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Amerikastudien / American Studies 63.1 Reviews Elizabeth S. Anker Amerikastudien / American Studies 63.1 ★ Reviews Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski (eds.), wide range of affective styles, modes of argu- Critique and Postcritique (Durham, NC: ment, and tones. Critique must not be seen as Duke UP, 2017), 329 pp. the only possible theoretical approach. While Felski’s argument in The Limits of Critique Another death of Theory? Another burial? constantly returned to the ideas, and prac- Another entombment during which no one tices, of affect, style, ethos, mood, and tone, sheds a single tear and all one hears are listless- the editors of Critique and Postcritique also ly uttered anecdotes, as well as some mumbled ask whether critique entails “a distinctive and incoherent obscenities? Since many peo- disposition, tone, attitude, or sensibility” (1). ple outside academia think that literary stud- Moreover, they call attention to the question ies is a scandalously useless discipline, it has of whether “postcritique require[s] a different to constantly justify its own existence. Those ethos or affect” (2). attempts at justifi cation and the respective Critique has often been dominated by a self-refl ections of the discipline’s proponents self-critical dimension, a desire to reach a can be useful or boring, stimulating and enter- metalevel. Anker and Felski suggest that it is taining or jargon-fi lled nonsense. Whatever interesting to ask how recent debates in liter- their nature, they keep the “Fach” alive. The ary and cultural theory differ from those at- “theory wars” of the past decades have shown tempts at self-scrutiny or self-refl exivity, and how intense such debates can get. The discus- whether current reassessments of critique sion centering on the possibility of developing will be capable of elucidating the promising forms of postcritique of course has to be seen potential of a plurality of forms of postcri- in connection with those “theory wars.” How- tique. Emphasizing the “chronic negativity ever, there is more to it. This becomes obvious of critique” (11) and its self-proclaimed “op- in Rita Felski’s widely discussed The Limits positional, marginal, and embattled status” of Critique (2015). In her opinion, critique is (13), the editors’ contention is that postcriti- a style of thinking that is refl ected in Fredric cal thought offers an alternative disposition. Jameson’s symptomatic reading, ideology cri- Today’s versions of postcritique include, for tique, Foucauldian discourse analysis, certain instance, Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus’s forms of deconstruction, and versions of liter- notion of “surface reading,” Heather Love’s ary and cultural criticism that see it as their idea of “thin description,” Franco Moretti’s primary task to discover signs of transgres- notion of “distant reading,” affect theory, and sion or (political) resistance in texts or that Bruno Latour’s actor-network-theory and its unmask political quietism. It is crucial to see move from debunking to assembling and from that Felski does not offer a polemic against critique to composition. critique. Furthermore, it is of the utmost im- What does Critique and Postcritique seek to portance to appreciate that she does not seek achieve? According to the editors, it “carries to counterbalance the reign of critique and out a threefold project: it offers an assessment suspicious reading with the imperative that it of the legacy and status of critique; it explores was high time to realize the promising poten- a range of alternative methods and orienta- tial of a new aestheticism or new formalism. tions; and it presents multiple perspectives on Instead, as Felski emphasizes, she presents “a the value of a postcritical turn” (2). The fi rst 1 close-up scrutiny of a thought style,” which part, “Countertraditions of Critique,” offers goes hand in hand with a certain intellectual discussions of counterhistories of critique that mood or disposition. have hitherto been mostly neglected in liter- In Critique and Postcritique, the editors, ary and cultural studies. It consists of three Elizabeth S. Anker and Felski, continue the essays: Toril Moi, “‘Nothing is Hidden’: From work begun in The Limits of Critique. In their Confusion to Clarity; or, Wittgenstein on introduction, they seek to convince their read- Critique”; Heather Love, “The Temptations: ers that it is deplorable that the practices of Donna Haraway, Feminist Objectivity, and symptomatic or suspicious reading still seem the Problem of Critique;”; and Simon Dur- de rigueur for many literary scholars, and ing, “The Eighteenth-Century Origins of Cri- they thus seek to convince their colleagues tique.” The second part, “Styles of Reading,” to fully realize the tempting possibilities of a shows the postcritical critic at work, as it were. The essays of this part combine theoretical 1 Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique (Chi- refl ections with readings of novels as diverse cago, IL: U of Chicago P, 2015), 2. as Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, Jim Thomp- Amerikastudien / American Studies 63. Jg., ISSN 0340-2827 © 2018 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH, Heidelberg Verlag: Universitätsverlag WINTER P-Nr.: B- P-Anfang: .. ID: int – . Printjob: Seiten: / Reviews ★ Amerikastudien / American Studies 63.1 son’s noir novel The Killer Inside Me, and introduction of two concepts—idealism and J. M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus. The imagination—can revitalize critique. (212) essays in this section are: Jennifer L. Fleiss- As one can see from these few examples, ner, “Romancing the Real: Bruno Latour, Ian the essays in this volume do not simply engage McEwan, and Postcritical Monism”; Ellen in a mechanistic or ritualistic condemnation of Rooney, “Symptomatic Reading Is a Prob- critique. Rather, they seek to clarify how one lem of Form”; C. Namwali Serpell, “A Heap can (dialectically) use critique’s shortcomings, of Cliché”; and Elizabeth S. Anker, “Why We oversights, and liabilities in order to accen- Love Coetzee; or, The Childhood of Jesus and tuate the possibility of demarcating a realm the Funhouse of Critique.” The third and fi nal beyond critique. It is problematic that these part, “Affects, Politics, Institutions,” focuses attempts to elucidate the futures of critique on the disposition of critique in the context completely ignore the signifi cance of Ameri- of its politics. The essays in this section, even can pragmatism (the irony is that almost all more so than the pieces in the other two parts, contributors to this collection of essays teach discuss the possible futures of critique. These at American universities and most of them are futures, as the authors propose, have much to American). If one intends to draw attention do with hope, imagination, a weak messianic to the possibilities offered by a combination power, and the idea of criticism-as-translation: of panrelationalism, antifoundationalism, his- Christopher Castiglia, “Hope for Critique?”; toricist nominalism, and the creativity of ac- Russ Castronovo, “What Are the Politics of tion, it is not only Latour’s ANT that serves Critique? The Function of Criticism at a Dif- this purpose. Pragmatism does the job just as ferent Time”; John Michael, “Tragedy and well. From John Dewey’s attack on Platonism, Translation: A Future for Critique in a Secu- dualistic thought, and the quest for certainty lar Age”; and Eric Hayot, “Then and Now.” to Rorty’s scenario of a post-philosophical or Critique and Postcritique is an important, poeticized culture, the development from fi nd- stimulating, and timely volume. In a thought- ing to making has been central to pragmatism. provoking manner, these elegantly argued Furthermore, pragmatism has the additional essays highlight the consequences of the post- advantage that it is unwilling to consign the critical turn, and at the same time they dem- idea of humanism to the dustbin of history and onstrate how exactly a postcritical reading dif- instead shows how pragmatism, humanism, fers from a close reading, the work of ideology anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics critique, a deconstructionist reading, or a ver- are linked. If one considers this combination sion of discourse analysis. It is as interesting to as helpful then Latour’s move toward ontology follow Moi’s use of the later Wittgenstein and and Best and Marcus’s neoempiricism and its to understand why she holds that literary criti- attempt to reactivate the categories of “objec- cism “doesn’t have anything we can plausibly tivity, validity, truth” 2 become problematic. In call competing methods” (34), as it is stimu- other words, pragmatism offers another per- lating to contemplate Castronovo’s suggestion spective on the endeavor to imagine the con- that it might be “productive to understand cri- tours of postcritique. tique as the impossible pursuit of political rel- The same can be said about Jacques Ran- evance and meaning, one that anticipates but cière’s philosophy. While pragmatism does not is destined never to achieve its exigent ends” play a role in Critique and Postcritique (nor in (235). Moreover, there are productive ten- Felski’s The Limits of Critique, for that matter), sions between Heather Love and Jennifer L. Rancière is briefl y mentioned in the introduc- Fleissner’s creative use of Latour’s ANT and tion and in Castiglia’s essay. Nonetheless, as far Christopher Castiglia’s proposal that instead as I can see the proponents of postcritique have of rushing postcritique we should try to revi- so far avoided a detailed discussion of Ran- talize and redescribe critique. As Castiglia cière’s work and its implications for a critique puts it in an important passage: of critique. From his early study La Leçon It may not be “critique” that has outlived d’Althusser (1973) to Aisthesis: Scènes du ré- its usefulness [. .], but the dispositions that gime esthétique de l’art (2011), Rancière has have become customary, even mandatory, to carry it out. Dispositions have their cor- 2 ollary in methodology, however, so as part Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, “Sur- of suggesting an alternative disposition for face Reading: An Introduction,” Representa- criticism—hopefulness—I will argue that the tions 108 (2009): 1-21, 17.
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