grounding concept for their particular m odel o f literary study
really trying to produce knowledge? The answer is largely no: at least as the
position was form ulated initially, the goal was not to produce knowledge but
to train readers. From this perspective, the “problem o f aesthetic value” is not
a false problem b u t a real one, and one that cannot in fact be reduced to an
“opposition between universal and particular,” since in principle it w ould be
possible to develop, for instrum ental purposes, an aesthetics that had no
com m itm ent at all to the idea o f “universal aesthetic value.”
Part o f w hat is being missed here is som ething W illiams knew, in his
projection o f an eventual reconstruction o f aesthetic thinking on a m ateri
alist basis. The other part is som ething th at even W illiams overlooked: the
fact th at there exists no necessary connection between the project o f aes

thetic criticism and idealist universalisms— in fact, as we have seen, Richards
launched the form er precisely as a critique o f the latter. W hen Jameson
rightly excoriates the old hum anist line o f questioning (“Is Faulkner greater
than H alldor Laxness, or vice versa? Is either greater than Tolstoy?”) it is easy
enough to agree, for he is really excoriating the idealist, m id-century aes
thetic criticisms th at follow o u t o f Leavis and the N ew Critics, w ith their
obsession w ith staging the scene o f critical judgm ent. But surely it is quite
w rong to reject the w hole project o f aesthetic criticism as if it were reducible,
in principle, to exercises in establishing the relative rank o f various canonical
figures. D isciplinary criticism was founded on the basis o f a m uch better
response to these kinds o f aesthetic questions. To see this, one has only to
th in k back a little further than the m id-century. If a m iddling hum anist o f
the k ind Jam eson is excoriating were indeed to ask “W hich is m ore uni
versal, I Promessi Sposi or Red Chamber D reamF w ould the early critical
answer be such a bad one? T hat answer being: “It is less im portant to like
‘good’ poetry and dislike ‘bad,’ than to be able to use them both as a means
o f ordering our m inds.”
What about Close Reading?

O u r history, then, has led us to a stage where two o f our three lines o f
thinking are in disarray. The project o f criticism, initially left-liberal, was
co-opted by conservatism, and then dismissed as irretrievably conservative
by the left. As our story stands, it has been largely forgotten: now even
defunct critics are assessed as if they had been simply bad scholars. In its
place, we have a broad consensus built around the idea that the proper
project o f literary studies is the scholarly one— a consensus so influential as
to rem ain generally unrem arked upon. The aesthetic, too, has been dis
missed, if n o t entirely forgotten. First appearing w ithin the m odern disci
pline as a radical break w ith idealism, it was soon regathered into the
m ainstream o f idealist thought, and then critiqued as irredeemably idealist
by the left. A t present, the critique o f it, where it appears, has become
reflexive. Richards’ early version has been effaced; W illiams’ two saving
clauses— particularly the second, w hich specified that the critique o f the
aesthetic was to be considered a clearing operation on the way to an eventual
reconstruction o f it in m aterialist term s— have been lost.
105
W hat, then, o f the third line we are tracking— w hat o f the methodologies
th at were developed as the practical arm o f the project o f criticism: “close
reading” and “practical criticism”? W e have seen that they began, in our first
period, as m ethods for the practical training o f the aesthetic faculties o f
readers. W e have seen, too, that the early reversal that took place in the phil
osophical and political orientation o f the project o f criticism led to a signifi
cant change in these methodologies: where once they had been intended as
tools for helping us to “better order our m inds,” as opposed to learning to
judge works “good” and “bad,” in the second period, they tended instead to
become theaters in w hich to stage the scene o f critical judgm ent. W hat about
the third period? If this period really did begin w ith an epochal shift from
literary-studies-as-criticism-and-scholarshiptoliterary-studies-as-scholarship-
alone, has this n o t led to some fundam ental m ethodological change?
I have two answers to this question, b oth o f them , though in different
ways, am ounting to a “yes.” The first “yes” runs as follows. As we have seen,
the new consensus on scholarship has m ade for a profound change in the
orientation o f the discipline s reading: a change from reading for the p u r
poses o f aesthetic education, in w hatever m eaning o f the term aesthetic we
m ight choose, to reading for the purposes o f historical and cultural analysis.
In the light o f this, it is interesting to note the different fates o f the two terms
we have been tracking. If the term “practical criticism” has been generally
abandoned outside o f the exceptional (should I say odd?) enclave o f
Cam bridge, this is presum ably at least in part because o f the ease w ith w hich
it can be associated w ith “criticism” in its now objectionable m id-century
sense, as the staging o f expert aesthetic judgm ent. In contrast, the term
“close reading,” w hich is easier to dissociate from “criticism” in the old sense,
has been retained. Yet just this severing o f the association between “close
reading” and “criticism” has led to an im poverishing generalization o f the
form er term , w hich is now usually used sim ply to designate any reading
practice th at attem pts to derive nontrivial m eanings from small units o f text.
This does m uch to mask the fact th at w hat early and m id-century critics
called “close reading” and w hat the discipline now calls “close reading” are in
m any ways quite different practices: broadly speaking, earlier modes o f crit
icism saw “close reading” as a focus on small units o f text for the purposes o f
relating to the text as an aesthetic object, whereas today “close reading” usu
ally means a focus on small units o f text for the purposes o f understanding
w hat the text has to teach us about histories and cultures. It m ay help to
make the poin t if we observe, perhaps too schematically, that today close
reading is a way to focus ones attention on small units o f text, whereas for
the early critical paradigm , close reading was a way to use small units o f text
to focus ones attention. O f course, having said this, one w ould need to go
on to observe also th at for the m ajor early critics, aesthetic education m eant
the cultivation o f m uch m ore than mere “attention”: even a basic account
w ould have to include the cultivation o f affect, o f self-awareness, psycholog
ical insight, capabilities relating to value, and so on. The retaining o f the old
term to designate a substantially new practice has done m uch to mask the
scale o f the shift th at inaugurated our period.
O bserving this helps us to notice that, o f all the interesting moves made
in the course o f recent debates about “close reading,” one o f the m ost useful
has been Jonathan C uller’s call for the discipline to th in k more deeply about
the range o f different reading practices th at shelter under the nam e.15 The
periodization I offer here adds som ething to this debate by suggesting that,
historically, we may w ant to distinguish between three m ain types o f close
reading: the initial form , posited though never fully developed as a tool w ith
w hich to cultivate readers’ aesthetic sensibilities in som ething approaching a
m aterialist sense; the second form , in w hich the emphasis passed onto the
m aking o f critical judgm ents about the universal or final aesthetic value o f
the thing being read; and a third form , where the goal has been to use small
units o f text as diagnostic tools for the analysis o f historical and cultural
phenom ena, in the absence o f any aesthetic considerations whatsoever— or
indeed, m ore often, in im plicit opposition to aesthetic considerations. In
each case, careful attention is being paid to small units o f text, b u t th at is
about as far as the sim ilarity goes.
O n e could make a different p o in t to similar effect by observing th at if
“close reading” involves focusing on small units o f text at least partly in order
to practice paying certain kinds o f attention, then we need to go on to ask,
in each case, w hat kind o f “focus” is being directed onto the text, and there
fore w hat specific kind o f “attention” is being practiced. To note just one
fairly obvious example, the N ew Critical version o f the m ethod sought to
train readers to pay a particular kind o f attention to the text as a unified
whole in a way th at our contem porary historicist/contextualist versions
usually do not; the latter sometimes claim to be training us to pay attention
to the ideological content o f texts in a way th at the N ew Critical practice did
107
not; and so on. O n e could easily m ultiply these distinctions. Again, the
retaining o f a single term for these very different practices masks not only
the great variety o f m ethods potentially on offer, b u t also the real historical
changes th at have taken place in the discipline in our period, chief am ong
them the shift from a m odel o f literary study that includes both literary
scholarship a n d literary criticism to a m odel th at tends to lim it literary study
to literary scholarship alone.
Taking this next step w ould allow one to build on the position outlined
by some o f the defenders o f close reading. A good example here w ould be
Jane Gallop, w ho, in the late 2000s, m ade an argum ent for close reading
prem ised on the perceptive observation th at the greatest threat to the m ethod
over the three decades previous had been the ongoing historicization o f lit
erary studies.16 I cannot help b u t cheer w hen she observes, dolefully, that
close reading “has been . . . tarred w ith the elitist brush applied in our rejec
tion o f the N ew Critics’ canon, and . . . throw n out w ith the dirty bathw ater
o f timeless universals.” In this connection, it is hard n o t to endorse her tu rn
to the question o f radical pedagogy in the last section o f the paper, and her
claim th at we have chiefly the practice o f close reading to th an k for the fact
th at the “literature classroom has represented a real alternative to the banking
m odel” o f education, in w hich the teacher simply deposits knowledge in the
m in d o f the student.
H aving acknowledged the perceptiveness and power o f all o f this, we
need then to go further to try to rethink m any o f the elements o f this posi
tion, w hich seems m arked in im p o rtan t ways by the institutional forces that
are supposed to be under critique. This is where it helps to th in k the m ethod
o f close reading through its central relationships w ith the project o f criticism
and the category o f the aesthetic. Gallop is typical o f m any recent defenses
o f close reading in th at she shares the foundational third-period assum ption
th at the project o f criticism and the category o f the aesthetic need to be
rejected, b u t tries nevertheless to defend the m ethod that was their working
edge. Yet it is the rejection o f the first two th at has led to the rejection o f the
last; one cannot, I think, have “close reading” in any sophisticated form
w ith o u t some version o f the others. Thus w hen Gallop tells us that “m y
p o in t here is n o t to argue about the relative m erits o f historicism and close
reading as m ethods for studying literature; I have no doubt that both pro
duce w orthw hile knowledge,” it seems telling that the defense o f close
reading, even against the “historicization” o f literary studies, needs now to

be m ade in these specifically scholarly, rather than critical, term s (183). If
we accept the production o f knowledge as our goal, how are we to have
close reading in its capacity as an alternative to the “banking” or knowledge-
transfer m odel o f education? Responding th at close reading allows the stu
dents to produce their own knowledge only gets us halfway there; it strikes
m e as better to say th at close reading is a practice o f cultivation— or encul-
turation, if you like— rather than knowledge production per se, and proceed
on th at basis.
Similarly, G allops argum ent for the value o f close reading is in sym pathy
w ith the tendencies she is trying to critique in that it rests on a thorough
rejection o f any aesthetic justification for literary study. She offers us close
reading as a defense and a justification for literary studies, but justifies close
reading in tu rn by appealing to its usefulness as a way o f approaching polit
ical, historical, and theoretical texts, rather than literary ones. Is it too naive,
given our investigation o f W illiam s’ cunning critique o f the category o f
the literary, to object th at the justification for literary studies surely has to
rest, at some stage, on the concept o f literature? In saying this, I am not
defending the category o f the literary in its traditional form. Rather, I am
simply observing, at a m ore basic level, th at a discipline needs to be able to
justify its object o f study, n o t just its m ethod for studying it. Unless literary
studies can do this, then even am ong those w ho are convinced o f the value
o f close reading the correct institutional response w ould, and surely will, be
to say th at students in law, political science, philosophy, and so forth should
sim ply be taught to read m ore closely in their own disciplines. O ne can
im agine the kind o f ideological reading practices th at w ould result— indeed,
one does n o t have to try very hard to imagine them , since to a certain extent
they exist already.
Truly responding to argum ents o f this kind means going back to ask w hat
we really m ean by “close reading,” beyond paying careful attention to small
units o f any kind o f text. O u r questions then m ust be o f the order: w hat
ranges o f capabilities and sensitivities is the reading practice being used to
cultivate? W h at kinds o f texts are m ost suited to cultivating those ranges?
P utting the issue naively, it seems to me th at the m ethod o f close reading
cannot serve as a justification for disciplinary literary study until the disci
pline is able to show th at there is som ething about literary texts that make
TH E H IS T O R IC I S T /C O N T E X T U A L IS T PARADIGM 109
them especially rewarding training grounds for the kinds o f aptitudes the
discipline is claim ing to train. Here again the rejected category o f the aes
thetic proves indispensable, for o f course literary and other aesthetic texts
are particularly rich training grounds for all sorts o f capabilities and sensitiv
ities: aesthetic capabilities, in the m aterialist and instrum ental sense o f aes
thetic I have been attem pting to gesture tow ard throughout. I ought perhaps
to read into the record, at points like this, how very merely gestural these
gestures have been; the real task o f developing claims o f this kind is o f course
philosophical and m ethodological rather than historical, and thus has
seemed to me to belong to a different book.
In any case, the answer to the broader question is “yes”: the scholarly turn
that inaugurated the current period o f literary studies has indeed led to a
profound reorientation o f our central methodology, in that “close reading”
now functions as a scholarly practice, rather than a critical one. That m uch
for m y first “yes”; now for m y second. For it m ight be noted, and fairly, that
this account, in which “close reading” becomes quite a new thing in practice,
bu t is nevertheless proudly retained in principle, rather troubles the sym
m etry o f m y m odel o f the discipline’s history. If the shift to scholarship in this
period has really been as im portant as I claim, then should n o t “close
reading” have gone the way o f “practical criticism,” “criticism,” and the “aes
thetic”? The story o f the demise o f criticism and the aesthetic in our period
should lead us to expect that the m ethod that was originally developed as
their working edge w ould also come under critique from the left on the
grounds that it is irredeemably com prom ised by its purported origin in New
Criticism , Leavism, and similar, and this in tu rn should lead to calls for its
rejection and replacem ent by m ore properly scholarly m ethods. W hy has this
n o t happened? In fact it has happened, though somewhat belatedly. For o f
course Franco M oretti, one o f the m ost interesting and iconoclastic o f con
tem porary literary scholars, has famously made an argum ent o f just this kind.
Franco Moretti
M oretti s work, like Jam esons, has led to m ore specific innovations than can
easily be nam ed. For present purposes, it is enough to note th at M oretti’s
m ost famous and challenging argum ent has been a m ethodological one: his
critique o f “close reading” in favor o f w hat he has called “distant reading.” In
the context o f the longer history o f the discipline, it is o f some interest that
this critique and rejection o f “close reading” has been m ade in the nam e o f a
m ore general com m itm ent to reform ing the discipline by m aking it m ore
objective, quantitative, and therefore properly “scientific.”
M oretti first m ade his claim for “distant reading” in the paper “Conjec
tures on W orld Literature,” w hich originally appeared in 2000 in the New
Left Review.17 There, his argum ent was th at the only way literary studies
w ould be able to cope w ith the massive increase in jurisdiction, as it were,
required by its new com m itm ent to the study o f “W orld Literature” w ould
be to eschew close reading in favor o f “distant reading.” M oretti starts by
posing the problem as follows:
W h at does it m ean, studying w orld literature? H o w d o w e do it? I w ork on

W est European narrative betw een 179 0 and 1930, and I already feel like a
charlatan outside o f Britain or France. W o rld literature? M any people have read
m ore and better than I have, o f course, but still, w e are talking o f hundreds o f
languages and literatures here. R eading m ore’ seem s hardly to be the solution.
Especially because w e’ve just started rediscovering w hat Margaret C oh en calls
the great unread’: I w ork on W est European narrative, etc., etc. . . . n ot really,
I w ork on its canonical fraction, w h ich is n ot even on e per cent o f published
literature. A n d again, som e people have read m ore, but the p oin t is that there
are thirty thousand nineteenth-century British novels ou t there, forty, fifty,
sixty thousand— n o-on e really know s, n o -o n e has read them , n o on e ever will.
A n d then there are French novels, C hinese, A rgentinian, Am erican . . . Read
in g m ore’ is always a good thing, but n ot the solution. (45—46)
The problem is th at there are too m any texts to read, and M oretti’s bold
solution is to give up reading and do som ething else instead. N oting this
helps us to see from the outset th at the term “distant reading,” w hen it later
appears, will prove to be som ething o f a misnomer, since the m ethod it
describes is n o t really reading at all: rather, it is a m ethod that, w hen it
appears elsewhere as the uncontroversial stock-in-trade o f m any scientific or
social-scientific disciplines, is unproblem atically labeled things like “data
analysis,” “data m ining” (if using specialized search engines), or similar. But
then, if one can say this politely, w hen we call it by its ordinary nam e it starts
to sound a bit less novel, and a bit less like w hat m any o f us feel, if vaguely,
111
th at we came to the hum anities to do. O nce we have noticed this, it becomes
interesting to ask w hy exactly the term “distant reading” has been chosen.
In his new preface to this essay in the D istant Reading volume, M oretti
claims (or rather, claims w ithout claiming, as it were) that the term arose as
an accident or a joke:
That fatal form ula had been a late addition to the paper, where it was initially
specified, in an allusion to the basic procedure o f quantitative history, by the
words ‘serial reading’. T hen, som ehow , serial’ disappeared, and ‘d istant’
rem ained. Partly, it was m eant as a joke; a m o m en t o f relief in a rather relent
less argum ent. B ut no on e seem s to have taken it as a joke, and th ey were
probably right. (44)
The phrase arose “som ehow ”; to the extent th at he is willing to speculate

about the intentions o f its author, he tells us that it was partly m eant as a
joke, though no one seems to have taken it as such. “They were probably
right,” he concedes, and yet a suspicion has been raised th at M oretti s
critics rather lack a sense o f hum or. In all seriousness, I hope th at this unfor
tunate series o f m isunderstandings will soon come to an end, and that
M oretti will no longer to have cause to com plain o f our dourness. Certainly
this new protestation o f innocence is a little difficult to take at face value, in
a fresh volum e n o t entitled, for example, “Collected Essays on M ethod,”
“Q uantitative Literary Studies,” or “Serial Reading,” but, inevitably, “Dis
tan t Reading.” W anting to test this claim that the phrase was (perhaps) just
an accident after all, and thus returning to reread the original essay, we find
th at in fact the “fatal form ula” is repeated m any times, and at key m om ents,
and indeed th at it is provocative in just th at m ode characteristic o f M oretti
w hen he makes argum ents th at are seriously intended. W ith o u t w anting to
be aggressive, then, it seems to me th at the au thors attem pts to deflect the
question really succeed in giving it a new urgency. W hat is really at stake in
the coining o f this phrase “distant reading”? W hy decide on it, highlight it,
and then keep using it again and again? W hy did the phrase catch on so
readily? W hy then w ould its author move to disavow it, w ithout really dis
avowing it? W h at kinds o f interests does the underlying analysis serve?
The phrase seems to be offered as a kind o f antonym to “close reading,”
b u t as Jonathan Culler has noted, the two terms are not opposites at all,
because they do n o t refer to the same order o f thing: the real opposition here
is that between data analysis and reading per se.18 O u r question then becomes
as to w hat is gained by fram ing an argum ent against reading-in-general as an
argum ent against “close reading” in particular. To find out, let us look closely
at M orettis famous critique o f “close reading”:
[T ]h e trouble w ith close reading (in all o f its incarnations, from the n ew crit
icism to deconstruction) is that it necessarily depends on an extrem ely sm all
canon. This m ay have b ecom e an uncon sciou s and invisible prem ise by now,
but is an iron on e nonetheless: you invest so m u ch in individual texts only i f
y o u th in k that very few o f them really matter. O therw ise, it doesn’t make
sense. A n d i f y o u w ant to lo o k b eyond th e canon (and o f course w orld litera
ture w ill do so— it w ou ld be absurd i f it didn’t!) close reading w ill n o t do it.
It’s n o t designed to do it, it’s designed to do the op posite. A t b ottom , it’s a
theological exercise— very solem n treatm ent o f very few texts taken very seri
ously— whereas w hat w e really need is a little pact w ith the D evil; w e k n ow
h ow to read texts, n o w let’s learn h o w n o t to read them . D istan t reading:
w here distance, let m e repeat it, is a co n d itio n o f know ledge. (48)
This phrase “close reading (in all its incarnations, from the new criticism to
deconstruction)” certainly sums up the received view o f the history o f the
m ethod. By this stage in our history, I hope it is evident th at this received
view is quite misleading, since it b oth misdiagnoses the origin and unduly
limits the range o f the practice. As we have seen, the m ethod was developed
well before the N ew Critics, for ends th at were in im portant ways opposed
to those later pursued by them ; and the m ethod continues to be used even
today, albeit in a radically different form , by historicist scholars w ho have
little or no relation to either “new criticism” or “deconstruction.” So we need
to th in k rather m ore carefully than this about w hat “close reading” has been
and could be.
B ut by now all this should be clear enough. W h at m atters more here is
that, though M orettis emphasis rests squarely on the methodological insuffi
ciencies o f close reading, his argum ent seems in m any respects to be a
residual version o f w hat was originally a political one. M oretti tells us, o f
close reading, th at “ [a]t bottom , its a theological exercise— very solemn
treatm ent o f very few texts taken very seriously— whereas w hat we really
113
need is a little pact w ith the Devil.” O nce again w hat we are really talking
about here is the N ew C riticism , and m uch o f the force o f the argum ent
derives from our presum ed opposition to th at old “theological exercise”— an
opposition w hich, as we have seen, has always had a political rather than
strictly m ethodological cast. Here we can observe that m uch o f the persua
siveness o f M oretti s argum ent derives from our residual sense that positions
o f a N ew Critical kind are som ehow still, in 2000 and then again in 2013, a
potential political threat to the discipline, and are thus still w orth reacting
against. This is a big part o f w hat is gained by fram ing a critique o f reading-
in-general as a critique o f “close reading” in particular: it gives w hat is really
a tu rn to a scientistic m odel o f scholarship som ething o f a leftist political
valence, as a critique o f the old idealisms. I f the argum ent for data analysis is
an argum ent against close reading, and close reading is, “at bottom ,” New
Critical and hence idealist, then data analysis comes to seem the proper
m aterialist m eth o d .19 This k ind o f move should make us uncom fortable,
given the fact th at the N ew C riticism is long dead as a significant force in
literary studies, and given also the fact th at the particular econom ic, polit
ical, and cultural situation th at had once allowed it to function as a signifi
cant form o f conservatism has long since been replaced by a situation o f a
very different, and in m any ways, quite opposite, kind.
Here we can start to see how m uch o f M oretti s position is actually laid out
for us, n o t by M oretti, b u t by the system o f assumptions that gained ground
w ith the scholarly tu rn o f the late 1970s and early 1980s, and that is now the
discipline’s paradigm atic mode. For surely it is the disciplines earlier rejection
o f criticism that enables M oretti to assume that his task is to use literary texts
as a route to knowledge about larger social and historical forces, and surely it
is the disciplines earlier rejection o f the aesthetic that enables M oretti to
assume th at his task is to deal, not just w ith the “canonical fraction,” but w ith
the whole o f the “great unread.” The phrase— which, as M oretti notes, was
originally M argaret C ohens— seems to im ply that the drawing o f aesthetic
distinctions autom atically involves us in the drawing o f class distinctions, and
in an elitist way. Both this buried assum ption and the assum ption that lies
beneath M oretti s rejection o f close reading as “theological” were, in their day,
good political argum ents from the left: the critique o f idealist aesthetics and
the critique o f idealist criticism, respectively. It is, I think, characteristic o f
the contem porary scene in literary studies that these explicitly political
argum ents appear here only, b u t precisely, in residual form. It is then w orth
asking what has happened to these good arguments, and others o f their kind;
why they are no longer being m ade in explicit terms, but instead m ust be left
to remain as im plications beneath the surface o f a debate that seems to con
cern itself w ith m ethodology in some m ore politically neutral sense; and
whether, were they to become explicit, they w ould still seem politically desir
able to us in our very different situation today.
O n e way to suggest an answer to questions o f this kind is to ask: w hat
account o f the project and value o f literary study is being assumed by
thinkers w ho can write, or read, the following sentences, w ithout a profound
sense o f disjunction? Close reading, M oretti tells us, is insufficient as a m eth
odology because
it necessarily depends o n an extrem ely sm all canon. This m ay have b ecom e an

uncon sciou s and invisible prem ise by now, but is an iron on e nonetheless: you
invest so m u ch in individual texts on ly i f you. th in k that very few o f them
really matter. O therw ise it doesn’t m ake sense. (48; em phasis in original)
In critique o f this, w ould it n o t now be undisciplinary, as it were, to bring up

the example o f— reading? Even “having a favorite book”? If we are prepared
to th in k in these kinds o f nonprofessionalized term s for a m om ent, M oretti s
claim here starts to seem rather remarkable, for it is obvious enough that
people invest a great deal in individual texts all the tim e, w ithout feeling it
at all necessary to claim th at those texts are the only ones th at “really m atter.”
To say otherwise is to fail to im agine th at people may come to literature for
reasons other than mastery o f the entire literary field. O r rather, to p u t it
m ore precisely, in saying otherwise here M oretti is proceeding on the basis
o f an “unconscious and invisible prem ise” o f his own: that the only way in
w hich literature can “m atter” for disciplinary purposes is as a total system,
w hich in tu rn m atters as a diagnostic instrum ent for the analysis o f the total
system o f historical and cultural forces. By this stage in the discipline’s his
tory, any other approach just “doesn’t make sense.”
This is the kind o f disciplinary logic th at M oretti’s w ork so brilliantly
extends. Specifically, it is the logic o f the scholarly tu rn s critique o f “criti
cism” and the “aesthetic”— the critique we saw in W illiam s— and M oretti
extends it by pointing o u t to us, in effect, that once we have jettisoned both
THE H IS T O R IC I S T /C O N T E X T U A L IS T PARADIGM
o f these on the grounds th at they are irredeemably K antian, idealist, and

N ew Critical, we have little reason to hang on to close reading— or even
reading per se— at all. H e sees, in a way th at m any others have not, that
criticism, the aesthetic, and close reading m ust be th ought through— and
thus m ust be defended or critiqued— together. The whole project o f “quan
titative literary studies,” as currently constituted, is really founded on this
insight: th at the three lines o f thinking we have been tracing cannot be
untangled, and th at severing the first two com m its us to severing the third.
W h en we read his claim th at the study o f W orld Literature will “o f course”
look beyond the canon, because “it w ould be absurd if it didn’t!” we m ust, I
think, detect the exasperation o f a vibrant thinker w ho has wholeheartedly
accepted the scholarly ideal o f literary study as a discipline o f knowledge
production, ideally o f a “scientific” kind, b u t who nevertheless continues to
find him self in a discipline w hich has n o t yet realized w hat a truly thorough
going com m itm ent to th at ideal w ould entail. It is, if you like, the problem
o f the little boy in the story o f the E m perors New Clothes: M oretti is the
only one w ho has been willing to poin t out the “absurdity” o f our situation,
in w hich we justify literary study by appealing to standards o f scholarship—
the production o f knowledge, ideally o f a scientific kind, about history and
culture— b u t continue to use tools and concepts— close reading, as well as,
residually, the aesthetic distinction between the canonical and the nonca-
nonical— th at were originally built for the very different task o f criticism.
Thus if M oretti s argum ent against close reading has seemed controver
sial, it is only because we are n o t used to seeing anyone so enthusiastically
follow to its natural conclusion the central logic th at has dictated so m uch
o f the last three decades o f literary study: the rejection o f the project o f crit
icism— aesthetic education for som ething resembling, in aspiration if not in
fact, a general audience— and the embrace o f the project o f scholarship—
the production o f cultural and historical knowledge for an audience o f spe
cialists. In fact one m ight be tem pted to say th at the iconoclasm o f M oretti s
argum ent lies precisely in the lack o f hesitation w ith w hich he com m its
him self to the current orthodoxy. O n e cannot b u t adm ire this com m itm ent
to em bracing the full consequences o f a position, this refusal to be held back
by disciplinary inertia, w hich is surely here the m ark o f a genuine thinker at
work. Yet, having acknowledged this, we need then to go on to ask w hether
som ething rather crucial has n o t been missed— whether, in fact, the position
being com m itted to is n o t one designed to respond to a situation very dif

ferent from our own.
M oretti s seminal w ork Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005) takes as its epigraph
the following lines from R obert Musil:
A m an w h o w ants the truth becom es a scientist; a m an w h o w ants to give free

play to his subjectivity m ay b ecom e a writer; but w hat should a m an do w h o
w ants som eth in g in between? (1)
In its way, it is a version o f the question th at the belletrists faced at the start
o f the tw entieth century: the question o f how a concern for the literary, in
its aesthetic and subjectivity-form ing capacity (“free play”), ought to be pur
sued w ithin the rigorous and scientistic term s o f the m odern research uni
versity. M oretti s answer is “quantitative literary history,” and it is an answer
th at is very m uch in line w ith the central logic o f literary studies in our
period.20 T hat answer am ounts to a newly scientized version o f W illiam s’
answer, Eagleton’s answer, Jam esons answer, the answer o f so m any others
on the left: the critique o f ideology. F urther to the right, the answer given by
so m any others from the left-liberal m ainstream o f the discipline, from
G reenblatt and Gallagher onward, has been to write literary and cultural
history by tracking the embeddedness o f texts. In all these cases, the answers
offered find their intellectual grounding in the basic character o f the histor-
icist/contextualist paradigm: th at the task o f literary studies is the analysis o f
culture. Yet it is possible to answer M usil’s question rather differently. For
instance, we could proceed from our attem pt to docum ent the history o f
subjectivity rigorously and scientifically, and into a m ore active attem pt to
develop rigorous and scientific m ethods for the cultivation o f subjectivities.
To establish such a project w ithin literary studies, we w ould need to begin
by developing both a philosophical account o f how subjectivities come to be
cultivated and a rigorous m ethodology o f reading. But then here we are w ith
I. A. Richards, back at the start o f our story.
The Breadth and Richness of the Paradigm

These are just five figures— six, if you co u n t m y hasty com m ents on G allup—
and I suppose one could argue th at m y analysis o f them proves little about
the discipline at large. Obviously, in some crucial respects, they are quite
unrepresentative— four o f the six are the proverbial “w hite m en,” for
instance. Yet I do n o t th in k anyone w ould deny th at they have been am ong
the m ore im p o rtan t figures in literary studies over the last few decades, nor
th at they have functioned as figureheads for broader tendencies. O thers
could easily be added. For instance, I have m ade no m ention at all o f those
new lines o f w ork th at are so obviously “scholarly” in character that little
m ore needs to be said. An example here w ould be the field o f “book history”
or “bibliography,” w hich has prospered in our period: to point o u t th at the
field understands its task as the production o f knowledge about culture
w ould be no revelation at all. O r one could add Edward Said, another
scholar, deeply influenced by W illiams, who served as the inspiration for a
crucial tendency o f the period. Again, to call Saids work, and the w ork o f
those w ho followed him , part o f the dom in an t paradigm is no revelation, for
the central range o f w ork in postcolonial studies has very evidently been
conducted in classic historicist/contextualist fashion. In this connection it
is w orth noting in passing that, tow ard the end o f his career, Said had
th o u g h t his way around to a position from w hich it seemed to him best to
call explicitly for a “return to philology”: the effects o f the victory o f the
scholarly paradigm could hardly be clearer. In any case, I believe the figures
we have discussed here provide enough points w ith w hich to m ark o u t the
rough shape o f the current paradigm in a prelim inary way.
For the benefit o f readers w ho are unfam iliar w ith the texture o f the par
adigm as it extends beyond these figures— or w ho are familiar w ith it, b u t
m ight need a gentle rem inder simply as to the scale o f the consensus it rep
resents— it m ay be w orth providing here a rapid roll call o f significant exam
ples. Below I have reproduced a key sentence or two from a series o f m ajor
works o f literary scholarship produced in the last th irty years: sentences that
I take to express the character o f the larger project. This is odd practice—
norm ally one does n o t reproduce a long series o f quotes w ithout perform ing
at least some analysis o f them — b u t it seems to me a useful way to provide,
albeit in a ruthlessly concise way, some sense o f the breadth, richness, and
ultim ate coherence o f the paradigm . It helps also as a way o f recalling that
any functioning intellectual paradigm requires w ork o f a wide range o f dif
ferent kinds: the examples assembled here include m any attem pts to use the
literary as an occasion for w riting cultural history m ore or less directly, o f
course, b u t also analyses (often “theories”) o f particular cultural processes,

histories and analyses o f m ore obviously literary or aesthetic phenom ena,
supporting proposals for new critical vocabularies w ith w hich to address
specific media, attem pts to historicize specific genres— and so on. It is, inev
itably, a rich and sophisticated intellectual scene, w ith interlocking and often
opposing projects being carried out at m any levels. M y point is that behind
this complexity, one can discern the shape o f a com m on set o f assum ptions
as to w hat kind o f w ork the literary disciplines are supposed to perform .
A final note before proceeding: I realize th at m any readers will be tem pted
to skip these quotes, or else merely skim them , but if youVe stuck w ith the
book this far, I urge you to take the full plunge by really reading them
through. M y own argum ent aside, the sentences assembled here provide an
index to a small sample o f some o f the finer scholarly thinking o f our period.
You will have taken m y point, w hich really is a simple one, once you are able
to sense the mass o f the com m on body around w hich all these differently
w eighted projects revolve.
[W ]h en w e studied w o m e n s achievem ents in radically different genres w e

fo u n d w hat began to seem a distinctively fem ale literary tradition, a tradition
that had been approached and appreciated by m any w o m en readers and
writers but w h ich no on e had yet defined in its entirety. . . . Seeking to
understand the anxieties o u t o f w h ich this tradition m ust have grow n, we
undertook a close study o f the literature produced by w o m en in the n in e
teen th century. . . .
Sandra M . Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The M a d w o m a n in the A ttic

(N ew Haven: Yale U niversity Press, 1979) xi
In this study I shall explore som e o f the ways in w h ich evolutionary th eory has
been assim ilated and resisted by novelists. . . . The b ook is concerned w ith
V ictorian novelists. . . . B ut evolutionary ideas are even m ore influential w hen
they b ecom e assum ptions em bedded in our culture than w h ile they are the
subject o f controversy. . . . That process o f naturalisation is the other major
top ic o f m y enquiry. . . . Precisely because w e live in a culture dom in ated by
evolutionary ideas, it is difficult for us to recognize their im aginative pow er in
our daily readings o f the w orld. W e need to do so.
Gillian Beer, D a r w in s P lots

(Cambridge: Cam bridge U niversity Press, 1983) 2
TH E H I S T O R IC I S T /C O N T E X T U A L IS T PARADIGM 119
This b o o k argues that in his sonnets Shakespeare invents a gen u in ely new
p oetic subjectivity and that this poetic subjectivity possesses special force in
post-R enaissance or p ost-H u m an ist literature because it extends by disrupt
in g w hat until Shakespeare’s sonnets is the norm ative nature o f poetic person
and p oetic persona.
Joel Finem an, Shakespeare's P erju red Eye: The In ven tion o f P oetic S u b jectivity
in the Sonnets
(Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1985) 1
A s I hope to show, the p o in t o f the [V ictorian novel] . . . is to confirm the

novel-reader in his id en tity as “liberal subject”. . . . I further assum e that
the traditional n o v e l. . . remains a vital consideration in our culture. . . . The
“death o f the n ovel” . . . has really m eant the explosion everywhere o f the
novelistic. . . . To speak o f the relation o f the V ictorian novel to the age o f
w h ich it was . . . the mass culture, is thus to recognize a central episode in the
genealogy o f our present.
D . A . M iller, The N o v e l a n d the Police

(Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1988) x
I have m ade no great discoveries o f undeniable links, constructed n o n ew

“proofs,” or fou n d heretofore lost m anuscripts sh ow in g the W est’s in d eb ted
ness to m edieval Arabic culture. I recount no facts that have been u n know n
or have rem ained unadduced by m any in previous discussions. I w ill attem pt
m erely to show w h y the texts, facts, and discoveries o f others have seem ed
negligible or ignorable to so m any R om ance literary historians and to sketch
o u t a perspective that w ou ld render th em significant, that w ou ld bring them
in from the cold and the ob livion to w h ich they have so lon g been relegated.
M aria Rosa M enocal, The A ra b ic Role in M e d ie v a l L iterary H istory

(Philadelphia: U niversity o f Pennsylvania Press, 1990) xiv
E pistem o lo g y o f th e C loset proposes that m any o f the major nodes o f

th ou gh t and know ledge in tw entieth -cen tu ry W estern culture as a w h ole
are structured— indeed, fractured— by a chronic, n o w en d em ic crisis o f
h om o/h eterosexu al definition, indicatively m ale, dating from the end o f the
n in eteen th century.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, E pistem ology o f the C loset

(Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1990) 1
A study o f C haucerian subjectivity thus seem s w orth undertaking n o t on ly for

its ow n intrinsic interest, and n o t on ly in order to recover a past too easily
m isrepresented . . . but because it can perhaps contribute to understanding o f
the issues involved in the dialectical process o f self-construction per se. A n d
w h ile historical k now ledge m ay be a frail instrum ent w ith w h ich to con fron t
the vast eco n o m ic and social forces that are shaping and m isshaping our
w orld, it is n o t finally to be scorned.
Lee Patterson, C hau cer a n d the S u bject o f H istory

(M adison: U niversity o f W isconsin Press, 1991) 12
Regardless o f their affiliation to the right, left, or centre, groups have fallen
back on the idea o f cultural nationalism . . . . A gainst this choice stands
another, m ore difficult option: the theorisation o f creolisation, m etissage,
mestizaje, and hybridity. . . . This b ook addresses on e sm all area in the grand
consequence o f this historical con ju n ction — the stereophonic, bilingual, or
bifocal cultural form s originated by, but no longer the exclusive property
of, blacks dispersed w ith in the structures o f feeling, producing, co m m u
nicating, and rem em bering that I have heuristically called the black A tlantic
w orld.
Paul Gilroy, The B lack A tla n tic

(London: Verso, 1993) 2 - 3
W h ile scholars generally agree that the system atic use o f copyrights, or signs
o f authorial ow nership, in France and E ngland dates from the eighteenth and
n in eteen th centuries . . . a nascent consciousness about literary ow nership in
the sixteenth century has been n oted, albeit in rather vague terms. . . . I pre
sent here evidence o f a sustained effort on the part o f vernacular writers to
protect their works through law suit, the use o f privileges, an early form o f
copyright, and the supervision o f their publication and distribution as early as
the first decade o f the sixteenth century.
C ynthia J. Brown, Poets, Patrons, a n d P rin ters

(Ithaca: C ornell U niversity Press, 1995)
W h y care about poetic form and its intricacies, other than in nostalgia for a
bygone era o f criticism? M y purpose in F o rm a l C harges is to refresh this
interest for criticism today by focu sin g “an historically form ed form alist
criticism ” on R om antic aesthetics. . . . M y argum ent is that R om anticism s

in volvem en t w ith p oetic form . . . participates in central discussions o f its his
torical m om en t. . . .
Susan J. W olfson, F orm al Charges: The Shaping o f Poetry in B ritish R om anticism

(Stanford: Stanford U niversity Press, 1997) 1, 30
The readings w h ich com p ose F a m ily F ram es use the photographic im agetexts
that are its subjects to forge a theoretical vocabulary that w ill allow us to talk
about specific elem ents o f fam ily photography. . . . W h at w e need is a lan
guage that w ill allow us to see the cod ed and conventional nature o f fam ily
picture— to bring the conven tion s to the foreground and thus to contest their
ideological power. . . . In F a m ily F ram es . . . I exam ine the idea o f “fam ily” in
contem porary discourse and its pow er to n egotiate and m ediate som e o f the
traum atic shifts that have shaped post-m od ern m entalities, and to serve as an
alibi for their violence.
M arianne H irsch, F am ily Frames: Photography\ N a rra tive, a n d P ostm em ory

(Cambridge: Harvard U niversity Press, 1997) 10, 13
I f a single claim stands at the heart o f this book, it is that A nglo-A m erican
m odernism is centrally anim ated by a tension betw een an urgent validation o f
p roduction and an adm iration for an object w orld b eyond the m anipulations
o f consciousness. . . .
D ouglas M ao, S o lid Objects: M o dern ism a n d the Test o f P rodu ction
(Princeton: Princeton U niversity Press, 1999) 11
As I’ll argue, the novel rose less by challenging the esthetic and social hierar
chies w h ich had kept it dow n than by projecting those stratifications on to its
ow n audience. Far from leveling class or gender distinctions . . . the novel has
internalized and even reinvented them .
Leah Price, The A n th ology a n d the Rise o f the N o v e l

(Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 200 0 ) 7
H o w cou ld d om esticity be key to preserving the diet, rituals, and m ethods

that constitu ted English culture but also be the abject realm to be disavow ed
in the nam e o f progress? . . . S ta g in g D o m e stic ity isolates such contradictions
as they surface in early m odern plays so as to m ake visible the contradictory

but pow erful identifications they offered to audiences.
W endy W all, S tagin g D om esticity: H ou seh old W ork a n d English Id e n tity in

E arly M o d ern D r a m a
(Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 200 2 ) 5
D o m estic interiors . . . rarely appear in the high-level hierarchies o f poetry or

prose until later in the eighteenth century, but then dom in ate nin eteen th -
century novels and poetry. This b ook w ill try to account for the historical and
cultural change in the status and use o f description. . . .
C ynthia Wall, The Prose o f Things: Transform ations o f D escription in the

E ighteenth C en tu ry
(Chicago: University o f C hicago Press, 200 6 ) 10
M u ch o f this w ork w ill underm ine the fantasies o f cultural exclusivity o f both
“Shakespeare” and “C hina,” attending to the fact that even th ou gh every read
in g is a rewriting, m ore rewritings o f a canonical text do n o t always translate
into m ore radical rethinking o f norm ative assum ptions. It is w ith this con vic
tion that I exam ine the transnational im aginary o f C hina in Shakespearean
perform ance a n d Shakespeare’s place in C hinese cultural history from the first
O p iu m War in 1839 to our tim es.
Alexa H uang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two C enturies o f C u ltu ra l Exchange

(N ew York: C olum bia U niversity Press, 2009)
M y basic hypothesis in this b ook is that b oth the in stitu tion o f slavery and the
culture o f taste were fundam ental to the shaping o f m odern identity, and that
they did so n o t apart but as n onidentical tw ins, similar yet different.
Sim on G ikandi, Slavery a n d the C u ltu re o f Taste

(Princeton: Princeton U niversity Press, 201 1 ) xii
W h y do p eople stay attached to conventional good -life fantasies— say, o f

enduring reciprocity in couples, fam ilies, political system s, institu tion s, mar
kets, at w ork— w h en the evidence o f their instability, fragility, and dear cost
abounds? . . . Readers o f m y national sentim ental trilogy— The A n a to m y o f
N a tio n a l F antasy ; The F em ale C o m p la in t, and The Q u een o f A m eric a n Goes to
W ashington C ity — w ill recognize these questions as central to its investigation
o f U .S . aesthetics, erotics and p olitics over the last tw o centuries. . . . C ru e l
O p tim ism expands the concerns o f that w ork transnationally and temporally,
exten d in g th em to th e contem porary m om en t.
Lauren Berlant, C ru el O ptim ism (Durham, D uke University Press, 2011) 2—3
The problem is precisely that m ost accounts o f the m odern claim its European
face and disavow these m ixed form s, believing that the history o f Europe or
the W e s t . . . can be w ritten w ith o u t reference to them . If, however, on e can
dem onstrate that the th ou gh t o f writers and intellectuals like D id erot and
Burke is p rofoundly form ed . . . by reflection u pon slavery and conquest,
then it ou gh t to be possible to reconfigure the relationship betw een en ligh t
en m en t, colonialism , and m od ern ity in a m ore proxim ate and productive
manner.
Sunil M . A gnani, H a tin g E m p ire Properly: The Two In dies a n d the L im its
o f E n lig h ten m en t A n ticolon ialism (N ew York: Fordham University Press,
201 3 ) xxi
[T ]his b ook tells a story o f the historical accidents and reversals that led
Spanish-Am ericans to im agine them selves n o t as sovereigns o f n ew nations
but as an unexpected and, increasingly, racialized group o f peoples w ith in the
U n ited States. . . . It traces the circulation o f ideas and texts as these relate to
the m aking o f Latino intellectual life in the U n ited States. It is a history. . . .
Raul Coronado, A W orld N o t to Com e: A H istory o f L a tin o W ritin g a n d

P r in t C ulture
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2 0 1 3 ) 17
C h ap ter Four
The Critical Unconscious
I C .U H N T E L L S U S th at no paradigm can entirely m aster its field: all

are troubled by doubts, provisos, and discontent. W hatever may be the
value o f this as a general proposition, it certainly has its merits as a way o f
understanding the last few decades in literary studies. The historicist/con-
textualist paradigm now dom inates the discipline, and has done so for a
generation— and yet like all dom in an t paradigms, it has n o t been entirely
untroubled by a sense th at som ething im p o rtant may lie beyond its limits.
M uch good w ork senses and tests the existing boundaries, even as it fails to
secure a breach. If one believes in the political— I am tem pted to add
“hum an”— im portance o f som ething like the project o f criticism, then one
w onders a great deal about these forms o f dissent, some o f w hich seem
m ore sym pathetic than others. The present dom inance o f the histori-
cist/contextualist paradigm m ight lead one to predict, pessimistically, that
the discipline is simply heading for m ore o f the same— but is there a hidden
trajectory? O ne way to answer this question is to look back on the more
recent history o f literary studies, trying to assess the extent to w hich various
thinkers’ attem pts to test the boundaries o f the scholarly paradigm m ight be
readable as the first sketches o f a fresh critical paradigm to come. Naturally,
this is b oth speculative and perform ative, risking falling into either prophecy
or m anifesto— b u t it seems w orth m aking the attem pt in any case. W hen we
look at the disciplines recent history, w hat can we find that m ight serve as
the seed o f a possible future for criticism?
125
In this chapter, we will take a rapid to u r through some o f the m ore inter
esting new tendencies th at have sprung up w ithin the discipline in recent
years— tendencies th at are by no m eans “literary critical” in their basic char
acter, b u t th at in the longer historical view seem readable as expressions o f
frustration w ith the narrowness o f the current paradigm , and perhaps even
as im plicit attem pts to make a break. For convenience, I group these under
three headings: Pendulum s, Intim ations, and Expansions. U nder the heading
o f “Pendulum s,” I bring together those whose sense o f the narrowness o f the
dom in an t paradigm has led them to call for the return o f the very term s that
the historicist/contextualist paradigm traditionally has been m ost at pains to
discredit. I take our period’s various “new aestheticisms” and “new form al
isms” as em blem atic cases, trying to draw clear distinctions between nos
talgic calls for a return to the old paradigm and genuine attem pts to move
forward onto new ground. U nder the heading o f “Intim ations,” I bring
together those whose dissatisfactions w ith the dom inant paradigm have led
them to make proposals for new modes o f reading (“surface reading,” “repar
ative reading,” and so on), as well as related developments in the study o f
affect. I suggest th at proposals o f this kind have im plicitly registered the
need for a disciplinary project o f aesthetic— or at least affective— education,
though as yet th at project, such as it is, is being carried o u t in an unsystem
atic and preparadigm atic way. Finally, under the heading o f “Expansions” I
bring together the m any proposals th at we have seen over the last thirty years
for dram atically expanded contextual frames: the key term s here are o f the
order “transnational,” “global,” “deep tim e,” “world literature,” “A nthropo-
cene,” and so on. These, I suggest, need to be read together in series as a long
collective attem pt to break o u t o f the narrow confines o f contextualism as
usual. This breakout attem pt m ight appear merely an effort to extend the
reach o f the existing paradigm , b u t if one is willing to understand its under
lying m otivation as a frustration w ith field specialization or even scholarly
specialization per se, then it comes to seem as if it, too, ought to be read as
one o f the m any m eans by w hich the discipline has registered, at quite a deep
structural level, the loss o f the generalist paradigm o f criticism.
I th in k the history o f these three tendencies is quite exciting, b u t I m ight
as well adm it from the outset th at it is a som ew hat repetitive one. For in this
chapter, we will see the same pattern again and again: an incisive thinker
encounters a lim it in their local sphere th at is in fact one o f the b o u n d
aries o f the d om inant paradigm , though this goes unrecognized as such.
Frustrated by th at lim it, the thinker proceeds to critique certain elements o f

the d o m in an t paradigm — a critique th at turns out to be partial, since for
historical reasons the paradigm itself is never quite brought fully into view.
Being partial, the critique is then regathered fairly com pletely into the m ain
stream o f scholarly w ork, though the core o f the critique continues to ges
ture toward som ething beyond it. T hat is the pattern, and once one has seen
it, or som ething very like it, recurring across a range o f different discourses,
one begins to feel th at one is really looking at a m uch broader phenom enon
than any account th at deals merely w ith individual instances will be able to
keep in view. Thus in w hat follows, I will be suggesting th at m any o f the
m ore interesting m ethodological thinkers o f recent decades have in fact been
w orking on the same problem , though this has not generally been recog
nized: the problem being the absence o f a paradigm for criticism as such.
W h at we are looking at, I think, is a richly preparadigm atic scene o f local
innovations, each frustrated by specific elements o f the dom inant paradigm ,
b u t as yet unable to achieve a synthesis th at w ould give expression to all their
frustrations in a unitary and thus determ inative way. P utting things m ore
positively, one could argue th at the new tendencies we see springing into
being all around us may tu rn out to have been the first stirrings o f a collec
tive attem pt to th in k a way tow ard a genuinely alternative paradigm for
criticism, if only they were able to recognize themselves as such.
I am n o t unaware th at claims o f this kind will strike m any as merely ten
dentious— it may be said th at I am taking some o f the m ost influential
thinkers in the contem porary scene, baldly asserting that they do n o t really
understand w hat they are doing, and then reading their proposals as fore
bodings o f a future th at m ay never come to pass. I will have more to say
about this at the end o f the chapter, b u t for now let me simply insist that my
claim is really n o t so absurd as all that. As we have seen, for the bulk o f the
tw entieth century there were two paradigms; having lost one o f them , it is
only to be expected th at existing w ork w ithin the discipline w ould register
the lack. The registering o f th at lack m ight well be im plicit, rather than
explicit, since the thinkers involved have been confronting an unprece
dented situation: viewed historically, the lack o f a true paradigm for criti
cism is quite a novel problem for the discipline— a problem that it has n o t
faced since the 1920s. To these som ewhat consoling com m ents, I only w ant
to add th at the problem facing the discipline is not an entirely new one, for
127
in a broad sense it is m uch the same problem th at the critical revolution o f

the 1920s m anaged to solve: the problem o f creating a true paradigm for
criticism— the problem o f how to build an institution th at w ould cultivate
new, deeper forms o f subjectivity and collectivity in a rigorous and repeat-
able way. It remains to be seen w hether or n o t the discipline will manage to
solve that problem for present purposes, and if so, w hether it will manage to
solve it in a better manner. I hope so.
As one moves through these various tendencies, tracing local debates,
impasses, breakthroughs, and so on, it is easy enough to begin pitting them
against each other in o nes m ind. W h ich o f these new tendencies has proved
better? W hich o f their proposals ought we to believe? A nd so on. These
questions are n o t bad ones, b u t for the m ost part, they have n o t been mine.
Instead, I have tried to assume as often as possible that the frustrations that
gave rise to the tendency in question were to a significant extent real and
justified, and also th at the m ost interesting proposals m ade were all w orth
while in their essentials, at least in their own sphere. M y guiding questions
have therefore been o f the order: how m ight one go about accepting all these
new counter-tendencies simultaneously? W h at w ould it mean to think
through all their best proposals in a single m ovem ent, despite how differ
ently their decisive emphases seem to fall? W ith in that broader line o f ques
tioning, the central challenge has been to distinguish sharply between, first,
nostalgic proposals for the revival o f residual forms o f m id-century criticism;
second, proposals th at im plicitly regather potential sources o f dissent back
into the d o m in an t paradigm ; and third, proposals th at seem to plant the
seeds o f w hat may or may n o t prove the em ergent forms o f a radical critical
paradigm to come.
These m ethodological questions are ultim ately political ones, and yet as
readers will quickly perceive, I do n o t make the distinction between residual,
dom inant, and em ergent prim arily on the basis o f the professed politics o f
the thinkers in question. To p u t bluntly w hat will in any case becom e
apparent in the course o f w hat follows, m any o f those who have been offering
exciting methodological propositions also seem to me to be inhabiting polit
ical positions o f a naively liberal kind, whereas for reasons we have already
explored m any o f the discipline s m ost impressive figures on the left, whose
politics are m ore sym pathetic from m y p o in t o f view, are also some o f the
m ore com m itted exponents o f the d om inant paradigm — the paradigm that,
in m y view, we so urgently need to find a way to move beyond. H ere then

the distinction between residual, d om inant, and em ergent cannot be drawn
simply on the basis o f professed politics, if indeed it ever can. As readers will
see, I have instead tended to draw it on the basis o f the kinds o f positions
being adopted in aesthetics, since I take it that the question o f the aes
thetic is one o f the fundam ental questions on w hich ones consequent posi
tion w ith respect to the status and value o f the literary depends. Generally
speaking, I have taken to be residual those whose proposals have, in effect,
been for the return o f an older, idealist mode; I have taken to be dom inant
those w ho have continued to call for a wholesale rejection o f aesthetic dis
course, though clearly there are also newly em ergent scholarly forms that
operate in this vein; and lastly, m ore speculatively, I have taken to be em er
gent those w ho have sought to lay the groundw ork for a newly materialist
conception o f the aesthetic value o f the literary, particularly those for w hom ,
however distantly, some project o f criticism proper seems on the horizon.
This leads m e to a final proviso, though I hope an unnecessary one. As in
previous chapters, m y m ethod will be to avoid mere lists o f names wherever
possible, and instead to direct attention tow ard specific figures as means by
w hich to take the tem perature o f the broader tendencies in question. Given
this, and given also th at I am w riting here o f w hat is still in m any ways the
contem porary critical scene, it is perhaps w orth repeating once again that
m y aim is neither to conduct a comprehensive taxonom y o f recent work, nor
to assemble some sort o f hon o r roll o f the best and brightest, whatever that
w ould m ean. Though obviously all the figures here are o f considerable
interest, I make no claims as to their being representative o f the m ost exciting
w ork in the discipline: indeed, I take it th at m uch o f the best w ork in our
period is still being carried out in the m ainstream o f the dom inant para
digm , just as one w ould expect. N o r am I claim ing that these are the only
recent tendencies that can fairly be th o u g h t o f as running counter to the
m ain current. Rather, I have selected these particular tendencies, and these
particular figures w ithin those tendencies, because they offer a convenient
range o f reference points w ith w hich to m ark out the shape o f w hat I take to
be a certain im p o rtan t kind o f dissent in our period: a series o f disconnected
points o f tension or frustration w ith the current paradigm , w hich only con
nect up into a coherent picture at the m om ent at w hich one is able to hold
a rough sketch o f a newly em ergent paradigm in view.
129
Part One: Pendulums

As we have seen, our current historicist/contextualist paradigm was
launched in part by a sweeping critique o f the category o f the aesthetic.
Thus it is n o t perhaps so surprising to find th at the earliest signs o f w hat
one could, thinking in hope, call the first seeds o f a new, m ore radical crit
ical paradigm were calls for the rehabilitation o f the aesthetic on other
terms. The earliest forms o f som ething th at called itself a “new aestheticism”
in this sense were launched in Britain in the early 1990s, b u t subsequently
there were m any others: by the m id-1990s there was a cluster o f field-
spanning w ork going on under the same nam e in the USA; there were
also self-described “new aestheticisms” am ong specific historicist specialists
such as early m odernists, Victorianists, and Americanists; and there were, in
addition, m any other uses o f the phrase th at do n o t fit easily into any o f
these categories, such as Rei Terada’s early proposal for a “new aestheticism”
th at w ould offer a kind o f defense o f deconstruction against its detractors.1
N aturally some o f these clusters o f w ork were richer than others. To m y
m ind, the early constellation in Britain remains the m ost interesting, none
o f the subsequent groups yet having outshone it in term s o f the clarity w ith
w hich it was able to survey, and then respond to, the surrounding disci
plinary terrain. Some o f the m ore im portant sites for this early British “new
aestheticism” included a largely Cam bridge-based attem pt to revive an
advanced K antian aesthetics; a separate debate, as interesting for its confu
sions as for w hat it illum inated, th at began in the pages o f the N ew Left
Review and centered around the idea o f a return to Adorno; and— to m y
m in d the m ost interesting— the w ork o f Isobel Arm strong. The fact that
all these clusters o f w ork ended up adopting the same title m ight lead us
to conclude th at we are looking at a single tu rn or m ovem ent, b u t this
w ould be a mistake: for the m ost part they were developed locally, often
w ith o u t the benefit o f any very clear sense o f w hat others were doing under
the same nam e in other places, and though a com m on m ood is certainly
discernable, the actual proposals m ade differ in their implications. It there
fore seems best to consider the “new aestheticisms” o f the 1990s as a fairly
heterogeneous series o f largely independent local clusters that offered sim ul
taneous, sometimes parallel responses to the anti-aesthetic tenor o f the
dom in an t paradigm .
Roughly around the tu rn o f the m illennium there was a consolidation o f

“new aestheticist” w ork accom panied by a shift in terminology: reading back
through the 2000s one finds first th at the local clusters o f w ork are increas
ingly aware o f one another, the landm ark edited collections having been
published and read, and second th at the term “new aestheticism” attracts
fewer and fewer adherents, to be replaced in effect by “new formalism,”
though in a broad sense quite similar argum ents continued to be offered
under both headings, and indeed m any o f the same figures continued to be
claimed. Stepping back to survey the developm ent o f the whole tendency,
then, it seems best to treat the names “new aestheticism” and “new for
malism” as the two ends o f a single tim eline. I do so w ith some misgivings,
n o t because some o f todays “new formalists” seem quite innocent o f any
fam iliarity w ith the earlier w ork— th at seems simply an error— but because
by tracing the history in a single line I risk repeating one o f the confusions I
will be at pains to poin t o u t in w hat follows: the easy slide from “aesthetic”
to “form al” that, as I see it, has done so m uch to conceal the real stakes o f
the debate from m any o f those involved in it, and has thereby become the
cause o f some o f the specific confusions that underpin m uch prom inent
w ork perform ed in this vein today.
N e w Aestheticisms
B ut to begin w ith the “new aestheticisms.” For the m ost part, the thinkers
w ho united under the various new aestheticist banners o f the 1990s were
those who had noticed at least som ething o f the scale o f the transform ation
th at had occurred w ithin the discipline as a result o f the widespread rejection
o f the category o f the aesthetic through the 1980s, and who felt that some
thing im p o rtan t was now missing as a result. Just w hat th at missing “some
thing” was varied from account to account. Some accounts principally
emphasized how m uch h ad been lost w hen the discipline became unwilling
to m ake disciplined judgm ents as to the aesthetic value o f specific literary
texts: often the argum ent was that, since aesthetic judgm ents o f one kind or
another were inevitable in any case, our new unwillingness to make them in
an explicit way simply left us having to make them implicitly instead. This
was unfortunate, it was felt, because it often m eant quietly endorsing the
m ost traditional o f canons w hile rendering our principles o f judgm ent
unavailable for critique. O th er accounts chiefly missed the aesthetic in its
capacity as a means by w hich to distinguish the literary from the nonliterary:
here it was argued th at in the absence o f a way to define literariness per se, we
were left treating works o f literature sim ply as yet further instances o f the
unreasonably broad category “texts in general,” w hich m ade it impossible to
acknowledge the specificity o f literary texts. Still other accounts argued that,
w ith o u t a com m itm ent to the aesthetic, the discipline had become stuck in
a suspicious and diagnostic m ode o f reading th at was enabling for ideology
critique b u t crippling for any serious attem p t to cultivate a positive relation
to the aesthetic pleasures o f the text (an argum ent that w ould echo again and
again over the next two decades, w ith or w ith o u t the initial emphasis on the
loss o f the aesthetic per se). There were times w hen these three argum ents
were m ade independently o f one another, b u t for the m ost part the core new
aestheticist w ork o f this period m ade them in com bination, w ith varying
emphases. In any case, those w ho identified w ith the new aestheticism felt
th at we needed the aesthetic back, and the question was as to the term s on
w hich we m ight now be able to have it.
As we have seen, there was certainly som ething quite accurate about the
m ap o f the discipline on w hich such argum ents were plotted. It was indeed
true to say th at there had been a critique o f the category o f the aesthetic so
sweeping th at it had led m any o f the key figures in the discipline to reject the
category outright. It was also true to observe that this critique o f the aes
thetic had been at the root o f a large-scale shift in the basic orientation o f the
discipline. Moreover, this shift had indeed been o f such a kind as to make
the specific operations th at the new aestheticists missed m uch m ore diffi
cult to justify in principle, as well as m ore difficult to perform in practice: by
the 1990s, the m ainstream o f the discipline no longer possessed a paradig
m atic m ethod for m aking explicit and disciplined aesthetic judgm ents, nor
a paradigm atic m ethod for specifying the boundaries o f the literary, nor a
paradigm atic m ethod for cultivating a positive relationship to the pleasures
o f the text. By this stage, the historicist/contextualist critique o f the aes
thetic had m ade projects o f that kind look regressive in principle, at least to
m any— and even those w ho were n o t yet quite convinced by the principle in
its strictest form were tending to pursue other projects, since the questions
th o u g h t m ost exciting were simply o f other kinds. To th at extent, one can

say th at the new aestheticism began w ith the benefit o f an unusually clear
sense o f the surrounding disciplinary terrain.2
O ne m ust then go on to add th at there were im portant levels at which the
new aestheticist tendency, taken as a whole, evidently found it difficult to
recognize the full shape o f the situation to w hich it was responding. For o f
course it was n o t simply the category o f the aesthetic that had been rejected—
the category o f the aesthetic together w ith generally accepted m ethods for
m aking aesthetic judgm ents, for defining literariness, and for encountering
textual pleasures— b u t a whole paradigm for criticism: a paradigm that, for
all its m any flaws, had once offered a unified way sim ultaneously to pursue
each o f these projects, together w ith others, as part o f a single, relatively
coherent intellectual practice. As we have seen, it was in fact a whole syn
thesis, a whole integrated m ethod by w hich to approach problem s o f this
order, th at had been discredited. The best observers were able to discern
som ething like this even w ithout the benefit o f hindsight; still in the thick o f
the events themselves, the tendency as a w hole did not. It is this underesti
m ation o f the size o f the target th at explains, in part, the evident failure o f
the new aestheticist critique ultim ately to find its mark. For the result was
th at the tendency as a whole was quite unclear not only about w hat it was
attacking— which, from a certain angle, ought to have been the trium ph o f
literary scholarship per se— b u t also about w hat it was seeking to defend:
implicitly, the practice o f literary criticism itself. W ith o u t recognizing that
they were really involved in a defense o f criticism per se, the thinkers involved
were often unable fully to register the real force o f the left critique that had
discredited criticism in its m id-century modes. For this reason, and also
simply because the tendency arrived as early as it did, the genuinely “new”
elements o f the “new aestheticism” are sometimes hard to distinguish from
residual defenses o f the old paradigm — defenses that crum bled quickly
under the existing critique. They were then unable to drag the mass o f the
discipline any significant distance in their direction.
This is despite the fact th at all the m ajor proponents were at pains to dis
tinguish their own proposals from, in the words o f John. J Joughin and Simon
M alpas, “a case for a return to the notion o f art as a universally and apoliti-
cally hum anist activity presided over by a benign council o f critical patri
archs” (3).3Joughin and M alpas were m uch more perceptive than m ost about
133
the history w ith which they were engaging, b u t I am afraid the exaggeration
o f the terms here is n o t atypical, and perhaps suggests how little was really
being disavowed. For in fact w hat happened so often was that the insistence
that one was sym pathetic both to the category o f the aesthetic and to the
dom inant historicist/contextualist critique o f it led to a certain am ount o f
confusion, w hich in tu rn led to an effective return, as if by habit, to an older
set o f terms. Thus, for example, w hen George Levine wrote the introduction
to Aesthetics a n d Ideology (1994), a collection that m any would later see as
having planted the flag for certain liberal strand o f new aestheticism in the
U nited States— and a collection that w ould later go on to be claimed by the
“N ew Formalists,” as well— he o f course began by offering the usual dem ur-
rals: he was n o t in the business o f talking about “transcendental or universal
value,” he was n o t going deny that the aesthetic was “historically bound to
ideology,” and so on. H e then m oved to propose a new com m itm ent to the
aesthetic: one that w ould n o t fall prey to the existing antiaesthetic critique.
Yet his positive account o f the aesthetic was as follows:
The aesthetic remains a rare i f n o t unique place for a lm o s t free play, a place
w here the very real con n ection s w ith the political and the id eological are a t
lea st p a r tly short circuited. . . . The aesthetic is a realm w here so m e th in g lik e
disinterest and im personality are possible. . . . [T ]he aesthetic provides a
space w here the im m e d ia te pressures o f ethical and political decisions are
deferred. (17; m y italics)
“Almost,” “at least partly,” “som ething like,” “deferred”: in cases o f this kind,
it is quite difficult for even a sym pathetic observer to say that new claims are
being m ade for the aesthetic, for this sounds very m uch like a reassertion o f
the old claims, albeit in m ore m odest terms. O nce one had accepted the
existing critique o f idealist aesthetics, one needed to be given som ething
quite new if one was to accept the aesthetic at all. Were argum ents o f this
kind offering us a new, m ore acceptable m odel o f the aesthetic, or were they
simply restating the old idealisms in a chastened tone?
It is perhaps tem pting to conclude the latter, but in regard to the new
aestheticist tendency as a whole, that w ould be too quick and too harsh: it is
m ore accurate, and certainly m ore generous, to say that the question is not
finally answerable, at least w hen asked at this more general level. For dissent
o f this kind was spoken from the margins o f the dom inant paradigm by m any
quite different voices, and underlying conditions were not yet such that the
incipient collective, taken as a whole, was able to make sharp distinctions
between residual argum ents and em ergent ones. Yet having acknowledged
the ambivalence o f the form ation on this central point, it is im portant also to
observe that one o f the im m ediate effects o f the collective uncertainty was the
flourishing o f a range o f reinstated idealisms, more or less continuous w ith
rearguard defenses o f the old paradigm: renewed critiques o f the “politiciza
tion” o f w hat ought to be an autonom ous aesthetic sphere, renewed com m it
m ents to an autotelic m odel o f the aesthetic— in the worst cases, simply a
renewed faith in the transcendental power o f the phrase “for its own sake.”
W ith a few crucial exceptions, to which we will come shortly, the liberal
cam p achieved this by calling for a return to Kant, and a smaller camp on the
left echoed them by calling for a return to K ant via Adorno, on the principle
that K antian aesthetics was neither bourgeois nor liberal when proposed by
Marxists. It was rare to come across a new aestheticist argum ent w ith a strong
sense th at it m ight be desirable or even possible to argue for the aesthetic in
other than autonom ous terms, and rarer still to come across argum ents which
recognized that the critical wing o f the discipline had been founded on an
aesthetics o f that order to begin with. It is w hen reflecting on m om ents o f this
kind that it seems particularly regrettable that W illiam s “saving clauses” had
been forgotten: one imagines that it could have been quite clarifying—
particularly for those on the left, who were instead turning to Adorno— if, at
such a m om ent, the anti-aesthetic position to which the new aestheticists
were responding could have been seen as a clearing operation designed to
sweep the field clear o f idealist aesthetics so as to make way for an eventual
reconstruction o f the category in materialist terms.
B ut the left were in the m inority here, w hich is to say that any genuine
assessment o f the m ainstream o f new aestheticist w ork m ust be quite clear
about its strongly liberal character. A m om ent ago, I noted that there were
three related argum ents th at recurred again and again in new aestheticist
work, b u t w hen one restricts oneself to discussing the liberal core o f the
tendency, those three argum ents tend eventually to reduce to one: that the
politicization o f literary studies from the left had gone too far. Rereading the
liberal new aestheticist w ork today, one hears this so often th at it begins to
sound like a refrain. Generally, it is intoned in a m easured way, as a princi
pled statem ent o f a traditional liberal doctrine, b u t occasionally the tone
THE CRITICAL U N C O N S C I O U S 135
lapses and one can just make out a deeper chord o f “Its political correctness
gone m ad!” Levine:
W h ile I am obviously n o t entirely enam ored o f the developm ents I have o u t

lined, m y objections are to reductivism and sim plification, n o t to the broad
tendencies. As w ith m ost o f the colleagues I respect, m y “a n tis” are im pecca
ble: I am an ti-foundationalist, anti-essentialist, anti-universalist, and I do n ot
believe in the p ossibility o f that view from now here that gets on e beyond
contingency. I w elcom e the n ew historicism , in low er case, as w ell as the rec
o g n itio n that all literature needs to be understood in relation to the local and
the tim e-bound; and I am as com fortable as on e can be w ith the necessarily
uncom fortable inevitability o f diversity and undecidability, w h ose absence in
criticism always leaves m e a bit nervous. (2)
This is o f some historical interest as a concise sum m ary o f one expected lib
eral position as it stood in the 1990s, right dow n to the expected range o f
affect. The central note is the im portance o f “critical thinking” in every
thing, particularly regarding large claims (thus “contingency,” “local,”
“tim e-bound,” “necessarily uncom fortable,” “diversity,” “undecidability,”
“nervous”); there is also a slight undertone o f resentm ent at having the
necessity o f politics forced upon one from outside (“m y a n tis’ are im pec
cable”). N otable in its absence is any positive com m itm ent to the political
per se, w hich in fact quickly turns out to be the enemy. These are the lines
im m ediately following:
M y uneasiness w ith the current critical scene is that whereas critics like Fredric
Jameson, Edward Said, Stephen Greenblatt, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgw ick (not to
m en tion several o f the contributors to this volum e) have w onderfully enriched
the possibilities o f literary criticism, their sensitive and com plex relation to texts
and strong conviction that those texts have enorm ous cultural significance
often, in their followers, reduce critical practice to exercises in political p osition
ing. In the current critical scene, literature is all too often dem eaned, the aes
thetic experience denigrated or reduced to m ystified ideology. (2—3)
Like the insistence in the previous paragraph that the objection is to

“reductivism and sim plification, n o t to the broad tendencies,” the phrase “in
their followers” here shirks the burden th at the argum ent claims to carry
elsewhere. Indeed, w ithout w anting to be cruel, it is perhaps not unfair to
p o in t out th at the equivocation as to the target o f the critique breaks the

gram m ar: is it really Jam eson and com pany’s “sensitivity” and “conviction”
th at “reduce critical practice to exercises in political positioning” in their
followers? Surely w hat one wants to say is th at Jameson and com pany’s “sen
sitivity” and “conviction” distinguish them from their followers, the claim
being th at it is precisely the followers’ lack o f these two things that con
dem ns them to a critical practice consisting o f nothing more substantial
than “political positioning.” Fram ed in th at way, it would be a m odest claim,
acceptable to anyone w ho believes th at political convictions are things that
happen to people w ho are missing a liberal appreciation o f ambivalence and
a proper deference to the text, and it w ould also allow one to critique polit
icization while avoiding having to argue against its big thinkers. But instead
the gram m ar gets confused and says som ething else, because behind the
w riting there is the strong feeling th at Jam eson and com pany are the agents
o f the reduction after all. They thus stand accused w ithout having to be
confronted, and the perform ance o f even-handedness fails to conceal the
aggression on w hich it is based.
The real argum ent in new aestheticist w ork o f this kind is n o t against
wayward epigones, b u t against the anti-aesthetic tenor o f the whole para
digm , and the claim m ade m ost often, and m ost forcefully, is the old liberal
one th at in allowing the bulw ark o f idealist aesthetics to be breached, we are
abandoning the literary to the political, from which it ought to be saved.
Levine here is unusually direct, b u t the general form o f argum ent is typical.
W infried Fluck offered the same argum ent in m ore sophisticated form in his
claim th at the M arxist “politicization o f aesthetics” had now gone so far that
it could only result in an equal and opposite “aestheticization o f politics.”
W hen one recalls the phrase from Benjam in being borrowed, one sees the
political valence o f the argum ent, am ounting to the traditional centrist fan
tasy th at extremes m eet, and th at C om m unism and Fascism are the same.4
To take another example, E m ory Elliott, in his introduction to another o f
the new aestheticism’s landm ark edited collections, Aesthetics in a M ulticul
tural Age (2002), sought to distinguish his own position from th at o f conser
vative “culture warriors” w ho cham pioned a “m ainly white, male Euro-
Am erican canon” by stating that “ [s]uch em otionally charged issues in which
conflicts o f identity and culture are inscribed do tend to produce extremism
o f the right and left and silence am ong those w ho seek to negotiate the
unstable m iddle g ro u n d ” (10). To distinguish oneself from conservatives, it

seemed one needed also to distinguish oneself from the left, the perform ance
o f even-handedness once again being the thing. All this rough talk o f politics
had silenced the center, we were being told, and it was now tim e to allow
those w ho had been silenced— those liberal experts in “negotiation” and
“instability”— to stand up and be heard.
Some readers will th in k I am being overly harsh on this, and that may be:
for the m ost part, this is an older form o f liberalism, long since supplanted
by updated modes. Yet m uddled argum ents from the center against a per
ceived over-politicization o f literary studies really do deserve fairly stern cri
tique wherever they appear, and I am afraid this is all the m ore true w hen
they are m ade in an amiable form. For there is m uch at stake here, particu
larly for those o f us on the left w ho also feel th at we need som ething like the
aesthetic, b u t are fundam entally opposed to the political register in w hich it
is here being thought. W h en Levine writes o f the “necessarily uncom fortable
inevitability o f diversity,” it is perhaps easy for some to slide by, nodding—
b u t is the prospect o f “diversity” really “necessarily uncom fortable”? To
whom? W hy, in 1994, does diversity feel “inevitable” to someone in this
subject-position— w ith all the dark foreboding th at the w ord “inevitable”
implies? O ne can perhaps bend over backward to excuse the phrase by saying
th at it is simply a case o f a conventional liberal rhetoric o f “critical thinking”
(com fort-w ith-discom fort, and so forth) getting confused w ith a conven
tional liberal rhetoric o f support for “diversity”— b u t really here, speaking
plainly, the m ore disturbing tones o f the underlying sensibility are starting
to show through: a sensibility to w hich equality itself has som ething o f the
taste o f a necessary evil. It is this underlying sensibility that the rhetorics o f
critical thinking and diversity, properly executed, are usually able to manage
and conceal. I note th at critiques offered at the level o f sensibility are some
tim es read as a d hominem attacks, and I certainly do n o t offer m ine in that
sense— Levine was larger than this as a scholar, and no d o ubt as a person,
too— b u t if we are to understand the core o f the new aestheticism as a phe-
nom enon, then the sensibility in question, as it extends across the m edian
range o f new aestheticist work, needs to be seen for w hat it is. For w hat we
are looking at is, in the m ain, an aging centrist form ation in the process o f
discovering th at the left has gone too far and arguing on that basis for a
conservative backlash. In C hapter 2, I noted that the initial critique o f the
aesthetic offered by W illiam s had swept the field clear o f aesthetic idealisms
w ith o u t finding a way to occupy the territory so cleared; here it is tem pting
to conclude the m etaphor by observing th at if a field so cleared is n o t soon
occupied, the flowers native to capital will soon spring up once again. But
perhaps th at appears too cruel.
N o t all the independent clusters o f w ork that adopted “N ew Aestheti
cism” as a title were o f this political cast, though some o f the m ore explicitly
leftist form ations were situated outside literary studies. It is w orth taking a
b rief detour to take a look at one o f the m ore progressive strands, which
clarifies by contrast. B oth sides o f the “Philistine Controversy” that began in
the N ew Left Review and continued in The Philistine Controversy (2002) and
in The N ew Aestheticism (2003) understood themselves in broadly M arxist
terms, though the central new aestheticist proposal for a return to autonom y
in a fairly traditional K antian sense was, at a m inim um , quite difficult to
square w ith historical m aterialism at large. For our purposes it is perhaps
m ost illum inating to focus on the other side o f the debate— the self-declared
“philistines”— since they were also proposing a return to the aesthetic,
though in w hat they understood as m ore acceptably materialist terms. Dave
Beech and John Roberts saw this other “new aestheticist” position as back
sliding, and were n o t afraid to say so: one thinks, for instance, o f their use o f
the subtle phrase “Liberal D elusions” as a section heading (35). Responding
to w hat they saw as regression, they w rote quite powerfully o f the im por
tance o f honoring to its full extent the existing left critique o f the aesthetic:
It is a p olitical achievem ent that th e grand hum anist categories and canonic
distinctions o f dom in an t culture have been fractured according to the speci
ficities and fault-lines o f class, race, gender, and sexuality. It is a political and
cultural achievem ent that art has been ‘secularized’ through th e liberation o f
the ‘m eanings o f the d om in ated ’ across a range o f subject p ositions and social
locations. A n d it is the d im in ish m en t o f this achievem ent that w e w ant to
repudiate. (32)
Yet their position was by no means a simple reaffirmation o f the existing

critique o f the aesthetic: for Beech and Roberts, the left s victory over the old
idealist aesthetics was a “political achievem ent” that needed to be defended,
139
b u t it was also a mistake th at needed to be moved beyond. In the last anal

ysis, the aesthetic needed to be, n o t rejected, b u t rethought. Thus they w rote
regretfully o f “a period in w hich the Left s attitude to aesthetics has not been
o f simple neglect b u t o f aggressive suspicion and denunciation,” and they
rejected the move to transform any “discussion o f aesthetics into a discussion
o f ideology” th at they felt had been the knee-jerk response o f the left since
the “nineteen-seventies and early nineteen-eighties” (16).
In this the “philistines” were at one w ith the “new aestheticists” w ho were
the object o f their critique. For b o th sides o f the philistine controversy, the
question was as to how we m ight rethink the aesthetic w ithout giving up on
our com m itm ent to the original anti-aesthetic critique; for both sides, the
answer to this question lay in a recom m itm ent to the doctrine o f aesthetic
autonom y; and b o th sides also concurred, m ore or less, in feeling that this
return to a seemingly idealist language could be authorized by appeal to the
authority o f A dorno. The difference was th at they read A dorno s idea o f aes
thetic autonom y in quite different ways. Beech and Roberts felt that the left
could return to a doctrine o f aesthetic autonom y as long as it realized that
“the separation o f the social from the aesthetic is n o t necessary for the m ain
tenance o f a rts autonom y” (35). If you suspect this argum ent o f em ptying
the concept o f aesthetic autonom y o f m uch o f its m eaning, you have my
sympathies, b u t o f course this is n o t the place to try to adjudicate these
claims.5 For our purposes, the chief im portance o f the “philistine contro
versy” is as an example o f the kind o f thinking that was, in principle, avail
able to the left o f the discipline at this m om ent. For even given all its faults,
the controversy represented a very rare thing: an explicitly M arxist attem pt
to argue o u t a new and positive conception o f the aesthetic w ithout giving
up any o f the ground w on by the left s existing anti-aesthetic critique. Sadly
it was largely a debate in art history and in philosophy, especially in its initial
m om ents; despite the presence o f a num ber o f insightful literary thinkers in
Joughin and M alpas’ subsequent volum e The N ew Aestheticism (2003), this
particular cluster o f attem pts to rethink aesthetic autonom y in less obvi
ously K antian term s was ultim ately to m ake relatively few inroads into the
field o f literary studies. For the left o f the discipline, it still stands as one
m arker o f a road n o t taken. There are other markers pointing to that road,
as we shall see.
N e w Formalisms
R eturning for now to the liberal m ainstream o f the tendency, one misses
Beech and Roberts’ com m itm ent to honoring the full force o f the existing
anti-aesthetic critique. For as the tim eline continues, a certain haziness as to
the terms o f the initial anti-aesthetic position against w hich the argum ent is
ostensibly being posed becomes increasingly com m on, as does a confusion
between “aesthetics” and “form ”— a confusion that eventually leads to the
replacem ent o f the form er by the latter, and thus to the loss o f the tendency’s
initial clarity regarding the contours o f the disciplinary situation it was
seeking to change. For as one reads forward toward today’s “new form al
isms,” one repeatedly witnesses thinkers proclaim ing a break while in fact
either effectively calling for a return o f the residual order or merely reiter
ating the term s o f the d om inant paradigm .
H ere we come to the “Pendulum s” o f m y heading, for a typical pattern
here seems to be th at one begins by recalling, as if it were simply a m atter o f
com m on knowledge, th at intellectual trends swing back and forth like a
pendulum , and one then relies on this as an im plicit justification for a call to
return to an older set o f term s. Thus Levine, at a very early p o int in the
timeline:
I believe that the m ost im portant th in g this b ook can do, in forcing reconcep
tualization o f the aesthetic, is push the p en d u lu m back toward the form al
elem ents that have for so lo n g been denigrated as literary intellectuals co m
plete their reaction to the excesses o f the N e w criticism . . . . In effect, the
b ook is a plea for a n ew kind o f form alism . . . . (2 3 )6
W e will return to the “new . . . formalism” im plied here. For now, m y point
is that centrists seem to gravitate to pendulum s: the trope allows one to feel
th at in the long run every objectionable extremism will find its antithesis,
thus revealing history as a series o f oscillations around a com m on-sense
m iddle ground. To a centrist backed into a corner, though, a pendulum is
n o t quite so com forting: in the lines just quoted, it does seem th at history is
on our side, the pendulum having swung too far to one extreme, yet at the
same tim e it seems as if history is against us, since we have to “force” the
pendulum back into its natural state; this makes us feel small to the point o f
141
being Lilliputian (“push the pendulum ”) and even abject, despairing, or vic
tim ized (“plea”).
As the years pass, and the “aesthetic” drops away to be replaced by “form ,”
th at pendulum returns again and again, though its tenor changes. Thus
T im othy Peltason in 1999: “no one is calling just now for a new formalism,
b u t the pendulum logic o f the profession will likely lead to that, too.” O r
Paul J. Alpers in 2007: “W ith the advent o f the new historicism, the pen
dulum o f criticism swung from form to context. There are m any signs that
it is now swinging back. . . .” O r Stephen C ohen, also in 2007, offering a
fresh take on the trope: “ [historical form alism ought to reinvigorate] New
H istoricism as a source o f theoretical innovation . . . by engaging it w ith the
periods form al complexity, and in so doing, to arrest the form -history pen
dulum by producing a historically and ideologically sensitive formalism.”7
The latter in particular reveals som ething about the fantasy th at the trope
underwrites: perhaps w hat one really wants to do is stop history in the
center, so th at no further extremisms can be produced. In any case, Rachel
Sagner B uurm a and Laura H effernan caught the right trope w hen they
observed, in 2013, th at “ [t]hose w ho label these new m ethods formalist
understand their arrival as a swing o f the disciplinary pendulum back to the
text after decades o f hegem onic historicism and its supposedly strongest
expression, ideology critique.”8
I p o in t o u t this rhythm ic recurrence n o t in order to criticize those indi
viduals who happen to m ake use o f the trope, b u t in order to make a broader
point, w hich is perhaps in any case already obvious to m ost observers: that
part o f the appeal o f the “new aestheticist” and “new form alist” positions,
such as it is, has been derived from an assum ption th at the discipline pro
ceeds in a pendular fashion, m eaning th at one should expect the eventual
return o f whatever term one feels is now being rejected m ost strongly. For
Levine, calling for b oth a “new aestheticism” and a “new kind o f formalism”
at the start o f the tim eline, the trope seems natural b u t uncom fortable: the
am bivalent affect reveals the difficulty o f his position, still in close proxim ity
to those who are able to m ake the left critique o f the aesthetic in its strongest
early form. But by the end o f the tim eline the term s o f the initial anti-
aesthetic critique have been either blunted or forgotten, and in any case the
controversial proposal for a return to the aesthetic has been abandoned, the
m uch m ore generally acceptable term “form ” being adopted instead. It is at
this p o in t th at we begin to see the trope being used w ith confidence, by

those w ho feel that the pendulum is now swinging their way.
A m I taking this trope too seriously? Is it w orth pointing out, in response
to it, th at history never moves like a pendulum — that in the hundred years
o f its history the discipline has never yet m oved like a pendulum — and then
w ondering w hat is at stake in this repeated recourse to the assum ption that
it does? The appearance o f a pendulum as a m etaphor for the m ovem ent o f
history is alm ost always a sign th at the dialectic is being misread; I take it
th at its presence here is also an indication o f a conceptual impasse: one
wants to go forward, b u t one does n o t yet know how to do so, except by
going back. For the call to a pendular return is typical o f this whole line o f
work, and n o t just o f its m ore nostalgic elements, the difference between the
“new aestheticist” and the “new form alist” ends o f the tim eline residing
m ainly in their answers to the question o f w hat, precisely, the discipline has
lost, and w hat therefore will inevitably make its way back. For the early “new
aestheticisms,” this was the “aesthetic”; for todays “new formalisms,” it is
“attention to form .” This shift o f terms ought to tell us som ething about the
“new form alism ,” its m ode o f argum ent and its m otivations for arguing
being otherwise so similar to those o f its predecessor.
To determ ine w hat really m otivated this slide to “form ,” the best place to
start is M arjorie Levinsons survey o f “new formalisms”— a survey th at has
now becom e a standard reference p o in t for anyone discussing the tendency.
Levinson distinguished between two different camps w ithin the new for
malism: one nostalgic and conservative, and the other innovative and pro
gressive. She figured b o th as calls for the return o f earlier modes. The first
cam p— th at o f “norm ative formalism”— was:
cam paign [ing] to bring back a sharp dem arcation betw een history and art,
discourse and literature, w ith form (regarded as the con d ition o f aesthetic
experience as traced to Kant— i.e. disinterested, autotelic, playful, pleasur
able, consensus-generating and therefore b oth individually liberating and
cond u cive to affective social cohesion) the prerogative o f art. (122)
Levinson dismissed argum ents o f this kind as “backlash formalism,” and,

reading through the work, one can certainly see w hat she means: m uch o f
w hat has been done under the sign o f the “new formalism” has indeed
am ounted to a nostalgic attem pt to reinstate an idealist m odel o f the aes

thetic as the philosophical foundation o f the discipline, as we saw in Levine.
I hasten to add th at some o f this w ork has been very fine indeed. Angela
Leightons On Form (2007) offers us a good test case here in being both
typical o f this strand in its com m itm ents and exceptional in the brilliance o f
its execution. The book begins by tracking the various uses o f the w ord
“form ,” and proceeds to rich and nuanced readings o f individual figures. The
m ode is recognizably that o f a certain strand o f liberalism— one wants to call
it a local Cam bridge liberalism, b u t perhaps that is going too far— the
intense reasonableness o f w hich makes it very effective w hen puncturing the
inflated claims o f charism atic and unreasonable figures such as W ilde and
Pound. H ere all extreme claims find themselves tem pered, Leightons fine
irony pulling them back to a com m on-sense m iddle ground. The effect o f
this m ode is to make her look very reasonable even w hen she is in fact
m aking the m ost regressive claims. The books individual readings are excep
tionally acute and beautiful; she has a w onderful ear for tone, and is cer
tainly a m uch clearer (and funnier) w riter than Isobel A rm strong, whose
praises I am about to sing, and yet the result, in the end, is a collapse back
into an older position: she closes w ith a retreat into an aesthetic mysticism
o f all too familiar a kind, from w hich the only positive claims that can be
m ade are gnom ic ones: “the wise nothings o f poetry,” and so forth (265).
The final chapter is entitled “N othing.” C ertainly sage and arcane things can
be said on the them e o f nothing, and Leightons m editation is rich and inter
esting— in m any ways it represents this line o f thought in its strongest con
tem porary form . Yet at the same tim e it is hard not to feel that, in this circle
back to idealist aesthetics, som ething o f a dead end has been reached.
Levinson s diagnosis o f the character o f the second cam p was no less accu
rate. Following Susan W olfson, she nam ed it— flatteringly— “activist for
m alism .” She saw this as the cam p o f those w ho sought:
to restore to tod ays reductive reinscription o f historical reading its original

focus on form (traced by those critics to sources foundational for materialist
critique— e.g. H egel, M arx, Freud, A d orno, Althusser, Jam eson). (1 2 2 )
This she hailed as a return to the “form alist” roots o f real historicism.
Levinson here is trying to draw a clear distinction between the residual and
the em ergent, w hich I take to be a very im portant task. She perform s that
task in the historicist/contextualist spirit: she wants to reject any talk o f a
return to idealist aesthetics so as to prevent backsliding into m id-century
modes, and she w ants instead to endorse calls for better “historical reading.”
W e should note in passing the period assum ption th at “historical reading,”
done correctly, is politically salutary as such.9 H er categorization o f the two
camps w ithin the “new form alist” tendency seems to me quite accurate in
its essentials, and she is o f course right in her rejection o f positions that
effectively call for the return o f aesthetic idealism. I only w ant to add that
w hen one reads this in the context o f the longer history we have been tracing,
one sees th at the distinction being draw n is between those calling for a
return to the aesthetic idealisms o f the m id-century, and those calling for
a recom m itm ent to the basic priorities o f the historicist/contextualist para
digm in its best or “original” m ode.10 I f she is right, then the choice the “new
formalisms” offer us is a choice between a return to the residual and a
return to the best existing forms o f the dom inant. The em ergent is nowhere
to be found.
To accept this w ould n o t be to deny the richness and perceptiveness o f
the best “new form alist” w ork— it w ould merely be to restrict the “new” o f
the title to a m uch m ore m odest compass. Still, it w ould be a fairly dispir
iting conclusion. In our efforts to find the truly em ergent here, I th in k per
haps it is better to tu rn Levinsons diagnosis around, as it were, in order to
find the positive elements even o f the w ork she sees as regressive, w ithout o f
course losing the force o f her existing critique o f idealist aesthetics, w hich I
take to be quite right. For in our terms it begins to seem as if w hat Levinson
is really attem pting is to cut away the new aestheticisms from the new for
malisms, the better to celebrate the historicist potential o f the latter. But this
is problem atic, since as we just noted the earlier new aestheticisms, for all
their faults, had at least the virtue o f being based on a substantially correct
diagnosis o f the state o f the field: the “aesthetic” had been rejected very
widely, and this had indeed led to consequences o f just the kind that the new
aestheticists identified. It is at this level th at one can say that the tendency as
a whole began its journey w ith quite an accurate m ap o f the surrounding
disciplinary terrain. Yet as the difficult term “aesthetic” was com m itted to
less and less frequently, to be replaced m ore and more often (though never
entirely) by the m uch m ore widely acceptable term “form ,” this m ap became
increasingly blurred. O nce one has seen this, it starts to look unwise to
endorse the later end o f the tim eline at the expense o f the earlier work.
W e see this m ore clearly w hen we examine the claims that the “new for
m alist” end o f the tim eline has tended to make about its place in the history
o f the discipline. In the kind o f “new form alist” w ork that Levinson endorses,
the disciplinary-historical argum ent is generally as follows: “formalism” has
been the disciplines great enem y over the last tw o-to-four decades; this
rejection o f “formalism” has been good in th at it has allowed us to become
m ore attentive to history, b u t bad in th at it has led us to be culpably inatten
tive to form; we therefore need to bring form back, so as to be attentive to
b oth history a n d form , at the same tim e. Yet w hat does “formalism” here
really mean? G enerally speaking, the new formalists Levinson endorses have
used the term “formalism” to indicate som ething like “attentiveness to
form .” To define the term in this way is to cast a very wide net, w hich can be
a virtue. At the same tim e, it is n o t unfair to observe that this is the shal
lowest o f all extant m eanings o f the term . This hollowing out o f the central
term has presented difficulties for those attem pting to use it as a tool for
thought. For one can accept the basic new formalist claim that “formalism”
has been the great enem y o f historicism only if one understands “formalism”
in one o f the richer senses it has usually carried in better w ork over the last
four decades: as indicating a com m itm ent to som ething in the range o f
self-authorizing, self-sufficient, autonom ous, or autotelic form — w hich is to
say, a com m itm ent to idealist aesthetics, o f one kind or another. W hereas if
one uses the term in such a way as to indicate merely “attention to form ,”
then one has secured a new breadth o f m eaning at the cost o f giving up ones
right to use it as the nam e o f the great enemy. To echo for a m om ent a ques
tion th at m any others have already asked, if “formalism” in the sense o f
“attentiveness to form ” really is w hat the discipline has been rejecting for the
last three or four decades, w hy do we consistently find all the m ajor figures
o f the last three decades pay so m uch attention to form?
In fact, as so m any have observed, the historicist/contextualist paradigm
has never been hostile to form per se: the chief N ew Historicists w ho are so
often the targets o f new form alist critique certainly were not, and to see this
even m ore clearly one only has to look at the M arxist tradition from which
the paradigm ultim ately springs— a tradition in w hich the prim ary task has
very often been the diagnosis o f the social significance o f form, Jameson
being the inevitable example. As Levinson rightly notes, “new form alist”
w ork is often forced to adm it this quite quickly, excusing the m ost prom i
n en t N ew Historicists o f all charges, holding up Jameson as an example o f
best practice, and so on, w hich often leaves us w ith the claim that the argu
m en t is merely w ith the epigones— the claim we saw George Levine m aking
just now.11 I f so, well and good; b u t then the argum ent is simply th at we
ought to do the existing historicism as well as the best existing historicists,
and the “new” in the kind o f “new formalism” Levinson endorses starts to
look a little wan. O nce again the argum ent ought to be w ith the existing
paradigm at its best. B ut w hen we take the argum ent in that sense we find
th at it is quite problem atic, since the central term means one thing in claims
about the relationship between new form alism and the history o f the disci
pline, and quite another w hen “new ” m ethodologies are being proposed.
At best, this fudging o f the definition o f the key term “formalism” is an
unw itting confusion that enables interesting work to be performed. Yet one
notes with some discomfort the fact that it has happened to prove very conve
nient for the purposes o f publicity: indeed, a skeptical observer m ight say that
the term “new formalism” has allowed some o f those involved to attract a crowd
by posing in the m antle o f the great enemy, only to reveal, once we are inside
the tent, that w hat they are in fact proposing is simply historicism as usual, plus
form. From the perspective o f the mainstream o f the discipline, strongly histor-
icist/contextualist in orientation as well as more or less on board with the disci
pline s perennial emphasis on reading the significance o f form, one can imagine
few things cozier. Setting this alongside the odd centrality o f the assumption
that disciplinary history swings like a pendulum , it is hard not to begin to
wonder whether there has sometimes been a greater than usual quotient o f
careerism here. If “formalism” has been the great enemy for quite a while, and
you believe that disciplinary trends swing to and fro like a pendulum , would it
not be wise to declare oneself a “formalist” so as to get along for the ride? N ot
to propose “formalism” really, o f course, in the old aesthetic way— that would
be suicide— rather, simply to propose “attention to form” in the best histori-
cist/contextualist fashion. Seeing the m atter in this m urky light puts our skep
tical observer at risk o f mistaking the “new formalism” for a formation built
around neither liberalism nor leftism, but careerism, plain and simple.
But o f course the best new formalist w ork is m uch better than this. If the
slide from “aesthetic” to “form al” has at m any points m eant the loss o f the
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clear-eyed sense o f disciplinary history that guided the early “new aestheti
cisms,” there have been some com pensating advantages. The attentiveness to
m atters formal is generally quite real, and stands in contrast to m uch, though
no t all, existing historicist/contextualist work; w hen one assesses it as a shift
o f emphasis w ithin, rather than against, historicist/contextualist scholarship
as usual, this end o f the tim eline has its strengths. In any case— and this is
really m uch m ore im portant from the p o in t o f view o f the longer history—
the strong urge to move at all is the result o f a genuine insight into the limits
o f the discipline under present conditions. This is to say th at m any o f those
who have found themselves convinced, at least in part, by new aestheticist or
new formalist argum ents have been moved by quite an accurate sense that the
discipline, as currently configured, is failing to m eet an im portant set o f
dem ands that it ought to be m eeting— and failing for lack o f som ething that
it once had. Everything then rides on our sense o f what, exactly, that missing
som ething is. The usual diagnosis offered in “new formalist” work— that the
loss o f an “attention to form” is the heart o f the matter, and that “new histor-
icism” was the culprit— seems to me quite wrong, b u t the basic intuition o f
the tendency as a whole, from the new aestheticisms o f the early 90s through
to todays new formalisms, strikes me as a good one. That basic intuition, I
take to run as follows: first, that the discipline lost som ething im portant in
the tu rn to its current m ode in the late 1970s and early 1980s; second, that
this missing som ething is related in some way to the aesthetic, or perhaps to
the formal; and third that in order to address this we need to achieve a break
w ith som ething like “historicism.”12 The question then is as to how to do
justice to the strength o f th at intuition, w ithout leading off into the vague
ness o f the usual mistakes. If the first line Levinson identified— that o f “nor
mative formalism,” trying to reinvigorate an idealist aesthetics— m ight be
taken to poin t the discipline toward a dead end in this regard, the second
line— that o f “activist formalism,” trying to use form as a way to reinvigorate
the dom inant historicist/contextualist m ethods— seems som ething o f a dead
end, too, at least if we are truly looking to break with the dom inant. H aving
reached a twin impasse o f this kind, w ith both o f our “pendular” movements
merely leading us in circles, how are we to move forward onto new ground?
H ere I th in k it is helpful to look again at some o f the early “new aesthet
icist” work, w ritten as it was w ith a clearer sense o f the larger disci
plinary situation. The blockage here seems to be the failure to develop a
m odel o f the aesthetic th at w ould be com patible w ith a full com m itm ent
to our existing critique o f the idealist m ainstream o f aesthetic thought. The
fact th at this blockage appears w ith such clarity here is a testam ent to the
perceptiveness o f the underlying analysis, for as we have seen, this is in
fact a version o f one o f the basic intellectual limits o f the historicist/con-
textualist paradigm itself. C onfronting this fundam ental boundary, m uch
“new aestheticist” w ork simply rebounded into a nostalgia for older m odes—
and yet other work, m ore clear-sighted, was able truly to sense the nature o f
the boundary, and even to chart it, test it, and then p u t it under a certain
am o u n t o f strain. I w ould like then to close this section by briefly exploring
the w ork o f a figure whose thought is especially rich in this regard: the British
fem inist thinker Isobel A rm strong. I take her as an example o f w hat the
“new aestheticism” was capable of, in its better instances, as a collective
attem p t to chart a way past one o f the defining impasses o f historicist/con-
textualist thought.
Isobel A rm strong
In a series o f essays w ritten th roughout the 1990s, some o f which were later
collected in The Radical Aesthetic (2000), A rm strong attem pted to track the
“convergence o f a conservative and a left anti-aesthetic,” thereby showing
th at “the ‘left’ aesthetics o f cultural m aterialism was oddly tw inned with
Thatcherism ” (14).13 She saw quite accurately that this “left anti-aesthetic”
was being derived variously from the w ork o f Eagleton, D errida, de M an,
and Bourdieu, and she critiqued each o f them in turn via a form o f argu
m ent th at runs closely parallel to the argum ent I made in C hapter 2 in
relation to the earlier w ork o f W illiams. Here she introduces the argum ent
in relation to Eagleton s The Ideology o f the Aesthetic (1990):
A major w ork o f suspicious herm eneutics, this b ook aligns itself w ith cultural
m aterialism but w idens the scope o f critique. N o th in g less than the im p ossi
b ility o f the category o f the aesthetic is its them e. [For E agleton, the category
o f the aesthetic] and K ants w ork, in particular, serve a succession o f different
oppressive system s [:] bourgeois hegem ony, co m m o d ity culture, and, ulti
mately, Fascism. (16)
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This was well observed: as we have seen, Eagletons book was indeed an
“expansion” o f the existing cultural materialist critique o f the aesthetic—
specifically, it was W illiam s’ critique o f the aesthetic, expanded beyond the
limits previously set by its two saving clauses. A rm strong accepted the gen
eral form o f this critique, b u t sought to bring the argum ent forward into
new territory by calling for the construction o f new models o f the aes
thetic— new m odels th at w ould m eet the objections that the existing left
critique o f the aesthetic had raised.
E agletons study offered a salutary, virtuosic analysis o f th e intrinsic political

and id eological problem s o f the aesthetic in the history o f our culture. B ut the
b o o k was n o t seriously interested in envision in g alternatives, or in im agining
w hat a changed understanding o f the aesthetic w o u ld lo o k like. Chapter 1 o f
m y b ook, ‘The A esthetic and the Polis: M arxist D e c o n str u c tio n , is a response
to E agletons argum ent. It seeks, w ith deliberate eclecticism , to develop other
ways o f describing the aesthetic, b oth cogn itively and affectively. (16)
W here Eagleton had “effectively concede [d] the concept o f the aesthetic to
the right,” A rm strong w ould instead seek out a way to th in k a truly “rad
ical aesthetic”: one that would neither give ground on the existing critique o f
idealist aesthetics nor cede the territory that the right traditionally had used the
category o f the aesthetic to claim (45). It was a maneuver she was happy to
repeat in response to the claims o f other central anti-aesthetic thinkers:
[T ]he elem ents o f the aesthetic deconstructed by b oth Derrida and de M an are
the com p on en ts o f an archaic, individualist theory o f art w e associate histori
cally w ith the n ineteenth century. B ut this obsolete, subject-based bourgeois
account o f the aesthetic is universalized as th e aesthetic, and thus b oth writers
som etim es look as if they are d oin g m ore than they actually are. . . . [Thus]
[t]he possibility for an alternative aesthetic latent in nineteenth-century texts,
w h ich can arrived at by goin g around D errida and de M an rather than con
fronting them , occupies the next stage o f this discussion. (54—55)
As w ith Eagleton, so w ith D errida, de M an, and later Bourdieu: in each case
A rm strongs move was, in effect, to show th at the critique o f the aesthetic
being offered was n o t really a critique o f the category o f the aesthetic tout
court, b u t in fact a critique o f a specifically idealist (often neo-Kantian) aes
thetics; she then accepted the critique in th at m ore lim ited form , and pro
ceeded to try to push the argum ent forward into new territory by rethinking
the aesthetic in o ther terms.
All o f this strikes m e as extremely insightful, showing how accurate a sense
A rm strong had o f the surrounding terrain, even w ithout our benefit o f h in d
sight. H er clarity as to the disposition o f forces in the field had as its corollary
a m ore focused clarity w ith respect to specific matters, too: thus, for instance,
A rm strong was able to see Eagleton’s book as an expanded statem ent o f the
existing anti-aesthetic position at a tim e w hen others were misreading the
book as a call for the revival o f the aesthetic and were therefore feting it as a
watershed between the lefts existing anti-aesthetic position and a new
pro-aesthetic turn: as one o f the “opening shots o f w hat has become the new
aestheticism,” in Beech and Roberts’ terms (18).14 A rm strong was not fooled
by that— and while w riting in the m ode o f praise I cannot help but add that
w hen reading her one sometimes feels one has been delivered from bad com
pany by the good grace o f her incisiveness on questions o f gender, which
repeatedly throws the im plicit masculinism o f m uch existing pro- or anti-
aesthetic discourse into stark relief. A m ong those proposing “new aestheti
cisms” she remains exemplary for the clarity w ith w hich she saw the need to
make a sharp distinction between nostalgic attachm ents to residual idealisms,
on the one hand, and genuine calls for a new materialist account o f the aes
thetic, on the other. In short, she is an unusually perceptive guide, particu
larly on the crucial question o f w hat happened to the aesthetic w ithin the
discipline, and w hat the left m ight w ant to do about it.
The question then becomes as to how far her positive rethinking o f the
aesthetic was able to proceed. W h at was the alternative model o f the aes
thetic th at she proposed, and how did she go about developing it? The gen
eral shape o f her argum ent here will, I hope, strike the reader as familiar, for
w hat A rm strong proposes again and again is the breaking down o f the
boundaries w ith w hich the idealist m ainstream o f aesthetic th o ught seeks to
cordon the category off from the rest o f practical life. “A n aesthetic needs to
be grounded in experience that happens to everybody” (58). “I have sug
gested th at the artw ork be [viewed as] em bedded in the ordinary processes
o f being alive . . . rather than as a privileged kind o f creativity cut off from
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experiences that everyone goes through” (79—80). A nd so on. For Arm strong,
p u ttin g the aesthetic back into contact w ith the processes o f life in this way
m eant m arshalling a wide range o f disparate figures and sending them o u t to
tear dow n specific K antian or post-K antian boundaries: Vygotsky and
W in n ico tt to connect the aesthetic w ith the act o f play in its ordinary sense,
rather than in its m ore rarefied K antian sense; Freud, Levinas, Ricoeur,
Silvan Tom kins, A ndre Green, W ilfred Bion, and Vygotsy again, as well as
others, to try to challenge the cordoning-off o f the cognitive from the affec
tive, and instead to unite them as parts o f the same living process; Gillian
Rose to undo the e ith er/o r binarism s o f poststructuralist thinking and to
allow us instead to inhabit the “broken m iddle”; and John Dewey for the
claim th at (grasping the bull now by the horns) “ordinary experience is in
continuity w ith aesthetic production”— to m ention just a few o f her figures
(163). Reading down the list o f names, one im m ediately sees how broad her
range o f reference is: she has assembled quite an army. The task she proposes
to give th at arm y— the task o f building a new, expanded m odel o f the aes
thetic by tearing down the boundaries th at have traditionally been taken to
secure the aesthetic realm from ordinary life— seems to me a crucial one. As
we have seen, it is also a task th at has a claim to be serving the central histor
ical w ork o f the discipline itself.
A nd yet, if the roster o f thinkers A rm strong manages to marshal together
is impressive in its heterogeneity, it is also, for the same reason, at risk o f
being som ew hat scattershot, m aking it possible to suspect th at there may be
som ething less than coherent about the position w on. W hen your guide
begins to enthuse about the sheer variety o f different paths available, it m ay
be a sign th at you are lost. H er tone is invariably confident— indeed, at
tim es it borders on the O lym pian— b u t we ought n o t to let this fool us: her
confidence, as well as the buckshot m ethod she sought to own as a “delib
erate eclecticism,” are really, I think, signs o f her em battlem ent, and o f how
relatively friendless her project leaves her at her m om ent in the disciplines
history: she is casting about for alternatives, and if she seems to find an
em barrassm ent o f riches, this m ay be because nothing she finds is really w hat
she seeks. H aving battled through the thickets o f her prose and come to
grips w ith each o f her suggestive argum ents on specific points, one starts to
w ant to ask her some broader questions about the possibility o f a synthesis.
How, precisely, were we to connect this fram ing o f the aesthetic as a form o f
play to the com m itm ent to w riting from the “broken m iddle”? Assum ing we
accepted her repeated insistence th at the cognitive ought n o t to be thought
o f as insulated from m atters o f affect, how precisely was this to change our
theory o f the aesthetic as play, itself newly com bined w ith the question o f
the “broken m iddle”? It is difficult to say. Each elem ent o f the theory is
appealing on its own, and cries o u t for m ore developm ent— but w hat lan
guage were we to use to th in k the different elements o f the project sim ulta
neously? A rm strong’s unusually keen sense o f the geography o f the discipline
allowed her to identify the need for a rethinking o f the aesthetic in a m uch
m ore precise way than m any others were able to, and she was therefore able
to gesture tow ard the general term s under w hich that rethinking w ould have
to be carried out. B ut once we reach th at point— the p o in t at w hich the
largely unknow n territory o f a materialist aesthetics begins— she begins to
take us up each path a short way, only to turn back and try another, and then
another, and another. O n e then begins to w onder if we have arrived at
another impasse after all.
Viewed as part o f the longer history we have been tracing, one o f the
ironies o f A rm strongs position is th at she looked everywhere for a m ateri
alist aesthetics w ithout ever being able to bring into focus the incipiently
m aterialist aesthetics th at lay so close to hand: that o f the early critical para
digm , right there at the foundation o f her own discipline. This was despite
her very precise obiter dicta on the history o f close reading— some o f the
m ore insightful I have seen.15 O f Richards, she was able to say that he
“believed th at he had found a technique for achieving absolutely undistorted
com m unication.” This is Richards only in the sense that a negative can be
called a photographic print, for in fact his emphasis is alm ost invariably on
the nigh-insuperable difficulties o f com m unication:
The on ly proper attitude is to lo o k u pon a successful interpretation, a correct

understanding, as a trium ph against the odds. W e m ust cease to regard a m is
interpretation as a m ere unlucky accident. W e m ust treat it as the norm al and
probable event. {Principles, 3 15)
I make this p o in t n o t in order to chide A rm strong for her m isreading o f a

figure w ho was, after all, n o t her central concern, but in order to emphasize
once again how m uddled the story o f the origins o f criticism had become by
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this p o in t in the discipline s history: the situation was now such that a subtle
thinker, and a thinker w ho in other respects was unusually perceptive about
the history o f the discipline, found it possible to make claims o f this quite
erroneous kind about a founding figure, and they were allowed to stand. By
this stage in the discipline’s history, the question o f the aesthetic roots o f
criticism was simply n o t being given serious attention in any widespread
way. In the absence o f a developed sense o f the resources that lay at her feet,
A rm strong turned instead to Dewey, w ho offered a different, nondisciplinary
route to som ething similar: an anti-K antian aesthetics that insisted that
“ordinary experience is in continuity w ith aesthetic production.” In this, she
was moving in parallel w ith the liberal m ainstream o f the “new aestheticist”
tendency: W infried Fluck, for instance, was proposing a tu rn to Dewey o f
just this kind. The effect was to miss the birth o f criticism entirely.
To be clear, I have no in tention o f claiming, even by im plication, that the
early critical paradigm som ehow held the solutions to all the problem s in
aesthetics A rm strong had posed for herself: obviously not. Richards, for his
part, had proposed solutions that were, in their specifics, either too liberal or
too dated to be o f use to her; the other early thinkers o f criticism had still less
to offer in this key respect. M y p o in t is a different one: that the histori-
cist/contextualist discipline around A rm strong was unable to provide her
w ith the tools she needed to recognize that m odern disciplinary criticism
itself had been founded on the basis o f a serious attem pt to address the very
class o f problem s th at she now sought to solve— and an attem pt, moreover,
th at had opened up new territory in just the direction she now felt she had
to move. This m attered chiefly because it prevented her from seeing clearly
w hat an attem pt to address the problem o f a non- or anti-idealist aesthetics
m ight look w hen p u t into practice: w hat it m ight m ean to address the
problem o f the aesthetic as a problem o f cultural or political intervention,
and n o t merely as a problem for theory. Stepping back for a m om ent, one
m ight observe th at the example o f the early critical paradigm shows how
m uch can be done b o th at an intellectual and at an institutional level w hen
an instrum ental or incipiently materialist aesthetics is set to w ork as a series
o f practical educational proposals. In the 1920s, this com bination allowed
the b irth o f a rigorous discipline o f aesthetic education— one flawed in such
a way as to allow its quick co-opting by m ore conservative forces, and yet,
even so, one th at standsas one o f the only extant cases o f a rigorous and
widespread institutionalized m ethod o f aesthetic education surviving under

Anglo-Am erican capital for a n um ber o f generations at a stretch.
O n e then w onders w hat it m ight have led to if, at this p o in t in the disci
pline s history, a thinker o f A rm strongs perceptiveness and conviction had
m anaged to synthesize the elem ents o f a materialist aesthetics th at were to
hand, and had then m anaged to use th at aesthetics as the philosophical basis
on w hich to develop a new set o f pedagogical and critical tools for active
aesthetic intervention in the culture at large. A t an institutional level, per
haps it w ould have led to very little— after all, a whole tide o f material fac
tors were against her. In this regard, the contrast between her m om ent and
the m o m en t o f the birth o f m odern criticism in the 1920s is fairly stark. Yet
the purely intellectual gains could have been significant, even in the absence
o f a genuine institutional advance. This counter-factual may seem merely
fanciful, b u t A rm strong was already in sight o f the territory— she closes one
o f her finest essays w ith the questions: “W h at w ould todays aesthetic educa
tion look like? A nd w hat kind o f society w ould it be th at valued aesthetic
education am ong its projects?” (80). The im plied call for whole new
m ethods, even w hole new institutions, strikes me as an affecting one. This
was the class o f questions to w hich this line o f thinking led her, and they are
critical questions in the full sense o f the w ord. Indeed, it is to questions o f
this kind th at the line o f thinking th at began w ith the “new aestheticisms”
ought to have led us, rather than to a nostalgia for idealist aesthetics, or to
the mysticism o f “nothing,” or to the cozy impasse o f historicism plus form.
Given how little help the discipline around her offered, the fact that
A rm strong was able to th in k her way to a position from w hich to pose ques
tions o f this kind in a serious m anner is a significant achievement. The task
o f answering them remains.
Part Two: Intimations

W e can now move to the second o f the three broad tendencies we are
tracking. O ne o f the distinctive features o f the historicist/contextualist par
adigm — and one th at has in effect been remarked on by many, at least by
im plication— is its m ethodological com m itm ent to interpretative practices
o f a diagnostic rather than, say, appreciative or therapeutic kind: a “herm e
neutics o f suspicion,” if you like.16 In recent decades, though, a num ber o f
sensitive and intelligent m ethodological argum ents have been m ade against
interpretative practices o f this order, perhaps the m ost influential o f which
have been Eve Sedgwicks proposal to replace “paranoid reading” w ith
“reparative reading” and Stephen Bests and Sharon M arcus’s later proposal
to replace “sym ptom atic reading” w ith “surface reading.” As the terms sug
gest, these argum ents have been fram ed against specific modes o f reading,
b u t it strikes me that in both cases w hat has really been pointed to is some
thing m ore general— and som ething th at we cannot simply reject or move
on from , since it is a necessary elem ent o f any project o f interpretative cul
tural analysis. I th in k perhaps a better term for this larger thing— better
because both m ore general and m ore neutral— w ould be som ething like
“diagnostic reading”: a reading practice th at uses the text as a means by
w hich diagnose the state o f the w ider culture. O r if you prefer to be even
broader, “scholarly reading”: a reading practice that sees the text chiefly as an
occasion for cultural analysis. To use either o f these latter phrases is to point
to a m uch wider range o f reading practices; moreover, it is to point to reading
practices th at are necessary, n o t simply to any scholarship, b u t to any politics
w orth the nam e. If one then wants to critique those kinds o f reading prac
tices— or at least to draw a distinction between those practices and others, in
the interests o f opening up a space for new orientations— then one m ust
broaden the critique so as to include even m any o f the alternative reading
practices th at have been proposed: Best and M arcus’ “surface reading” is
clearly oriented tow ard producing further and better cultural analyses, for
instance.17 H aving seen this, one begins to fear that, on closer exam ination,
m any recent critiques o f our discipline’s d om inant reading practices will
simply tu rn o u t to be continuations o f the usual historicist/contextualist
project under another nam e.
A nd yet in their best m om ents, some o f these critiques o f our paradigmatic
reading practices have moved in a genuinely new direction— sometimes
even pointing, in effect if never explicitly by intention, away from the under
lying project o f scholarly cultural analysis itself. In this section, we will tu rn
our attention particularly to those argum ents that have emphasized the
political im portance o f entering into a m ore positive affective relationship to
the text than the existing paradigm , in its strictest forms, w ould appear to
allow. W e saw this emphasis a m om ent ago in the new aestheticisms and new
formalisms, though there the questions were chiefly philosophical in nature,
the search being for a rigorous way to rethink the aesthetic value o f the lit
erary as a source o f value. In the argum ents we will glance at here, som ething
like the same emphasis recurs, though at the different level o f hermeneutics:
here, the search has been for new m ethodologies o f reading that w ould allow
for, or even cultivate, a m ore positive relationship to the text. I have chosen
to group tendencies o f this kind under the heading o f “Intim ations” because
the w ord m ight plausibly be taken to capture som ething both about the
object o f th at search— a rigorous m ethod for achieving a positive intim acy
w ith the literary text, where th at achieved intim acy is treated as a central site
o f intellectual value— and also about the incompleteness o f the search— w hat
have so far been discovered are, in m y view, merely hints at such a m ethod;
the search continues. I also intend the buried w ord “Intim acies” here as an
indication o f the particular field in w hich this thinking has been carried out
m ost sensitively in our period: queer theory, the same field in w hich broader
questions about the character o f our affective intimacies in general has been
th o u g h t through in the m ost interesting and extended way. It may be th at I
should apologize for the wordplay in the heading, which is perhaps unsuc
cessful. In any case, glancing briefly at the w ork o f three key figures will be
enough at least to sketch a broad pattern o f th o ught here. We will begin w ith
Eve Sedgwick and D . A. Miller, and then move to discuss the som ewhat
different w ork o f Lauren Berlant.
Eve Sedgwick
Eve Sedgwick and D . A. M iller have been two o f the m ore prom inent figures
in queer theory in our period, and as m any have noted, in a broad sense their
thinking developed in parallel. In their early work, both offered exception
ally rich Foucauldian readings in precisely the paradigm atic mode: the key
examples are Sedgwick’s Between Men: English Literature and M ale Homo
social Desire (1985) and Epistemology o f the Closet (1990), and M illers The
Novel a n d the Police (1988). As they became more senior figures in the disci
pline, though, b oth began to tu rn away from w hat Sedgwick described as
“paranoid reading” and toward reading practices that were m ore intim ate,
personal, and affective, in search o f (am ong other things) a rigorous way to
w ork through a positive relationship w ith the pleasures o f the text. Sedgwick’s
claims for a “reparative reading” practice were exemplary here, as was
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M illers brief and incandescent Jane Austen, or the Secret o f Style (2003). It
w ould be w rong to say th at Sedgwick’s “reparative reading” was the theory
th at M iller s Jane Austen p u t into practice— they were w orking m uch m ore
independently than this w ould imply. Yet it w ould n o t be so w rong as to be
entirely misleading, for they were very m uch part o f the same larger conver
sation, and they were clearly pursuing the same class o f methodological
problem s at just the same tim e, and in a similar spirit.
A bout “reparative reading” itself, there is a lot to be said. M any people
have seized on the phrase on the assum ption th at it offers us a new reading
m ethod, b u t in fact if you go back to the original essay— m em orably entitled
“Paranoid Reading A nd Reparative Reading, O r, You’re So Paranoid, You
Probably T hink This Introduction Is A bout You”— you find Sedgwick
offering it n o t prim arily as a positive m ethodological proposal, b u t simply as
a kind o f generous re-description o f the w ork she saw going on around
her— specifically, the w ork in the edited collection to w hich her essay was
the in tro d u ctio n .18 Exam ining w hat she took to be some o f the better queer
theory o f her m om ent, she detected a n um ber o f characteristic emphases
that, she felt, could be taken together to constitute som ething like a new,
m ore positive reading practice. A m ong them were emphases th at by now
m ay have acquired a familiar ring: “affect and cognition are n o t every distant
processes”; “pleasure, grief, excitem ent, boredom , satisfaction are the sub
stance o f politics rather than their antithesis”; and m ost tellingly, perhaps,
“its well to attend intim ately to literary texts, n ot because their transform a
tive energies either transcend or disguise the coarser stuff o f ordinary being,
b u t because those energies are the stuff o f ordinary being” (1—2). As we have
seen, these were very m uch the emphases being draw n at the same tim e by
the best o f the “new aestheticisms,” particularly those on the other side o f
the A tlantic— indeed, any o f these sentences could have been the center-
piece o f an essay by Isobel A rm strong, though she was w riting in w hat m ight
seem quite a different intellectual context. The d om inant paradigm was pro
voking m ultiple, largely independent clusters o f intellectual dissatisfaction,
and those clusters were m aking their critiques in similar terms.
Like A rm strong, Sedgwick w anted to:
op en a space for m ovin g from the rather fixated q uestion “Is a particular
p iece o f know ledge true, and h o w can w e know ?” to the further questions,
“What does knowledge do — the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of
it, the receiving-again of knowledge of what one already knows? H o w , in
short, is knowledge performative, and how best does one move among its
causes and effects?” (4)
O n e can still hear Foucault speaking quite loudly here, and indeed Sedgwick
im m ediately w ent on to rem ark th at this m ight seem an “unrem arkable
epiphany: th at knowledge does rather than simply is, it is by now very rou
tine to discover” (4). A nd yet her insight was not really the old one, that
knowledge and power were inextricable— it was, on the contrary, a new
insight into the curious powerlessness o f know ledge-production itself. It
m ay be, she was saying, th at knowledge is not perform ative after all, at least
n o t where it counts. She drew attention to the “extraordinary stress” that
contem porary literary studies seemed to place on “the efficacy o f knowledge
per se— knowledge in the form o f exposure” (17). This faith in exposure
seemed to her to be m isguided, for exposing the tru th did not necessarily
lead to any positive change. Yet literary studies refused to recognize this, and
instead kept recom m itting to projects th at prom ised to use the literary as an
occasion for exposing the dark truths o f culture, as if doing so was bound to
make a difference. It was her sense o f the futility o f this project o f exposure,
together w ith her sense th at literary studies’ default m ode was now to search
everywhere for hidden threats, seeking the negative affects that were, it was
sure, concealed beneath the positive ones, th at led Sedgwick to diagnose the
whole scene as “paranoid.”
Understandably, she then w ondered how this had come to be. H ow was
it that queer theory, and w ith it literary studies as a whole, had become
trapped in a pattern o f merely “paranoid reading”? To the local version o f the
question— restricted to queer theory alone— she felt she had the answer:
Paranoia . . . becam e by the m id - 1980s a privileged o b ject o f an ti-h om op h ob ic

theory. H o w did it spread so quickly from that status to b eing its uniquely
sanctioned m eth o d o lo g y? I have been look in g back in to m y ow n w riting o f the
1980s as w ell as that o f som e other critics, trying to retrace that transition—
on e that seem s w orthy o f remark n ow but seem ed at the tim e, I think, the
m ost natural m ove in the w orld. Part o f the answer lies in a property o f para
n oia itself: sim ply put, paranoia tends to be contagious. . . . G iven that
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paranoia seem s to have a peculiarly intim ate relation to the p h ob ic dynam ics
around hom osexuality, then, it m ay have been structurally inevitable that the
reading practices that becam e m ost available and fruitful in an tih om op h ob ic
w ork w ou ld often in turn have been paranoid ones. (6—7)
The local answer, then, was th at due to its concern w ith the psychological
dynamics o f hom ophobia, the field had naturally lighted on paranoia as a
central object o f study; this object o f study was “contagious” by its nature,
and therefore came to infect the field s methodology. I am n o t here going to
try properly to assess the persuasiveness o f this intuition— in passing, let m e
simply observe th at in order to be convinced by it, one has to have a great
deal o f confidence in psychoanalysis as a tool for analyzing m edium-scale
institutional transform ations. For our purposes it is m ore im portant to note
that, w hen confronted w ith the m ore general question o f why this kind o f
m ethodology had com e to dom inate, n o t just queer theory, b u t literary
studies as a whole, Sedgwick was open about drawing a blank:
There m ust have been historical as w ell as structural reasons for this develop
m en t . . . since it is less easy to account on structural term s for the frequent
privileging o f paranoid m eth od ologies in recent non-queer critical projects
such as fem in ist theory, psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction, M arxist criti
cism , or the N e w H istoricism . (7)
H ere Sedgwicks m ethod o f analysis in this essay reaches its limits: diag
nosing the cultural m alady as “paranoia” enabled her to analyze it as a syn
chronic structure by analogy w ith psychological processes, but it left her
unable to trace the causes o f th at m alady in any m ore general way. I say this
w ith her, n o t against her: she is herself quite clear about the impossibility o f
understanding the tu rn to “paranoid reading” simply by analyzing the psy
chological structure o f the paranoiac position. Sedgwick knew that there
“m ust have been” larger historical forces at play, but w hat they were, exactly,
she did n o t feel in a position to say.
Yet at other m om ents, she was able at least to gesture toward the elements
o f a m ore genuinely historical account. O nce again m oving in (presumably
unw itting) synchrony w ith A rm strong, Sedgwick sensed that the kinds o f
“exposure” th at had seemed w orthw hile under the Keynesian regimes no
longer had real political purchase in her own period— the period that we
have now learned to call “neoliberal,” w hich appears in A rm strong under the
nam e “Thatcherism ,” and in Sedgwick under the names “Reaganism” and
“the tax revolt.” Here she offers a critique o f the Foucauldian assum ptions
underpinning M illers The N ovel and the Police (1988) as well as, by im plica
tion, her own earlier w ork— a critique th at quickly widens out to encompass
the “New H istoricism ” taken in very broad sense, as a synecdoche for the
w ork o f the whole period:
W riting in 1 9 8 8 — that is, after tw o full terms o f Reaganism in the U n ited

States— D . A . M iller proposes to follow F oucault in d em ystifying “the in ten
sive and con tin u ou s pastoral’ care that liberal society proposed to take o f each
and every on e o f its charges.” As if. I’m a lo t less w orried about b ein g pathol-
ogized by m y shrink than about m y vanishing m ental health coverage— and
that’s given the great good lu ck o f having health insurance at all. Since the
b egin n in g o f the tax revolt, the governm ent o f the U n ited States— and,
increasingly, those o f other so-called liberal dem ocracies— has been p ositively
rushing to divest itself o f answerability for care to its charges (cf. “en titlem en t
programs”)— w ith no other institu tion s proposing to fill the gap. This devel
op m en t is the last th in g anyone cou ld have expected from reading N e w H is-
toricist prose, w h ich constitutes a full genealogy o f the secular welfare state
that peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, along w ith a w atertight p r o o f o f w hy
things m ust b ecom e m ore and m ore like that forever. . . . (19—20)
Sedgwick offers this as an argum ent about the m ism atch between
Foucauldian/N ew H istoricist projects o f exposure and the actual historical
situation they (sometimes seem to) claim to w ant to change, rather than an
answer to the larger question o f historical causation— the question as to why
the discipline turned to “paranoid reading” w hen it did. She did n o t claim
to be able to answer th at question— yet one sees here th at she already had
the basic elem ents o f an answer to it w ithin her grasp. As I have suggested,
it is true th at the breakdow n o f the Keynesian regimes and the subsequent
tu rn to neoliberalism had ensured th at the political claims o f the dom inant
historicist/contextualist paradigm were out o f step w ith historical realities—
b u t that is n o t the whole tru th , for it is to a large extent the historicist/con
textualist paradigm s political futility that allowed it to prosper, the turn to
neoliberalism being, in th at sense, part o f its historical cause.
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H aving appreciated w ith remarkable sensitivity the real texture o f the

situation around her, Sedgwick attem pted to feel her way toward a deeper
kind o f practice: an alternative practice o f reading th at w ould be m ore gen
uinely engaged w ith the actual historical conditions it sought to change.
H ere we com e to the phrase “reparative reading,” w hich was offered both as
a description and a prescription. In the form er capacity, it was a way o f
m aking explicit practices that, she felt, were already im plicit in m uch existing
w ork w ithin literary studies, and particularly w ithin queer theory. If one
viewed the discipline negatively, she argued, one m ight simply see “paranoid
reading” everywhere:
Subversive and d em ystifying parody, suspicious archaeologies o f the present,

the d etection o f hidden patterns o f violence and their exposure: as I have been
arguing, these infin itely doable and teachable protocols o f unveiling have
b ecom e the co m m o n currency o f cultural and historicist studies. (21)
A nd yet Sedgwick encouraged us instead to view the situation more posi

tively, by em phasizing th at the tu rn to the “present paranoid consensus” had
n o t really “entirely displaced] ” m ore positive ways o f reading. Rather, it had
“simply . . . required a certain disarticulation, disavowal, and mis recogni
tion o f other ways o f know ing— ways less oriented around suspicion— that
are actually being practiced, often by the same theorists and as part o f the
same projects” (22). She therefore intended the phrase “reparative reading”
as a way to redescribe the achievements o f existing work, so as to “[do] jus
tice to the powerful reparative practices that, I am convinced, infuse self-
avowedly critical projects” (8). This is a sensitive and generous way to read
the critical scene, and there is certainly a lot to be said for going back to
reflect on the richness and heterogeneity o f actual practice, w hich the
dem and for m ethodological rigor so often conceals.
Yet the prescriptive am bitions m otivating the phrase “reparative reading”
were m ore circumscribed:
M y prescription . . . here is very m odest: that our w ork grows m ore interest
ing, m ore responsive, m ore truthful, and m ore useful as w e try to accou n t for
its m otives in a less stylized fashion than w e have been. Perhaps the unpack
ing, above, o f several different elem ents o f paranoid th ou gh t can suggest
several specific, divergent dim en sion s in w h ich alternative approaches m ay

also be available— m ay indeed be in practice in these pages. (23)
As a positive claim appearing at the end o f an extremely provocative essay,

this is indeed notable for its modesty. Perhaps it is the more persuasive for it.
Taking the descriptive and prescriptive elements together, “reparative
reading” appears to am o u n t to the observation that in our best m om ents we
already do m any useful, nonparanoid things, but that our explicit com m it
m en t to a paranoid m ethodology masks and deforms this; this observation
then justifies the argum ent th at we ought to step back from our explicit
m ethodological com m itm ents, the better to see the rich range o f alternative
practices already in play. P utting it this way allows us to see both the span
and the limits o f the claim being m ade, for one can acknowledge the real
force o f this observation, and still be left w anting more from the argum ent.
In particular, once one has agreed to cut dow n the old “paranoid” m ethod
ology, one wants to know w hether it m ight be possible to do m ore than
simply return to the fertile m ulch o f prem ethodological practice: one wants
to know how to set about growing a new, m ore positive m ethodology at least
as strong and various as the last.
I am n o t alone in w anting to see a m ore im m odest Sedgwick here. In his
2004 essay “U ncritical Reading,” M ichael W arner observed precisely this,
and drew o u t the implications:
B ut is reparative reading a structured program o f reading or explication? For

the m ost part Sedgw ick describes it as local, detailed, and unsystem
atized. . . . Sedgw ick’s reparative reading seem s to be defined less by any proj
ect o f its ow n than by its recoil from a m anically program m atic intensification
o f the critical. It is n o t so m u ch a m eth od as (principled?) avoidance o f
m eth od . ( 1 7 - 1 8 ) 19
The question m ark on “principled” is perhaps a little tough, b u t otherwise

this seems quite right to me. W h at I w ant to add is simply that this is pre
cisely w hat one expects to see w hen an incisive thinker pursues an interesting
line o f th o u g h t into a new territory fo r which she has no paradigm. The limits
o f the existing m ode are being sensed and rejected, but no new paradigm is
in view; instead, the thinker retreats from m aking explicit m ethodological
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claims and falls back instead on the m ore basic, more heterogeneous, b u t
also m ore inchoate level o f practice. It is in just that kind o f broader disci
plinary situation th at one is tem pted to claim ones lack o f m ethodology as
a virtue, as Sedgwick does here. In the later w ork o f both Sedgwick and, as
we shall soon see, M iller we find a strong sense o f the lim itations o f the
existing m ethodology, together w ith a call, express or im plied, for som ething
new— yet in the end no new m ethodology arrives, and w hat we get instead
is charisma, local brilliance, contingency, idiosyncrasy, chance. If one wants
to reinstate W arners question m ark on “principled” here, one can observe
th at at certain m om ents, moves o f this k ind threaten to throw us back into
the anti-institutionalism , the suspicion o f any form o f positive collectivity,
even the bad libertarianism , anarcho-liberalism , or simple neoliberalism that
m any have detected in Foucault.
B ut this is harsh, and Sedgwick’s later w ork really does p o in t richly to
som ething far beyond this: her sense o f the state o f the discipline was unusu
ally incisive, and though she did n o t p u t it in quite these terms, it is n o t to
press too far beyond her own language to say th at one o f her guiding in tu
itions here was th at further and better analyses o f oppressive forces were o f
very lim ited use in the absence o f a paradigm atic means by which to bring
the results o f th at analysis to bear on the actual practices o f social life. I take
it th at this is just the kind o f in tu itio n th at literary studies in its present state
m ost needs. Thus w hen I say th at for those in search o f a new, m ore positive
herm eneutic m ethod, beyond the boundaries o f the historicist/contextualist
paradigm , her later w ork remains o f gestural value, I do n o t m ean it as faint
praise. “Reparative reading” m ay n o t be a new m ethod in itself, still less the
birth o f a new paradigm — and yet if one is willing to take it in the “m odest”
spirit in w hich Sedgwick first proposed it, then it really does seem a very
perceptive way o f pointing in the direction in w hich a new, m ore genuinely
critical m ethod m ight eventually be found.
D . A . M iller
O riented by this, we can tu rn to D . A. M iller in the hope o f taking a step or

tw o further forward. H ere I th in k we will see just the same pattern recurring
at another level. The reader will recall the long list o f quotes w ith w hich we
ended the last chapter: quotes th at I intended as a rapid sketch o f som ething
at least suggestive o f the historicist/contextualist paradigm . There, I included

a fragm ent o f M illers The Novel and the Police (1988)— a fragm ent th at I
take to be M iller’s single m ost concise sum m ary o f his books central argu
m ent. For the readers convenience, I reproduce it here:
As I hope to show, the point of the [Victorian novel] . . . is to confirm the

novel-reader in his identity as “liberal subject”. . . . I further assume that
the traditional novel. . . remains a vital consideration in our culture. . . . The
“death of the novel” . . . has really meant the explosion everywhere of the
novelistic. . . . To speak of the relation of the Victorian novel to the age of
which it was . . . the mass culture, is thus to recognize a central episode in the
genealogy of our present, [x]20
This is an exemplary case o f the historicist/contextualist paradigm in action.

A nd yet, as Sedgwick asks, “w ho reads The Novel a nd the Police to find out
w hether its m ain argum ent is true?” (14). The books real readers, she tells
us, are “impelled through a grim ly m onolithic structure o f strongly paranoid
theory by successive engagem ent w ith quite varied, often apparently keenly
pleasure-oriented, smaller-scale writerly and intellectual solicitations” (22).
For Sedgwick, it is the latter th at really make up the heart o f the book; to
recover them is to do part o f the w ork o f redescribing paranoid reading as
reparative.
I th in k this is dead right, and to dram atize the tru th o f it, let me now
reproduce the central argum ent o f The N ovel and The Police once again,
restoring all the phrases th at I had to redact in order to get at it. W h at I take
to be M illers central claim in the book actually runs as follows:
As I hope to show, the point of the exercise, relentlessly a n d often literally

b ro u g h t h o m e as m u ch in th e novel's characteristic fo r m s a n d co n dition s o f recep
tio n as in its them es, is to confirm the novel-reader in his identity as “liberal
subject,” a term w ith w h ich I a llu d e n o t j u s t to th e su b ject w hose p r iv a te life,
m e n ta l o r dom estic, is f e l t to p ro d u c e co n sta n t in a rg u a b le eviden ce o f his co n stitu
tiv e “fre ed o m , ” b u t also to, b ro a d ly speaking, th e p o litic a l regim e th a t sets store by
th is subject. Such co n firm a tio n is th orou ghly im agin ary, to be sure, b u t so too, I
w i ll even tu a lly be suggesting, is th e id e n tity o f th e lib e ra l subject, w h o seems to
recognize h im s e lf m o s tfu lly on ly w h en he fo rg ets or d isa vo w s his f u n c tio n a l im p li
ca tio n in a system o f carceral restraints or d isc ip lin a ry in ju n ction s. I further
assum e that the traditional novel— the novel that many people define their
modernity by no longer reading— remains a vital consideration in our culture:
not in the pious and misleading sense that, for instance, “Masterpiece Theatre”has
dramatized all but one o f the novels I mainly discuss, but because the office that
the traditional novel once performed has not disappeared along with it. The
“death o f the n ovel” (of that novel, at any rate) has really m eant the explosion
everywhere o f the novelistic, no longer bound in three-deckers, but freely scat
tered across a far greater range o f cultural experience. To speak o f the relation o f
the V ictorian novel to the age o f w h ich it was, faute de mieux, the mass cul
ture, is thus to recognize a central episode in the genealogy o f our present, (x)
Evidently, the ellipses in the first version elided a great deal: n o t just addi
tional complexities o f argum ent, b u t also digressions, epigrams, m etaphors,
provisos, sudden leaps, second thoughts, suggestive instances, explanations
th at seem superfluous— even pointedly superfluous— snarls, tones, tics o f
style. The books m ain argum ent is hard to quote concisely, because the
marks o f charism a keep jum ping in. M arks o f charisma— or else, if you
prefer, the marks o f a restless intellectual dissatisfaction. The core o f M iller s
early w ork is exemplary o f the paradigm , b u t it chafes frustratedly against
the paradigm s limits all the time: already in this early work, the author
seems to feel th at his uncom prom ising, strongly Foucauldian historicist/con-
textualist argum ent is som ehow unsatisfying or insufficient. Arm ed w ith
Sedgwicks program notes, one can approach M illers early w ork a little dif
ferently: though it seems as if the book ought to w ant to keep the spotlight
on its historicist/contextualist project, in fact one can already hear a rustling
in the wings.
H ow different, and yet how similar, the opening lines o f Jane Austen,
w hen the extra charism a seems to leap forw ard and take over the show. The
whole show, I m ean, at every level: actor, script, and fictional action.
A ll o f us w h o read Jane A usten early— say, at eleven or tw elve, the age w h en

she began w riting— were lost to th e siren lure o f her voice. “H o w nicely you
talk; I love to hear you. You understand everything.” Yet whereas E m m as talk
m erely held H arriet w ith the charm o f a person, w hat A u sten s w riting chan
n eled for us was the considerably m ore exciting appeal o f no longer bein g one.
H ere was a truly o u t-o f-b o d y voice, so stirringly free o f w hat it abhorred as
“particularity” or “singularity” that it seem ed to com e from no enunciator at
all. It scanted person even in the linguistic sense, rarely acknowledging, by

saying I, its originations in an authoring self, or, by saying you, its reception
by any other. We rapt, admiring readers might feel we were only eavesdrop
ping on delightful productions intended for nobody in particular. (1)
The critical voice speaking here is quite remarkable for the finesse w ith
w hich it m im ics the rhetorical effect it is describing. The finesse lies in an
odd place, in th at M iller here reproduces A ustens effect in an exaggerated
m anner, thereby training us to experience it in its m ore subtle original form.
This I w ould like to call pedagogical. A ustens voice, we are told, is “out-of-
body,” lacking and abhorring particularity, and in the argum ent that follows
the im personality o f th at voice turns out to be a cover for the shame o f her
person (“W h at lies at the close heart o f Austen Style is . . . a failed, or refused,
b u t in any case shameful relation to the conjugal im perative” 28). Crucially,
the critical voice th at tells us this— M illers voice— also seems to be trying to
speak impersonally, b u t is m aking such a fuss o f it that it keeps failing.
As so often in Austen, the complexities o f the tone are paraded in the first
line. Even just the first p a rt o f the first line: “All o f us w ho read Jane Austen
early— say, at eleven or twelve.” The “All o f us who read” here— rather than,
say, “/ read . . .”— seems an attem pt to rise beyond the merely personal, but
it is an attem p t th at fails very quickly— “say” is too conspicuously conven
tional a m arker o f a pretended casualness to prevent “eleven or twelve” from
revealing itself as a merely particular, autobiographical detail. Evidently this
is not an out-of-body voice— rather, this is M iller talking; M iller loudly per
form ing the failure o f an attem p t to hide his personality. A nother exagger
ated example, tw o pages later: “But the same discovery that, sometimes even
despite herself, m ade the girl a good girl, m ade the boy all w rong” (3). The
practiced ineptitude o f this— it is only too obvious that “the boy,” ashamed,
is M iller pretending to cover him self—trains us to see that whenever a voice
o f this kind seems to speak impersonally, it is m aking an effort to hide, or
manage, or com pensate for its very personal shame. W hen Austen perform s
this rhetorical maneuver, it fools us; M iller sees through it and then bungles
it in slow m otion for our benefit. It is by exposing him self that he exposes
the w ork o f the text.21
I find this perform ance trem endously convincing, n o t simply in its local
insights, b u t in its recovery against all odds o f w hat seems a genuinely critical
impulse. For in its best m om ents Jane Austen abandons n o t just “paranoid
reading” or a “herm eneutics o f suspicion” b u t even w hat we m ight call
sim ply “scholarly reading” itself. Now, clearly n o t all the m om ents in the
book are o f this kind. There are times w hen M iller manages the risk o f expo
sure by perform ing cognitive precision o f a familiar theoretical order, w hich
is safe enough; and crucially, as we learn by the end o f ja n e Austeny M iller
also manages it by fram ing his insights as, finally, insights into Austen in her
context. This is to say that by the end o f the book, there is a kind o f collapse
o u t o f this deeply personal m ode, and into som ething nom inally m ore
objective, m ore legible to historicist/contextualist norm s. A nd yet if we
focus on the m ost striking (because now so unfamiliar) elements o f Jane
Austen, disem bedding them from the habitual contextualism in w hich we
sometimes find them , we find th at in its strongest, m ost resistant (or elated)
m om ents, the book stakes its claim on our intellectual attention prim arily
by referring us to the depth, articulation, and affective intim acy o f the critics
own subjective inwardness w ith the text, the necessarily idiosyncratic rela
tionship between text and reader being secured by means o f our com m on
capabilities in such a way as to make itself available to others as a potentially
representative one. Brought to bear in this way, M illers own intim ate
insights into Austen acquire the force o f m ore general insights, n o t simply
into Austen, b u t into life.
I do hope the reader hears the echo o f Leavis in my language here—
specifically, the echo o f Leavis’ A rnold— because if you do hear it, it m ight
be jarring enough to make you long, as I do, for a discipline that w ould set
itself the task o f trying to com pose a better language to fall back upon in
such instances. As Sedgwick p u t it:
the vocabulary for articulating any readers reparative m otive toward a text or
a culture has lon g been so sappy, so aestheticizing, defensive, anti-intellectual,
or reactionary that its n o w onder few critics are w illin g to describe their
acquaintance w ith such m otives. The prohibitive problem , however, has been
in the lim itations o f present theoretical vocabularies rather than in the repar
ative m otive itself. (35)
Sedgwick’s theoretical contrast between the “paranoid” and the “reparative”

offers us a language through w hich at least to articulate our inability to talk
o f criticism proper— and yet for all its suggestiveness, Sedgwicks own pro
posal for “reparative reading” ultim ately am ounted to a refusal o f m ethod.
C an we say the same o f M iller here? O u g h t we to view this as a heroic refusal
o f the norm al historicist/contextualist m ode that nevertheless cannot find
its way to anything m ore systematic or repeatable than a brilliantly charis
m atic belletrism— an im pressionism , w ith o ut real m ethod, that retreats in
the end to the usual contextualist claims?
N o, for in fact M iller does have a rigorous disciplinary m ethod here:
nothing so novel as “reparative reading”— or “surface reading,” say— b u t
simply our old friend “close reading.” (And indeed M iller begins the last
chapter o f Jane Austen by reflecting directly on the history and current status
o f close reading as a practice— reflections to w hich we shall return in a
m om ent.) In his search for a new, m ore positive, m ore personal m ethod o f
reading— a search th at is, really, in a buried way, a search for a new paradigm
for criticism proper— M iller finds precisely the central tool o f the old critical
paradigm , and pursues it so far th at becomes som ething quite unfam iliar
today. D isencum bering him self o f m any o f the usual scholarly shibboleths,
he mines dow n into the roots o f close reading, thereby rediscovering it as a
means by w hich to pursue a belletristic or aestheticist impulse in a rigorous
and exacting way.
Was M iller then offering us a new paradigm for criticism— in effect, the
old paradigm returning in a new mode? Was it repeatable by others, and
on other terms? I do n o t th in k so. For the perform ance here is quite evi
dently n o t o f such a kind as to be generally repeatable w ithout massive
adjustm ent, n o t only o f the perform ance itself, but o f the wider disciplinary
context in w hich such efforts w ould have to take their place. For M illers
later work, like Sedgwick’s, was recognizably m arked and received as the
w ork o f thinkers at a very specific institutional site. In the first place, they
were obviously senior, and thus insulated from pressing institutional
dem ands like “field specificity” and “contribution to knowledge”— concerns
th at were nonnegotiable lower dow n the scale, and rem ain nonnegotiable
today. It is n o t hard to im agine the difficulties a PhD student w ould
encounter if trying to find a job on the basis o f w ork o f this kind, even were
they to carry it o u t quite brilliantly— let alone if they were to carry it out at
a level m ore realistically to be expected from junior critics at large. A junior
scholar in literary studies w ho elects to write chiefly about the virtues o f
169
nondualist B uddhist thought, conceived pedagogically, as Sedgwick did; a

new ly-m inted P hD w ith a dissertation th at simply engages w ith the text in
a personal way, claim ing the representativeness and intellectual value o f
insights so discovered, in the absence o f any further p ro o f secured by
m eans o f rigorous historical or contextual analysis— I do not say it is im pos
sible th at such a person could be taken seriously by the discipline, but I
do n o t th in k anyone w ho knows the field w ould deny that they w ould
encounter difficulties on a scale n o t faced by those pursuing projects o f the
m ore usual kind.
B ut it is n o t just the seniority o f the figures concerned th at marks M iller s
achievem ent as highly particular, rather than paradigm atic. Clearly Jane Aus
tens best m om ents provide us w ith a kind o f w riting about literature very
different to th at dem anded by scholarly norm s— I w ant to call it m ore “per
sonal,” b u t this is com plicated, since it is precisely the possibility o f a purely
personal stake in the text th at seems at issue. The fact that this is the issue is
a clue to another way in w hich the book relied, for its effect, on its relation
ship to a very specific institutional context. The central dram a o f the book
lies in its bravura perform ance o f critical reading in a context where such
things are unexpected, n o t to say dangerous; it offers us the spectacle o f a
rich and persuasive thinker walking the tightrope o f an intim acy w ith the
text, w ithout (or at least, seemingly w ithout) the safeguards o f a scholarly
net. This to say th at the book is convincing precisely as a spectacle o f daring
the face o f vulnerability, and m uch o f this vulnerability derives from the
books necessarily fraught relationship w ith existing historicist/contextu-
alist norm s. As we have seen, today the discipline at large possesses no sys
tem atic way to articulate to itself the m eans by w hich a personal and affec
tive intim acy w ith the text can be m ade a prim ary site o f intellectual
value— n o t through contextualizing or theorization, b u t through the force
o f its own inwardness— not, th at is to say, by staking its claims to intellectual
rigor on its perceptiveness or utility as cultural analysis, b u t by staking them
instead on the power and subtlety o f its attem pt to cultivate our com m on
capabilities. In such a context, any w ork th at w ould stake its claims on a
“merely” personal intim acy w ith the text m ust run the risk o f being revealed
as mere im pressionism or belletrism, such as cannot be taken seriously by
the strictest scholarly standards. M iller manages th at risk by both them a-
tizing and perform ing it. A t the m ost obviously vulnerable m om ents, he
finesses his vulnerability by perform ing charisma— by staging repeatedly the

transform ation o f his vulnerable and particular personality into critical
authority, if you like— or, if you prefer, by perform ing w ith breathtaking
precision an unfortunate failure o f Style. M y point is that both M illers style
and his choice o f subject— he is investigating the range o f rhetorical tech
niques by w hich people manage the shame o f self-exposure— are overdeter
m ined, being in part sym ptom atic o f the risks th at m ust be ru n by any
attem p t to return to a m ore personal and affective m ode in a context that
cannot as a rule take such things w ith the highest seriousness, except as spe
cial cases. If one is trying to make a claim for the im portance o f a genuinely
critical relationship to the literary, in a context where this is seen as either
regressive or undisciplinary, then one m ight well have to do so by w riting a
w hole book th at b oth analyses and deploys precisely the kinds o f rhetorical
strategies th at people use to m anage the shame o f the particularity o f their
person; the shame o f self-exposure. In the discipline as it stood at that point,
could one have pulled off a perform ance o f this kind w ith such elan, if the
perform ance had been about som ething else?
Seeing this allows us some insight into why this return to som ething like
criticism in a personal and affective sense is occurring in queer theory, o f all
places. H ere it strikes me th at Sedgwicks intuition th at queer theory was
m ore liable to paranoia than o ther fields has the potential to mislead us, for
the striking fact th at needs to be explained is just the opposite: w hy was it
th at queer theory was so quick to see the need to move on? I am n o t going
to try to answer th at question in a serious way here, except to note th at in
queer theory, in the period leading up to this kind o f work, there had been
a deep collective thinking-though o f questions o f perform ance, personality,
shame, self-exposure— moreover, there had been a concerted effort to recover
for serious intellectual life the possibilities o f modes o f personal relation that
w ent beyond simply the production o f theory or knowledge in the expected
scholarly m ode. H ere it is surely relevant that both Sedgwick and M iller
were em blem atic precisely for their perform ance o f charisma, chutzpah,
verve, personality, camp. Inevitably, given the period, w ork o f this kind had
usually taken the form o f cultural analysis: further and better historicizations
and theorizations o f sexuality and gender; the recovery o f lost queer histo
ries, figures, lines o f thought; new accounts o f the role o f affect in the culture
at large— all o f w hich was rich in im plications for the analysis o f sociality
171
and subjectivity m ore broadly. A nd yet there had also been other, m ore
direct attem pts actively to cultivate and em body different modes o f person
ality, subjectivity, and collectivity, and here we approach som ething like crit
icism in the fuller sense.
A t this point, as we note the presence in queer theory o f a real, felt pres
sure to cultivate different m odes o f com m on being, it seems possible to
detect the traces o f the m ore fundam ental historical situation in and by
w hich th at body o f theory was form ed, and to w hich it was an attem pt to
form an adequate response. For w hat we see here are the signs o f the fact that
o f all the fields, sub-fields, and emphases w ithin literary study that claimed
a political m andate, it was queer theory, alm ost uniquely, th at still had its
roots in live and m obile social forces— collective forces th at were actually
m aking advances, albeit advances o f a very problem atic kind, in the wider
world. I pass over vast complexities in saying this quickly, b u t it needs to be
said, even at the cost o f over-simplification. P utting things very rapidly, real
collective action on class had stalled w ith the global tu rn to neoliberalism;
collective action on gender and race had advanced a little further before
being rerouted and turned back, m uch o f the forward m ovem ent having
been halted by the stalling o f the underlying critique o f class. But having
gathered steam a little later, the collective struggle for a broader, m ore
hum ane regime o f sexuality was still m aking some kind o f progress in the
1990s and 2000s, even if, as m any have noted, th at progress was inevitably
o f a very awkward and sometimes thoroughly pyrrhic kind. I p u t on hold for
the m om ent the crucial question o f the extent to w hich critiques based on
gender, race and sexuality are, or are not, at odds w ith the determ inative
forces o f capital, and at w hat particular conjunctures; pursuing it w ould take
us too far o u t o f our way here. M y p o in t is sim ply th at it really does make a
difference to the character o f the w ork produced by an intellectual form a
tion w hen those involved feel strongly their responsibility to the needs o f
fairly well-defined larger form ation beyond the academy— a larger form a
tion defined n o t sim ply by its “identity” b u t by its character as a living move
m ent— w hich is to say, really, a form ation defined by its always lim ited but
nevertheless real ability to define itself by determ ining, collectively, the tra
jectory o f its own developm ent.
M illers own com m ents on his relationship to the history o f “close
reading” offer an effective sum m ary o f m y observations here. The final
chapter o f Jane Austen begins as follows. This is long, since I am now reluc
tan t to straighten o u t the snarls.
Picture, if you can, a past moment of literary criticism when, institutionally

empowered and rewarded, close reading was the critic s chief tool of profes
sional advancement; his command of a text, his capacity to tease from it a
previously invisible nuance, or illuminate it under a fresh insight, would as
good as light the pipe in his mouth and sew elbow patches on his jacket, so
unfailingly did he thus distinguish himself as the compleat, the full professor
of English Literature. Now picture, if you need to, a future moment of literary
criticism in which the same practice has fallen into total dereliction, and the
esprit definesse has ceded all its previous authority and prestige to the esprit de
geometrie, more familiarly known as “theory.” Even more efficiently than it
once promoted its practitioner through the ranks of the professoriat, close
reading now transforms him into an emeritus, antiquated and rambling. . . . I
don’t mean to suggest by either exercise that, whether or not we ever lived in
such a past, we should contemplate returning to it, or that, if such a future is
indeed at hand, we should do our best to resist it. On the contrary, it is close
reading in its humbled, futile, “minoritized” state that would win my prefer
ence in any contest. For only when close reading has lost its respectability, has
ceased to be the slave of mere convenience, can it come out as a thing that,
even under the high-minded (but now somewhat kitschy-sounding) ratio
nales of its former mission, it had always been: an almost infantile desire to be
close, period, as close as one can get, without literal plagiarism. (57—58)
O ne could quibble here about M illers sense o f his m om ent in the history
o f the discipline— today, w ith the benefit o f hindsight, it is easy enough to
see th at “theory” was n o t at this m om ent on its way to becom ing a dom inant
paradigm , as he seems to th in k — b u t this misreading o f the tu rn to the cur
rent paradigm as a tu rn to theory should be familiar enough by now. W h at
I w ant to note instead is th at M iller here cham pions close reading, and I
th in k by im plication criticism itself, b u t precisely not as a paradigm atic
m ethod. H e refuses to countenance returning to an (in any case illusory)
m id-century w hen it was “institutionally empowered and rewarded,” the
“chief tool o f professional advancem ent,” and so on; indeed he envisions a
future— even a present— in w hich it has almost totally collapsed into
“theory,” and refuses to say th at this w ould be bad. Instead, he insists that he
THE CRITICAL U N C O N S C I O U S
likes close reading m ost in its abject state. So w hen one points out, as I have
tried to do here, th at M iller is effectively fighting for criticism per se in this
book, one m ust im m ediately go on to add th at he does not appear to see any
possibility o f th at fight succeeding.
Here perhaps you begin to see the parallel that I am trying to draw between
the two thinkers, because it is precisely in situations o f that kind, when there
seems no prospect o f winning, that it so very tem pting to make a virtue out o f
no t w anting to win. In Miller here it is a political virtue: close reading, as he
likes it, is “hum bled, futile, ‘m inoritized’”; it “has lost its respectability”; only
thus can it “come out.” Unlike Sedgwick, M iller does have a positive com m it
m ent to a m ethod, yet at the same tim e he wants to claim as a positive good
the absence o f a broader paradigm that would make that m ethod available for
general use. If you are sympathetic to some o f the spirit o f this, I am with you,
bu t when one takes a close look at the political sensibility that underpins it, it
begins to look to me like one that we ought to reject. H ow to put this? O f
course it is sometimes necessary to cham pion the virtues o f the losing position,
and the fact that M iller can do so w ith such confidence here testifies to the
collective achievements o f the larger cultural form ation o f which he is a part.
Yet remarking the fact o f ones being hum bled as a virtue is useful only up to
point— putting a large argum ent in a very short form, it is simply very hard to
see how a politics based on virtues o f this kind can ever make plans to win.
So in b o th thinkers we see the same pattern: Sedgwick and M iller both
p o in t us toward a m ore positive, m ore personal, ultim ately m ore critical
relationship to the text; yet in b o th cases this leads, n o t to a new m ethod or
a new paradigm , such as w ould allow this new kind o f project to be carried
o u t in an institutionally recognized way, b u t instead to an acceptance and
even a celebration o f the lack o f any such m ethod, the lack o f any such par
adigm. Set in its broader historical context, this pattern o f response strikes
m e as doubly sym ptom atic. Locally, it speaks to the lack o f any prospect o f
a true paradigm for criticism— the lack o f any hope o f p u ttin g together a
paradigm atic way to use the literary directly to intervene in the social order.
Globally, it speaks to the lack o f any prospect o f decisive political progress:
despite the real gains m ade on the front o f sexuality, “m inoritized” still seems
to be the best th at we can hope for here. Both these sym ptom s strike me as
typical o f the period— a period in w hich it was in fact quite realistic to hold
little hope for serious progress on the left.
Lauren B erlant
Let us then tu rn very briefly to the final figure we will address in this section.
In recent years, “affect theory” has becom e more and more visible as an
exciting part o f the discipline s work. The defining emphasis here is a familiar
one, since we have already seen it in b oth A rm strong and Sedgwick: an insis
tence on the inextricability o f cognition and affect, and a concom itant call
for a m ore careful study o f the neglected latter term . In the face o f strong
existing emphases on cognition, m any have found this alternative emphasis
convincing, and it is perhaps n o t unfair to say that m uch o f the energy in
and around queer theory circles has now m igrated into the study o f affect,
w ith both positive and negative results. O n the negative side— w riting for a
m o m en t as som eone n o t from the U nited States— I shall risk rem arking that
w hen reading the w ork o f leading affect theorists, there are m om ents w hen
one cannot b u t feel th at a peculiarly U.S. form o f sentim entality is being
pressed on one from the outside, a sensation familiar from daily life any
where in the em pire— and this is despite the seemingly radical intentions o f
m any o f those involved. T hat this was n o t true in the same way o f m uch o f
the earlier queer w ork perform ed in the U nited States suggests th at there
m ay be som ething about the study o f affect, as presently constituted, that
calls nom inally internationalist U.S. thinkers back hom e to merely local
(but then projected) ranges o f feeling in a problem atic and often unacknow l
edged way. I poin t this out here since I rarely see it noted, though I am afraid
I do so only to set it aside— pursuing this question in a serious m anner
w ould take us too far o u t o f our way. In any case, I take it that to m any
non-U .S. readers I will merely be pointing o ut the obvious.
The m ore salient gains and losses o f the general move toward affect are
perhaps best seen by directing our attention toward a specific figure, and I
will therefore close this section by turning briefly to Lauren Berlant,
treating her as a means by w hich to take the tem perature o f the broader
body o f work. Berlant s “national sentim ental trilogy”— The Anatomy o f
N ational Fantasy (1991), The Queen o f American Goes to Washington City
(1997) and The Female Complaint (2008)— has form ed som ething like a
backbone to m uch recent w ork in affect theory. Reading this through to
Cruel Optimism (2011)— as o f the tim e o f w riting, her m ost recent m ajor
w ork— one is struck by the strength and explicitness o f her com m itm ent to
175
the historicist/contextualist project. Again and again she tells us that “affect
theory is another phase in the history o f ideology theory”— quoting here
from the introduction to Cruel Optimism— and she traces w ith great preci
sion the m om ents at w hich her own w ork is a continuation and develop
m ent o u t o f the w ork o f the m ost central o f historicist/contextualist figures,
particularly R aym ond W illiam s and Fredric Jameson, w ho appear in this
capacity w ith great regularity (53). At the same time, she makes m any o f the
nom inally alternative gestures now expected o f up-do-date work, repeatedly
aligning herself w ith the tendencies we have just examined— thus, for
instance, she emphasizes th at “Cruel Optimism is a more formalist w ork”
than other recent works in queer and affect theory w ith w hich it m ight o th
erwise be confused, and she notes also that her book “tries to avoid the clo
sures o f sym ptom atic reading,” by w hich she seems to m ean m ainly that she
avoids econom ic determ inism s o f a “vulgar M arxist” kind (13, 15). N one o f
this, however, shifts her determ inedly scholarly orientation: emphatically,
the goal is still cultural analysis. She often uses the term s “aesthetic” and
“form al” in an analytical rather than debunking or demystifying spirit, but
they are virtually always treated as diagnostic registering apparatus in a
Jam esonian mode: thus “I am claim ing th at the aesthetic or formal rendi
tion o f affective experience provides evidence o f historical processes”; “these
new aesthetic forms, I argue, emerge during the 1990s to register a shift in
how older state-liberal-capitalist fantasies shape adjustm ents to . . .”— and
so on (7, 16).
The challenge for the historian is then to determ ine w hether one ought to
read her— and w ith her, perhaps, the “turn” to affect as a whole— as a collapse
and containm ent o f earlier attem pts at a break w ith historicist/contextualist
norm s, a gathering o f the new pseudo- or proto-critical lexicons back into
the scholarly fold— or whether, on the o ther hand, one ought to read her as
we have been reading other such figures, looking beneath her explicit com
m itm ents to the dom inant so as to detect the im plied impulses toward a
break that they manage and conceal. This is a genuine conundrum , and m uch
is at stake in it, since “affect theory” has reached a position o f some im por
tance in the w ork o f the discipline, and the question o f w hether it consti
tutes a containm ent or an expansion o f the existing counter-tendencies
therefore m atters a great deal as a sign o f m ore general trajectories. The
fact th at it is still very m uch a live form ation makes it som ew hat tem pting
to wait a little and see how things tu rn o u t before m aking a call. Yet that
w ould be an abdication. I th in k perhaps it is best to take the second option,
reading Berlant against the grain a little so as to glance just briefly at a couple
o f the m om ents at w hich her w ork seems to call out for a project o f criticism.
I do so partly on the basis o f the principle that, in mobile situations o f this
kind, w hen the direction o f events is still being determ ined, description is
sometimes less useful than prescription. In any case, I take Berlant s w ork to
be exemplary o f some o f the best that contem porary affect theory has to
offer, and it strikes me th at a genuine project o f criticism o f the kind for
w hich I have been calling could m ake good use o f it, w hether or n o t
affect theory itself is in fact heading tow ard a break w ith the dom inant ana
lytical m ode.
To see this, one needs to note the strong congruence between Berlant s
project o f cultural analysis and w hat we earlier, in C hapter 1, called the
“diagnostic” elem ent o f the early critical paradigm . There are a num ber o f
examples one can p o in t to here, and for convenience I will once again use
Richards as the em blem , though at the risk o f m aking it seem as if he con
tains everything, w hich once again he em phatically does not. To begin w ith,
we can observe th at “affect” in Berlant names w hat Richards w ould have
considered a partial span w ithin the broad range o f sensibilities, habits o f
evaluation, patterns o f impulse, techniques o f adaptation, and so on, that are
best th o u g h t o f as “aesthetic.” Berlant’s own use o f the term “aesthetic” tends
to place it in the smaller vicinity o f specifically artistic practices, but it does
w ander o u t into this w ider territory from tim e to time. If one is willing to
press her use o f the w ord a little further in that direction— a move already
being m ade by other affect theorists, Sianne Ngai being perhaps the m ost
p rom inent example— then one can observe that the core o f Berlant’s w ork is
designed to track w ith great precision the specifically aesthetic means by
w hich subjectivities and collectivities manage to undergo and respond to the
w orld.22 W hen she writes th at attention to affect allows us to uncover “a
kind o f proprioceptive history,” one cannot but hear Richards’ attention to
neural responses, to the social history o f the kinaesthetic im agination, to the
intuitional utility o f m icro-m ovem ents o f the spine (20). Or, tu rning things
around, I take it th at anyone w ho has read Berlant will find familiar Richards’
emphasis on “this aspect o f experience as filled w ith incipient p ro m p t
ings, lightly stim ulated tendencies to acts o f one kind or another, faint
177
prelim inary preparations for doing this or th at . . .”; the reader o f the present
book may also recall th at in C hapter 1, we spoke o f the diagnostic Richards
w ho envisioned conducting “fieldwork in com parative ideology” toward a
“natural history o f hum an opinions and feelings” that w ould track, n o t
simply avowed beliefs, b u t also “imaginal and incipient activities or tenden
cies to action.”23 O r again, w hen Berlant replaces Jam esons “w aning o f
affect” w ith the “w aning o f genre,” she provides us w ith an understanding o f
genre th at Richards easily could have endorsed: “Genres provide an affective
expectation o f the experience o f w atching som ething unfold, w hether that
thing is in life or in art” (6). This is, if you like, a psychological account o f
an aesthetic category; moreover, it is an account that strongly asserts the
continuity between artistic experiences and experience more generally con
ceived. O r once again, Berlant tells us th at tracking affect “releases to view a
poetics, a theory-in-practice o f how a w orld works” (16). This, one m ight
say, is quite a precise description o f the aesthetic in the sense understood by
the early critical paradigm from Richards through Leavis: the structured/cre
ative (“poetics”) and heuristic (“theory-in practice”) activity by which sub
jects encounter and remake elements o f their experience as sources o f value,
using the com m on experiential resources o f the culture at large.
M y p o in t is simply th at if one reads the scene in this light, then it once
again begins to seem plausible to say th at the discipline is currently in a
preparadigm atic phase, in w hich the groundw ork for som ething like a gen
uinely interventionist project o f criticism is being laid. For once one has
developed the ability to track all these things so closely as they circulate
through the culture, surely the next step is to try to develop rigorous means
by which to cultivate them? Affect theory as em blem atized by Berlant seems
a case-in-point here, for the project, while clearly historicist/contextualist in
its basic orientation tow ard cultural analysis, seems to have been hom ing in
on som ething th at strongly recalls the old aesthetic concerns. Now, I am o f
course aware th at m y claim th at the natural next step is a break toward crit
icism proper will strike m any as absurd: we affect theorists, we literary
scholars, intervene by analyzing.\ n o t by . . . well . . . intervening. A nd
indeed, it is true to say that so far this new trajectory is still m ore or less
b o u n d w ithin historicist/contextualist limits. For all her emphasis on affect,
and on how inseparable it is from cognition, to read Berlant is to engage the
latter w ith o u t necessarily doing m uch to cultivate the former. Speaking
m ore broadly, the “tu rn ” to affect in our period has made it possible to diag
nose affect as it circulates through the social body, b u t if we were to try to
develop new and rigorous means by w hich to cultivate affective or aes
thetic capabilities, in their various depths and ranges, then this w ould raise
a very different set o f questions, and require quite another m ode. So it
m ay be fair to say th at there is as yet no real, concrete evidence o f a tu rn in
this direction.
A nd yet there are intim ations. In a piece w ritten in 2004 for the journal
Critical Inquiry, Berlant records her m em bership in a small scholarly/
artistic/activist group called “Feel Tank Chicago,” part o f a larger (but still
evidently very small) “system” o f “cells” in a num ber o f other cities in the
U nitied States: “cells” w ith names like “Transnational Fem inism ,” “Sex and
Freedom ,” “O rganizing G endered and Racialized C om m unities through
the Axis o f Class,” and— perhaps m ost significantly for our purposes—
“Public Feelings.”
W e have hosted, for exam ple, an International D ay o f the Politically

D epressed. W h at does it m ean to th in k o f negativity n o t as an effect o f bad
pow er b u t as a w ay o f b eing critical w ith o u t consciousness, as w e currently
understand its cultivated form? H o w is it possible to th in k about cultivated
subjectivity in the aesthetic sense w ith o u t im p lyin g uplift, progress, or
errancy? Situated in our ow n contradictions, w e are also restless, angry,
m ournful, and strangely op tim istic activists o f the U .S . political sphere. I
close w ith th e slogan that w ill be on our first cache o f T-shirts and stickers:
Depressed? . . . It M ig h t Be Political. (4 5 0 —4 5 1)24
The emphasis on the positive potential o f depression here comes on so

strongly as U.S. Am erican, o f a certain stripe, th at I have trouble breathing
for the press o f it, b u t again, we are p u ttin g th at aside. The genuine interest
o f this kind o f thinking lies in its felt need to create a new language w ith
w hich to think through the kind o f concerns that were once, in an older,
discredited m ode, referred to as “cultivated subjectivity in the aesthetic
sense.” It has n o t yet found th at language, b u t it is clear about the need for
it, and it is also clear in its rejection o f the old language, w hich, it feels,
w ould sim ply lead us back to the old ideologies. The specific terms used to
p o in t to those ideologies here are sym ptom atic o f the m om ent: it was 2004,
and the w ork o f m any o f the figures in this circuit returns again and again to
the horrors o f U.S. neo-conservatism — in such a context, “uplift” and “prog
ress” seemed available only as the term s o f the enemy. It is w orth keeping
th at context in m ind w hen we try to evaluate the new language that this
tendency d id manage to form — the language o f affect theory itself—a lan
guage which, as we have noted, is m arked precisely by its refusal o f any active
attem p t to cultivate new ranges o f affect, and its retreat back to the mere
analysis o f affect.
A nd yet, even in such a context, the group evidently felt the need to try
to th in k a way toward some kind o f w orthw hile interventionist action. It is
only too easy to dismiss the p rinting o f “Depressed? . . . It M ight Be Polit
ical” slogans on T-Shirts as simply another failed attem pt at activist perfor
m ance art; it is harder, b u t I th in k better, to make the effort to see the
intellectual victory th at had to have been w on in order to arrive at that
seemingly rather unprom ising course. For if in a sense all activist campaigns
are attem pts to make a political intervention, this one is unusually clear
about its status as an intervention a t the level o f collective political sensibility;
Indeed, the slogan is precisely an insistence on the idea th at sensibility is
political, and vice versa. It is as if one o f the fundam ental emphases o f affect
theory— on sensibility as political, on the political as a m atter o f sensi
bility— is being carried through into an actual, if gestural, attem pt to
encourage the developm ent o f a different range o f political sensibilities in
the wider collective. It is, moreover, an attem p t to encourage the develop
m ent o f precisely th at range o f political sensibilities w hich w ould allow the
collective to acknowledge w hat, under neoliberalism, it could n o t acknowl
edge: the viability o f the underlying category o f political sensibility itself—
the category w ithin w hich phrases like “political depression” and “Public
Feelings” ought to w ork and m ean. The w ork notionally being done here is
n o t literary, b u t it is— speaking quite precisely— aesthetic, and it tries to lay
a foundation for further aesthetic work. W ith in its obvious limits, it strikes
m e as a genuine act o f criticism, and one intended precisely as an attem pt to
open up space for a criticism still to come.
O ne then w onders w hat a practice w ould look like that com bined this
particular activist emphasis on intervention at the level o f collective political
sensibility, w ith M iller’s m ore evidently literary rediscovery o f the critical—
affective, personal, also representative— roots o f close reading, guided by
Sedgwick’s nod tow ard som ething like a “reparative” or— if you like—
therapeutic motive. I th in k it w ould be som ething other than scholarly. I
th in k it w ould be w orth having, too.
Part Three: Expansions

B ut by itself it w ould n o t be enough. As we have seen, one o f the basic dis
tinctions th at structured the scholar/critic dispute throughout the m iddle
decades o f the tw entieth century was th at between specialists and generalists:
archetypally, the “scholars” were the specialists and the “critics” were the
generalists. This basic distinction is o f course com plicated by m any factors:
one can m ake it problem atic simply by recalling A uerbachs Mimesis, w hich
dem onstrates how widely, in exceptional cases, the often highly specialized
philological tradition was capable o f opening out toward m ore generalist
concerns. N o r is it true th at the critical tradition was merely generalist in any
simple sense: on the contrary, the m odern critical paradigm initially distin
guished itself from the m ore im pressionistic belletrisms o f the fin de siecle,
and thereby w on for itself a place in the m odern research university, precisely
by dem onstrating th at the w ork o f the general could be carried o u t in a spe
cialist way. In this sense, one m ight observe that the characteristic tech
niques o f m odern “scientific” criticism were specialist techniques by w hich
to approach m atters o f the highest generality— thus Leavis, m aking a case
for criticism: “ [m odern society is] irretrievably com m itted to specialization,
and no m an can m aster all the specialisms. The problem is that o f educating
a central kind o f m ind, one th at will give the different specialisms a hum ane
centre, and civilization a centre o f consciousness” (166).25 Criticism , no less
than scholarship, necessarily had to find a way to p u t the claims o f both spe
cialization and generalization in some productive relationship w ith one
another— w hen thinking at any depth, one cannot simply choose a side.
A nd yet after registering the force o f all these observations, one finds that the
accepted distinction still holds in a broad way, and that the usual claim that
the scholars were specialists and the critics were generalists really does
describe a characteristic difference in emphasis. Recall the m id-century
questions im agined by Jameson: “is Faulkner greater than H alldor Laxness,
or vice versa? Is either greater than Tolstoy? W hich is m ore universal, /
Promessi Sposi or Red Chamber D ream F For all its m any faults, the
181
universalist account o f aesthetic value th at underpinned m uch m id-century

criticism allowed critics to perform their intellectual w ork over a very broad
historical, and som etim es also cultural, range. If the critical paradigm always
in fact laid claim to a certain kind o f specialist expertise— skating over m any
complexities, one m ight call it a specialist expertise in speaking to and on
behalf o f the general— it also acted as a check on the constant drive to spe
cialization th at the scientistic character o f the m odern university encouraged
in all disciplines, and o f w hich the scholarly paradigm was, in its unexcep
tional forms, the local representative.
It is therefore unsurprising to find th at the scholarly turn, which removed
that check, brought w ith it a very clear trend toward intellectual specializa
tion. In rejecting aesthetic universalisms o f a m id-century kind and insisting
instead on the embeddedness o f texts in specific contexts, the historicist/con-
textualist paradigm sharpened the focus o f the discipline only at the cost o f
narrow ing its field o f view. This was evident in the nature o f the w ork per
formed, o f course, b u t also— and perhaps even more tellingly— in the harder
institutional structures o f hiring, publication, and prom otion. Chiefly, the
historicist/contextualist period saw a new institutional emphasis on field spe
cialization, accom panied by a shift in a sense o f w hat did, and did not, con
stitute a “field.” Some o f the m ore obvious features o f this included a marked
hardening o f divisions between “fields”; the developm ent o f a range o f new
field-specific specialist organs (journals, professional associations, confer
ences, and so on), w ith existing field-specific organs acquiring a m ore central
role; the creation and ever m ore m arked presence w ithin individual graduate
programs o f a field-specific professionalizing apparatus, designed to prepare
graduate students for the rigors o f the “job m arket” by ensuring their work
was carried out w ith a clear awareness o f their relationship to a well-defined
preexisting field; the invention o f the phrase “hiring field,” w ith all that it
implies, which w ent hand-in-hand w ith the newly created rhetoric o f the
“job m arket” itself—and so on.26 We should note that in each case, the
m ajority o f the “fields” in question were being defined by place and period,
w hich is to say, in the terms m ost im m ediately amenable to m ainstream his
toricist / contextualist approaches. There were o f course exceptions: at various
points throughout the period, positions m ight become available in, say,
“gender studies,” “theory,” “postcolonial studies,” “critical race studies,” or
“queer theory”— just to list some obvious examples— b u t “fields” defined in
this m ore them atic or m ethodological way tended to prove vulnerable over
the m edium term in a way th at the core fields, defined by place and period,
were not. Indeed, in m any cases fields defined by principles other than place
and period found th at their tenure lines had a tendency to evaporate w ith any
tu rn in the weather. Given the oppositional character o f m any o f these more
marginalized specialisms, it is w orth observing in passing that the discipline
tends to manage dissent by incorporation and evaporation, creating new
fields, only to discard them later.27 In any case, field specialism was becom ing
m ore and m ore central to the w ork o f the discipline, and the bulk o f those
fields were being defined by place and period.
W ith this development being so marked at so many im portant levels, it was
only to be expected that many would feel it as an ever-narrowing straightjacket,
and therefore long to break free. N o-one who has observed trends in the disci
pline over the last two decades can have failed to notice the repeated excite
ments generated by the prospect o f carrying out the project o f contextualiza-
tion over a much, m uch broader range o f contexts. The specific terms around
which this kind o f interest has clustered have o f course varied greatly: any list
would have to include at least “transnational,” “globalization,” “world litera
ture,” and m ost recently “Anthropocene,” each o f which has been the object o f
a great deal o f collective attention at one time or another; and a longer list
would find m any more to choose from: “transatlantic,” “Atlantic” itself,
“deep time,” “Pacific,” “energy systems,” “silk road,” “M editerranean”. . . . Each
o f these terms has called for an expanded framing o f a different kind, and each
has therefore opened up a different line o f questioning. To broach, in passing,
just a few o f the grounding questions: Does the move to a “transnational” frame
make the traditional national frames less im portant, or more? Does “globaliza
tion” usefully describe a real phenom enon, and if so, over w hat timescale? Is
“world literature” really just literature that circulates widely, and if so, does a
“world literature” framing prevent us from attending to the specificities o f local
idioms? Does the “Anthropocene” overturn our existing distinctions between
the natural and the cultural, thereby bringing into being a radically new subject
o f history— or not at all? A nd so on. Each o f these questions is o f course only a
point o f entry to a m uch larger debate, to which I merely gesture; I am not
going to try to wade into all these debates simultaneously here.
M y p o in t is a m ore general one. Though in each case the appearance o f
this particular term , rather than another one, has been overdeterm ined, all
the terms have functioned as means by w hich to organize w hat I take to be

the same kind o f excitement: the disciplines ongoing excitem ent at the pros
pect o f expanding the frame. This ought to be obvious enough, but it is
im p o rtan t to recognize. Each o f the various proposals for expanded contexts
has o f course had its own reasons for being, m any indeed having had their
genesis outside the discipline (m ost conspicuously “globalization” and
“A nthropocene”), yet in each case m uch o f their appeal to those w ithin the
discipline has evidently derived from their ability to speak to the same anx
iety: an anxiety about o f the narrowness o f our existing m odes o f contextu-
alization. Taken together, these repeated proposals for expansions attest to a
fairly widespread feeling th at our strong existing com m itm ent to specific
and bounded contexts has become som ething o f a trap, and to a fairly long
standing desire to break free. W hen we view this as part o f the longer history
o f the discipline, the salient poin t is th at in the second half o f the histori-
cist/contextualist period, a significant proportion o f the discipline began to
form som ething like an incipient consensus around the idea th at breaking
o u t into wider contexts was a w orthw hile goal, though the collective, taken
as a whole, has n o t yet been able to settle upon a means.
Before m oving to justify this last clause— after all, one m ight wonder,
w hy w ould the collective even w ant a single means? Is it n o t better to
have many?— it is perhaps w orth pausing a m om ent in order to attend
directly to the underlying excitem ent th at marks and even motivates these
clusters o f work. I am tem pted to give it a nam e— “expansion excitem ent,”
perhaps— simply to emphasize its coherence as a single object: a coherence
it retains across a range o f discussions w hich, on the surface at least, m ight
seem quite distinct from one another. Three quotes will suffice as a means
by w hich to familiarize ourselves w ith the texture here. Let us begin
w ith D avid D am rosch in 2003, explaining the excitements o f a “W orld
Literature” framing:
The follow in g chapters w ill treat materials w ritten as far back as four thousand
years ago and as recently as the late 19 9 0 s, and w ill include discussions o f the
current reshaping o f our understanding o f H ellen istic Egypt, thirteenth-
century Europe, and seven teenth-century M exico. O n e o f the m ost exciting
features o f contem porary literary studies is the fact that all periods as w ell as
all places are up for fresh exam ination and op en to n ew configurations. (1 7 )28
For any scholar feeling a trapped by the discipline s strong existing m ethod
ological com m itm ent to specialized knowledge o f specific contexts, it is
indeed exciting suddenly to be addressed in this expansive way. As D am rosch
is aware, m any also find it w orrying— w hich is to say that the second sen
tence here is n o t quite true. For surely it w ould be m ore accurate to say that
m uch o f the excitem ent o f the first sentence, w ith its sweep across continents
and m illennia, derives precisely from the fact that “contem porary literary
studies” is not completely “open” to this kind o f w ork— or not yet open to it,
if you prefer? We will return to this p o in t in a m om ent.
As a second example, let us take W ai C hee D im ock in 2006, showing us
the excitements o f a “D eep T im e” framing:
[In this chapter] the B u d dhist-inflected ecology o f Gary Snyder w ill op en in to

a backward loop through a Sanskrit epic, the Ram ayana, w h ose sim ian pro
tagonist H an u m an , w o u ld in turn take us to C hina, to the sixteenth-century
novel Hsi-yu-Chi (Journey to the W est). M eanw hile, the crisscrossing paths o f
N ative A m erican and A sian-A m erican authors— Leslie Silko, S im on O rtiz,
Gerald V izenor, M axine H o n g K ingston— w ill w eave in and ou t o f this loop,
turning it in to a m ore sinuous fiber. (1 6 6 )29
T hough D im ock is proposing a m odel o f literary investigation quite dif

ferent to D am roschs, and is therefore offering us a very different set o f terms,
the m otivating excitem ent seems to be quite similar, if not indeed the same.
That excitem ent is quite vivid here, in b oth style and content. The aerobatics
display that transform s into a loom ; Snyders near-transform ation into a
simian; the way th at the N ative A m erican and Asian-American contexts,
w hich one had been trained to distinguish between, here become “criss
crossed” together as parts o f the same broader weave: all these, tum bling into
one another, give the reader the same dizzying sensation that the list o f dis
parate tim es and places is m eant to provide— the heady scholarly thrill o f
bringing wildly divergent contexts into unexpected relations. It is perhaps
only to point to the obvious to observe th at m uch o f the real excitem ent
here— even, it strikes me, the central m otivating excitem ent— lies in
D im ocks refusal to be tied dow n to a single context as norm ally defined.
Before drawing out the point, let us turn to just one more example: Patricia
Yaeger in 2011, showing us the excitements o f an “energy systems” framing.
185
Instead o f divvying up literary works into hundred-year intervals (or elastic

variants like the lo n g eighteenth or tw entieth century) or categories harness
in g the history o f ideas (R om anticism , E nligh ten m en t), w hat happens if
w e sort texts according to the energy sources that m ade them possible?
. . . W e m igh t juxtapose Charles D ick en s’s tallow -burning characters w ith
Shakespeare’s, or con n ect the dots betw een the fuels used for cook in g and
w arm th in The O dyssey and in Gabriel Garcia M arquez’s C ien an os d e so ledad.
( 3 0 5 - 3 0 6 )30
W h en one sees this happening again and again, in m ethodological argu

m ents that otherwise seem to p o in t in very different directions, one wants to
start the conversation again at a m ore general level. W orld Literature, Deep
Tim e, Energy Systems: the differences between these proposed frames seem
quite great, and yet one begins to w onder in w hat way, precisely, those dif
ferences m atter, if indeed it is true th at the m otivating excitem ent is the
same. O f course, it is open to us to feel that the kind o f excitem ent I am
poin tin g to here is m arginal, or at any rate n o t central, to these projects, and
then we are back where we started. But it seems to me at least as plausible to
say that, w hen one steps back to try to place these things in the longer his
tory, the scene as a whole— the whole long series o f thrilling proposals for
expanded frames: transatlantic, transnational, global, w orld literature, deep
tim e, energy systems, A nthropocene . . .— begins to seem less invested in
the specific argum ents being offered than each argum ent, taken merely on
its own, quite naturally claims. In fact, it begins to seem as if w hat the col
lective is really m ost excited about is simply the prospect o f a convincingly
rigorous way to break w ith the narrowness o f our existing contextualisms— a
break tow ard the general, if you like, secured as a genuine step forward
rather than as a regression into universalizing m id-century modes. At the
risk o f doing a disservice to some rich and thought-provoking argum ents, I
will suggest th at it w ould n o t entirely be w rong to th ink here about the
structure o f a prisoner s fantasies: for the collective, taken as a whole, the real
investm ent has been in the breakout itself, rather than in any specific pro
posal about w hat we w ould do once we were free. This is a new develop
m ent, and one th at seems quite im p o rtan t in the longer view. O u r period s
repeated “expansion excitem ents” seem im p o rtant to the extent th at they are
occasioned by the prospect o f a break, n o t simply w ith the specific
boundaries o f particular fields, b u t w ith field specialization per se. D raw ing
the point, it seems th at once again w hat we are seeing is an im plicit collective
protest against one o f the central features o f the historicist/contextualist par
adigm , albeit a protest th at has n o t yet been articulated as such.
To some, it may seem th at in draw ing attention to this kind o f excite
m ent, I am simply offering a disproof o f m y first observation: that our period
has been com m itted to specialization above all. H ow can it be true to say
th at the d om inant tendency in the historicist/contextualist period has been
toward specialization, if it is also true th at m any o f the more celebrated pro
posals o f the last few decades have been for expansions outwards toward
som ething approxim ating “generalist” concerns? The answer is that it is pre
cisely the persistence o f the longing to expand that shows how com pletely
the historicist/contextualist emphasis on field specialization now determ ines
the ordinary state o f things. For w hen we look at all these clusters o f w ork
together, som ething like a pattern emerges: we have a sequence o f overlap
ping discourses, each using its own term inology as a means by w hich to
propose an expansion o f our spatial or tem poral frame o f reference, w ith a
new central term com ing to prom inence, say, every five years or so, and
lasting for about a decade, before beginning to fade and being replaced by
others. The need for repetition— the repeated need for a new term that
promises once again w hat the last term prom ised— is a sign o f the persistence
o f the underlying concerns. Again and again, we see the same collective
excitem ent at the prospect o f a break outwards, but the proposed expansion
never quite takes hold o f the center o f discipline, and the break that w ould
really break never quite occurs.
The picture we are left w ith is o f a discipline still fundam entally struc
tured by place/period fields narrowly defined, w ith a long-standing desire,
never quite satisfied, to broaden out. O n e way to see the tru th o f this is to
consider the principles by w hich the discipline governs its own reproduc
tion. At alm ost any p o in t in the second h alf o f the historicist/contextualist
period, one could have overheard professors giving their PhD students good
advice o f the following kind: by all means, perform a broader comparison;
by all means, do som ething th at breaks o u t into a m uch w ider context—
som ething transatlantic, transnational, global, world, A nthropocene, etc.—
th a ts exciting; people like that. B ut o f course you should never, ever do this
at the cost o f giving up your claim to be specialist in one o f the existing
“hiring fields”: th at is simply nonnegotiable if you w ant to have a career in

the discipline today. B oth the assumed im portance o f a grounding in an
existing field, and the excitem ent at breaking out o f it a little, are sym ptom
atic: it is precisely because the discipline has been so com m itted to the
im portance o f deep, rather than wide, contextualization th at it has seemed
by turns so necessary, so exciting, and— eventually, in each case— so im pos
sible to succeed in expanding the default frame.
W h at w ould such an expansion look like, if it ever really succeeded in
transform ing the core o f the discipline? It is tem pting to say that the ques
tion ought n o t to be answered, since it sets the bar too high: here one m ight
observe th at m any o f those proposing turns to the transnational, the global,
the w orld and so on have n o t really proposed th at everyone should use their
expanded frame, only th at some should, and that, in this view, the core o f the
discipline will o f course always need to continue to w ork in the existing
fields as currently defined. B ut in fact the argum ent is usually m ore
dem anding than this, am ounting to the claim th at the new large-scale phe
nom ena being observed require a newly expanded periodization even at the
disciplines center, if n o t indeed a basic revision o f w hat it means to study
literature at all. M any, unw illing to com m it to a single fram ing b u t still
com m itted to expansion in a pluralist spirit, have even called for a more
com plete transform ation involving m ultiple expanded periodizations all at
once. For this m ore dem anding version o f the argum ent, it seems th at the
institutional sign o f a success w ould be a rearrangem ent o f the tem poral and
spatial boundaries o f the core “hiring fields.” Clearly none o f the tendencies
tow ard expansion has yet m et th at bar, and if one is com m itted to an expan
sion o f our usual contextual fram ing, and trying to bring it about, one then
perhaps w onders why. Is it th at those listening have been too obtuse to rec
ognize good proposals for expansion w hen they see them? Are the institu
tional structures o f the discipline are sim ply too inert to be moved by argu
ment? O r is it th at the argum ent has n o t been strong enough?
W h at one misses here is a sense that the problem m ight be deeper than
sim ply an existing preference for specific and narrow contexts; a sense that
the problem m ight be the underlying contextualism itself. For w hat these
argum ents are really encountering are the lim its o f the historicist/contextu-
alist paradigm ; a paradigm that, as we have seen, is dom inant for more than
sim ply intellectual reasons— one thinks here o f the way its institutional
profile fits hand in glove w ith the m odel o f specialized knowledge produc
tion th at the thoroughly scientized neoliberal university assumes as the
default. As we have seen, the narrowness o f our existing fram ing is a conse
quence o f the tu rn to scholarship, and m ust be fought as such.
A Hidden Trajectory?
W e have thus taken a glance at three recent tendencies, observing the ways
in w hich each has quietly registered the lack o f a paradigm for disciplinary
criticism. It w ould o f course be possible to add others. O ne obvious candi
date here w ould be the various “turns to ethics” about w hich one sometimes
hears things said— taken together, the m any clusters o f w ork that have pro
ceeded under th at title recall the “Pendulum s” w ith w hich we began, in that
those identifying w ith them have tried to propose a return to som ething like
a m id-century emphasis on literature as a site for ethical and aesthetic edu
cation. Naturally, some o f these argum ents have been merely nostalgic,
whereas others have been offered in a m ore progressive spirit. As a sign o f the
distance between w ork o f this kind and the current paradigm , it is w orth
noting in passing th at the central figures here have been drawn from outside
literary studies— m ost conspicuously from philosophy, Judith Butler and
M artha N ussbaum being the perhaps the key examples. A nother candidate
for a tendency sym ptom atic o f the “critical unconscious” in our sense w ould
be the various new discourses on “literature as therapy” that have sprung up
recently on the m argins o f literary study, often in the gap between our disci
pline and m ore directly therapeutic ones: the field o f “narrative medicine,”
for instance, or various efforts to use works o f literature in psychological
treatm ent, all o f w hich take the old idea that criticism has a therapeutic
function in a very literal sense, w ith o u t necessarily having had the benefit o f
a rich engagem ent w ith the deeper thinking about aesthetics, language, and
culture th at underpinned the critical paradigm in its classic forms.
Last b u t by no m eans least, there is the crucial question o f the discipline s
various ongoing attem pts to refigure its relationship to the “public,” the
“social,” or the “com m on.” The im portance o f these attem pts perhaps justi
fies our dwelling on them just a little longer than on those just m entioned.
As we have seen, where “literary scholarship” was once the discipline’s pri
m ary organ o f specialist know ledge-production, “literary criticism” was once
its prim ary organ o f public engagem ent. O ne w ould therefore expect the
demise o f criticism to be associated w ith a collapse o f the discipline’s public
role— and o f course, this is precisely w hat occurred. O f course anxieties
about irrelevance, over-specialization, or disconnection from the world o f
real affairs are very long-standing w ithin the hum anities— so m uch so that
some have even claimed th at they are constitutive o f the hum anities— and yet
one misses the real character o f the historical m om ent if one fails to see that
the neoliberal restructuring o f the university has given them a special
urgency. In this connection there is a great deal to be said, but in the inter
ests o f conciseness I will make the poin t very bluntly indeed simply by
observing th at in the neoliberal period, unlike in the Keynesian period that
preceded it, it was no longer possible for literary critics to get CIA funding
for their “little magazines,” to use Trillings old phrase.
N aturally this developm ent, too, has had its dissenters, m any having
chafed against what, in the introduction, we saw Eagleton describe as lit
erary studies’ willingness to convert itself into “a species o f technological
expertise, thereby establishing its professional legitimacy at the cost o f
renouncing any w ider social relevance.” H ere again it is w orth taking care to
distinguish the residual form ations from the em ergent ones. A m ong the
residual phenom ena, one thinks first o f the various well-patronized debates
about the “decline o f the public intellectual” th at seemed to effloresce partic
ularly during the 1990s and 2000s— debates that find their historical
grounding in the decline o f the Keynesian “public sphere” (so-called). The
em ergent phenom ena have been m ore interesting: to m y m ind, the m ost
striking developm ent here has been the cultivation o f a new and fairly
vibrant literary scene o f “little magazines.” A brief, heterogeneous list will
suffice as a gesture to the kind o f publication I have in m ind here: N + l, Lana
Turner.; Public Booksy Nonsite, The Point, The Valve. . . . N aturally the line
here continues to be anchored by the older flagships o f literary journalism —
preem inently the London Review o f Books, b u t also the N ew York Review o f
Books, Times Literary Supplement, and so on— but the presence o f the new
smaller players is an interesting developm ent, and one that can only partly
be explained by the birth o f the internet.
It w ould be interesting to try to develop a rigorous general account o f this
phenom enon. I will instead offer just two observations regarding this new
wave o f publications— one intellectual, the other institutional. M y first
observation is as follows. Recall th at disciplinary criticism was once precisely

the discourse th at m ediated between specialist scholarship and the m ore
generalist, belletristic, and unsystem atic w ork o f literary journalism , evalua
tive reviewing, and so on. The absence o f disciplinary criticism thus leaves a
distinctive gap in these publications— a gap for w hich they cannot bear the
blame. Though naturally the emphases vary greatly from publication to pu b
lication, m y sense is th at the newer publications tend to adopt a “mix” com
posed prim arily o f perhaps four m ain kinds o f work: reviews and surveys o f
existing academic works o f cultural analysis, w ritten for a general rather than
specialist audience; original cultural analysis o f a more or less recognizably
disciplinary kind, perform ed in public view; reviews o f contem porary artistic
and literary works; and perhaps a forum for response, debate, or discussion.
This is merely a rough catalogue, b u t already one can see that, though the
magazine as a whole aspires to be a site o f engagem ent between the discipline
and the public, it is n o t quite clear w hat “engagem ent” here really means.
O n the one hand, the parts o f the magazine m ost m arked by recognizably
disciplinary forms o f intellectual rigor often seem to understand “engaging
w ith the public” as if it were simply a m atter o f exposing the public to
existing disciplinary work. O n the other hand, the parts o f the magazine that
seem to recognize the need for some other practice to supplem ent this— a
practice th at is m ore belletristic, evaluative, aesthetic, or similar— are left
m eeting th at need simply by providing journalistic reviewing o f contem po
rary artistic works— w hich is to say, by leaving disciplinarity behind. There
is then a large gap between the emphasis on cultural analysis, w hich bears
the m ark o f recognizably disciplinary forms o f intellectual rigor, and the
reviewing, w hich often feels like an activity quite different to any trained by
or carried o u t w ithin the discipline in its current mode. M any o f the new
publications have been trying (often rather heroically, in m y view) to find
som ething to p u t in th at gap, w ith a range o f genuinely fascinating results—
yet in the absence o f a rigorous and institutionally supported paradigm for
criticism, their task has been very difficult indeed.
This then leads to m y second observation, w hich relates to the project o f
“engaging w ith the public” itself. In the interests o f conciseness, I will be
b lu n t— blunter, perhaps, than m any o f these publications deserve. M y sense
is th at publications o f this order have been m ost at risk o f becom ing lim p
where their aspiration has been to connect w ith the “public” generally
191
conceived. A im ing so high, they inevitably fall short, and one instead ends
up in a fairly intim ate academic coterie. I do n o t intend this as a critique o f
coterie publications— far from it: everyone from Leavis to Trilling has
believed strongly in their im portance, as do I— rather, I am simply noting
the m ism atch between the aspirations and the realities. For it strikes m e that,
w hen publications o f this kind are conceived as m ore focused endeavors
from the outset, they are (somewhat paradoxically) better able to generate
results beyond the coterie at key m om ents. For somewhere between the
tightness o f the “coterie” and the looseness o f the “public” there lies the
“social m ovem ent,” and it is at this m edian level that coterie publications are
able to do their best work, w hen conditions allow.31
In summary, then, we have at least six new tendencies that seem to testify
to a “critical unconscious”: the “Pendulum s,” “Intim ations” and “Expan
sions” we have examined, and the “turns to ethics, “turns to therapy” and
“turns to the public” at w hich we have merely glanced. Each has had its own
reasons for being; I hope by now it is clear th at each can also be read as a
sym ptom o f the demise o f disciplinary criticism, and an attem pt to make up
for the lack. N o d o u b t further examples could be added— a whole new book
o f them , perhaps. Yet I th in k th at those we have traced are sufficient at least
to suggest a general pattern. To some, this pattern may seem oddly drawn,
n o t least in th at it paints some o f the m ore notable new tendencies o f the last
few decades as cries from the margins— cries th at call our attention both to
the absence o f literary criticism per se and to the poverty o f literary scholar
ship w ith o u t it. O n e m ay object to this. M any o f these figures and tenden
cies have received a great deal o f attention— surely they have been central?
In em phasizing their repeated collapse back into historicist/contextualist
scholarship as usual, am I n o t going o u t o f m y way to paint as failures move
m ents th at have evidently m et w ith m uch success?
I do n o t th in k so. C ertainly m ost o f the tendencies we have examined
here have been widely discussed, and there is also o f course an im portant
sense in w hich the only “success” that really counts lies simply in w riting
w orthw hile and interesting w ork under present conditions. Yet w hen one is
trying to bring about a fundam ental shift in the orientation o f the discipline,
as I th in k at least the first three o f these tendencies have implicitly sought to
do, then one is setting the bar for “success” very high indeed. If it is obvious
th at m uch o f the w ork done under the sign o f these various new tendencies
192 LI T E R A R Y C R I T I C I S M
has been quite brilliant, significantly expanding the norm ative boundaries o f
existing research, it is also obvious th at none so far has m anaged to become
paradigm atic, nor have any yet broken w ith the existing paradigm in such a
way as to catalyze a broader m ovem ent toward a truly alternative model o f
literary studies. Indeed, w ithout w anting to underrate their real achieve
m ents, it is n o t unfair to observe that in the context o f the longer history o f
the discipline relatively few o f the “turns” or “m ovem ents” o f the last two
decades have really m erited either descriptor, if one feels th at those term s
im ply significant shifts in the center o f gravity o f the discipline as a whole:
shifts o f gravity such as may lead to a true change o f direction. A t a practical
level, m any o f the “turns” we have looked at here have really been a m atter
o f a relatively small group o f academics m eeting at a series o f conferences
and then, in due course, publishing a series o f readers, edited volumes, spe
cial issues o f journals, or similar. I risk being im polite here, though I hope
n o t to be: understanding the history o f the discipline dem ands that one face
squarely this question o f scale, and set it against the scale o f the forces against
w hich these efforts were ranged. It is n o t to underrate any o f these new ten
dencies to emphasize the deep entrenchm ent o f the paradigm that their
m ost inventive proposals im plicitly sought to move.
The bar for success here having been set so high— some may say im pos
sibly high, though disciplinary paradigm s do in fact change at times, as we
have seen— the story I have told in this chapter m ight be read as the story o f
a series o f failures: failures really to “move” and “turn.” Clearly I do not th in k
this is the right way to read it, b u t were one to do so, one w ould have to
agree at least to see these failures in historical rather than in merely personal
terms. It is a truism o f the history o f disciplines that, while a dom inant par
adigm remains dom inant, doubts are condem ned either to remain on the
fringes or to be regathered into the m ainstream , no m atter how w ell-thought
and powerfully articulated they may be. It is only w hen a change in under
lying conditions brings the d o m in an t paradigm into crisis th at the various
isolated instances o f discontent can coalesce into a new paradigm . Viewed in
this light, the fact th at none o f these new tendencies has yet m anaged to
effect a decisive break w ith the existing paradigm is neither surprising nor
even necessarily a sign th at they ought to have done things differently: the
external conditions for a crisis w ithin the discipline were simply n o t yet in
place. For if, as I have suggested, the dual “critical” and “scholarly”
paradigm s o f the m id-century are best seen as the disciplines complex

response to the dem ands o f the Keynesian period, and if, similarly, the
present historicist/contextualist paradigm is best seen as the discipline s way
o f riding o u t our own neoliberal period, then it is only to be expected that
the discipline w ould have to await the crisis o f neoliberalism before the real
character o f the historicist/contextualist paradigm could come into view.
Seen in this light, the chapter is n o t the story o f a series o f failures, b u t o f a
series o f partial successes: a richly preparadigm atic scene o f local innovations
that, taken together, m ight be seen as opening up the possibility o f a genu
inely critical paradigm to come.
W h at w ould all these partial successes am ount to, if taken together? If we
proceed as I have tried to— w hich is to say, if we proceed by assuming that
all the m ore influential alternative m ethodological argum ents o f recent
decades are in some sense to be honored and believed— then w hat is the
problem w ith the discipline as it now stands? W ithdraw ing for a m om ent
m y own views, and instead lim iting the discussion merely to those critiques
th at are already on the table, it seems th at the problem w ith the discipline as
it stands is th at it is too quick to dismiss the aesthetic a n d /o r the formal
(Pendulum s); too m uch inclined to “sym ptom atic,”, analytical, aggressive,
Jam esonian, or merely cognitivist reading (Intim ations); and too tightly
b o u n d w ithin the narrow confines o f particular places and periods (Expan
sions). To these, let us add also the further charges that the discipline is too
quick to dismiss the ethical or therapeutic claims o f the literary as merely or
only ideological (the turns to ethics, the turns to therapy); and that its
habitual m ode is now so specialized and professionalized that it no longer
has a program m atic com m itm ent to w hat ought to be its more directly
public role (the turns to the public). Let us then try to assume that everyone
is right. H ow are we to accept all these diagnoses at the same time? W hat is
this hybrid thing that no single “tu rn ” or “m ovem ent” seems to condem n on
its own, b u t th at all the dissenting descriptions seem to am ount to w hen
taken together? The enem y is anti-aesthetic; anti-formalist; takes as its prim e
task cultural analysis in w hat m ight be called a Jam esonian mode; is deeply
com m itted to cultural and historical specificity, field by field; suspects the
ethical and therapeutic claims o f the literary as merely ideological; and is
b oth highly professionalized and highly specialized, tending to eschew any
m ore direct or generalized public role. I hope by this stage in the book, it is
clear th at w hat we have just described is, quite precisely, the scholarly para
digm in its current historicist/contextualist form.
O n the other side o f the coin, w hat is this hybrid thing that no single
“tu rn ” or “m ovem ent” seems to call for by itself, b u t that all the dissenting
m ovem ents w ould be calling for, in effect, if one took them all together?
Again, none o f the following term s is quite m y own— nor, indeed are all o f
them anyone's, since they come from such disparate places— b u t let them
stand together here for a m om ent as rough approxim ations o f a potential
collective will. M erely aggregating the various proposals one already hears, it
seems th at the m ethod being called for w ould be deeply concerned w ith the
aesthetic and the formal; sensitive to feeling and affect both as forms o f cog
nition and in their own right as crucial determ inants o f individual, collec
tive, and historical changes; able to move broadly, in som ething like a gener
alist fashion, across times, places, and cultures; willing to use the literary as
a means o f ethical (or political?) education; have its emphasis on therapeutic
rather than merely diagnostic uses o f the literary; and w ould be com m itted
in a deep and rigorous b u t still fairly direct way to a public role. W h at we
w ant, in a w ord, is criticism, for this is precisely a list o f the signature
strengths o f the lost critical paradigm in its best form. Yet in order to under
stand w hat th at desire means we need to recognize firstly th at the discipline
lacks a true paradigm for disciplinary criticism at present; secondly th at the
m eaning o f the term “criticism” has shifted in such a way as to disguise that
lack; and thirdly how long the road really is that w ould lead the discipline
from w hat it is now doing tow ard a criticism that w ould truly m eet the
dem ands o f our m om ent.
The task o f creating new and rigorous intellectual forms w ith w hich to
unify the best o f the dissenting insights is a large one; the task o f creating
robust institutional forms in w hich to carry o ut a project o f this kind is per
haps even larger. Yet som ething like the basic elements o f such a criticism are
already present in the collective, even as it stands; w hat we w ant is the col
lective will to bring them together. W hether or not we will m uster that
remains to be seen.
Conclusion
The Future o f Criticism
J .T IS F A M O U S L Y IM P O S S IB L E to predict the future, and so it is

understandable w hen historians end their books by refusing to try. At the
risk o f seeming to w ant to invite absurd com parisons, I will recall here that
Eric H obsbaw m ends his m onum ental history o f the tw entieth century by
telling us th at “it w ould be foolish to end this book w ith predictions,”
because history, in the end, “is no help to prophecy.” “We do n o t know
where we are going. We only know th at history has brought us to this point
and— if readers share the argum ent o f this book— why.”1 This refusal to
prophesy is probably wise, and certainly canny, yet reading it on p. 585 o f
the final book in a four-book series, I m ust adm it to having some ungrateful
feelings. Surely, I w ant to object, at least part o f the p o in t o f spending so
m uch tim e w orking out w hat happened, and w hy it happened, is th at doing
so promises to help us w ork o u t w hat m ight happen next? Is it really “foolish”
to end a book by m aking predictions? The odd (but also everyday) task o f
talking responsibly about the future poses special challenges, o f course, and
all predictions turn o u t to be w rong in one way or another— b u t it is n o t as
if we can therefore do w ithout them .
In any case, I am going to close this very little book by hazarding some
predictions, come w hat may. N o d o u b t in a few years’ time, m uch o f w hat I
offer here will look quaint at best, as all predictions do in hindsight, but it
still seems w orth the attem pt— I am n o t trying to write history in advance,
w hich w ould indeed be foolish, b u t simply trying to sketch a guide for

present action. For we have now come to the point in our story at w hich the
question o f the future o f criticism begins to seem quite pressing. The schol
arly historicist/contextualist paradigm dom inates the field, and for the m ost
part, the critical paradigm th at once provided a counterpart and alternative
to literary scholarship is either forgotten or m isremembered. Camouflaged
against th at background, we see an array o f incipient counter-tendencies
variously dissatisfied w ith one or another elem ent o f the dom inant para
digm , m any o f w hich seem to be sensing the absence o f criticism in a partial
way, though none yet understands itself as a critique o f the existing para
digm as such. Being partial, so far none o f these critiques has m anaged to
effect a decisive break. H aving reached this point, one wants to know first
how long the reign o f the historicist/contextualist paradigm is likely to last,
and second, w hether the various counter-tendencies we have been dis
cussing, together no d oubt w ith others still to come, will continue simply to
m ake proposals for local revisions o f one or other elem ent o f the existing
consensus, or whether, on the contrary, some catalyst will bring them to
coalesce into a truly alternative critical paradigm .
H ow to answer this im p o rtan t question? Let me begin by observing that
any attem pt to form ulate an answer here leads us rather quickly to further
questions th at are very broad in scope— m uch broader, I w ant to say, than is
usually assumed in discussions o f this kind. For I hope by this stage it is clear
enough that, although the specific texture o f the discipline s history has been
determ ined in part by individual idiosyncrasy, local difference, and chance,
on a larger scale the discipline has stepped out its fundam ental m ovem ent
from paradigm to paradigm in close synchronization w ith the broader
advance o f the social order itself from phase to phase. This has always o f
course been the historical m aterialist line in theory, b u t to m y m ind it has
n o t often been taken seriously enough on the ground. Assuming for a
m om ent th at the three-period analysis I offer here is plausible, at least in its
broad outlines, we ought to understand the early critical paradigm , in all its
political ambivalence, as one expression am ong others o f a m om ent in the
history o f capital w hen the balance o f forces was unusually tense and uncer
tain; we ought to understand the peculiar coexistence o f two paradigms
through the bulk o f the m id-century as an articulation of, and sometimes a
resistance to, the dem ands o f capital in the Keynesian period; and we ought
197
to understand the historicist/contextualist paradigm in an equally complex

relation to the rather different dem ands o f our own neoliberal period. It is
then merely to state the obvious to observe th at the disciplines future shape
will depend m ost o f all on the character o f whatever new period o f capital
emergences in the wake o f the current crisis.
O u r question about the various possible futures o f the discipline then
quite quickly becomes a very large one: n othing less, in fact, than the ques
tion o f the character o f the com ing social order. To call this a “m illion dollar
question” is to sell it cheaply— it is the question on w hich all m oney now
depends. Are we presently living through the birth o f a new period in the
history o f capitalism? If so, w hat can we say already about its likely con
tours— and about the dem ands, such as they are, that capitalism in this new
period m ight make o f literary studies? But if not, then w hat does a continu
ation and extension o f the neoliberal period entail, now that the conditions
th at allowed for its initial developm ent have been so radically transformed?
O bviously I am n o t going to attem pt to offer definitive answers to questions
o f this order, b u t I do n o t th in k they can wholly be avoided: they are ques
tions about the basic conditions under which, and by w hich, future forms o f
literary study will be built. It therefore seems essential at least to glance up at
this w ider horizon before returning to our m ore local concerns.
Before taking th at glance, though, I perhaps ought to say th at I am not
unaware o f the fact th at m any readers will be alienated by m y asking the
question o f the future o f criticism in this m anner. Indeed in the past, when
I have posed questions o f this kind, I have noticed th at people w ho have
never had m uch reason to p onder the very im portant array o f problem s
know n to cultural analysts under the nam e “m ediation” sometimes seem to
th in k I am im agining a scenario in w hich the head o f derivatives at G oldm an
Sachs puts in a call to the C hair o f English at H arvard, saying som ething to
the effect o f “Look, conditions have changed; heres w hat we need you to
do. . . .” O bviously not. But to assume th at that kind o f scenario is necessary
to the question is to fail to consider the long series o f causal connections,
m etonym ic shifts, and feedback loops by w hich w hat goes on in one seg
m en t o f the social order regularly and quite uncontroversially comes to
determ ine w hat goes on in another. O n e thinks o f the continuous and often
dram atic m aterial restructuring o f universities in response to m arket forces;
the direct influence o f senior university m anagem ent, trained in the same
schools and belonging to the same class fraction as managers o f for-profit

corporations, w ith w hom they are increasingly interchangeable; the ongoing
transform ation o f the wider cultural situation in w hich those involved in
literary studies operate, a transform ation th at in crucial respects is deter
m ined by the underlying transform ations o f capital; the significant dem o
graphic overlap between elite academic form ations and elite financial ones in
term s o f family connections, friendships, attendance at the same educational
institutions, all o f the sociological factors th at go toward constituting some
thing like a com m on outlook— all these have real effects on the intellectual
and political character o f the w ork eventually produced. O ne can acknowl
edge the im portance— even the determ inative im portance— o f these kinds
o f connections w ith o u t even straying too far from norm al language, let alone
positing a direct or one-to-one (“vulgar”) causal connection between base
and superstructure, simplistically conceived. In fact, I will go so far as to say
th at once one begins to consider connections o f this kind, one begins to feel
th at the phone call does come, after its fashion. We are then returned to the
question o f the nature o f the com ing social order, and thus, in time, to the
question o f the likely nature o f capitals dem ands. W h at is the new period o f
capital likely to dem and o f literary study? A nd o f course, the next question
instantly presents itself: w hat opportunities m ight there be for literary
studies to w ork at som ething at odds w ith w hat capital demands?
H ere I will have to risk m oving very quickly through some im m ense and
varied territory— territory th at really ought to be attended to in a m ore sus
tained way. M oving quickly then, I take it th at there are three m ain kinds o f
scenario th at sensibly can be im agined. First, one m ight suspect th at w hat
we are seeing around us is n o t a genuinely epochal change in capitalist
dynamics, b u t merely a prolongation and intensification o f the existing neo
liberal order. For it is o f course quite striking th at our existing political elites
have been very far from retreating from , still less breaking with, the neolib
eral orthodoxy th at was at the root o f the crisis th at closed the century s first
decade; rather, after a very brief m om en t o f do u b t in the im m ediate after-
m ath o f the crisis, they have taken every o p p ortunity to re-impose it in ever
m ore-in tense forms. A t this level, the crash o f 2008 has proved less a w ater
shed than an excuse for “doubling dow n” on the policies that were its cause.
In structural term s, it is now evident th at the elite interests responsible for
the crisis were able to use it as an o p portunity to consolidate their position,
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while im posing its costs on the bulk o f the population, w hich m ay suggest
to some that, considered merely in their particular capacity as corporations,
capitalists, and elite class fractions, they have every objective short-term
reason to oppose stabilizing reforms, whatever the resulting instability— the
m ost glaring current examples being Trum p, Brexit— may m ean for their
long-term collective survival as a class (whatever we now m ean by “class”) .
In any case, there are at least three reasons to be doubtful about the pros
pects o f any im m inent change in the governing order: first, despite the seeming
breakdow n o f a neoliberalism as usual, the hold th at oligarchic interests have
secured over politics as norm al appears in m any respects even m ore secure
than it was before the crash; second, the process o f de-dem ocratization— a
defining political dynam ic o f the m ost powerful nations since the end o f the
Keynesian com prom ise— is clearly at present being carried further rather
than reversed; and third, no powerful countervailing forces have yet arisen
th at m ight be able to save capitalism from itself by forcing it to take on a less
crisis-prone form. H aving survived as the ideology o f virtually the whole
spectrum o f our political and financial elites, despite having been thoroughly
discredited in the m ost dram atic fashion, neoliberalism now begins to
look oddly invulnerable, practical economics having declared, in effect, that
it recognizes no standards o f falsifiability. All this leaves us w ith a highly
unstable econom ic situation th at nevertheless works well for the purposes o f
direct extraction, at least for the tim e being. Clearly, our existing political
elites recently have been dealt some rather stunning rebukes— rebukes that
m ight be thought to indicate that the era o f neoliberal globalization is
now at a close. But at the tim e o f w riting, it is not yet clear that the newly
reconfigured political elite will be w illing to bring itself into any significant
conflict w ith the existing financial elite. It may therefore seem as if the only
reasonable conclusion is th at the neoliberal period is still very m uch w ith us,
and will be w ith us for a long tim e still.2
This all seems plausible enough, b u t then one begins to have ones doubts.
For to focus in this way merely on the ideologies o f existing elites, rather than
on underlying dynamics, risks m aking it seem as if history functions by fiat,
those in power simply declaring w hat will occur next. But since the crash we
all ought to be in a position to see that this, at least, is false: neoliberal policies
very evidently produce crises th at their proponents do not intend and cannot
predict. Moreover, the question is n o t simply one o f elite desires, b u t o f
objective historical processes: neoliberalism is n o t a state that one can inhabit,

nor be forced by diktat from above to continue to inhabit— rather, it is a con
tinuing dynam ic by which all levels o f the social order are subjected to
sweeping change. It is therefore bound continually to become som ething
other than it is, if only because it needs to respond in new ways to the new
situations it has made. This is to say that the clock cannot be dialed back, and
all that was transform ed by the neoliberal offensive in its first phase cannot be
changed in that same way again. Therefore, even if we w ant to speak, not
about the b irth o f a whole new period in the history o f capitalism, b u t merely
about a prolongation and intensification o f our existing neoliberal period, it
seems we m ust at least be willing to speak about a m ovem ent towards a neo
liberalism o f a different kind. The question then is as to w hat kind, exactly,
and as to w hen precisely we w ant to say that the line has been crossed, all
these quantitative changes having accum ulated to such an extent th at they
am ount to a qualitatively different phase o f capital.
W e m ay therefore find ourselves moved by shades toward im agining a
second kind o f scenario, in w hich those who try repeatedly to reimpose the
doctrines o f the past end up doing their part in bringing about a period o f
quite a different character. This w ould place us, n o t in the m idst o f a long
neoliberal period, b u t in an interregnum on the way to some new phase.
Looking at things from this angle, one sees our financial elites attem pting to
double dow n on the same raft o f policy prescriptions th at caused the crisis,
while our political elites flail, and reads it n ot as a sign th at we are heading
tow ard a prolongation and intensification o f neoliberalism, b u t precisely as
a sym ptom o f the increasing obsolescence o f neoliberalism as a set o f guiding
doctrines, even for the grim purposes o f capital. O n this view, the relevant
“crisis” is n o t simply the m onetary crisis o f 2008 and surrounds, but a
broader crisis o f neoliberalism per se— by w hich one really means a cas
cading series o f smaller crises, each dealt w ith tem porarily merely by shifting
it to another sector, each o f w hich does its part in laying dow n the sedim ent
for a new, m ore stable order o f some kind, the foundations o f w hich we
w ould already be able to see around us, if only we knew the signs for which
to look. W e are then returned to the question o f the character o f the new
period, though in other terms, the task o f the analyst now being to find the
child by distinguishing their features from those o f the parent, w ithout
being confused by resemblances.
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A t this stage, m any signs seem to indicate we should fear the child. If it is
another new form o f liberalism that we see form ing around us, then it evi
dently involves austerity for the m ajority and welfare for the very wealthy few,
and if it is a true crisis o f liberalism, then the dram atic rise o f neofascist and
extreme nationalist parties gives one good reason to fear a turn to the right
rather than to the left. A nd yet there are also m ore hopeful signs, chief am ong
them the new resistance m ovem ents o f recent years, o f w hich a brief list will
have to suffice: the broad radicalization o f democracy in Latin America; the
radical energies o f the early m om ents o f the Arab Spring; Occupy; the M ove
m ent o f Squares; the Indignados; 15-M , Podemos; Syriza before the collapse;
Black Lives M atter; N u it D ebout; and no doubt others just around the
corner. It is o f course only right to observe that none o f these, even at its
highest m om ent, m anaged truly to break the grip o f politics as usual in its
sphere o f action, and yet the fact th at each, differently, has succeeded in
forcing the principle o f econom ic equality into view, in a way that seemed
impossible during the decades prior, m ay perhaps be read as a sign o f a shift
in the w ind. At the tim e o f writing, both Britain and the U nited States seem
to be witnessing the breakup o f the neoliberal center, at least at a party-
political level— to the right, we have Brexit and the rise o f Trum p; to the left,
the C orbyn and Sanders form ations. The perils o f such a situation are very
evident; at the same time, it is n o t impossible to read this breakup in an opti
mistic way, as a sign that for the first tim e in a generation, there may be
opportunities to make advances on the genuine left. (As I write, Trum pism in
particular is generating new forms o f opposition, though m uch o f it is evi
dently o f a kind that evaporates w ith the next center-left victory; we shall see.)
N ote that I leave to one side the whole question o f the value o f electoral
politics in a system such as ours, w hich is for another time.
So there we have two plausible scenarios: the first, a continuation and
intensification o f neoliberalism; the second, a m ovem ent into a qualitatively
new phase. But there is o f course a third scenario— one that has some plau
sibility, and certainly a great deal o f interest, though its grand scale makes its
actual probability difficult if n o t impossible to assess. In this third scenario,
w hat we are seeing around us are signs o f the term inal crisis, not just o f the
neoliberal phase o f capital, b u t o f capitalism itself. O f course, as soon as one
has raised this as a serious possibility, one wants to go back and hedge ones
bets. As W olfgang Streek has recently p u t it:
I am w illin g to m ake exactly this claim , although I am aware o f h ow m any

tim es capitalism has been declared dead in the past. In fact, all o f the m ain
theorists o f capitalism have predicted its im p en d in g expiry, ever since the
con cep t cam e into use in the m id 1800s. This includes n o t just radical critics
like M arx or Polanyi, bu t also bourgeois theorists such as Weber, Schum peter,
Som bart and Keynes. (4 6 )3
H e continues in a footnote: “So, if history proves me wrong, I will at least

be in good company.” Yet, as Streek goes on to argue, there are reasons to
entertain the view in earnest, especially w hen we understand that those pro
posing it at a high level are n o t suggesting that the whole m ode o f produc
tion is going to come crashing dow n into chaos w ithin the next decade or
two, b u t are rather claim ing th at we are at the start o f a relatively long period
o f instability in w hich the mainstays o f the capitalist m ode o f production are
likely gradually to fray at the edges, obsolesce, and decay. Streeks account
gives us a collapse o f capital under its own weight, b u t refuses to make any
predictions about w hat m ay com e in its place; here one m ight contrast one
o f W allerstein’s scenarios, w hich detects around us the earliest foundations
o f a fairly dark neo-feudalism — though o f course he proposes m ore positive
possibilities, too.4 I am n o t going to dwell on this third scenario here; I
merely note it.
These, at any rate, are three visions o f the future o f the social order— or
three classes o f visions, really, since there is o f course a great deal o f variation
w ithin them , different observers painting their pictures differently. In a
sense, they are three distinct visions o f the present, too, since the first places
us in the m iddle o f a long neoliberal period; the second places us in an inter
regnum between the clearly neoliberal period o f the late 1970s through to
2008 and whatever new period o f capital will follow after; and the third
places on the long tail-end o f the capitalist m ode o f production itself. H ow
m uch credence we ought really to place in them , I cannot say— certainly I
am n o t going to attem pt to arbitrate between them here. But in our effort to
find a vantage poin t from w hich to take the range o f the possible futures o f
literary studies, it seems wisest to proceed as if looking out from the m iddle
o f the three positions, w hich is som ething like a m edian case. O u r awareness
o f the other two vantage points on either side gives us some ability at least to
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imagine other plausible angles o f view, thus m aking clear the doubtfulness
o f our chosen position.
From th at doubtful vantage point, w hat do we see? Is the new period o f
capital likely to have any use for criticism? H ere we can begin to survey some
possible futures for literary studies, starting w ith w hat I take to be the m ost
negative. As we have seen, the critical paradigm in its m id-century form was
a creature o f Keynesianism and N ew Deal-ism at an institutional level, if n o t
always at an intellectual one. Yet in our rapid search for a future form o f
criticism, one thing at least has become clear: in none o f the scenarios just
outlined does the Keynesian welfare state m ake a com eback on any grand
scale. This ought to be obvious enough, b u t it is w orth stating firmly, since
at times a return to the m id-century welfare state seems the lim it o f w hat the
liberal left is capable o f hoping for. In the absence o f a real possibility o f a
new welfarist regime, calls to revive the role o f the “public intellectual” as a
means by w hich to engage the hum anities m ore fully in the “public sphere”
or similar seem quite beside the point, since the conditions for the re-
emergence o f these things do n o t exist, and are n o t going to spring into
existence in the foreseeable future. As m any have shown, the Keynesian
regimes propped up the hum anities in p art as a way to prom ote a kind o f
social cohesion in response to the ideological pressures o f the cold war.5 But
today, and still m ore in the future, the dem ands on literary studies, and on
the hum anities generally, are likely to be o f a som ewhat different kind. As
G oran T herborn has observed:
[S]ocial coh esion is m u ch less vital for the ruling elites o f today. . . . [P] revail
in g eco n o m ic w isd om holds that the sen tim en t o f international investors
counts for m ore in delivering grow th than developm ental unity. For N orthern
elites coh esion im plies, if anything, pressure u pon im m igrants to assimilate
better, in the nam e o f ‘in tegration . . . . Clearly, national cohesion is no longer
considered the key to im perial pow er— as it was in the n in eteen th and tw en
tieth centuries . . . .(1 3 )6
This seems quite right to me, though our focus here means th at it is helpful
to specify the periods som ew hat differently. The hum anities o f the m id
century university were o f course largely a project o f “social cohesion,” in the
sense th at they justified themselves to their funders on the basis o f their

potential utility in the securing o f a national cultural life— “bildung,” and so
on. But w ith the decline o f the Keynesian and N ew Deal regimes and the
global tu rn to neoliberalism, elites reordered their priorities. Calls for cul
tural unity rem ain part o f the rhetorical arsenal, o f course, and the new right
seems determ ined to shout them loudly. Yet at an econom ic level, they are
no longer taken seriously. The hum anities, thankfully fairly resistant to the
idea o f taking up an official role as an assimilator o f im m igrants, then no
longer have a place to stand: this is p art o f the “crisis” often spoken of.
Looking forward to a future w ith o u t a renewal o f the welfare state, it seems
very likely th at the hum anities will continue to find themselves w ithout an
im p o rtan t role to play in the m aintenance o f capital. The future o f criticism
then seems dire. If the hum anities as a w hole will lack a significant function,
w hat significant function could possibly be found for the m uch m ore spe
cific practice o f literary criticism?
O n e possible future direction for literary studies seems clear enough: one
can easily im agine a scenario in w hich the current paradigm , already dom i
nant, simply entrenches itself m ore deeply. W ith even the last, vestigial
organs o f criticism long since having w ithered, and no new project o f a
critical kind being proposed, we w ould see a continuation o f the current
trajectory: the interventionist w ing o f the discipline w ould be hollowed out
even m ore completely, if possible, and we w ould see a further scientization
and sociologization o f w hat remains. T hough names like “literary criticism”
and “hum anities” m ight be retained, the critical project o f form ing new
subjectivities and collectivities by way o f the systematic cultivation o f capac
ities for value w ould have been abandoned as merely ideological; left in its
place w ould be new sciences and social sciences, producing new facts, theo
rizations, histories, and analyses. The fact th at some o f these analyses w ould
be o f a radical or resistant cast notw ithstanding, a continued transform ation
o f this kind w ould suit well those who seek a continuation and intensifica
tion o f neoliberalism, for w hich all questions o f value are to be given up for
arbitration by the market. As the previous chapter suggested, the tendencies
already moving in this direction are strong, and a scenario o f this kind may
therefore seem quite plausible to some.
Yet to tell the tru th I do n o t th in k such a scenario is very likely, if
only because it relies on nothing occurring to change the disciplines
trajectory— and it seems a safe bet th at something surely will, for good or ill.
N o paradigm lasts forever, and disciplines do change radically from tim e to
tim e; moreover, m any w ithin literary studies seem to be searching for a way
to make a change, as we have seen. Let us then imagine a second, perhaps
slightly m ore positive scenario for literary studies, in w hich the new tenden
cies and others like them manage to come to relate to one another on some
thing like their existing terms, and thereby acquire a kind o f centrality
w ithin the discipline, m odifying the existing paradigm while leaving intact
its basic orientation tow ard cultural history, cultural theory, and cultural
analysis. W h at w ould a new consensus o f this kind look like? It w ould be
historicist/contextualist in its basic orientation, but it w ould m odify the
existing paradigm by the addition o f new emphases on (for example) form,
on affect, on relating positively to the pleasures o f the text, and on m ethods
o f analysis th at are broadly transhistorical and transcultural, rather than nec
essarily bound to single, specific places and periods— probably achieving
this last, in part, by focusing n o t just on contexts o f production, b u t on
contexts o f reception. It w ould perhaps be capable o f a positive “presentism ,”
in the sense th at it w ould m ake an effort to dwell, not on the past “for its
own sake,” b u t on historical and cultural m atters that bear on questions o f
key im portance today. It w ould be highly specialized and professionalized—
o f course!— b u t it w ould also make a strong effort to break o u t o f the asso
ciated trap o f irrelevance by com m itting to perform ing its cultural analyses
in public view. A nd so on. All these changes taken together m ight be enough
to qualify it as a qualitatively new paradigm — or else, if you prefer, as a new
phase o f developm ent in the longer history o f the scholarly paradigm . This
is m ore or less w hat we hear being called for all around us; let us then say
these calls are heard, and take their effect. W h at w ould the success then be?
There w ould certainly be reasons to welcome this developm ent, just as
there w ould be reasons to welcome, say, the transform ation o f a significant
proportion o f the existing discipline into an institutional hom e for quanti
tative literary studies. The discipline w ould have changed w ith the times,
w hich is som ething; to w hat extent the change w ould have been made
against the times is quite another question. For— merely to note the
obvious— w hat we have just described is a m odernization rather than a
m obilization o f the discipline, and considered merely in that capacity does
n o t carry any necessary political significance, right or left, beyond the usual
coding o f m odernization as the forward m arch o f liberalism. This is despite
the fact th at m any thinkers are currently arguing passionately for elements
o f the scenario just outlined, often in political terms. O ne can see this in a
familiar way by n oting that, just to take one example, a vast expansion o f our
habitual frame o f reference o u t to som ething like the “global,” “w orld litera
ture,” or similar, could have any num ber o f political valences: in some hands,
such a m ethodological expansion w ould simply be merely a highly m ediated
sym ptom o f the expansion o f capital into new territories; in other hands, it
could be a way o f arriving at better diagnoses o f a general condition.
But this way o f asking the question o f the politics o f literary studies is a very
familiar one, and part o f the point o f reading a book o f this kind is to p u t our
selves in position from which to ask that question in a different way. For regard
less o f the banner under which these new analyses would be pursued, and
regardless also o f the implied political valence o f the diagnostic innovations that
would be proposed, a transformation o f the kind just outlined would represent
a recom m itm ent to the existing idea o f the discipline as a discipline o f cultural
analysis and cultural theory alone, and would in that sense prevent any true
mobilization at all. The scenario envisions us developing a range o f sophisti
cated methodologies for the analysis o f affect, for instance, but it fails to envi
sion any paradigmatic means by which cultivate new ranges o f affect. Perhaps
we would rely on our analysis to do that for us by implication; no doubt some
bolder souls w ould grasp the nettle by asserting confidently with some o f the
Freudians and Lacanians that “analysis” simply is the same thing as treatment,
and leave it at that. O r perhaps, somewhat better, the discipline would at least
recognize the whole array o f crucial questions that lie in the gap between cul
tural analysis and social change, but refer those to others outside the discipline:
to the activists, perhaps, or to the politicians, or to the public at large, newly
informed by our newly publicized diagnoses o f cultural ills. In any case, the
discipline w ould be left w ithout a systematic means by which to act on its anal
yses. Ultimately, then, it seems to me that the second scenario we are envi
sioning is really another version o f the first: w hat we are looking at is a deeper
entrenchm ent o f the scholarly model o f literary studies, and an ever more com
plete collapse o f the humanities into the social sciences, albeit the social sciences
pursued in a less quantitative and more interpretive mode. This is precisely the
analytic posture to which the discipline was forced to retreat throughout the
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neoliberal period; for all its value as a defensive position, it is o f limited use to
those who now seek to make advances on the left.
Is there an alternative scenario— a scenario in w hich som ething like crit
icism is reborn? Scenarios such as those we have just outlined may seem to
take off the table any prospect o f a return o f the critical paradigm , no m atter
how centrist its political orientation— and yet one can easily find exceptions
here. For if we believe, as m any analysts do, th at capitalism can only func
tion in the long term if its excesses are tem pered by a loyal opposition o f
some kind, and we im agine th at one o f the roles o f that loyal opposition is
prom oting at least the illusion o f social cohesion, the form ation o f ideolog
ical com m unities, and so on, then the fact th at the Keynesian period will not
return ought n o t to m ean the com plete demise o f the hum anities in their
broader sense, n o r even o f criticism in som ething like its m id-century
hum anist, “liberal education” sense. O n e then wants to know w hat the sites
o f this loyal opposition will be. In answer to this question, it seems w orth
observing first th at there will still be local sites o f som ething like m id-century
Keynesianism, particularly on the advancing frontiers o f capital (“emerging
markets,” and similar), and here the hum anities, and even som ething like
criticism in the m id-century liberal hum anist sense, m ight be called upon to
play a role. I am thinking here particularly o f the call for a W estern-style
hum anities education th at one som etim es hears com ing from those who
seek to educate the executive and managerial classes o f some o f the m ore
strongly statist nations in Asia and the M iddle East. These may seem local
eddies, b u t in fact they connect up fairly directly w ith w ork being done at
the heart o f the empire. Thus M artha N ussbaum , always cited prom inently
in discussions o f a so-called “ethical tu rn ” in literary studies, w riting in N o t
For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010):
It has been fascinating for m e to learn m ore about current d evelopm ents in
Singapore and C hina, so often tou ted as successes because o f their em phasis
on technological education. In fact, however, both o f these nations have
recently con d u cted massive educational reforms in order to give a larger place,
in b oth schools and universities, to b oth critical th in k in g and the arts. The
reason is hardly a desire to cultivate democracy. It is, instead, the dem ands o f
a healthy business culture in a m ob ile w orld econom y. B oth nations have
recognized that critical th in k in g is a very im portant part o f a healthy business

c u ltu r e ____( 1 5 0 - 1 5 1)7
This, it seems, is inspiring, and is intended to rem ind us th at “one o f the

distinctive features o f Am erican econom ic strength is the fact th at we have
relied on a liberal arts education and, in the sciences, on basic scientific edu
cation and research, rather than focusing m ore narrowly on applied skills.”
A nd business, in its wisdom , knows this: “m any firms prefer liberal arts grad
uates to those w ith a narrow training” (53). As you can see, in liberalisms o f
this kind, the term s can be shifted around quite readily: a title such as N o t
fo r Democracy: Why Profit Needs the H um anities w ould w ork just as well.
N ussbaum ’s real argum ent for the hum anities is prem ised on the idea that
there is no significant tension between dem ocracy and profit— this in 2010,
w hen it seemed th at the rest o f the world, almost regardless o f political ori
entation, was just waking up again to precisely that contradiction. The
prom ise th at a hum anities education will provide a loyal opposition could
hardly be m ade m ore clearly, or w ith a stronger emphasis on the modifier.
M y poin t is that it if we believe N ussbaum — or even simply if enough others
do— then even at the heart o f the em pire there will be new opportunities for
the hum anities, literary studies w ithin them , to “re-brand” as appropriately
generalist training for “corporate leaders in a rapidly changing world,” as the
jargon goes.
N ew sites o f localized Keynesianism are one thing, b u t perhaps even more
significant are the various new, nonstatist forms on w hich today s capitalism
is increasingly com ing to rely as a means by w hich to shore up its noncapi
talist foundations. O ne thinks here o f the new popularity o f “the com m ons,”
a category th at is attracting the enthusiasm s o f both corporations and activ
ists, though in different ways. Narrowly conceived, the idea o f the com m ons
is a way o f securing collective property rights; taken m ore broadly, it is a way
o f thinking through, and perhaps taking advantage of, the necessary collec
tivity o f the social. To say th at capital is placing new emphases on com m ons
is in one sense merely to note th at we are in the m iddle o f a new round o f
enclosures, b u t there seem also to be significant efforts to establish com m ons,
naturally under the control o f the corporations, that can then be used as
perm anent gardens o f collective effort, ripening for corporate exploitation
on an ongoing basis, the exploitation carried out in a m anner akin to tax
209
farm ing or even, if you like— returning to Wallers terns fears o f a neofeudal
order— to a kind o f cultural m anorialism . The example always used here is
th at o f the “social media” com m ons— sites o f vast collective cultural produc
tion harnessed and guided by the profit im perative o f large corporations,
though the harnessing and guiding is (sometimes) m ade to feel loose and
voluntary— b u t there are certainly others. In any case, it seems as if it may
be to sites o f this kind th at we need to look when we search for the counter
processes th at capitalism will use to stabilize itself in the new period— and it
m ay therefore be at sites o f this kind th at the hum anities, and perhaps some
thing like criticism in its m id-century sense, m ight be able to find new ways
to serve the masters.
Considerations o f this kind allow us to envision a third scenario for lit
erary studies, in w hich som ething like a paradigm for criticism proper m an
ages to gain a foothold in the institutions, alongside and to a certain extent
in com petition w ith literary scholarship. I take it that this w ould have to
involve som ething like a synthesis o f the key emphases o f the existing
counter-tendencies, as well as o f others no doubt still to come. A t the very
least, it w ould need to dem onstrate its effectiveness as a m ethod by w hich to
address the questions th at m any in the discipline are now asking: questions
about the role o f form and o f affect; about the political potential o f a more
positive relation to the text; about our capacity to break w ith the existing
fields as narrowly defined in order to w ork transculturally and transhistori-
cally; about the positive rather than merely diagnostic role o f the literary in
ethical or political education; about the discipline s broader public role, and
so on— w hich is to say, questions about how usefully to address those things
th at seem to lie beyond the particular lim its o f historicist/contextualist
scholarship as usual. But it w ould also need to go further by opening up
a range o f questions th at have n o t been addressed w ithin the discipline
in any widespread way since the m id-century: all the m any questions that
lie in the gap between diagnosis and treatm ent; all the questions that are
raised as soon as one undertakes systematically to cultivate new subjectivities
and collectivities, in the service o f w ider cultural, political, or m ore deeply
social change.
Let us then imagine th at this third scenario comes to pass, and the existing
countercurrents, and others like them , n o t only manage to develop a new
paradigm for active cultural intervention, b u t also manage to w in a place for
criticism proper w ithin the literary institutions. W ould this be a welcome

development? The answer greatly depends. It w ould certainly constitute a
m obilization o f the discipline: an attem p t to find intellectually rigorous and
institutionally coherent ways o f p u ttin g our cultural analyses to practical
use. A nd yet it is obvious enough th at institutions can mobilize for quite
different ends. In principle— w hich is to say, suspending for a m om ent ones
sense o f the shape o f the ongoing historical transform ation th at w ould ulti
m ately prove determ inative— one can envision a centrist or even a right-
w ing version o f this project: one th at w ould forget the lessons o f the schol
arly tu rn and instead seek simply to reanim ate som ething like a m id-century
apparatus for the production o f liberal subjectivity. Few w ithin literary
studies seriously seem to w ant th at sort o f thing nowadays, b u t the old, good
argum ents against liberal forms o f aesthetic education have now been
leeched dow n into the soil o f grounding assumptions, and as such, have
evidently become som ew hat less available for conscious use. It may be that
the discipline could simply ignore them , trying to move back in the nam e o f
m oving on. The m ore regressive parts o f the “Pendulum s” tendency stand as
w arnings here, as do the m ore obviously liberal versions o f the “ethical” and
“public” turns.
B ut how m uch weight ought we to give those w arnings today? As we have
seen, for some decades now the ghost o f m id-century criticism has been used
to scare; surely now the w hite sheet is looking a little gray? For all that one
has ones provisos, the broader tru th is th at the Keynesian regimes are long
dead, and their ideological spirits will n o t return. Capital has passed through
a whole period since then, and it is now passing forward into yet another.
A fter decade after decade o f alm ost unm itigated defeat, the left is at a very
low point— yet it seems at least possible th at we may be heading into a
period in w hich it will have slightly m ore room for m aneuver than it has had
since the global tu rn to neoliberalism in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
This room for m aneuver will n o t be great, b u t it could be m ade to count
greatly if used well. M oreover literary studies remains one o f the relatively
few places in the English-speaking w orld today where the left proper has
som ething like an institutional foothold. This is true even if, as the center
never tires o f rem inding us, the vast m ajority o f academic radicalism is evi
dently merely rhetorical; and even if, as I have argued here, the lefts
m ost celebrated local victory o f the last few decades— the victory o f the
211
historicist/contextualist paradigm over the critical paradigm in its m id

century form — has in m any ways been a pyrrhic one, for the m ost part
unexceptional to the general rule by w hich neoliberal forces have swept the
field elsewhere. In this new context, there m ay be opportunities for a genu
inely radical form o f the critical paradigm to find a foothold. If such a thing
were to happen in a widespread way, it w ould be a significant thing, even
w hen weighed on a historical scale.
H ere I th in k the task o f those on the left o f the discipline is clear. We will
o f course continue to need trenchant historicist/contextualist analyses o f
culture through a radical lens, such as are now provided by those on the left
o f the discipline, as well as by those situated outside the discipline to its
left. B ut to make advances in this new period, we will also need to mobilize
those analyses, setting them to w ork as the diagnostic elem ent in a broader
project o f systematic cultural intervention. W ithin the discipline, achieving
this w ould pose significant challenges, b o th intellectual and institutional.
Intellectually, it w ould necessitate the creation o f a new paradigm for rad
ical criticism proper. Such a paradigm w ould need a clear and coherent
research program together w ith a rigorous new pedagogy, both o f w hich, I
think, w ould need to be founded on an intellectual synthesis th at addressed
the various concerns o f the m ajor countercurrents in a systematic and uni
tary way. Institutionally, it w ould require the creation, or redirection, o f a
range o f disciplinary sites and resources— a fraught endeavor. This w ould
m ean finding a way to outm aneuver the institutions default strategy for
defusing dissent: first to ignore, second to incorporate by creating a new
“field,” and lastly, once the fuss has died dow n, quietly to let the new field
go. The broader aim w ould be to secure a viable site w ithin the social order
from w hich to w ork at criticism in the genuinely oppositional sense. This
w ould necessitate m aking broader alliances w ith the left outside the disci
pline, for it is on the broader success or failure o f a more general forward
m ovem ent th at a m ovem ent for criticism w ithin literary studies w ould ulti
m ately depend.
T hat final p o in t deserves some elaboration. H istoricist/contextualist
w ork often makes claims about its political value, and sometimes those
claims are true. But one gets a different sense o f w hat does and does not
count as “political” w hen one tries to im agine the response th at a genuinely
radical, rather than liberal, project o f subject form ation w ould call down
upo n itself, were it to becom e established in any widespread way— still more
a project th at h ad real success in cultivating new collectivities that were bent
on pursuing modes o f life deeper than any th at the existing order is willing
to allow. If the left o f the discipline is to make advances, it will need to do so
by exposing conflict where previously one had seen merely the blank features
o f a dead peace, and one makes few friends in th at fashion. The hum anities
being in as weak a position as they are, literary studies’ ability to succeed at
any genuinely resistant task will be dependent, m ost o f all, on the strength
and suppleness o f its articulation w ith the larger forward m ovem ent— if
indeed there is to be one. The challenge is to do our part in ensuring that
there is.
Appendix
The C ritical Paradigm an d T. S. E liot
I O U G H T TO A D M I T th at I take some pleasure in consigningT. S. Eliot

to an Appendix; it was initially a footnote, b u t then I repented. M y purpose
here is to glance briefly at a few thoughts that m ight lead one to w ant to
unseat him a little from his usual position as general-in-chief o f the critical
paradigm — which is to say, m y intentions are essentially hostile. Yet m y
broader aim is to rescue som ething th at he valued from the particular m anner
in w hich he valued it, and in that sense, at least, we are in sympathy; the real
argum ent is against those w ho w ould condem n all criticism as necessarily
conservative on the strength o f the assum ption that Eliot can be treated as a
synecdoche for the whole. M y reason for addressing Eliot in an Appendix,
rather than treating him in the body o f the text itself, is th at his case raises
specialist considerations that are both complex and o f somewhat lim ited rel
evance to the m ain story, at least w hen one is telling it in as ruthless a way as
I have tried to do— ruthlessly focused\ I m ean, o f course. Eliot comes first in
any chronological list o f the m ajor early critics, which makes it very conve
nient, from the standpoint o f anyone trying to write a history, to claim him
as the originator and architect o f the critical paradigm. Yet the real story is a
bit m ore com plicated than that. I was at one stage tem pted to begin the first
chapter o f the book w ith Eliot, showing first his continuity w ith the belle-
trisms o f the fin de siecle and then, second, drawing attention to his innova
tions, only to p o in t out, third, the ways in which m any o f those innovations
really constituted a false start; then beginning the story once again w ith
APPENDIX
Richards, only to return to Eliot later in a discussion o f the process by w hich

the whole scene turned to the right. This w ould have been chronologically
accurate, b u t as this sum m ary indicates, it w ould have involved paying a price
in both conciseness and readability. For better or worse, I have opted instead
to start the book where the critical paradigm really begins, w ith Richards, and
instead glance briefly at the exceptional case o f Eliot here.
Nowadays Eliot is alm ost always considered the key figure in the critical
revolution. This seems natural enough, given that Richards, Leavis, and the
N ew Critics each claimed him as their figurehead at one tim e or another—
w hich is to say, all the m ajor thinkers associated w ith the new paradigm ,
barring Em pson. B ut w hen one looks a little deeper, noticing that these
thinkers and m ovem ents in fact claimed him in the nam e o f quite different
and sometimes even quite opposing principles, one begins to harbor certain
doubts. If, as Louis M enand tells us, “the genius o f Eliot s literary strategy
m ight be characterized as the genius o f a weak pragm atism ,” m eaning in part
th at his characteristic ambivalence was a deliberate strategy that allowed
him , for a tim e, to seem to be all things to all people, m ight the same n o t be
true o f his criticism?1 It is n o t to underrate E liots real achievements to
observe o f him also th at he had the happy knack o f delivering gnom ic pro
nouncem ents in an authoritative tone o f voice, and that he often did so
opportunistically in order to take full advantage o f the various possibilities
the situation offered. M y poin t is the gnomic-ness o f the utterances, the
am biguity o f w hich allowed him to function as a figurehead for a range o f
quite disparate m ovem ents. His m ystique was o f such a kind as to conceal
the real contours o f his position, w hich allowed his nam e to be used to
authorize the pursuit o f quite opposite ends. Here it is perhaps telling that
w hen he finally came to declare a position (the famous “classicist in litera
ture, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion” o f the preface to For
Lancelot Andrewes), his celebrity was still on the rise, but his substantive
influence on other thinkers was beginning its decline.2
In this connection, it is perhaps w orth recalling the letter o f the same year
in w hich V irginia W oolf inform s her sister o f Eliots conversion:
Then I have had a m ost sham eful and distressing interview w ith poor dear
T om Eliot, w h o m ay be called dead to us all from this day forward. H e has
b ecom e an A n glo-C ath olic, believes in G od and im m ortality, and goes to
APPENDIX 215
church. I was really shocked. A corpse w ou ld seem to m e m ore credible than

he is. I m ean, there’s som eth in g obscene in a livin g person sittin g by the fire
and believing in G o d .3
These lines have been m uch discussed as an index to W oolf’s views, and as a
place at w hich to debate the secular or religious character o f high m odernism
generally. But they are also remarkable for som ething quite different. H ow
can Eliot’s C hristianity come as such a “shock” to her? K nowing w hat we
now do about E liots later views, it is hard to recover W oolf’s surprise. Surely
the traces o f E liots religious brand o f conservatism were obvious enough,
even in his earliest writings? They certainly seem so today. Yet here we have
W oolf, surely one o f the m ost perceptive observers o f her tim e— and an
observer, moreover, w ho was very close indeed to Eliot; an observer w ith the
m ost serious interest in divining the im plications o f his views— and still,
w hen Eliot reveals his position, it leaves her “shocked” and “distressed.” She
is perform ing for Vanessa here, o f course, b u t the underlying surprise seems
real. Reflecting on this gives one a strong sense o f how am bivalent Eliot’s
position had seemed before this point.
O ne then begins to w onder w hat Eliot’s influence in the early period was,
precisely, beyond the obvious rhetorical weight o f his perceived authority.
H ow m uch control was he really exercising over the critical paradigm as it
formed? W h at k in d o f control? To clarify the precise nature o f Eliot’s rela
tionship to the whole early scene, it is necessary to see that he exercised at
least three kinds o f influence, each o f w hich needs to be distinguished from
the others and then assessed accordingly. I will be brief. First, there is his
influence on m odernist poetry, and thence on the poetry o f subsequent gen
erations. This is o f course very considerable indeed. Yet for the purposes o f
assessing the influence o f his critical thought, it is obviously o f only indirect
relevance— certainly the fact that he was both a deep and provocative thinker
in criticism and a sophisticated poet o f a startlingly new kind m ade him
trem endously convenient as a figurehead for the critical revolution, but, at
least in principle, this is quite distinct from the question o f his substantive
influence on particular critical doctrines, still m ore from the question o f his
influence on the birth o f the m odern critical paradigm itself.
Second, there is his influence on the specific doctrines o f key critical move
m ents from the 1920s through to the mid-century. This influence was o f
APPENDIX
course also very considerable— even a cursory survey would show that Eliot
was responsible for at least four ideas, or sets o f ideas, that became central to
the m any o f the m ost im portant critical movements o f the early-to-mid cen
tury: first, his subtle and deeply-thought conception o f “tradition”; second, his
historical thesis o f the “dissociation o f sensibility” and his consequent revalua
tion o f the English poetic canon; third, his doctrine o f “impersonality”; and
fourth, his suggestive remarks on the “objective correlative.” Each o f these was
received as a key intervention at the tim e Eliot pronounced it, and it was then
incorporated as a central element in some o f the m ost im portant critical posi
tions o f the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Indeed, it is n o t too m uch to say that,
taken together, these four related passages o f thought did more than any other
to determ ine the specific political, aesthetic, and historical content o f literary
criticism in those decades. The politics o f this are also clear enough: w ith the
benefit o f hindsight, it is not difficult to see that o f these four key terms,
two— “tradition” and the “dissociation o f sensibility”— were being framed by
Eliot in such a way that they w ould prove significantly easier to use for conser
vative purposes than for liberal or radical ones.
A t this point, the discussion o f Eliot s influence usually stops, and we are
left w ith the conclusion th at he was the central figure in the critical revolu
tion, w hich then proves itself an essentially conservative endeavor after all.
Yet there remains a third level o f influence, one quite distinct from the
others, and specifying it here allows me n o t merely to make observations
about E liots role in the early history o f criticism, but also to reemphasize
some o f the central m ethodological stakes o f the book as a whole. For w hen
one is stepping back to discern, over the century o f the discipline’s develop
m ent, the traces o f its present lines o f force, one m ust consider not merely
how a thinker was received by their contem poraries, nor their influence on
the specific doctrines o f subsequent m ovem ents, b u t their influence, over
the whole period, on the basic structure o f the discipline itself. W h at was
E liots influence on the critical paradigm itself, as distinct from his influence
on the particular doctrines held at one tim e or another by the m ovements
th at sought, in their various ways, to p u t th at paradigm into practice? This
is where ones doubts about the extent o f E liots influence come to a head,
because here in tru th his contribution seems surprisingly slight. To m any in
the 1930s and 1940s, E liots key term s seemed central to the revolution in
criticism, yet by the 1950s and 1960s they were starting to be left behind
APPENDIX 217
even by those w ho were still strongly com m itted to the practice o f criticism
itself. O n e then w ants to ask w hat the underlying paradigm was, such that
later thinkers could understand themselves as literary critics, as distinct from
literary scholars, w ithout feeling any need to com m it themselves to Eliot s
specific doctrines. P utting it differently, one m ight say that the boundaries
o f the paradigm established by the critical revolution were evidently signifi
cantly broader than those draw n by Eliot. W ho then established those
broader boundaries?
If the need for conciseness requires th at you focus on a single figure, then
the short answer to this is Richards, and it is only a surprising answer if we
forget the problem the belletrists faced— the problem that the critical revo
lution proved able to solve. H ow does one pursue the tenuous task o f culti
vating an appreciation for the aesthetic w ith o ut lapsing into mere impres
sionism? H ow does one pursue this task w ith a rigor sufficient to qualify
ones w ork as disciplinary in the scientistic term s recognized by the m odern
university? We are returned to the centrality o f the new m ethods o f “close
reading” and “practical criticism,” and here I think it starts to feel uncom
fortable to emphasize the centrality o f these m ethodological innovations
and at the same tim e take as the central figure T. S. Eliot, who contributed
little to either.4 In this circum stance it seems better to say that, while Eliot
served as a convenient figurehead for the critical revolution, this was for
com plex and in m any ways quite contradictory reasons, and while m any o f
his particular emphases were determ inative for particular schools and move
m ents in the 1930s and 1940s, the crucial break th at enabled the birth o f the
critical paradigm itself derives m ost centrally from the w ork o f Richards and
E m pson.5 This was quite well understood by m any all the way through the
m id-century: thus Stanley Edgar H ym an in 1947: “N o treatm ent o f m odern
criticism is possible w ithout discussing Richards, since in the m ost literal
sense Richards created it. W h a t we have been calling m odern criticism began
in 1924, w ith the publication o f Principles o f Literary Criticism’ (278).6 Later
on, m uch o f the discipline was to forget this: by the 1970s it was becom ing
increasingly norm al to assume E liots centrality, and by the 1980s one heard
little else. Today, though, it ought to be possible to return to the better view,
rejecting the widespread assum ption th at the critical paradigm was born as
Eliot s creature, as well as the sense o f the necessary conservatism o f the crit
ical paradigm that this assum ption has been taken to authorize.
Notes
Introduction
1. In the U nited States, the “scholars” versus “critics” distinction was brought to
the attention o f m any by Gerald Graffs Professing L iteratu re in 1987, but it is n ot
sim ply a historians term inology: throughout m uch o f the century, m any thinkers in
the field explicitly referred to the conflict in substantially the same terms.
2. John G uillory w ith Jeffrey J. W illiam s, “Towards a Sociology o f Literature: A n
Interview w ith John G uillory” M in n esota R eview 61 (2004): 9 5 —109.
3. For sensitive reflections on the “heroic age” o f criticism, see Stefan C ollini,
C om m o n Reading: Critics, H istorians, P ublics (N ew York: O xford U niversity Press,
2 0 0 8 ).
4. I address these new tendencies, together w ith others, in the final chapter— but
som e o f the central reference points are as follows. For new form alism, see for example
Marjorie Levenson, “W hat is N ew Formalism,” P M L A , v o l.122, no. 2 M arch 2 0 0 7 ,
pp. 5 57—569; and Caroline Levine, “Strategic Formalism: Towards a N ew M ethod in
Cultural Studies,” V ictorian Stu dies 48 (Sum mer 2006): 6 2 5 —657. For surface reading,
see Stephen Best and Sharon M arcus, “Surface Reading: A n Introduction,” Representa-
tio n sV o l. 108, N o. 1 (Fall 2009): 1—21. For distant reading, see the papers collected in
Franco M oretti, D is ta n t R ea d in g (London: Verso, 2 0 1 3 ).
5. Fredric Jameson, The P o litic a l Unconscious: N a r ra tiv e as a Socially Sym bolic A c t
(Durham: D uke U niversity Press, 1981).
6. Later published as Perry Anderson, In the Tracks o f H isto rica l M a te ria lism
(London: Verso, 1983).
7. Terry Eagleton, L iterary Theory: A n In trodu ction (M inneapolis: U niversity o f
M innesota Press, 1983) 185—186.
N O T E S T O PAGES 1 1 - 2 4
8. Terry Eagleton, The F un ction o f C riticism (London: Verso, 1984), 56—57.

9. To see what I m ean here, one only has to look at the m any graphs of, say,
incom e inequality that circulated during, and then in the wake of, the m ovem ents o f
2 0 1 1 . See, for instance, Thomas Piketty’s C a p ita l in the T w en ty-F irst C en tu ry (C am
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2 0 1 4 ).
10. Perry A nderson, “Renewals,” N e w L eft R eview 1 (January—February 2 0 0 0 ),
5 -2 4 .
11 . Susan W atkins, “Shifting Sands,” N e w L eft R eview 61 (January—February
2 0 1 0 ), 5 -2 7 .
l.T h e Critical R evolution Turns Right
1. Chris Baldick, C riticism a n d L iterary Theory 1 8 9 0 to th e Present (London:

Longm an, 1996), 20.
2. Gerald Graff, Professing L iterature: A n In stitu tio n a l H isto ry (Chicago: C hicago
U niversity Press, 1987), 55.
3. John Guillory, “Literary Study and the M odern System o f the D isciplines” in
A m anda A nderson and Joseph Valente, eds. D isc ip lin a rity a t the Fin d e Siecle (Princeton:
Princeton U niversity Press, 2 0 0 2 ). G uillory’s essay focuses on these two main tenden
cies, presumably because he finds them central, but it is perhaps w orth noting that in
regard to the 1890s scene, he zoom s in, as it were, to a lower level o f generality and
detects “four different disciplinary practices (philology, literary history, belles lettres,
com p osition )” (35). This seems right. O n ce the critical revolution o f the 1920s
remakes belles lettres as a forcefully defined and com bative “criticism ,” both the
language-based studies that resemble the old philology and the continuing practices o f
literary history w ill increasingly be understood as w ithin the broad tent o f “scholar
ship,” leaving com position, as so often, out in the cold.
4. Gerald Graff, Professing L iterature: A n In stitu tio n a l H isto ry (Chicago: C hicago
U niversity Press, 1987), 14.
5. John Guillory, “Literary Study and the M odern System o f the D isciplines”
in A m anda A nderson and Joseph Valente, eds. D isc ip lin a rity a t the F in d e Siecle
(Princeton: Princeton U niversity Press, 2 0 0 2 ), 24. In passing, it is w orth n oting here
that G uillory believes that the philologists, for their part, also failed to achieve disci
plinary status, though for the opposite reason: they “overextended their claim to scien-
tificity” (36).
6. Stanley Edgar H ym an, The A r m e d Vision: A S tu d y in the M eth ods o f M o d ern
L itera ry C riticism (N ew York: V intage, 1947).
7. Christopher Hilliard’s w onderfully rich English as a Vocation: The Scru tin y
M o v e m e n t (Oxford: O xford U niversity Press, 2 0 1 2 ) is the source o f m any o f m y exam
ples here. O n the connection between the critical paradigm in its Leavisite form and
adult education m ovem ents in Britain, see also John M cllroy and Sallie W estwood,
eds. B order C oun try: R a y m o n d W illiam s in A d u lt E du cation (Leicester: N ational
221
Institute o f A dult C ontin u in g Education, 1993). O n the connection to the birth o f

cultural studies, see Tom Steele, The Em ergence o f C u ltu ra l Stu dies 1 9 4 5 —1 9 6 5 : C u l
tu ra l PoliticSy A d u lt E d u cation a n d the English Q u estion (London: Lawrence and W is-
hart, 1997). The D o c to r W ho is from Hilliard, page 99.
8. Chris Baldick, C riticism a n d L iterary Theory 1 8 9 0 to th e Present (London:
Longm an, 1996), 13. The fuller context o f this line o f som e relevance here:
The heroic phase o f m odern A nglo-A m erican criticism, from the 1920s to the
1960s, was marked by the subordination o f literary-historical and literary-
biographical study to the ascendant discourses o f critical analysis and evaluation. In
terms o f m ethod, this entailed a new practice o f ‘close reading’, attending to the
specific formal features o f texts rather than to the general world-views o f their
authors. N o th in g distinguishes tw entieth-century literary criticism more sharply
from that o f previous ages than this close attention to textual detail. (13)
This emphasis on the centrality o f close reading strikes m e as quite correct. Francis
Mulhern, focusing on the British scene, draws the same emphasis: “Richards’s theories
were the main formative influence on Cambridge English. H is ‘practical criticism’ soon
became independent o f the liberal theory o f com m unication on w hich it rested, and
passed into currency as the key instrument o f literary analysis in general.” Francis
Mulhern, The M o m e n t o f S cru tin y (London: N ew Left Books, 1979) 27. This is right on.
9. For examples o f the first kind o f account, w hich treat “close reading” m ainly as
a N ew Critical innovation, see Frank Lentricchia and A ndrew D uB ois eds., Close
Reading: The R eader (Durham: D uke U niversity Press, 2 0 0 3 ), especially D u B ois’ intro
duction; Franco M oretti’s “Conjectures on W orld Literature” N e w L eft R eview 1
(2000) 54—68; and Jane G allop’s “The H istoricization o f Literary Study and the Fate
o f C lose Reading,” Profession (2007), 1 8 1 -1 8 5 , as well as her “C lose Reading in 2 0 0 9 ”
A D E B u lletin 149 (2010), 1 5 -1 9 . For examples o f the second kind o f account, in
w hich “close reading” is seen as originating w ith Richards and Em pson, but Richards
and Em pson are then seen as “p roto-N ew Critics,” see John G uillory’s very interesting
“C lose Reading: Prologue and Epilogue” A D E B u lletin 149 (2010), 8—14 (Richards is
the “prologue” here); and Jonathan Culler’s very fine piece “The Closeness o f Close
reading” A D E B u lletin 149 (2010) 2 0 - 2 5 , w hich makes the same m ove via the form u
lation “A nglo-American N ew C riticism .”
10. Richards on another occasion: “I can’t add anything about m y ‘followers’ not
having know n w ho they could be or easily acknow ledging any w ho seem ed to regard
themselves so.” These statements are Richards’ way o f divorcing h im self entirely from
N ew C riticism as a critical tendency, and should n ot o f course be taken literally: as
Richards’ biographer John Paul Russo notes, Richards in fact knew a great deal about
the N ew Critics, being personally acquainted w ith m any o f them . John Paul Russo,
/. A . Richards: H is L ife a n d W ork (Baltimore: Johns H opkins UP, 1989) 524. Em pson’s
charges (“dogm a” and “absurd”) were levelled specifically at the view, associated w ith
the N ew Criticism and w ith N eo-C hristian criticism more generally, “that the reader
o f poetry only has the words on the page, and the author didn’t mean him to have
anything else so he m ustn’t k n o w anything [ e l s e ] S e e W illiam E m pson, “The Argu
m ent about Shakespeare’s Characters,” C ritic a l Q u arterly 7:3 (A utum n 1965),
reprinted in John H affenden, Selected L etters o fW illia m E m pson (O xford, O xford U n i
versity Press, 20 0 6 ) 389.
11. C K O gden, I. A. Richards, and James W ood, The F ou n dation s o f A esthetics
(London: Allen & U nw in, 1922); C. K. O gden and I. A. Richards, The M e a n in g o f
M ea n in g : A Stu dy o f the Influence o f L anguage Upon Thought a n d o f the Science o f S ym
bolism (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & C o, 1923). References to P rinciples are to
I. A. Richards, P rinciples o f L iterary C riticism (London: R outledge, 2001 [1924]). Ref
erences to P ra ctical C riticism are to I. A. Richards, P ractical C riticism : A S tu dy o f L it
erary J u d g m e n t (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956 [1929]).
12. A word here on the reception o f P ractical C riticism . Richards’ central finding in
this work was that, by and large, the students tested found even fairly sim ple poem s
very difficult to make sense of, and moderately com plex ones com pletely unintelli
gible. O ne initial conclusion he drew was that we had overestimated m ost people’s
ability to construe language: a more direct and focused form o f education in sim ple
com prehension was required— this is one o f the convictions that leads him to develop
“close reading.” Yet m uch o f the subsequent reception o f P ra ctica l C riticism has offered
a rather different account o f w hat the experim ent revealed: an account that emphasizes
that the students were unable to distinguish poem s by authors generally considered
geniuses from those by authors generally considered dunces— that is, that the students
had made a failure, n ot o f “construing” in its m ost basic sense, but o f “taste,” o f aes
thetic judgm ent. In m any cases readings o f this kind are sym ptom atic o f the history I
outline here. As we shall see, as the century proceeds Richards’ distinctive emphasis on
training basic cognitive and affective capacities rapidly gets buried beneath the
Leavisite and N ew Critical emphasis on com ing to the “correct” aesthetic judgm ents
about specific works. It is only w hen we read P ractical C riticism back through the lens
o f those later texts that it starts to appear, first as an expose about the failures o f literary
studies as aesthetic education, and then, as the century proceeds, as a kind o f u nw it
ting critique o f the aesthetic p e r se.
13. There is a great deal to be said at this poin t about Richards’ student W illiam
Em pson. For our purposes, it is enough to note that, like Richards’ P ractical C riticism ,
Em pson’s Seven Types o f A m b ig u ity (Norfolk: N ew D irections Press, 1947 [1930]) is
often read back through the history o f its influence in America: its focus on “ambiguity”
and its very close attention to fine linguistic detail in poetry allow it to be read as an
early work o f N ew Criticism. Yet Em pson’s work in Seven Types is less a m odel o f close
attention to “the poem itself,” and more a detailed investigation into reader responses:
a tracking of, and speculation about, the sorts o f associations an ordinarily com petent
language user makes w hen encountering poetic language. As w ith Richards’ P ractical
C riticism , the primary effort is not to sever the text from its context, but to investigate
the nature o f the relationship between the text and its context o f reception.
223
14. A good example here w ould be Terry Eagleton, w ho overlooks this diagnostic
aspect o f the project w hen he tells us that:
To m y m ind . . . m uch the m ost interesting aspect o f [P ra ctica l Criticism ^, and

one apparently quite invisible to Richards him self, is just h ow tight a consensus
o f unconscious valuations underlies [the students’] particular differences o f
opinion. Reading Richards’ undergraduates’ accounts o f literary works, one is
struck by habits o f perception and interpretation w hich they spontaneously
share. . . . [Richards] as a young, w hite, upper middle-class male Cam bridge don
was unable to objectify a context o f interests in w hich he h im self largely shared,
and was thus unable to recognize fully that local, ‘subjective’ differences o f evalua
tion work w ithin a particular, socially structured way o f perceiving the world. (.L it
erary Theory: A n In tro d u ctio n . London: Verso, 1996:13—14)
This is o f course one o f the left’s classic critiques o f liberalism— that liberals like
Richards fail to see how individual cases are determ ined by larger social forces. In so
m any places, this is a necessary and principled critique. Yet it seems odd to apply it
to the Richards o f P ra ctica l C riticism , for here he cannot really be accused o f failing to
perceive larger structures: his project in the second half o f the work is precisely to
observe and analyze the ways in w hich the various students’ different errors o f reading
fall into broader, socially determ ined patterns o f perception and response. The left
critique should rather be that Richards analyses these structures at what we m ight now
call a “cognitive” level, w ithout then goin g on seriously to interrogate the political,
econom ic, and ideological structures w hich w ou ld help to explain the production and
distribution o f the cognitive ones. Yet for the left the analysis o f cognitive patterns
remains o f considerable value as long as w e are prepared to see it in light o f a broader
account o f determ ining forces. For a m uch more nuanced reading o f this diagnostic
part o f Richards’ project, we can turn to Eagleton’s teacher, R aym ond W illiam s, w ho
tells us that P ra ctical C riticism demonstrated:
[T]hat the cultural consensus around certain earlier notions o f cultivation or taste
could be quite brutally refuted by presenting people w ith texts w ithout any cultural
signals like the author’s name, or any other cues to ‘the right response.’ If you asked
people about the authors w ho had written these pieces, they knew what to say
w ithin the terms o f the consensus. W hen they actually had to read and describe their
writings, the result was radically different— in som e cases nearly the reverse. So the
effect o f Richards’ practical criticism was anti-ideological in a very crucial sense: it
exposed the disparity between the cultural pretensions o f a class and its actual capac
ities. (Raym ond W illiam s, Culture. London: Fontana, 1981:192—193)
As a way o f recuperating Richards’ project for leftist purposes, W illiam s’ reading o f

P ra ctica l C riticism as an insistence on the gap between the “cultural pretensions o f a
class and its actual capacities” seems rather useful. Yet, by reading the results o f
Richards’ experim ent as evidence o f a failure in “taste,” a failure o f aesthetic education,
W illiam s here threatens to elide w hat is really the more fundam ental point revealed by
the experiment: that the institutions o f literary study, as w ell as the broader social
order, had failed to provide the students w ith the ability to construe basic m eanings in
sim ple poem s— that is, sim ply that they were unable to read, even in the ordinary
sense o f the term.
15. For reasons I note w hen I com e to address W illiam s’ work directly, it is n ot
clear to m e that the first task is inherently more politically viable than the second. See
chapter tw o, footnote 9.
16. P rinciplesy page x.
17. Twelve Southerners, 77/ take M y S tan d: The Sou th a n d th e A grarian T radition
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977 [1930]).
18. The key study here w ou ld be M ark Jancovich’s The C u ltu ra l Politics o f N e w
C riticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
19. It is w orth n otin g that Brooks insists on this distinction again and again: he
likes the practical Richards o f P ra ctica l C riticism , and he rejects the theoretical Richards
o f P rinciples o f L iterary C riticism . “The p r a c tic a l effect o f Richards’ discussion [in P rac
tic a l C riticism ] o f his thirteen selected poem s was alm ost overw helm ing, and was to
make its fortune in the w orld o f letters. The th eoretical aspect o f the work, however,
was another matter . . . (587; m y italics); “[The] precepts’ and adm onitions’ urged in
P ra ctica l C riticism . . . . impressed m e so m uch that they m ade up in part for w hat I
found difficult or distasteful, particularly in P rinciples ” (589); “I w rote long letters to
John R ansom and A llen Tate in w hich I argued that, in spite o f his ph ilosoph y a n d his
term inology, Richards was a perceptive critic o f great power w ho, a t least in his ap p lica
tion, arrived at judgm ents that were alm ost w holly com patible w ith m ine” (589; m y
italics); “H is practical criticism tends to correct his inadequate theory” (592); and so
on. Cleanth Brooks, “I. A. Richards and P ra ctica l C r i t i c i s m T h e Sew anee R eview Vol.
89, N o. 4 (1981): 5 8 6 -5 9 5 .
2 0. See W illiam K. W im satt, The Verbal Icon: Stu dies in the M e a n in g o f P oetry (Lex
ington: U niversity o f K entucky Press, 1954).
2 1. John Crowe Ransom, The N e w C riticism (Norfolk: N ew D irections Press,
1941).
2 2. See John Crowe Ransom , “C riticism , Inc.” V irgin ia Q u arterly R eview 13
(A utum n 1937) pp. 5 86—6 0 2 . R ansom was o f course responding directly to R. S.
Crane’s “H istory Versus Criticism in the Study o f Literature,” a traditional landmark
for anyone looking to track the developm ent o f the critic/scholar distinction. See R. S.
Crane, “H istory Versus Criticism in the Study o f Literature,” English Journal 24.8
[1935] pp. 6 4 5 -6 6 7 .
2 3. P ra ctica l C riticism , 3 2 7 .
2 4. John Paul Russo, I. A . Richards: H is L ife a n d Work (Baltimore: Johns H opkins
U niversity Press, 1989) 542.
2 5. Em pson, w ith his keen interest in, am ong other things, historical contexts, lit
erary biography, and even authorial intention, is the exception here.
225
2 6. O n the A nglophone left, the classic reference points for understanding Leavis
and Leavis-ism more generally are Perry Anderson, “C om ponents o f the N ational C ul
ture,” N e w L eft R eview 1 , no. 50 (July—A ugust 1968): 3—57, w hich is excellent, though
it is w orth noting that the section addressing Leavis is m uch shorter than the long
shadow the piece casts in subsequent debates m ight lead one to suppose; and Francis
M ulherns brilliant, and m uch more extensive, The M o m e n t o f 'Scrutiny (London: N ew
Left Books, 1979). For a careful defense o f Leavis— very, very thin on the ground
nowadays— one can do little better than M ichael Bell, F. R. L eavis (London: Rout-
ledge, 1988). (I remain grateful to Stefan C ollini for having referred m e to Bells
book). A nderson and M ulherns accounts o f the role that Leavis-ism played in tipping
to the right a cultural m om ent that was otherwise rather delicately balanced are, I
think, exceptionally perceptive, and as a result the picture they offer has largely been
taken for granted in the lefts subsequent reception o f Leavis. A t one level, this is as it
should be— yet Bells claim that neither really does justice to the depth o f Leavis’ view
o f language is, I think, w orth taking on board. The question then is as to h ow m uch
really rests on this. I have tried to conduct som ething like a preliminary scouting o f
that question in the m ain text.
2 7. See Philip Sm allw ood and Philip Trew, “British Theory and Criticism: 5. 1900
and After,” in Johns H opkin s G u id e to L iterary Theory a n d C riticism , 2 n d ed. (Baltimore:
Johns H opkins U niversity Press, 2 0 0 5 ).
2 8. I quote this as Leavis reproduces it in “Mass C ivilisation and M inority C ul
ture.” See F. R. Leavis, E du cation a n d the U n iversity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
sity Press, 1979), pp. 143—171. The original passage, in its full form , can be found in
I. A. Richards, P rinciples o f L itera ry C riticism (London: R outledge, 2 0 0 1 ), pp. 54—55.
2 9 . 1 quote from F. R. Leavis, The L iv in g P rinciple: English as a D iscip lin e o f Thought
(Chicago: Ivan R. D ee, Inc., 1975).
30. O n e can o f course also note the ways in w hich these broad similarities in the
larger positions play ou t in the smaller details. O n e example: a few pages after his
parsing o f the phrase “criticism o f life,” Leavis moves to defend Arnold on grounds
that could be taken straight from the pages o f P ra ctica l C riticism : “It is only by bringing
our experience to bear on it that we can judge the new thing, yet the expectations that
we bring, more or less unconsciously, m ay get in the way” (61). This is quite precisely
Richards on “stock responses”; the fact that Leavis feels no need to cite him here is
evidence o f h ow thoroughly internalised these sorts o f considerations had by then
becom e.
31. It may help those more familiar w ith philosophy than w ith criticism if I note
here that it is a view o f language som ew hat rem iniscent o f the kind later associated
w ith the W ittgenstein o f the P h ilosoph ical In vestigations (1 9 5 3 ), w h o was o f course at
Cambridge w hile the critical revolution was in full swing.
32. I am thinking here particularly o f Richards’ characteristic rejection o f aestheticist
views o f the artist as, q u a artist, a special or an especially idiosyncratic person, essentially
different in kind from the rest o f us, and his contrary insistence on the necessary
N O T E S T O PAGES 5 3 ~ 5 4
“normality” o f the artist, by which he means, in effect, the potential representativeness o f

the artists experience. See “The N orm ality o f the Artist,” the twenty-fourth chapter o f
Principles o f L iterary Criticism . In passing, as a gloss for future readers, let me draw atten
tion to the casual racism w ith w hich the chapter opens, the very odd and intriguing
theory o f artistic form to which it proceeds, and the more humane note on which it ends.
33. I am grateful to Francis M ulhern for clarifying this for me. “Leavis h im self
never called for a return to the ‘organic com m unity,’ w hich he expressly ruled out. The
‘finest use o f language’ was in his view the surviving trace o f such a com m u n ity and
the practical point in the present was the defense and developm ent o f that in the hands
o f ‘the critical m inority’: elitism was the programmatic obverse o f his retrospective
populism . The m o tif o f the organic com m unity receded in S cru tin y w ith the departure
o f D enys T hom pson in 1939.” Francis M ulhern, personal com m unication.
34. Later in “Mass Civilization and M inority Culture,” Leavis repeats almost precisely
the same move. H e quotes a number o f those with w hom he disagrees, and then states,
characteristically, that “such pronouncements could be made only in an age in w hich there
were no standards, no living tradition o f poetry spread abroad, and no discriminating
public. It is the plight o f culture generally that is exemplified here” (157). H e then offers,
as one o f his few footnotes, the following long quote from Richards’ Practical Criticism :
For there is no such g u lf between poetry and life as over-literary persons som etim es
suppose. There is no gap between our everyday em otional life and the material o f
poetry. The verbal expression o f this life, at its finest, is forced to use the technique
o f poetry; that is the on ly essential difference. W e cannot avoid the material o f
poetry. I f we do n ot live in consonance w ith good poetry, w e m ust live in conso
nance w ith bad poetry. A nd, in fact, the idle hours o f m ost lives are filled w ith
reveries that are sim ply bad private poetry. O n the w hole evidence, I do n ot see how
we can avoid the conclusion that a general insensitivity to poetry does witness a low
level o f general im aginative life.
O nce again, Leavis selects a passage in which Richards is at his m ost judgmental, and once
again, even in the passage selected, Richards’ central aim is really to insist on the conti
nuity o f artistic experience with ordinary experience, in contrast to Leavis w ho wants
instead to emphasise the collapse o f “standards” and the “plight o f culture generally.”
35. This strange fixation on staging and restaging the scene o f judgm ent is replayed
at the level o f Leavis’ treatment o f critics, too. Thus his final endorsem ent o f A rnold as
a critic is made in the follow ing terms:
[Arnold’s] actual achievem ent in producible criticism m ay n ot seem a very impres

sive one. But w e had better inquire where a m ore impressive is to be found. As soon
as we start to apply any serious standard o f w hat good criticism should be, we are
led towards the conclusion that there is very little. If A rnold is n ot one o f the great
critics, w ho are they? W hich do w e approach w ith a greater expectation o f profit?
M r E liot h im self—yes; and n ot only because his preoccupations are o f our time; his
22 7
best critical w riting has a higher critical intensity that any o f A rnolds. C oleridges
pre-em inence we all recognize. Johnson?— that Johnson is a living writer no one
w ill dispute, and his greatness is certainly apparent in his criticism. Yet that he
im poses h im self there as a more considerable power than A rnold isn’t plain to me,
and strictly as a critic— a critic offering critical value— he seems to m e to matter a
good deal less to us. As for D ryden, im portant as he is historically, I have always
thought the intrinsic interest o f his criticism m uch overrated . . . (63—64)
A n d so on. The testy shuffle around precedence, and the essay as a w hole, finally ends
with: “I can think o f no other critic w h o asks to be considered here, so I w ill say finally
that, whatever his lim itations, A rnold seems to m e decidedly more o f a critic than the
Sainte-Beuve to w h om he so deferred” (64). Unless w e have a particular interest in
the re-ordering o f tables o f precedence, this is a pretty flat note on w hich to end.
I make this som ewhat abstruse p oin t at such length n ot merely to em phasize the
distance betw een Leavis and Richards, but also to note that this sort o f thing has had
such an influence, n ot on ly o n m id-century criticisms, but on our own. In this regard,
it is perhaps w orth recording here m y sense that a surprising proportion o f the best
British w riting in the w orld o f letters— in the exceptionally fine L ondon R eview o f
Books, for instance— defaults to som ething like this m ode even today, w hen the argu
m ents and conditions that were once thought to underpin and justify it can no longer
seriously be defended. Readers o f Stefan C ollin, for example— a writer w hose work I
greatly admire— are importantly, I think, being treated to the spectacle o f a fair and
measured judgm ent, as i f the critic were really a kind o f judge w hose task, finally, is to
com e to a fair-m inded and lasting assessment o f the achievem ents o f various figures,
the better to know w ho is and w ho is n ot truly “first-rate.” This is despite the fact that
C ollini h im self w ou ld no doubt repudiate the kind o f canon-policing that character
izes the m ode in its earlier incarnations. O f all his w ork to date, this is perhaps seen
m ost clearly in C om m on R eading: Critics, H istorians, P ublics (N ew York: O xford U n i
versity Press, 2 0 0 8 ). It should perhaps be added that C ollini's more recent work
appears to be m oving in a slightly different direction— I am judging from a distance,
so it is possible that m y eye is off, but it seems to m e that in recent years his work has
becom e increasingly open to partisan com m itm ents. If so, then it is a developm ent for
w hich one can only cheer. I say this w ith a sense that som ething more is at stake than
the work o f a single person; I am hardly alone in thinking o f C ollini as one o f the
strongest contem porary representatives o f a certain tradition o f cultural criticism in
Britain. This may be the m om ent to refer readers to the extended debate between
C ollini and M ulhern that appeared in the pages o f N e w L eft R eview in the early
2 0 0 0 s— a debate that bears quite directly on w hat one m ight call the “Leavis ques
tion.” See Francis M ulhern, C u ltu re/M eta cu ltu re (London: R outledge, 2000); Stefan
C ollini, “Culture Talk.” N e w L eft R eview 7 (Jan.—Feb. 2001): 4 3 —53; M ulhern,
“B eyond M etaculture.” N L R 16 (July—Aug. 2002): 86—104; C ollini, “D efen d in g C ul
tural C riticism .” N L R 18 (N ov.—D ec. 2002): 7 3 —97; M ulhern, “W hat is Cultural
Criticism?” N L R 23 (S ep t.-O ct. 2003): 3 5 -4 9 ; C ollini, “O n Variousness; and on

Persuasion.” N L R 2 7 (M ay-June 2004): 6 5 -9 7 .
36. Though there were a few exceptions to this general rule. See for instance The
L iv in g Principle: English as a D iscip lin e o f Thought (Chicago: Ivan R. D ee, Inc., 1975)
19—69, where Leavis engages w ith, and selectively endorses, an idiosyncratic grouping
o f philosophers.
2. The Scholarly Turn
1. For the view from the fulm inating right w in g o f the U nited States, see Roger
K im balls m edia favorite Tenured Radicals: H o w P olitics has C o rru p ted o u r H ig h er E d u
cation (N ew York: Harper C ollins, 1990) usually paired w ith Allan B loom s The C losing
o f th e A m erica n M in d : H o w H ig h er E du cation H as F a iled D em ocracy a n d Im poverish ed
the Souls o f Todays S tu den ts (N ew York: Sim on and Schuster, 1987). The subtle titles
com e w ith the territory. For a more serious account from the left, see Perry Anderson,
“A Culture in Contraflow,” N e w L efi R eview 182: 85—137.
2. A good starting poin t here is N ancy Fraser, Fortunes o f F em inism : From
S ta te-M a n a g e d C a p ita lism to N eo lib era l Crisis (London: Verso, 2 0 1 3 ).
3. Here Jodi M elam eds question is a good one: in the U nited States in particular,
to w hat extent did the new race critiques contest the U nited States’ role as the guar
antor o f capital at the international level, and to w hat extent did they instead allow the
U nited States to redescribe itself as an “internalized m odel o f global diversity,” thereby
disguising its expansionism as merely that o f “a universal nation fulfilling its destiny”?
See Jodi M elam ed, R epresent a n d Destroy: R a tio n a liz in g Violence in the N e w R a c ia l
C a p ita lism (M inneapolis: University o f M innesota Press, 2 0 1 1 ), 35.
4. See for instance Benita Parry, P ostcolonial Studies: A M a te ria list C ritiq u e
(London: R outledge, 200 4 ) and V ivek Chibber, P ostcolonial Theory a n d th e Specter o f
C a p ita l (London: Verso, 2 0 1 3 ).
5. A good place to start here is H olly Lewis, The P olitics o f E verybody: F em inism ,
Q u eer Theory, a n d M a rx ism a t the Intersection (London: Zed Books, 2 0 1 6 ).
6. See for instance D aniel Zamora and M ichael C. Behrent, eds. F ou cau lt a n d
N eoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2016)
7. It is possible to take this argument a step further, albeit into som e quite specula
tive territory, by exam ining som e o f the patterns that structured this confusion. As
Marc Redfield, am ong others, has observed, the “Theory” debate was notable, not
merely for its confusion, but also for the especially central role played by personifica
tions, w ith the names o f key theorists com ing to stand for arguments, positions, quali
ties, affects, insults in com plicatedly mediatized ways. O n ce one has appreciated the
force o f this observation, it begins to seem worthy o f note that the two names that
became perhaps m ost iconic o f “theory,” Foucault and Derrida, w ould, if classified
according to the older dichotom y, fall on both sides o f the traditional “scholars versus
critics” debate: Foucault roughly in the former camp, Derrida very roughly in the latter.
2 29
I note this merely in order to observe that, if the new battle lines w ithin Anglo-American
literary studies were vague, they nevertheless form ed themselves in just such a way as
to m uddy the older distinctions. It is then open to one to suspect that one o f the
m ost im portant effects o f the shift into these vague terms, straddling the traditional
dichotom y, was to mask what was, in the longer historical view, the truly m om entous
change going on w ithin the discipline in just this period: the collapse o f the distinction
that had been the central axis o f dispute in the discipline since the 1920s, and the even
tual victory o f the “scholar” over the “critic” m odel. O f course, this was far from being
anything like the result that any o f the main practitioners intended.
Our rough classification bears this out, for if one were to insist on im agining, per
versely, the subsequent history o f the discipline as, in part, a com petition between
Foucauldian “scholars” and Derridean “critics,” one w ould find first that the history
resists being split in this way, since the various attempts that were made to paint the two
as opposing never really took on, but second, and perhaps just as im portant, that the
Foucauldians win. For if the m ost obviously “critical” forms o f deconstruction— de
M anian and “Yale School”— were rather quickly to acquire a period flavor, Foucauldian
“scholarship” was to make its way to the top o f the field and remain there, in a wide
array o f differing forms, from the new historicism through to queer theory. O f course,
as I just noted, this is a perverse way to read the history, since one forces these conti
nental philosophers into Anglo-Am erican literary-critical categories only at consider
able cost. The analogy is very rough indeed. A nd yet, to continue the thought experi
m ent, the particular texture o f that roughness is perhaps itself an indicator o f the turn
toward scholarship, and away from criticism: Foucauldian reading, w hile radically new
in its day, was still recognizably “scholarly” in that it took the form o f archive-based
cultural analysis. Yet deconstruction, for its part, was “critical” on ly in a very specialized
sense: though Derrida, de M an, and the “Yale School” o f deconstruction each resem
bled the older “critics” in their com m itm ent to som ething like “close reading” and their
associated determ ination to make use o f the text as, in Richards’ terms, “a m achine to
think w ith,” rather than as a source o f historical knowledge, they nevertheless repre
sented a break from criticism towards a distinctly scholar-like specialization and profes
sionalization, in that their aim was to use literary texts as a means by w hich to (un) think
high-level philosophy, rather than as a means by w hich to cultivate the sensibilities o f
general or “com m on” readers. The key difference here lay in the fact that deconstruction
was understood as having hollow ed out the aesthetic— precisely the category that, in its
various forms, had done m ost to provide the raison d'etre for criticism in its paradig
matic form. W ith apologies to Gayatri Spivak, w ho has at times made a valiant attempt
to turn this deconstructive tradition in the direction o f som ething like the more critical
task o f “aesthetic education,” it is necessary to say that the training that the theory o f the
“double bind” offers is, I think, primarily cognitive— w hich is not to say that the double
bind is not often also em otionally fraught. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A n A esthetic
E du cation in the Era o f G lobalization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 20 1 2 ).
8. Perry Anderson, “Renewals,” N e w L eft R eview 1 (January—February 2 0 0 0 ).
9. For W illiam s’ demurrals about the applicability o f the term “Left-Leavisism”

see Raym ond W illiam s, P olitics a n d L etters (London: Verso, 1981), 195. The w hole
section from 190—195 is o f considerable interest w ith respect to W illiam s’ sense o f the
relationship betw een his ow n early m ethods and those o f Leavis, and before him ,
Richards. But see also 65 where he makes the link in the m ost explicit terms, noting o f
the editorial board o f the Journal “Politics and Letters,” o f w hich he was one o f the
three founding members: “O ur in tention was to produce a review that w ould, approx
imately, unite radical left politics w ith Leavisite literary criticism .”
In this connection, it is perhaps helpful to reflect on Christopher Hilliard’s claim
that “‘Left-Leavisism’ was not a synthesis o f S cru tin y and Labour or Marxist politics: it
was a process o f working w ith or working through the assumptions and analytical prac
tices established by [Leavis’] C ulture a n d E n viro n m en t and arriving at a point where that
book’s governing principles no longer held” (170). Hilliard generally sees the scene w ith
great clarity, and this is a fine line. I wonder, though, w hether it is really true. It certainly
points to som ething real: he is speaking n ot just o f W illiam s but o f a w hole adult edu
cation scene, the other prom inent name being Richard Hoggart, and often in work o f
that kind, it seems as if it was precisely the depth o f the com m itm ent to the given
(broadly Leavisite) task that led to the position being developed in quite new ways.
Pointing this out has the virtue o f show ing the power o f Leavis’ (or if you like, Rich
ards’) initial premises, w hich, taken forward, outstrip the lim itations he placed on
them — w hich is precisely m y larger point. Yet if we take Hilliard’s line at face value,
then the claim is also that “Labour or Marxist politics” were ultimately irrelevant to
left-Leavism: that the critique was entirely an im m anent one, and that W illiam s, H o g
gart, and com pany either could have arrived, or did in fact arrive, at their anti-Leavisite
positions in the absence o f any external influence from forces o f that kind. That claim
w ould be quite wrong: to say that W illiam s’ developm ent out o f the Leavis tradition
took nothing significant from M arxism is very m uch to overplay Leavis’ hand.
10. R aym ond W illiam s, P olitics a n d Letters (London: Verso, 1981).
11. R aym ond W illiam s, D r a m a fro m Lbsen to E lio t (London: C hatto and W indus,
1952)
12. In this respect, it is o f som e interest to observe that for W illiam s here “English
literary sociology” itself begins w ith the practical criticism o f the S cru tin y group:
English literary sociology began, in effect, from this need o f a radical critical group
to locate and justify its ow n activity and identity: the practical distinction o f good
literature from the mediocre and the bad extending to studies o f the cultural con
ditions underlying these differences o f value . . . (18)
Apart from noting here once again that practical criticism began, not with Leavis’ and the
Scrutiny group’s project o f distinguishing “good literature from the mediocre and the bad”
but with Richards’ project o f using both good literature and bad “as a means o f ordering
our minds,” it is worth thinking back to what we earlier called the diagnostic part o f
Richards’ project— his proposal for literary studies as, in part, “fieldwork in comparative
231
ideology.” W ould it not be more accurate to say that “English literary sociology” within
the university really begin there, with Richards, at the start o f the discipline? See Ray
m ond W illiams, Culture a n d M aterialism : Selected Essays (London: Verso, 2005).
13. In this regard, it is w orth noting in passing that in accepting this emphasis,
thinkers in the discipline w hose primary intention was to reject the influence o f
Leavis were in fact im plicitly accepting his retrospective construction o f a tradition o f
criticism -as-judgm ent that ran behind him all the way back to Arnold. There is m uch
to be said here about the history o f the idea o f “criticism” before its entry into the
university as part o f the discipline o f English Literature; naturally I cannot say it here.
14. The two territories o f the U nited States and U nited K ingdom can hardly be
considered separately in this regard: W illiam s h im self notes that his opposition to lit
erary criticism as a project built on the assum ption that it was possible to make im per
sonal judgm ents o f works o f literature “was really m uch more [an opposition] to later
developm ents in N ew Criticism than to Leavis” (P olitics a n d L etters 33 5 ). A t this level
o f analysis, it is im portant to insist that the Anglo-A m erican intellectual tradition
moves as a unit, propelled in part by imbalances in the relative power and sophistica
tion o f the various national form ations w ithin it.
15. Raym ond W illiam s, M a rx ism a n d L iteratu re (N ew York: O xford University
Press, 1977).
16. Here it is o f interest to observe that in m opping up, as it were, W illiam s goes
on to argue that the term “beauty” cannot, as the tradition often claims, be used to
secure a further specialization o f the concept to p o sitiv e sensory experiences, since the
positive sensory experiences cannot finally be distinguished, in principle, from the
negative ones— precisely the second m ove in Richards’ argument.
17. The reader may perhaps excuse a long note here, for w ith ou t w anting to digress
too far from the m ain line o f our history, there is also m uch to be said about W illiam s’
sense that criticism is at fault for focusing too closely on the con text o f reception
(“effect”) and that it therefore needs to be supplem ented (or really, replaced) by schol
arly m ethods that can focus more effectively on the con text o f p ro d u ctio n (“intention
and performance”) . W h en we think o f the particular forms o f criticism he is trying to
do battle w ith, we must, I think, agree that he is largely right: there was, in both Leavis
and the N ew Criticism , a programmatic refusal to com e seriously to grips w ith real
problem s o f “intention and perform ance” in this sense. W e could even go further to
agree also that the “scholar” m odel o f literary study— literary study as the production
o f know ledge about culture— has tended to favor approaches like W illiam s’ that treat
the text, finally, as an index to its context o f production, whereas in contrast “criti
cisms” o f various kinds, conceiving o f literary study as a matter o f developing and
dissem inating certain cultural capabilities through training readers, creating an edu
cated public, and similar, have naturally enough tended to focus their attentions on
the context o f reception, often w ith very problem atic results.
But we need to make som e finer distinctions here, too, for as we have seen, there
are “criticisms” and “criticisms.” Can we really say that the Leavisite and N ew Critical
obfuscation o f the conditions o f textual production was the consequence o f their
placing too great an emphasis on “effect”— on the context o f reception, per se? I think
the answer is no: the real error here has m ostly been to deny “context” altogether in the
name o f a spiritualized and autotelic concept o f “the text itself.” After all, the N ew
Critics were at pains to excoriate both the “Intentional Fallacy” a n d the “Affective Fal
lacy”— to exile both the writer a n d the reader, as it were. Leavis is less explicitly idealist
here, but as we have seen, still represents a shift o f emphasis, not onto questions o f
“effect,” as W illiam s seems to think, but away from them , and instead onto the process
by w hich the critic judged the text “itself”— a shift o f emphasis that was to becom e
decisive. N oticin g this allows us to observe, once again, one o f the key differences
between criticisms o f w hat I am calling the first and the second periods: w hat was
initially, in Richards and Em pson, a deliberate focus on the context o f reception
becom es, in Leavis and then even more evidently in the N ew Critics, a rejection o f
context altogether.
If W illiam s misses this here, it is because o f his tendency to feel that the context o f
production is the only thing that really counts as a context for leftist purposes. In this,
he is again very m uch o f our period: “context” is n ow reflexively used in this way, in
reference to the context o f production alone. Yet surely this is overly restrictive: the
various contexts o f reception are at least as im portant, and there are good reasons to
w ant to distinguish between past contexts o f reception and present contexts o f recep
tion, too. W illiam s focuses his analysis on the context o f production because for him
such an analysis can entail— and indeed, for a Marxist, m ust entail— an analysis o f the
conditions o f material production more generally. H is proxim ity to Leavis makes him
very aware that there were, in criticisms o f the second period, ways o f focusing on
“effect” that am ounted to an evasion o f this more political, because more material,
analysis: that am ounted, really, to an ideological obfuscation o f the conditions o f
material production by way o f a redirection o f our attention onto consum ption. It is
this, I think, that som etim es leads him to make too quick an equation betw een the
specific context o f textual production and the conditions o f material production more
broadly.
From our present vantage point, it is perhaps easier for us that it was for W illiam s
to observe that there is no necessary identity between the two. In W illiam s’ writings,
an analysis o f the specific context o f textual production (the “structure o f feeling”)
am ounted to an analysis o f the conditions o f material production more broadly, but
this is by no means always the case, as is attested by the countless pages o f politically
inert literary history that the discipline has produced both before and since W illiam s.
Moreover, one m ight ask, could n ot an analysis o f a text’s relationships to its contexts
o f reception reveal just as m uch about the conditions o f material production in the
society at large? W e m ight even say that, to the extent that for an activist such as
W illiam s, useful cultural analysis m ust finally be a matter o f describing the conditions
o f material production as they stand in the present, rather than as they stood in the
past, it seems more prom ising to try to focus our attention on the present context o f
233
reception, rather than on past contexts o f production. Yet this w ould o f course still be
to think in the m ode o f the cultural analyst. If w e w ant to m ove forward into criticism
proper, then we have to begin to see that analyses o f contexts o f production, and past
contexts o f reception, can be made to engage w ith the real, present conditions o f m ate
rial production on ly insofar as they can be brought to bear on the present context o f
reception: real, living readers— w hat I w ou ld perhaps term the “context o f use.” Praxis
is on ly ever in the present, though it is o f course essential to bring the past to bear on
it as sophisticatedly as w e can.
But this takes us into deeper m ethodological waters than a historical book o f this
kind is built to weather. For present purposes, the historical poin t is sim ply that we
need to be able to appreciate the ways in w hich W illiam s’ careful insistence on the
im portance o f “intention and performance” offered a valuable corrective to criticisms
o f the second period, w hile also acknow ledging that he m isdiagnosed the real prob
lem s w ith that criticism in such a w ay as to dismiss also criticisms o f the first period—
criticisms to w hich W illiam s argument ought not, in all rigor, have been applied. As
the remainder o f this chapter begins to show, the generalization o f W illiam s’ argument
against Leavis and the N ew Critics into an argument against criticism p e r se did m uch
to pave the way for a wholesale replacement o f the “critic” by the “scholar” m odel, and
so inadvertently did m uch to direct the discipline, as well as his particular branch o f
thinking on the left, into the respective impasses they have reached today, w hen our
various highly developed practices o f cultural analysis fail to bite in the absence o f any
equally developed practice o f cultural intervention.
18. O f course, none o f this is to say that W illiam s was n ot deeply com m itted to
“practice” in other fields o f endeavor; I merely mean to observe that he understood his
disciplinary w ork in scholarly terms, as cultural analysis, cultural history, and cultural
theory, rather than understanding it in critical terms as the systematic cultivation o f
sensibility. Naturally, the two are n ot finally distinguishable, and any powerful work o f
scholarship moves readers to try on different ranges o f sensibility, etc., etc. But the
“practice” o f scholarship, conceived o f as cultural analysis, is necessarily neither direct
nor systematic in this respect. I ought to add that W illiam s’ work as a novelist (to
w hich I am personally very partial, for whatever that may be worth) is itself a signifi
cant form o f “practice” in just this respect, the novels naturally seeking to engage
readers’ sensibilities directly, rather than indirectly via the m edium o f scholarly
analysis— though even here I feel m yself bound to add, reluctantly, that one o f
W illiam s’ weaker points as a novelist is his tendency to lapse into sociological descrip
tion, relying on the force o f the underlying analysis to achieve effects that w ould be
better w rought more directly on the reader’s tastes, incipient responses, habits o f eval
uation, and so on. A longer account here m ight attem pt to situate the aesthetic work
perform ed by W illiam s’ novels in its precise relation to his rejection o f just that kind
o f work in his scholarship. I am grateful to Francis M ulhern for pressing m e on this.
19. O n e o f the members o f the editorial board o f the N e w L eft R eview put this
succinctly during the interview w ith W illiams: “W hat Morris really represents is the
first tim e that this w hole tradition [that is, the tradition that W illiam s outlined in
C u ltu re a n d Society ] centrally connects w ith the organised w orking class and the cause
o f socialism” (.Politics a n d Letters 128). This seems right. O f the m any passages by
Morris that confirm his status as the p oin t o f confluence between the R om antic revolt
and the revolt o f the w orking class, let m e just quote one:
[T]here is a revolt on foot against the utilitarianism w hich threatens to destroy the
arts. . . . For m yself I do n ot indeed believe that this revolt can effect m uch, so long
as the present state o f society lasts; but as I am sure that great changes w hich w ill
bring about a new state o f society are rapidly advancing upon us, I think it a matter
o f m uch im portance that these two revolts should join hands, or at least should
learn to understand one another. {U sefu l Work Versus Useless Toil. London: Penguin,
2 0 0 8 , 31)
I cannot resist directing readers toward the obvious p oint o f reference here: E. P.
T hom sons extraordinary biography o f Morris. See E. P T hom son, W illia m M orris:
R o m a n tic to R evolu tion ary (London: The M erlin Press, 1955).
2 0. R aym ond W illiam s, C ulture a n d Society 1 7 8 0 —1 9 5 0 (N ew York: C olum bia
U niversity Press, 1958).
2 1. “H o w I became a Socialist” 93, in Useful W ork Versus Useless Toil (London:
Penguin, 2 0 0 8 ), 88—94.
2 2. W illiam Morris, ‘The Lesser Arts’ 83, in U sefu lW ork versus Useless Toil (London,
Penguin, 2 0 0 8 ), 5 6 -8 7 .
2 3. “W h y I am a C om m unist,” L a b o u r M o n th ly (D ecem ber 1954): 5 65—568.
O riginally published in The W h y I A m s (London: Liberty Press, 1894). The italics are
m ine.
24. Show ing how this m ove com es through the various m om ents in the history o f
U .S. pragmatism w ould be a larger project. For now, it w ill have to suffice if I sim ply
rem ind the reader o f one o f the clearest examples, from John Dewey:
W herever conditions are such as to prevent the act o f production from being an
experience in w hich the w hole creature is alive and in w hich he possesses his living
through enjoym ent, the product w ill lack som ething o f being esthetic. N o matter
h ow useful it is for special and lim ited ends, it w ill n ot be useful in the ultim ate
degree— that o f contributing directly and liberally to an expanding and enriched
life. The story o f the severance and final sharp opposition o f the useful and the fine
is the history o f that industrial developm ent through w hich so m uch o f production
has becom e a form o f postponed living and so m uch o f consum ption a superim
posed enjoym ent o f the fruits o f the labor o f others. (A r t as Experience. N ew York:
Penguin, 2 0 0 5 , 27)
As so often in Dewey, the language here might well be called vague, but the strength o f
the thought comes through. D id he learn this from Morris? H e doesn’t cite him . But then
235
D ew ey cites no one. In this connection it is perhaps worth noting that in A r t as Experience

(1934), Dewey, w ho cites no one, does cite Richards— disparagingly, o f course.
3. The H istoricist/C ontextualist Paradigm

M innesota Press, 1983).
2. As w e also noted in the Introduction, this appearance o f success is som ew hat
deceptive, since one m ight fairly have doubts about the extent to w hich these kinds o f
arguments actually effected the changes they called for. W hat has been underestimated
here is the extent to w hich the m ovem ent from “critical” to “scholarly” m odels o f lit
erary study— a m ovem ent called for and seem ingly brought about by the left— was
substantially the result o f m uch broader political, econom ic, and cultural forces o f a
fundam entally conservative nature, viz., the crisis o f Keynesianism and the turn to
neoliberalism.
M innesota Press, 1983); The F unction o f C riticism (London: Verso, 1984).
4. The F unction o f C riticism (London: Verso, 1984), 38.
5. Terry Eagleton, The Ideology o f the A esth etic (London: Blackwell, 1990).
6. The best account here w ou ld still, I think, be Jam esons classic analysis o f the
plebeianization o f culture under late capitalism. See Fredric Jameson, P ostm odernism ,
or The C u ltu ra l Logic o f L a te C apitalism (Durham: D uke U niversity Press, 1991).
7. Since we are talking here about national form ations, this m ay the m om en t to
note m y sense that French conservatism, too, is som etim es still able— residually, I
think, but n ot therefore negligibly— to shelter to a certain degree behind aesthetic
distinctions. This bears on the question o f w h y the other main lines o f anti-aesthetic
critique arrived specifically from France— though obviously there are also other fac
tors. The em blem atic figure here w ould be Bourdieu. A brief survey o f this line o f
thought, w hich runs in parallel to the line developed by W illiam s, w ould m ove from
Pierre Bourdieu, D istin ctio n : A S ocial C ritiq u e o f the J u d g m e n t o f Taste (Cambridge:
Harvard U niversity Press, 1984) through John Guillory, C u ltu ra l C a pital: The P roblem
o f L itera ry C anon F orm ation (Chicago: U niversity o f C hicago Press, 1993), to, m ost
recently, Pascale Casanova, The W orld R epu blic o f L etters (Cambridge: Harvard Univer
sity Press, 2 0 0 7 ). This has proven to be a very significant line o f thought during the
period o f the dom inance o f the “scholar” in literary studies, and indeed Bourdieus
work, as it was received w ithin the discipline, played a key role in justifying the “schol
arly turn.” O f it, let m e sim ply ask: even if w e assume that this critique was aim ed at a
live target in France in the 1980s, can the same be said o f it w hen it is made in the
U S-dom inated A nglosphere today?
8. Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, P racticin g N e w H istoricism (C hi
cago: Chicago U niversity Press, 2 0 0 0 ).
9. This line is from C ulture a n d M ateria lism (1980) 20. The best example o f the
N e w Historicist critique o f materialism is probably Chapter 4 o f P racticin g N e w H istor-
icism , “The Potato in the Materialist Imagination”; the explicit critique o f W illiam s is at
112—113; the associated critique o f E. P. Thom son is at 122—126. Those interested
m ight see also the more extended discussion o f W illiam s on 60—66 o f the same work.
W ith ou t attem pting to adjudicate this issue in any thorough way here, I w ill sim ply
record m y sense that the N e w Historicists have a poin t to the extent that W illiam s,
particularly w hen trying to engage w ith others w ho accept a very simplistically hierar
chical account o f base and superstructure, does som etim es have a tendency to accept
form ulations that involve the positing o f “primary needs” that precede any process o f
culture, representation, or signification. To this extent, the N ew H istoricist insistence
on the om nipresence o f representation is a w elcom e and valuable correction. Yet the
central thrust o f W illiam s’ critique moves us in the opposite direction, toward an insis
tence that m ost or all o f what has been considered superstructure must, in various
m om ents o f analysis, be considered part o f the base. M uch o f the time, his moves to
posit primary needs are in fact provisional ones, made at a certain stage in the argument
specifically in order to explain his rather drastic revision o f the base and superstructure
m odel to Marxists w ho, he feels w ith som e justification, m ay otherwise have difficulty
com ing to accept it. It is in this sense that one can say that the N ew H istoricist m ove is
merely a repetition o f W illiam s’. For W illiam s’ ow n critique o f base and superstructure,
see his essay “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” C ulture a n d M a te
rialism (1980) 3 1 —39, as well as M a rx ism a n d L iteratu re 7 3—82. For an interrogation o f
W illiam s’ position on base and superstructure that is wonderful and illum inating, even
in its m om ents o f comedy, see P olitics a n d Letters, 140—147, 3 5 0 —358.
10. For a very fine discussion o f the w hole issue, see W illiam s P olitics a n d Letters
(1 9 7 9 ), pp. 7 8 —83, and P olitics o f M o dern ism (1989), pp. 151—162.
11. Frank Lentricchia, A fte r the N e w C riticism (Chicago: U niversity o f Chicago
Press, 1980).
12. Readers m ay w ell w ant to check w hether these phrases have any richer m ean
ings in their original contexts, w hich I here provide:
[S]everal o f us particularly w anted to h old on to our aesthetic pleasures . . . (4)
[We invited in] texts that have been regarded as altogether non-literary, that is, as
lacking the aesthetic polish, the self-conscious use o f rhetorical figures, the aura o f
distance from the everyday world, the marked status as fiction that characterize
belles lettres . . . (9)
The conjunction [between literary and non-literary texts] can produce alm ost sur
realist w onder at the revelation o f an unanticipated aesthetic dim ension in objects
w ith ou t pretensions to the aesthetic. (10)
But the new historicist project is n ot about “dem oting” art or discrediting aesthetic
pleasure . . . (12)
237
[O] ur effort is n ot to aestheticize an entire culture, but to locate inventive energies

more deeply interfused w ithin it. To do so is hardly to endorse as aesthetically grat
ifying every miserable, oppressive structure and every violent action o f the past. (12)
To wall o ff for aesthetic appreciation only a tiny portion o f the expressive range o f
a culture is to dim inish its individuality and to lim it o n es understanding even o f
that tiny portion . . . (13)
13. From “W orld Literature,” a lecture given as an acceptance speech for the H ol-
berg International M em orial Prize, University o f Bergen, Norway, N ovem ber 25,
2 0 0 8 . For com m ents to the same effect in his w ritten work, see, for example, A rchae
ologies o f the F uture (N ew York: Verso, 2 0 0 5 ), p. 18, note 11, where “traditional aes
thetics” is said to be “obsolete” on the grounds, really, that its “standard aim” is sim ply
to “identify the specifics o f the aesthetics as such.”
14. For those w ho are interested in follow ing this up, Jameson makes this fairly
clear in his response to tw o questions from Leonard Green in an interview for D i a
critics in 1982. See Leonard Green, Jonathan Culler, and Richard Klein, “Interview:
Fredric Jameson,” D ia critics 12:3 (1982): 7 2 —91; reprinted in Ian Buchanan, ed.,
Jam eson on Jam eson: C onversations on C u ltu ra l M a rx ism (Durham: D uke University
Press, 2 0 0 7 ), 11—43. I have in m ind Jamesons answers to Greens first two questions.
15. For relatively recent instantiations o f the debate, see for instance the papers
collected in Frank Lentricchia and A ndrew D uB ois, Close R eading: The R eader
(Durham: D uke UP, 2 0 0 3 ), as well as the three papers by Jonathan Culler, Jane Gallop,
and John G uillory in the A D E B u lletin 149, 2 0 1 0 . As I observe above, C ullers paper
seems particularly helpful in its attem pt to get us thinking about the m any things that
“closeness” here m ight m ean. H e concludes by calling for us to “reflect on the varieties
o f close reading and even to propose explicit m odels.” H e explains:
W e w ou ld be better equipped to value and to prom ote close reading if we had a

more finely differentiated sense o f its m odes and a more vivid account o f all the
types o f nonclose reading w ith w hich it contrasts and that give it salience, m aking
it m ore than som ething desirable that is taken for granted. (24)
C ullers quick, suggestive catalogue o f various typologies o f reading practices seems a

good place to start this kind o f project. Generally, his call for us to try to specify dif
ferent m odes o f reading w ithin the general category “close reading” seem s to m e very
helpful— and even more his suggestion that this m ay involve the proposing o f “explicit
m odels.”
16. “The H istoricization o f Literary Study and the Fate o f C lose Reading,” Profes
sion 2 0 0 7 :1 8 1 —185, and reiterated in “C lose Reading in 2 0 0 9 ” A D E B u lletin 149
( 2010 ) .
17. M oretti subsequently developed this m ethodological argument in a series o f

further papers, w hich n ow have been conveniently collected in a single volum e enti
tled D is ta n t R ea d in g (London: Verso, 2 0 1 3 ). I w ill cite from this edition.
N O T E S T O PAGES 1 1 2 - 1 3 2
18. Jonathan Culler, “The Closeness o f C lose Reading” A D E B ulletin 149 (2010):
2 0 -2 5 .
19. N o t to belabor the point, but it is also w orth asking w hat happens to this kind
o f argument once one has recognized that close reading was in fact invented by sec
ular— in E m psons case, radically atheist— left-liberals, precisely as a critique o f “theo
logical” idealisms o f a N ew Critical kind.
20. Franco M oretti, Graphs, M aps, Trees (London: Verso, 20 0 5 ).
4. The Critical U nconscious
1. ReiTerada, “The N e w A estheticism ,” D ia c ritic s v ol. 2 3 , no. 4, (1993): 4 2 —61.

This may also be an appropriate m om ent to thank Francis M ulhern for suggesting
“The Critical U nconscious” as a title for this chapter.
2. O n es sense o f this is reinforced w hen one notes that som e o f the specific figures
w ithin the broader tendency were operating w ith an unusually accurate account o f
precisely how all this had com e to pass. W infried Fluck, for instance, saw the history
o f the anti-aesthetic turn w ith exemplary clarity. Thus:
It has becom e one o f the starting moves o f recent revisionist scholarship in literary and
cultural studies to emphasize the historical relativity o f all aesthetic judgments and to
stress their function not only as cultural but also as political acts. This argument can be
traced back to one o f the founding texts, if not the founding text, o f cultural studies,
Raymond Williams’s Culture a n d Society [which] describes the emergence o f the term
aesthetic as a response to an alienating division o f labor between artist and artisan. In
M a rx ism a n d Literature, he takes one step further and characterizes aesthetic theory as
a form o f evasion, that is, as an instrument o f obfuscations. (79)
I w ant to claim that the new revisionism has systematically m isunderstood and
misrepresented the issue o f aesthetics because it has conflated the N e w Critical
version o f aesthetic value w ith the issue o f aesthetics in general. (84)
O bserving the widespread turn against the aesthetic, Fluck saw clearly that it had one
o f its central roots in W illiam s, and he saw also that in accepting the argument in its
broadest form the discipline was, in effect, allowing an argument against N ew Critical
aesthetics to serve as an argument against aesthetics per se. Few saw the situation as
sharply as that. O bviously such clear sight was n ot typical o f the tendency as a w hole,
and nor, perhaps, w ould we expect it to be. Still, it can fairly be said that the new
aestheticist position was founded on a perceptive analysis o f the state o f the discipline.
See W infried Fluck, “Aesthetics and Cultural Studies” in Elliot, C aton, and Rhyne,
eds. A esthetics in a M u ltic u ltu ra l A ge (O xford, O xford U niversity Press, 2 0 0 2 ).
3. John J. Joughin and Sim on M alpas, “The N e w Aestheticism: A n Introduction,”
in John J. Joughin and Sim on Malpas, eds. The N e w A estheticism (Manchester: M an
chester U niversity Press, 2 0 0 3 ), 1—19.
239
4. This was despite the fact that Flucks ow n position in aesthetics did tend toward
breaching the traditional Kantian boundaries by way o f a turn to pragmatism, and
thus bears com parison, in certain respects, w ith the more radical work o f Isobel
Arm strong, to w h om w e w ill turn in a m om ent. See W infried Fluck, “Aesthetics and
Cultural Studies” in Elliot, C aton, and Rhyne, eds., A esthetics in a M u ltic u ltu ra l A ge
(Oxford: O xford U niversity Press, 2 0 0 2 ), 7 9 —103. H e makes this particular argument
about the “aestheticization o f politics” at great length in “Radical Aesthetics.” REAL.
Yearbook o f Research in English a n d A m erica n Literature. Vol. 15, P ragm atism a n d L it
erary Studies. Ed. W infried Fluck. (Tubingen: Narr, 1999): 2 2 7 —2 4 2 . Flucks analysis
can be very incisive, but it m ust be noted that the central them es here are very staid
ones, at least to m y mind: academic radicals are all poseurs, their very existence is a
testam ent to the generosity o f the dom inant liberalism, etc., etc. O n the central points,
H einz Ickstad agreed: see “Towards a Pluralist Aesthetics” in A esthetics in a M u ltic u l
tu ra l A ge (O xford, O xford U niversity Press, 2 0 0 2 ) 2 6 3 —2 7 8 .
5. As Peter de Bolla notes, the debate is as interesting for its confusions as for w hat
it illum inated. Peter de Bolla, “Toward the M ateriality o f Aesthetic Experience” D i a
critics, Vol. 32, N o . 1, R ethinking Beauty (Spring, 2001): 19—37.
6. George Levine, “R eclaim ing the A esthetic,” in A esthetics a n d Ideology (N ew
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
7. T im oth y Peltason, “The W ay W e Read and Write N ow : The Rhetoric o f
Experience in V ictorian Literature and Contem porary C riticism ,” p. 1010. E L H ,
Vol. 66, N o . 4, (W inter, 1999): 9 8 5 -1 0 1 4 ; Paul J. Alpers, “Renaissance Lyrics and
Their Situations,” p. 309. N e w L iterary H istoryy Volum e 3 8, N um ber 2 (Spring
2007): 3 0 9 —333; Stephen C ohen, Shakespeare a n d H isto rica l F orm alism (Padstow:
Ashgate, 2 0 0 7 ), 14. C ohen opens the book by observing: “W ith ou t overm uch sim pli
fication, the institutional history o f literary studies over the last hundred or so years
can be characterized as a series o f agonistic oscillations between the disciplines
tw o m ighty opposites, form and history” (1). This is a popular view, but it does n ot
seem right.
8. Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan, “Interpretation, 1980 and 1880,”
p. 616; V ictorian Studies , 55, N o . 4, Special Issue: The Ends o f H istory (Sum mer
2013): 6 1 5 —6 28. It is w orth noting that Buurma and Heffernan actually go on to take
the argument in a different direction.
9. A nother w ay to see m y poin t here is to ask w hat is being elided w hen “materi
alist critique” in a Jamesonian m ode is conflated w ith “activism .” I think both are
necessary, but w e gain nothing by pretending that the former counts as the latter.
W orking w ithin the discipline, I see this trick practiced every day, but it ought to
belong to the right.
10. In a sense, Levinson is even unusually clear-sighted about the significance o f
the latter, in that she sees that the paradigm to w hich the better “new formalists” are
seeking recom m it themselves has its roots in the Marxist tradition. Thus she talks o f
N O T E S T O PAGES 1 4 6 - 1 5 5
returning us to the “original” m ode o f “historical reading” and refers us back, in effect,
to Marx (as the list o f figures just quoted suggests, her campsite is really just the
Marxist line, plus Freud). Yet I think perhaps the im plied reference to a w hole Marxist
tradition is an exaggeration, and the p h enom enon to w hich she is really responding is
one that m ust be measured on a m uch smaller timescale. As she notes elsewhere,
“Jameson is relentlessly held up as the good example”— the gesture, repeated again and
again, is really towards the m uch more local history o f the historicist/contextualist
paradigm itself.
11. Levinson: “one cannot help n oticing the striking agreement to exem pt by name
the founding figures o f historicist critique from the charge o f reductiveness, w hile
m aintaining the anonym ity o f those hapless “followers” and mere practitioners (Levine
2), those “less careful and subtle critics” (Clarke 9), w h o are held accountable for the
sorry state o f our criticism .” (560). The references here are to the George Levine piece
w e have just been looking at, and to M ichael Clarks Revenge o f the A esthetic: The P lace
o f L iteratu re in Theory Today (Berkeley: U niversity o f California Press, 2 0 0 0 ).
12. Levinson is appropriately dismissive o f “new form alist” reductionism here: “In
m any o f these essays, n ew historicism serves as a catch-all term for cultural studies,
contextual critique; ideology critique; Foucauldian analysis; political, intersectional,
and special-interest criticism; suspicion hermeneutics; and theory. This is regrettable”
(559).
13. Isobel Arm strong, The R a d ica l A esth etic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2 0 0 0 ).
14. Dave Beech and John Roberts, “Spectres o f the A esthetic” in Beech and
Roberts, eds. The P h ilistin e Controversy (London: Verso, 2 0 0 2 ), 13—4 7 . This was a
com m on reading, on both sides o f the left/liberal divide. Em ory Elliott read the book
in the same way in his introduction to A esthetics in a M u ltic u ltu ra l Age: “ The Ideology
o f the A esth etic makes a good beginning in the attem pt to m ediate between those w ho
argue that aesthetics is som ehow independent from political ideologies and those w ho
h old the view that aesthetics is merely a com p on en t o f a bourgeois ideology to be
purged from the discipline o f the arts and hum anities” (17).
15. These are scattered throughout her work, but a fair concentration o f them can
be found in her essay “Textual Harassm ent,” w hich attempts to lay the groundw ork for
a new paradigm o f reading, beyond “close reading” as norm ally understood. O n e
example: “Em pson saw his ow n revolutionary thinking co-opted by the conservative
neo-form alism o f C leanth Brooks and W. K. W im satt after the Second W orld War”
(90). In the first chapter, w e saw the truth o f this, and in the third, we saw how com
pletely it is usually overlooked; again, Armstrong is unusually clear-sighted about
m any o f the things that matter.
16. The phrase is Paul R icoeurs, but it has since been taken up and used by m any
others. See e.g. Paul Ricoeur, F reu d a n d Philosophy: A n Essay on In terpretation (N ew
Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
17. Best and Marcus’s m uch-discussed proposal for “surface reading”— or, else
where, “just reading”— is a good example here: it strikes m e as perceptive in its
241
identification o f “sym ptom atic reading” as a hallmark o f the dom inant paradigm, and
its choice o f Jameson as a synecdoche for that reading practice is o f course quite right.
Yet, to m y m ind, the real contours o f the history are obscured w hen one critiques the
turn to “sym ptom atic reading” as if it were m erely a turn to the analysis o f deep or
occluded structures: as w e have seen, it is really m ost significant as part o f the scholarly
turn to cultural analysis p e rse . In that sense, the proposed alternative, “surface reading,”
sim ply continues the existing project by another name. N o te that I do n ot here mean
to offer any assessment o f the merits o f “surface reading” as a m ethod for cultural
analysis; that w ould be quite a different project. See Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus,
“Surface Reading: An Introduction,” R epresentations 108.1 (2009): 1 -2 1 .
18. N o v e l G azin g: Q u eer R eadings in F iction (D urham , N C : D uke U niversity Press,
1997). The essay was later reprinted w ith som e m inor m odifications, under a slightly
different title in Touching Feeling (D urham , D uke U niversity Press, 2 0 0 3 ). I w ill quote
from the earlier, slightly more extensive version.
19. M ichael Warner, “Uncritical Reading,” pp. 17—18 in Polem ic: C ritic a l or U n crit
ical, ed. Jane G allop (N ew York: Routledge, 2004): 13—38.
2 0. D . A. Miller, The N o v e l a n d the Police (Berkeley: U niversity o f California Press,
1988).
2 1. In passing, I w ould like to offer a thought here on the status o f the “lyric” in
M iller s argument. The category seems crucial to the argument, though he never seems
to want to talk about it. Look again at these lines from the first page o f the book:
Here was a truly out-of-b od y voice, so stirringly free o f w hat it abhorred as “partic
ularity” or “singularity” that it seem ed to com e from no enunciator at all. It scanted
person even in the linguistic sense, rarely acknowledging, by saying I, its origina
tions in an authorising self, or, by saying you, its reception by any other. W e rapt,
adm iring readers m ight feel we were on ly eavesdropping on delightful productions
intended for n ob od y in particular.
“Voice”; “I, you”; “eavesdropping”: it strikes m e that w hat is really at stake here, as at
so m any crucial points throughout the book, is the possibility o f lyric speech and o f
lyric reading. This is interesting for m any reasons, but for our purposes I sim ply w ant
to recall that both “close reading” and the critical paradigm itself have historically been
quite closely associated w ith the genre (or m ode, if you prefer) o f lyric— certainly more
closely than w ith any other genre. H aving recalled this, it is intriguing to see lyric
returning here as one o f the central stakes o f a reading that does n ot acknowledge it— a
reading that, as I am trying to show, seems in m any ways to be an attem pt to w in a way
back, through “close reading,” to som ething like criticism in the older sense. There is
m uch more to be said here, but it w ill need to await another occasion.
2 2. See for instance Sianne N gai, O u r A esth etic Categories: Zany, Cute, In teresting
(Cambridge: Harvard U niversity Press, 2 0 1 2 ).
2 3. The first and last quotes from Richards here are from P rinciples o f L iterary C rit
icism (London: R outledge, 2001 [1924]), p .103 and p .102, respectively. The second
N O T E S T O PAGES 1 7 8 - 1 8 3
and third quotes are from P ractical C riticism : A S tu d y o f L iterary J u d g m e n t (London:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956 [1929]) p6.
2 4. Lauren Berlant, “Critical Inquiry, Affirmative Culture” C ritic a l Inquiry, Vol.
30, N o. 2 (W inter 2004): 4 4 5 —451.
2 5. F. R. Leavis, “The ‘Great Books’ and Liberal Education” in G. Singh, ed., The
C ritic as A n ti-P h ilosoph er: Essays a n d Papers by F. R. L eavis (Chicago: Elephant Paper
backs, 1998), 1 5 6 -1 7 0 .
2 6. O n the invention o f the phrase “job market,” and on its ideological character,
see Marc Bousquet, H o w th e U n iversity Works: H igh er E du cation a n d the L ow -W age
N a tio n (N ew York: N ew York U niversity Press, 2 0 0 8 ).
2 7. Graff gives a good account o f the first part o f this process w hen he observes
that, w hen challenged by contrary views, a discipline organized by “field-coverage” can
sim ply add an additional field, thereby assimilating the contrary view w ithout actually
engaging w ith it. W riting in 1987, w ith m em ories o f the Keynesian expansion o f the
universities still quite fresh, and the neoliberal offensive still in a relatively early phase,
Graff is perhaps n ot as aware as we are today o f the second part o f the process: he
focuses on the addition o f new fields, but says less about possibility o f those new ly
created fields later being stripped away. See Gerald Graff, Professing L iteratu re (C hi
cago: U niversity o f C hicago Press, 1987). Speaking m ore broadly for a m om ent, this
process o f m anaging dissent by expanding to incorporate it is characteristic o f m any
Keynesian institutions, certainly including the m id-century university. In contrast,
speaking broadly, in their neoliberal phase those same institutions have often opted
instead to starve dissent, presenting this as a collective tightening o f belts in response
to a general condition o f scarcity, w hile actually shifting resources to the top. W ithin
universities, the classic example o f the latter is the claim that the market demands
austerity from everyone, m eaning students, staff, and faculty (hum anities faculty in
particular), w hile in fact resources are being shifted to upper university m anagem ent.
I note w ithout surprise that this analysis keeps being rejected in som e circles w ithout
m uch serious evidence being offered to refute it, w hen in fact the general picture has
been made quite clear by a range o f persuasive, detailed, and responsible studies. For
the British context, see, am ong others, Stefan C ollini, W h a t A re U n iversities For?
(London: Penguin, 2 0 1 2 ) and A ndrew M cG ettigan, The G reat U n iversity G am ble:
M oney, M arkets, a n d th e F utu re o f H igh er E d u cation (London: Pluto, 2 0 1 3 ). For the
U .S. context, see for instance Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, A ca d em ic C apitalism
a n d th e N e w Econom y: M arkets, State, a n d H ig h er E d u cation (Baltimore: Johns H o p
kins U niversity Press, 2004); C hristopher N ew field U n m a k in g th e P u b lic U niversity:
The F orty-Year A ssa u lt on the M id d le Class (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2008); and Marc Bousquet, H o w the U n iversity Works: H ig h er E du cation a n d the L o w -
Wage N a tio n (N ew York: N e w York U niversity Press, 2 0 0 8 ).
2 8 . D avid D am rosch, W hat is W orld Literature? (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2 0 0 3 ).
N O T E S T O PAGES 1 8 4 - 2 1 4 243
29. Wai Chee D im ock , Through O th e r C ontinents: A m erican L iteratu re Across D eep
T im e (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 20 0 6 ).
30. Patricia Yaeger, “Editors C olum n: Literature in the Ages o f W ood, Tallow,
C oal, W hale O il, Gasoline, A tom ic Power, and O ther Energy Sources,” P M L A 126,
no. 2 (March 2011): 3 0 5 —326.
31. The best available case study here is Francis M ulherns survey o f N + 1, particu
larly where it bears on O ccupy W all Street. See Francis M ulhern, “A Party o f Late
com ers.” N e w L eft R eview 93 (M ay-June 2015): 6 9 -9 6 .
C onclusion
1. Eric H obsbaw m , The A ge o f Extremes: A H istory o f the World, 1 9 1 4 —1 9 9 1 (N ew

York: Vintage, 1996) 584, 4 8 5 .
2. For a more carefully elaborated version o f som ething very like this scenario, see
C olin Crouch, The Strange N o n -d ea th o f N eoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2 0 1 1 ). O f
interest here is Jamie Pecks “Explaining (with) N eoliberalism ,” in Territory, Politics,
G overnance 1, no. 2 (2013): 132—157.
3. W olfgang Streeck, “H o w W ill Capitalism End?” N e w L eft R eview 87 (M a y -
June 2014): 35—64.
4. Here I am thinking particularly o f the old collection H isto ric a l C a p ita lism w ith
C a p ita list C iv iliz a tio n (London: Verso, 1995 [1983]), but see also A fte r L iberalism
(N ew York: N ew Press, 1995).
5. This has been noted by many. For two rich accounts that bear directly on our
concerns here, see Greg Barnhisels C o ld W ar M odern ists (N ew York: C olum bia U niver
sity Press, 201 5 ) and Evan K indleys C ritics a n d Connoisseurs: P oet-C ritics a n d the
A d m in istra tio n o f M odern ism (forthcom ing w ith Harvard University Press). Both o f
these are recom m ended reading for anyone interested in tracing the connections
between m id-century criticism and the cold war, the old question o f CIA funding, and
so on. For the more general picture, see for example N oam C hom sky et al., The C o ld
W ar a n d the U niversity: T ow ard an L ntellectual H isto ry o f the P o stw a r Years (N ew York:
The N ew Press, 1997).
6. Goran Therborn, “N ew Masses?” N e w L eft R eview 85 (January—February
2014): 7 - 1 6 .
7. Martha N ussbaum , N o t For Profit: W h y D em ocracy N eeds th e H u m a n itie s
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton U niversity Press, 2 0 1 0 ).
A ppendix
1. Louis M enand, D iscovering M odernism: T. S. Eliot and H is C ontext (Oxford:

O xford U niversity Press, 1987), 4.
2. T. S. Eliot, For L an celot A ndrew es: Essays on Style a n d O rd er (London: Faber and
Gwyer, 1928), ix.
N O T E S T O PAGES 2 1 5 - 2 1 7
3. N igel N ich olson and Joanne Trautmann, eds. The L etters o f V irgin ia W o o lf
Volum e III: 1 9 2 3 —1 9 2 8 (N ew York: Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1977) 4 5 7 —45 8 .
4. A gain here, Chris Baldick is the m ost sophisticated representative o f what I
take to be the inform ed consensus view. H is account o f the “m odernist revolution” in
criticism puts Eliot in the guiding role, and the developm ent o f close reading is then
consigned to a second phase, a m ove w hich involves conflating Richards and Em pson
w ith the N ew Critics (the title o f the relevant section makes the poin t succinctly:
“C lose Reading and The Rise o f the N ew Criticism”). In m y view, this emphasis on the
centrality o f Eliot sits problem atically next to his emphasis on the centrality o f close
reading (see Chapter 1, note 8). Baldick resolves this problem by tracing the develop
m ent o f close reading itself back to Eliot s early essays, in w hich Eliot “takes care to
produce particular exhibits o f verse exem plifying [the] poetic qualities o f com plex
response to experience” in a way that anticipates Richards (78). C ertainly E liots sense
that “poetry gives us more than just a versified ‘idea’ or feeling, but an intense fusion
o f associations w ithin the com plex concentration o f its images” strikes a distinctively
m odernist note, but does E liots practice o f quoting itself here really constitute an early
form o f close reading? It strikes m e as quite consistent w ith earlier Edwardian, f in d e
siecle or even late Victorian practices o f quoting, E liots obvious m odernism in other
respects notw ithstanding. If this is really the innovation that “sharply distinguishes
tw entieth century criticism . . . from that o f previous ages,” then it is a bit difficult to
see what the fuss is about. O ne m ight note also that, w hen Richards com es to discuss
Eliot in Principles o f L iterary C riticism (1924), he discusses him as a poet, rather than
as the originator o f a new ly rigorous practice o f reading.
I should perhaps add that Baldicks account is w onderfully rich, and strikes m e as
the best available. O ne way to reconcile m y account w ith his m ight be to say that he is
focusing on w hat I take to be the second level o f Eliot s influence, at w hich level we
agree; w hat I am m ost interested in here is the third. See Chris Baldick, C riticism a n d
L itera ry Theory 1 8 9 0 to the P resent (London: Longm an, 1996) 6 4 —115.
5. M enand, n ot a believer in the im portance o f “close reading,” strikes what I take
to be the right balance here w hile assessing E liots influence on the basic form o f the
critical revolution itself:
It cannot really be said . . . that the critical vocabulary that came to be so strongly
associated w ith Eliot was his ow n invention, but it m ight be said that Eliot did
invent, for a com m on set o f terms and judgm ents, a manner— judgm ental, hierar
chical, but “scientific”— perfectly suited to the needs o f the m odern academic
critic.
I think this is quite right, though I w ou ld put it slightly differently. If w e are trying to
trace E liots influence at this third level o f analysis, his specific doctrines do n ot seem
the place to look; rather, w e m ight suspect that his central contribution to the effort
to turn the old belletrism into the new, more rigorous critical paradigm was the
N O T E T O PAGE 2 1 7 245
developm ent o f a style and tone suited to the occasion. H is manner was o f course
m uch copied. See Louis M enand, D iscoverin g M odern ism : X S. E lio t a n d H is C o n text
(Oxford: O xford UP, 1987), 155.
6. Stanley Edgar H ym an, The A r m e d Vision: A S tu d y in the M eth ods o f M o d e m
L itera ry C riticism (N ew York: V intage, 1947).
Acknowledgments
Som e o f these thanks perhaps ou gh t to be accom panied by apologies; in this b o o k I

have tried to avoid d w elling on the w ork o f peop le w ith w h o m I am personally
acquainted, so if your nam e appears in these acknow ledgm ents, it is a g o o d sign that
your thin k in g does n o t get treated in depth in the b ook itself. W h eth er you consider
this a curse or a blessing is up to you.
I very m u ch w an t to thank Sarah C ole, N ich olas D am es, and Erik Gray, w ho
were extraordinarily generous b oth to m e and to this w ork over a lo n g period. From
the sam e period, w arm thanks also to D eborah A schkenes, Jennifer D avis, A nne
D ieb el, Jessica Fenn, M atth ew Hart, Darragh M artin, Sarah M insloff, Sherally
M unshi, Bruce R obbins, Lytton Sm ith, Gayatri Spivak, Kate Stanley, and M arion
Thain.
I ow e particular thanks to L angdon H am m er, A m y H ungerford, and M ichael
Warner— and ind eed to the w h ole English D ep artm en t at Yale, for taking a risk on
w ork that was n o t easy to agree w ith , and that was in any case n o t b eing con d u cted
w ith in an established “hiring field.” For various m om en ts o f intellectual engagem ent
around this project, I w ou ld also like to thank Jessica Brantley, D avid Brom w ich,
Ardis Butterfield, W ai-C hee D im o ck , M arta Figlerowicz, Paul Fry, Ben Glaser,
D avid Kastan, Jonathan K ram nick, A n th o n y Reed, Jill Richards, Caleb Sm ith,
Katie Trumpener, R. John W illiam s, Sunny X iang, and R uth Bernard Yeazell. From
the sam e period, thanks also to A ndrew M cKendry, H eather M cKendry, and T im
Kreiner, for keeping things sane.
Jonathan Culler, John Guillory, and Francis M ulhern were all kind enou gh
n o t o n ly to read the m anuscript at various stages, but also to offer extensive
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
com m entary, criticism , and support. Rarely have I seen truly deep expertise brought
to bear in such a generous way.
A t the Press, I w ou ld like to thank Lindsay Waters for his co n tin u in g enthusiasm
about the project, as w ell as Joy D en g , w h o guided it to com p letion . I am also
grateful to A m anda Peery, w h o was kin d en ou gh to offer extra feedback w h en she
had n o form al responsibility for d oin g so.
W arm personal thanks to Janice, Sam uel, Blainey, and Sam uel Ingemar; Beck,
D an iel, M atthew, Oscar, and Richard; Gaurav, o f course.
For D eborah Friedell, a paragraph o f her very ow n.
Special thanks to A dam Alexander, Jason Alexander, D avid Backer, Chris
C asuccio, Aleksandra Perisic, and Jason W ozniak— after such an intense period o f
th in k in g together, m y thou gh ts are no longer quite separable from theirs.
Lastly, thanks m ost o f all to Katja Lindskog, for so m any things— n o t least for
her brilliant and incisive thou gh ts about this project, at every stage o f its develop
m ent, over the better part o f a decade. For whatever it m ay or m ay n o t be w orth, this
b ook is dedicated to her.
M y article “W h a ts ‘N e w C ritical’ about ‘C lose R eading’? I. A. Richards and H is
N e w Critical R eception” (copyright © 2 0 1 3 N e w Literary H istory, U niversity o f
V irginia), w h ich first appeared in N e w L ite ra ry H isto ry 4 4 , n o. 1 (W inter 2 0 1 3 ),
pages 1 4 1 -1 5 7 , is incorporated in to sections o f C hapter 1: “First Period: C riticism
E stablished,” “I. A. Richards, C lose R eading, and Practical C riticism ,” and “The
N e w Criticism : C lose R eading for Kant.” Thanks to N e w L ite ra ry H isto ry for the
perm ission to m ake use o f that w ork here.
Index
Achebe, Chinua, 57 Affect theory, 125, 174-180

Adorno, Theodor, 129, 134, 139, 143 Alpers, Paul J., 141
Adult education, 23, 95 Althusser, Louis, 143
Aesthetics, 35, 128; aesthetic education, 3, Anderson, Perry, 9-10, 18-19, 48, 61
5-6, 14, 35-36, 54-55, 105-106, 115, Anthropocene, 125, 182, 183, 185, 186
153_154, 178-180, 188, 210; at the f i n de Anti-capitalist movements, 19—20, 171, 191»
21-24; close reading and, 28-29, 43,
siecle, 201,211-212
45-46, 104-109, 168; F. R. Leavis and, 46, Anti-communism, 37
54-55, 102; Franco Moretti and, 113-115; Armstrong, Isabel, 129, 143, 148—154, 157,
Fredric Jameson and, 100—104; histori- 159,174
cist/contextualist rejection of, 16, 81, 100, Arnold, Matthew, 35, 46-47, 49, 70,
181, 193; I. A. Richards and, 14-15, 27, 167
29-32, 35-36, 44-46, 102, 116, 176-177; Auerbach, Erich, 180
Isobel Armstrong and, 148—154; Lauren Austen, Jane, 165-167, 169
Berlant and, 175-177; neoliberal dismissal
of, 86, 100, 193-194; new criticism and, Baldick, Chris, 21, 24
15-16, 27, 38-46; new historicism and, Baumgarten, Alexander, 15, 83
88, 91, 93, 96-100, 114-116; new left Beardsley, Monroe, 40
and, 72-77; politics of, 4, 8, 28, 34, 53, Beech, Dave, 138-140, 150
72-80, 104, 114-116, 128; Raymond Bell, Clive, 31
Williams and, 63, 66-72, 74-80, 102, Bell, Michael, 50-51
114, 134, 137-138, 149; Sianne Ngai and, Bell, Vanessa, 215
176; Terry Eagleton and, 82-86, 102, Belletrism, 5, 21-23, 168, 169, 180, 190,
148-149; ties to liberalism, 76, 79-80, 86, 213,217
93, 97-98. See also New aestheticism Benjamin, Walter, 136
250 INDEX
Bentham, Jeremy, 34 Culler, Jonathan, 106, 111-112

Berlant, Lauren, 174-180 Cultural studies, 23
Best, Stephen, 155 Culture wars, 8
Bion, Wilfred, 151
Book history, 117 Damrosch, David, 183-184
Bourdieu, Pierre, 8, 16, 148-149 Deep time, 125, 182, 184-185
Bradley, A. C., 31 de Man, Paul, 148-149. See also Theory
Brexit, 199, 201 Derrida, Jacques, 57, 148-149. See also
Brooks, Cleanth, 38-40, 43-45 Theory
Buddhism, 169, 184 Dewey, John, 53, 76, 151, 153
Burke, Edmund, 50 Dickens, Charles, 185
Butler, Judith, 57, 188. See also Queer Dimock, Wai Chee, 184
critique; Theory Distant reading, 7, 109-116
Buurma, Rachel Sagner, 141 D o c to r W h o , 24
Cambridge: critical revolution of the 1920s Eagleton, Terry, 8, 10—11, 82-86, 97, 116,
at, 21, 46, 82; new aestheticism and, 129; 148-149, 189; Isobel Armstrong and,
new formalism and, 143; Raymond 148—150; Raymond Williams and, 82—83,
Williams and, 62, 700; retaining of 149
“practical criticism” at, 105 Eliot, T. S., 25,213-217
Carlyle, Thomas, 35 Elliott, Emory, 136
Central Intelligence Agency, 189 Empson, William, 25-28, 42, 214, 217;
Close reading, 56, 79, 82, 104-116; politics of, 26-27
aesthetics and, 28-29, 43, 45-46, Energy systems, 182, 184-185
104-109, 168; as central to the crit Ethical turn, 188, 193-194, 210
ical revolution, 5-6, 14-16, 24-25,
217; D.A. Miller and, 168, 171-173, Faulkner, William, 101, 104, 180
179-180; as decontextualizing, 40, 43; Feminism, 56-62, 148, 150, 159, 171,
Isabel Armstrong and, 152; origins 178; new historicism and, 89-90, 92;
of, 27-29; politics of, 25-28, 85; relationship to specialist “fields,” 181-182.
Raymond Williams and, 63—66; versus See also Social movements
“distant reading,” 19. See also Practical Fluck, Winfried, 136, 153
criticism Foucault, Michel, 8, 16, 57, 59, 60, 87, 156,
Cohen, Margaret, 110, 113 158, 160, 163, 165. See also Theory
Cohen, Stephen, 141 Freud, Sigmund, 143, 151, 206. See also
Cold war, 13 Psychoanalysis
Colonialism, critique of, 56—62, 117,
181-182 Gallagher, Catherine, 86-100, 116. See also
Commons, 24, 208-209 New Historicism
Corbyn, Jeremy, 201 Gallop, Jane, 107-108
Critical revolution, 21—26 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 57
“Critics versus scholars” debate. See “Scholars Globalization, 125, 182-183, 185, 186,
versus critics” debate 206
INDEX 251
Goldman Sachs, 197 Keynesianism, 199, 202; as context for

Graff, Gerald, 21-22 understanding mid-century criticism, 13,
Green, Andre, 151 17, 58, 85, 189, 193, 196, 203, 207;
Greenblatt, Stephen, 86- 100, 116, 135- 136. cultural politics of, 159-160, 189,
See a b o New Historicism 203-204; unlikely to return, 203,
Guillory, John, 2 , 21-22 207-208, 210
Kingston, Maxine Hong, 184
Hall, Stuart, 57
Heffernen, Laura, 141 Lacan, Jacques, 57, 206. See a b o Psychoanal
Hegel, G. W. F., 50, 143 ysis a n d Theory
Hermeneutics of suspicion, 154-155, 193 Lawrence, D. H., 65
High school education, 23 Laxness, Halldor, 101, 104, 180
Historicist/contextualist paradigm, 81—123, Leavis, F. R.: and Leavisite criticism, 7, 9,
144, 148, 153, 169, 174-175, 196; 14_17, 37 , 46-55, 177, 180, 191; as ghost
general contours of, 1; hermeneutics of used to spook, 85, 167, 210 ; on language,
suspicion and, 154-155, 166-167; in 50-51; politics of 7, 25, 48, 53; Raymond
historical context, 193; politics of, 3-4, Williams and, 62-66, 70, 73, 80; T. S.
7—12, 20 , 144, 160, 210 ; relationship to Eliot and, 214
form, 145—147; rise to dominance, 2-3, Lee, Vernon, 29
59, 79; sensing its own limits, 124-194; Leighton, Angela, 143
trend towards specialization and Lentricchia, Frank, 99
professionalization, 181-182, 186-188. Levinas, Emmanuel, 151
Scholarly turn
See a b o Levine, George, 133, 135-137, 140-141, 146
Hobsbawm, Eric, 195 Levinson, Marjorie, 142-146
Hoggart, Richard, 73 Liberalism, 8-9, 205; ambivalence of, 25—26,
Hyman, Stanley Edgar, 23, 217 53, 134; and the university, 99; attentive
ness to individual psychologies, 68 ; naivete
Jameson, Fredric, 8 , 16, 19-20, 100-104, about economic and political determi
116, 180, 193-194; “Always historicize!”, nants, 33-34, 37, 68 , 76, 79, 127; neo-,
7, 9, 20 ; critiqued by liberals, 135-136; 3-4, 9, 13, 18-20, 58-59, 85-86, 90, 93,
Lauren Berlant and, 175, 177; new 99, 160, 171, 179, 188-189, 193,
formalism and, 143, 145-146 195—212; possibility of a break with, 13,
Joughin, John J., 132-133, 139 17, 195-212; tendency to turn right, 53 ,
Journalism, 4-5, 24, 189-191 134—138; traditional ties to aesthetics, 76,
79-80, 86 , 210
Kant, Immanuel, 15; F. R. Leavis and, 46, Linguistic turn, 24, 51
55; I. A. Richards and, 29-32, 53; new
aestheticism and, 134, 138; new criticism Malpas, Simon, 132-133, 139
and, 36-43; Raymond Williams and, 63, Marcus, Sharon, 155
66 , 74; Terry Eagleton and, 83. See a b o Marcuse, Herbert, 102
Aesthetics Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, 185
Keynes, John Maynard, 202. See a b o Marx, Karl, 20, 83, 143, 202. See a b o
Keynesianism Marxism
INDEX
Marxism, 8—9, 59, 73-77, 83, 103, 134, Philistine controversy, 138—139
138-139, 145, 159, 175; as historical Philology, 5, 21-22, 36, 45, 117, 180
materialism, 24, 37, 75—76, 138, 196, Polanyi, Karl, 202
198. See also Marx, Karl Postmodernism, 12
Menand, Louis, 214 Pound, Ezra, 143
Mill, John Stuart, 35 Practical criticism, 5-6, 14-16, 24-25,
Miller, D. A., 156-157, 163-173, 179 104—105, 217; Williams and, 65. See also
Millett, Kate, 57 Close reading

Modernism, 12, 30-31 Primary schools, 24
Moi, Toril, 57 Professionalization, 11-12, 21-22, 90—91,
Moretti, Franco, 8, 19, 109-116 94-96, 146, 168-169, 181; and field
Morris, William, 35, 50, 73-77 specialization, 186—187; and retreat from
Morrison, Toni, 57 the public, 189, 193-194
Mulhern, Francis, 48 Psychoanalysis, 159, 206
Musil, Robert, 116 Public intellectual, 189, 203
Public sphere, 189, 190-191,203
Narrative medicine, 188. See also Therapy,
literature as Queer critique/queer theory, 56-62,
New Aestheticism, 125, 129-139, 144-154, 154-180, 181-182; historical situation of,
155-156 170-171; paranoia and, 158-159
New Criticism, 14-17, 31-32, 36-46, 214;
aesthetics of, 38, 42-46; endlessly fired Race critique, 56-62, 171, 178, 181-182
upon even when long dead, 87-88, 98-99, Ransom, John Crowe, 40-43, 44-45
112-113, 210; last vestiges of, 85; politics Reaganism, 160. See also Liberalism: neo-
of, 7, 25, 36-37 Reparative reading, 125, 155, 156-163,
New Deal, 13, 203-204 167-168, 180
New Formalism, 7, 125, 130, 133, 140-147, Rich, Adrienne, 57
155-156 Richards, I. A., 14, 25-36, 116; aesthetics
New Historicism, 86-100, 135, 141, of, 28—32, 68; as cultural diagnostician,
145-147, 159, 160 32—34; as philosopher of criticism;
New Left, 72-77 34—35; as philosopher of language,
Ngai, Sianne, 176 50-51; Fredric Jameson and, 104;
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 57 influence on Leavisite criticism, 46—55;
Nussbaum, Martha, 188, 207-208 influence on the New Critics, 36-37;
Isobel Armstrong and, 152; Lauren
Ogden, C. K., 28, 51 Berlant and, 176-177; politics of, 26-27,
Ortiz, Simon, 184 52-53, 79-80; Raymond Williams and,
32-34, 68, 79-80; T. S. Eliot and, 214,
Pater, Walter, 29 217
Peltason, Timothy, 141 Ricoeur, Paul, 151
Pendulums, 140—142, 146, 188 Roberts, John, 138-140, 150
Periodization, 12-18, 60-62, 84-86, 91-92, Romanticism, 45, 50, 54, 73-75
96,192-193, 196-197 Rose, Gillian, 151
IN DEX 253
Ruskin, John, 35, 50, 75 Trilling, Lionel, 189, 191

Russo, John Paul, 45 Trump, Donald, 199, 201
Said, Edward, 57, 117, 135-136 U.S. hegemony, 58-59, 174, 207-208
Sanders, Bernie, 201 Utilitarianism, 33-34
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 102
Scholarly turn, 2, 16-17, 59, 72-73, Vizenor, Gerald, 184
105-106, 113-114; politics of, 9, Vygotsky, Lev, 151
12, 17, 25, 58. See also Historicist/
contextualist paradigm Wallerstein, Immanuel, 202
“Scholars versus critics” debate, 1—2, 5, Warner, Michael, 57, 162-163
17-18, 59, 180, 188-189, 192-193 Watkins, Susan, 19
Schumpeter, Joseph, 202 Weber, Max, 202
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofksy, 135-136, 155, Wilde, Oscar, 29, 143
156-163, 164-165, 167-168, 173, 174, Williams, Raymond, 8, 16, 33, 60, 62-80,
179 116; critique of the aesthetic, 66-69,
Shakespeare, William, 185 137-138; critique of criticism, 69-72,
Showalter, Elaine, 57 100; Fredric Jameson and, 102-103;
Silko, Leslie Marmon, 184 Greenblatt and Gallagher and, 93-100;
Snyder, Gary, 184 influence of F. R. Leavis on, 62-66, 73;
Social media, 208-209 Lauren Berlant and, 175; L. A. Richards
Social movements, 56-62, 171, 191, 201, and, 32-34, 68, 79—80; resistance to
211-212 professionalization, 95; “saving clauses”
Sombart, Werner, 202 regarding the aesthetic, 74-80, 134; Terry
Spivak, Gayatri, 8 Eagleton and, 82—83, 149
Streek, Wolfgang, 201-202 Wimsatt, William, 40
Surface reading, 7, 125, 155, 168 Winters, Yvor, 41
Wolfson, Susan, 143
Terada, Rei, 129 Wood, James, 28
Thatcherism, 148, 160. See also Liberalism: Woolf, Virginia, 6-7, 214-215
neo- Woolf, Virginia, tendentious indexing
Theory, 13-14, 56-62, 172, 181-182 practices of. See Liberalism.
Therapy, literature as, 188, 193-194 World literature, 19, 101, 110, 112, 115,
Therborn, Goran, 203 125, 182-185, 186, 206
Thompson, E. P., 73
Tolstoy, Leo, 101, 104, 180 Yaeger, Patricia, 184-185
Tomkins, Silvan, 151

Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History

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Literary Criticism

HI Harvard University Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1 The Critical Revolution Turns Right 21

2 The Scholarly T urn 56

3 The H istoricist/C ontextualist Paradigm 81

4 The Critical Unconscious 124

Conclusion: The Future o f Criticism 195

Appendix: The Critical Paradigm an d T . S. Eliot 213

I n T H IS BO O K , I offer a rapid, synoptic overview o f the basic paradigms

Accordingly, m y basic m ethod has been to step back from individual

larger m ovem ent, in an extended discussion o f m atters literary, aesthetic,

literature as a means by w hich to analyze culture and those w ho treated the

perhaps being F. R. Leavis’s neo-A rnoldian “criticism o f life,” now operate

w ith th at proposed by the liberal m ainstream . Rather, the discipline seemed

literary criticism, whether “practical” or “theoretical,” is typically just that,

Such a strategy obviously has far-reaching institutional implications. It would

If one could no longer outline this strategy today, th at is because it has

exchanged the project o f evaluative criticism, w ith its “genteel am ateurism ,”

o f observation, tracking developm ents in the culture w ithout any broader

to understand the discipline s developm ent than the tw o-part periodization

Ideologically, the n ovelty o f the present situation stands ou t in historical view.

The Critical Revolution

A doST OF T H O S E w ho have w ritten at length about the history o f

and the relevant conflict is th at between “philologists” and “belletrists.”3A nd

revolution on m any significant forms o f Anglo-American cultural jo u r­

later chapters, Richards’ and E m psons characteristically left-liberal innova­

First Period: Criticism Established

to the “traditional Southern values” o f family, religion, and an agrarian way

I. A. Richards, Close Reading, and Practical Criticism

In the simplest terms, we m ight say th at Richards’ argum ent in Principles

experience, divorced from experience o f b oth intellectual/cognitive and

W h en w e lo o k at a picture, or read a p oem , or listen to m usic, w e are n o t

Richards, then, is p u ttin g together his theory specifically to oppose any

A further objection to the assum ption o f a peculiar aesthetic attitude is that it

reception. For present purposes, it is im portant to note two parts o f this

an em in en tly suitable b a it for anyone w h o w ishes to trap . . . current op in ion s

In this capacity, he tells us, Practical Criticism should be considered a “record

hum anist liberalism from w hich he springs. It w ould certainly be possible to

Second Period: Criticism Turns Right

O thers have given m uch fuller accounts o f the ideological conditions

Briefly, the N e w C riticism is dam aged by at least tw o specific errors o f theory,

It is to be noted th at in b oth these cases the concern is ultim ately to

Consequences fo r Literary Study

This reversal in the philosophical orientation o f w hat w ould go on to becom e

ethical or political considerations to bear on literature, in an effort assess its

Richards' Reception w ith in B ritain: E R. Leavis

B ut it is n o t true that criticism is a luxury trade. The rearguard o f Society

M uch o f this language is o f course jarring by todays standards, in part

better emphases, as we shall see w hen we return to it at the end o f this

irrelevant to the broader project o f constructing a decent society in liberal

[W ]h at has to be stressed is his relative valuation o f the great Rom antics:

W h at can one say about this reduction o f criticism to facile questions o f

throu g h o u t Leavis’ work. Responding to critics who approach W ordsw orths

The Scholarly Turn

W it h T H E B E N E F IT o f hindsight, it is n o t hard to see that once the

struggles. In fact, as m any have noted, the disciplines rejection o f m id­

U S-expansionist form?3 W hen did the critique o f past colonialisms lead to

The question o f continental “Theory” is perhaps the central example here,

a dangerous course— can any single figure really be taken as representative?

work, even if he eventually came to critique key elements o f it in the stron­

Continuities between Leavis a n d W illiam s

O ne o f the best sources we have for understanding W illiam s’ intellectual

revolution on m any significant forms o f Anglo-American cultural jo u r

later chapters, Richards’ and E m psons characteristically left-liberal innova

struggles. In fact, as m any have noted, the disciplines rejection o f m id

work, even if he eventually came to critique key elements o f it in the stron

Yet it is clear, historically, that the definition o f ‘aesthetic’ response is an affir

a significant response to the problem s posed by idealist philosophical aes

inquiry— intellectual w ork as know ledge-production, now usually con

fact th at there exists no necessary connection between the project o f aes

being com m itted to is n o t one designed to respond to a situation very dif