Rita Felski

I remember lamenting to my professor about what I felt to be the ruthlessness and unkindness of academia. So many times I felt like exasperatedly saying to one person or the other "What you're saying might seem contrarian but it doesn't mean you're smart! You're just being a dick!" I had sensed that the almost automatic position was one of suspicion towards the work or the discussion at hand. I found it hostile, not exactly in tandem with my own conflict-avoidant personality that preferred a more exploratory, collaborative, more appreciative way of approaching a text or discussion. If I had something to contribute, I didn't want to tear down so much as continue to participate in building up and improving a discussion.

Reading this book by Rita Felski felt quite incredible because I could finally see this automatic stance of suspicion de-centered. And I say de-centred not problematized, because she is not against critique or saying it's inherently a poor position, but simply saying that it's not the de facto best, most intellectual position out there. There are other methods of inquiry that can be taken if we are so willing. I also appreciate that she addresses the fact that to understand the limits of critique is not to fall into that apolitical stance of pure aestheticism. Unfortunately (to me, at least) that stance is very much alive in literary departments, even if literary departments might see themselves as progressive.

And that's the thing! She reveals how to be critical has its own approach, "mood", language that would eventually be employed, and stance. To be critical sometimes is just to adopt the stance of being critical. So once you've got on all the trappings, what you say can be part of the contemporary mood of "chic bitterness," but it's actually no guarantee that you're actually saying anything radical or even rigorous. It does give the shine of it though.

She offers a new pedagogy and way (inspired by Latour's ANT theory) for the literary critic and academic to approach their work, one that is Postcritical -- A hermeneutics that seeks to uncover, unveil, instead of one of suspicion. It's a beautiful thought. We wouldn't be digging into the text and feeling like we were completely demystifying it, or breaking it apart, anymore. Instead we were looking to it in a more wondrous way, and being more open to its affective potentials.… (altro)