The Limits of Critique
Abstract
Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that critic's task is to reveal unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, dominant form of interpretation in literary studies, and situates it as but one method among many, a method with strong allure-but also definite limits. Felski argues that critique is a sensibility best captured by Paul Ricoeur's phrase the hermeneutics of suspicion. She shows how this suspicion toward texts forecloses many potential readings while providing no guarantee of rigorous or radical thought. Instead, she suggests, literary scholars should try what she calls postcritical reading: rather than looking behind a text for hidden causes and motives, literary scholars should place themselves in front of it and reflect on what it suggests and makes possible. By bringing critique down to earth and exploring new modes of interpretation, The Limits of Critique offers a fresh approach to relationship between artistic works and social world.
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Elements of a post-critical attitude can be sighted in the works of Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Rancière.
“Felski (2015) claims that elements of a post-critical attitude can be sighted in the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, and Jacques Rancière—authors whose ideas have found their way into the philosophy of education.”
From Post-criticality and the pursuit of an empirical philosophy of education: epistemology, methodology, ethics (2024) · cites this paper as Felski 2015
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“As Rita Felski (2015) reminds us, just because other work is not critical does not mean that it is un critical.”
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BackgroundThe limits of resistant reading in critical literacy practices
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- Authors
- Felski, R.
- Corresponding author
- Felski, Rita
- ORCID
- Felski, Rita
- Venue
- University of Chicago Press eBooks
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2015
- OpenAlex
- W2344967523
- Cited by
- 1,709
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 138 · 2025: 211 · 2024: 172 · 2023: 176 · 2022: 143 · 2021: 170 · 2020: 158 · 2019: 255 · 2018: 165 · 2017: 95 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 269.09
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- University of Chicago Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Contemporary Literature and Criticism
- Keywords
- literary criticism, critique, hermeneutics of suspicion, Paul Ricoeur, interpretation, demystification, literary theory, art and society
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