Professional Documents
Culture Documents
It would not be an exaggeration to argue that thinking of the literary as an event has
subverted conventional criticism whose wont has been to conceive literature as that which
attests to socio-historical patterns, tendencies, and hierarchies existing in a given context.
The literary, as the likes of Derek Attridge have underlined, does not quite fit within this
contextual space and compels readers to reimagine identities and ideologies in fresh and
unforeseen ways. A similar argument can be made about the proponents of postcritique
such as Rita Felski who highlight the manner in which critique has become predictable and
conservative on account of its investment in reading patterned along the lines of
hermeneutics of suspicion. Yet, the motive behind proposing the collection of essays
Postcritique and the Event of Literature: Exploring the Limits of Subjectivity is the view that
the arguments constituting the eventiality of the literary as well as postcritique can be
pushed further and thus rendered radical if their import is brought to bear on the question
of subjectivity.
4. Deadline for submission of chapters (approx. 7000 words): 20th December 2020
Contact Persons:
Chinmaya Lal Thakur, Dept. of Creative Arts and English, La Trobe University, Melbourne
Nishtha Pandey, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, Chennai
References:
Anker, Elizabeth S. and Rita Felski eds. Critique and Postcritique. Duke University Press, 2017
Bissell, Elizabeth Beaumont ed. The Question of Literature: The Place of the Literary in
Contemporary Theory. Manchester University Press, 2002
Elliott, Jane and Derek Attridge eds. Theory After ‘Theory’. Routledge, 2011
Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. The University of Chicago Press, 2015
________ . Hooked: Art and Attachment. The University of Chicago Press, 2020
McDonald, Ronan ed. The Values of Literary Studies: Critical Institutions, Scholarly Agendas.
Cambridge University Press, 2015