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Poetic Critique WeltLiteraturen/ World Literatures Schriftenreihe der Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule für literaturwissenschaftliche Studien Herausgegeben von Jutta Müller-Tamm, Andrew James Johnston, Anne Eusterschulte, Susanne Frank und Michael Gamper Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Ute Berns (Universität Hamburg), Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford University), Renate Lachmann (Universität Konstanz), Ken’ichi Mishima (Osaka University), Glenn W. Most (Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa), Jean-Marie Schaeffer (EHESS Paris), Stefan Keppler-Tasaki (University of Tōkyō), Janet A. Walker (Rutgers University), David Wellbery (University of Chicago), Christopher Young (University of Cambridge) Volume 19 Poetic Critique Encounters with Art and Literature Edited by Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, Jutta Müller-Tamm, and Simon Schleusener ISBN 978-3-11-068857-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-068871-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-068881-8 ISSN 2198-9370 DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110688719 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951273 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, Jutta Müller-Tamm, and Simon Schleusener, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston The book is published open access at www.degruyter.com. Cover: Designed by Jürgen Brinckmann, Berlin, using a graphic by Anne Eusterschulte Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com We thank the Einstein Foundation Berlin for its generous support of the publication of this volume. Contents Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, JuttaMüller-Tamm, and Simon Schleusener What Is Poetic Critique? 1 Jennifer Ashton Why Adding ‘Poetic’ to ‘Critique’ Adds NothingtoCritique 7 Michel Chaouli Schlegel’sWords, Rightly Used 19 Amit Chaudhuri Storytelling and Forgetfulness 35 Jeff Dolven Poetry, Critique, Imitation 45 Alexander García Düttmann “Echo Reconciles” 57 Jonathan Elmer On Not Forcing the Question: Criticism and Playing Along 65 Anne Eusterschulte La ChambrePoétique 79 Joshua Kates The Silence of the Concepts (in Meillassoux’s After Finitude and Gottlob Frege) 105 BettineMenke Theater as Critical Praxis: Interruption and Citability 125 Walter Benn Michaels Historicism’sForms: TheAestheticsofCritique 145 Yi-Ping Ong Poetic Criticism and the Work of Fiction: Goethe, Joyce, and Coetzee 155 Simon Schleusener Surface, Distance, Depth: TheText and its Outside 175 VIII Contents Contributors 203 Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, JuttaMüller-Tamm, and Simon Schleusener What Is Poetic Critique? Poeticcritique – is thatnot an oxymoron?Dothese two forms of behavior – the po- etic and the critical – not pull in different,evenopposite, directions?For manyschol- ars workinginthe humanities today, they largely do, but thathas not always been the case. Friedrich Schlegel, for one, believed that critique worthyofits name must use philologyand history not to bury the work, but to renew and intensify it.Inhis essay “On Goethe’sMeister,” for example, Schlegelsuggests that we need to criticize in and through poetry:The poetic critic, he writes, “will want to represent the representationanew,and form once more what has alreadybeenformed; he will add to the work, restoreit, shape it afresh” (Schlegel 2003,281). It is aliterary exam- ple thatmotivates him, namelythe discussion of the stagingofHamlet in Goethe’s novel. Still, Schlegel prompts us to envision amode of critique and of criticism (Kritik can mean either)that reflects on the poetic dimension of its own practice. Criticizing here means: rewriting, broadening, amplifying,advancing,vitalizing, valuing, and evaluatingthe wealth of meaning in literature. Schlegel suggests thatonlythis form of critique – he calls it poetische Kritik – stands achance of responding ade- quatelytoawork of art. This is not abook about Schlegel’sconcept of criticism, though his name and his ideas haunt many chapters that follow.Rather,his notion of poetic critique serves us as aprovocation to rethink and to reimagine what critique and criticism could be today. It is an invitation to examine the possibilities and limitations of such acritique in our encounters with artand literature,especiallyinview of debatesthat the prac- tice of critique has recentlycalled forth. We do not hold fast to adefinitive meaning of the notion, nor do we have aready-made idea of which practiceswould fall under the term and which would not.Yet we do find the time right to experiment with a mode of critical thought and practice that runs counter to the receivednotion of cri- tique as invariablynegative,amode that dares to bridge the gapsupposedlydividing art from critique. More than anything,the concept of poetic critique givesvoice to a desire – characteristic of Schlegel’stime and of our own – to draw close the realms of literatureand art,onthe one hand,and of research and critique, on the other,and let them mingle and affect each other. As we use it,the term poetic critique is an umbrella for the manydifferent ways of crossing the boundaries by which the poetic and the critical have often been held apart.Poeticcritique takes on manyguises: it can be amode of thinking, philological practice, poetic process, exercise in immersion, and intellectual challenge. While the essays gathered here approach the concept from manyangles and put it to use in a variety of periods and constellations, they have in common acommitment to reflect on how poetic critique might lead to afresh understanding of the nature and func- OpenAccess. ©2021MichelChaouli, Jan Lietz, Jutta Müller-Tamm, and Simon Schleusener,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeriva- tives 4.0 License. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9783110688719-001 2 Michel Chaouli, Jan Lietz, JuttaMüller-Tamm, and Simon Schleusener tion of critique. The thread running through the volume is this question: how can the idea of poetic critique shape our owncritical practice? Critique and Postcritique By no means are we the first to have raised the question of critique. It looms large in anumber of recent debates in the humanities.¹ Well before the publication of Rita Felski’sinfluential volume TheLimits of Critique in 2015,various authorshad begun to rethink critical practice, seeking ways of engagingwith literature and art in aless ‘suspicious,’ symptomatic, and antagonistic manner. There have been pleas for “uncritical reading” (cf. Warner 2004), “reparative reading” (cf. Sedgwick 2003), “surface reading” (cf. Best and Marcus 2009), “just reading” (cf. Marcus 2007,73‒108), and “descriptive reading” (cf. Love2010), to name onlyafew.Inevi- tably, these disparate effortshavebeen diagnosed as signalingyet another ‘turn,’ this time apostcritical turn.Though their modes of transport and theirdestinations differ,these approachesdohaveacommon starting point: adissatisfaction with a form of criticism common since the 1980s, particularlyinthe Anglo-American con- text,that focuses on atext’scontext and gaps, its latent meanings, ideological impli- cations, hiddentruths, and repressed content. Against these practices – associated, for example, with some forms of decon- structive,psychoanalytic, Marxist,feminist,postcolonial, and queer criticism – the models proposed by postcritics seek to be more attentive to atext’smanifest content, aesthetic properties,and affective capacities.Their stated goal is to be more affirma- tive and open-minded towardsliterary texts and otherworks of art.This reorientation coincides with the emergence of anumber of new,orupdated, theoretical models: while critical criticism was geared to schools of thoughtthatPaulRicœur has called the “school of suspicion”–with its three “masters of suspicion,” Marx,Nietzsche, and Freud, showing the way(Ricœur 1970,32‒33) – postcritical criticism seeks its theoretical orientation elsewhere: in actor-network theory,the new materialism, ob- ject-oriented ontology,affect theory,and ordinary languagephilosophy. But while the adherents of these and similar methodologies maysee, and appre- ciate, the dawningofanew postcritical era, others claim thatnow is preciselythe right “time for critique” (cf. Fassin and Harcourt 2019). Somefear thatthe hard- won practice of examining texts in their historical context and in view of their social conditions and political implications might give waytoaquietist aestheticism or for- malism, just when critical voices are desperatelyneeded. Then thereare disciplinary and methodological debates:Isliterarystudies falling backinto close reading? How does apostcritical approach to literatureconceive of the relationship between text Cf., amongothers,the followinganthologies:Jaeggi and Wesche 2009,Ankerand Felski 2017,Graw and Menke2019,and Fassin and Harcourt 2019. What Is Poetic Critique? 3 and context?And what would be the consequences of redefining this relationship as one of actorsand networks?Someofthese challenges are raised by essays in this volume. Forthe rest,the challenges form the background against which the essays unfold theirthinking. Practicing Poetic Critique While some essays in this volume take theirbearingsfrom the above-mentioned new methodologies,others strike out on their own;yet others go back to Ricœur’s “school