The Institution of Criticism The Institution of Criticisrn Peter Uwe Hohendahl Cornell U niversity Press ¡thaca and London This book has been published with the aid of a grant from the Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University. Copyright © 1982 by Cornell University Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850, or visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 1982 by Cornell University Press. First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2016. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. The institution of criticism. Essays translated from German. Includes index. Contents: Introduction—Literary criticism and the public sphere— The end of an institution?—[etc.] 1. Criticism—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. PN85.H6 801'.95'09 81-15188 ISBN 978-0-8014-1325-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-5017-0718-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) AACR2 The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With the exeeption of the introduetion, aH essays in this vol­ ume have be en translated from the German. Henry J. Sehmidt and Ronald Smith translated the three studies that first ap­ peared in my essay eoHeetion Literaturkritik und Offentlichkeit (Munieh, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1974), and are presented here as essays 1, 3, and 5. Their original titles are: "Literaturkritik und Offentliehkeit" (first published in Lili: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, Vol. 1, 1971); "Das Ende einer Institution? Der Streit über die Funktion der Literaturkritik" (first published in Revolte und Experiment: Die Literatur der sech­ ziger Jahre in Ost und West, Heidelberg, 1972); "Promoter, Kon­ sumenten und Kritiker: Zur Rezeption des Bestsellers" (first published in Popularitat und Trivialitat, Vol. 4, Wiseonsin Work­ shop, edited by Reinhold Grimm andJost Hermand, Frankfurt, 1974). Sehmidt and Smith also translated essay 2, "Kunsturteil und Tagesberieht: Zur aesthetisehen Theorie des spaten Heine," whieh was originaHy published in Reinrich Reine: Artistik und Engagement, edited by Wolfgang Kuttenkeuler (Stuttgart, 1977). 1 am indebted to J. B. Metzlersehe Verlagsbuehhandlung for permission to reprint. Three essays appeared in New German Critique: "The Task of Contemporary Literary Criticism," in no. 7 (Winter 1976), trans­ lated by David Bathriek; "Prolegomena to a History of Literary Critieism," in no. 11 (Spring 1977), translated by Jeannine BlaekweH; and "Critical Theory, Publie Sphere, and Culture: Jürgen Habermas and His Crities," in no. 16 (Winter 1979), translated by Mare Silverman. AH these essays have been 5 Acknowledgments amended slightly for this edition. I am grateful to the editors of the journal for permission to reprint. Unless otherwise indi­ cated, the translations of quotations are those of the translators or, in the case of the introduction, mine. In the final preparation of the manuscript I was assisted by Philip Brewster and Richard Bean, who helped me to revise the translations. I am grateful for their advice. Finally, I thank Carol Rosenzweig for typing the manuscript. P.U.H. 1thaca, New York 6 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 11 Literary Criticism and the Public Sphere 44 2 Art Evaluation and Reportage: The Aesthetic Theory oJthe Later Heine 83 3 The End of an Institution? The Debate over the Function rifLiterary Criticism in the I960s 126 4 The Task rifCon temporary Literary Criticism 159 5 Promoters, Consumers, and Critics: On the Reception oJthe Best-Seller 181 6 Prolegomena to a History of Literary Criticism 224 7 Critical Theory, Public Sphere, and Culture:Jürgen Habermas and His Critics 242 INDEx 281 7 The Institution of Criticism INTROD UCTION The recognition that a literary text is embedded in a historical context that can be defined in cultural, political, and social terms has been common knowledge for sorne time. This insight, how­ ever, has not been fully appreciated in the examination of vari­ ous forms of literary criticism-scholarly books and articles, journalistic essays, book reviews in newspapers, and the like. Yet studies that deal with literary works in one way or another should also be recognized as literary texts and should be seen against their own background. Literary criticism, to borrow a definition from Ernst Robert Curtius, is that form of litera tu re which is concerned with literature. The task of this introduction, seen in these terms, is to define and unfold the literary, cultural, and political context of the seven essays collected in this volume. They were written between 1970 and 1977-years that mark striking changes in the history ofliterary criticism in Europe and the United States. These changes are particularly evident in the West German situation, to which my essays refer primarily. The literary system of West Germany (the German Democratic Re­ public is excluded from the following considerations, since the East German situation is for a number of reasons fundamentally different) was going through a crisis that affected all its aspects: the production of literature was questioned no less than its dis­ tribution and reception. During these years of turmoil there was no agreement on the task of criticism and especially not on the method and function of aesthetic evaluation. For a number of years the crisis was so severe that the system itself appeared beyond repair. During the first half of the 1970S it was almost 1 1 The Institution DI Criticism impossible for the critical observer to follow traditional paths of literary criticism and write just another scholarly book or con­ centrate critically on the latest novel or play. It would have been a problematical pretense to insist on perpetuating the tradition of the discipline. Academic critics were literally besieged when students protested against conventional literary studies and oc­ cupied the seminar room s and libraries. And journalists who earn their living by writing reviews for newspapers, contributing essays to literary magazines, and lecturing on the cultural pro­ grams of public broadcasting were confronted with outspokenly polemical criticismo Their more poli te antagonists asked them to review their professional commitment and in particular to re­ flect on their highly elitist concern with questions of aesthetic evaluation, while their more radical opponents told them to keep quiet unless they were willing to address more important issues. The conventional attitude that kept literary and social issues separate became suspicious, to say the least. Moreover, the German literary tradition, the canon of classical authors from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to Thomas Mann, carne under criti­ cal scrutiny. In the early seventies it became a hazardous task to defend the cultural heritage of Weimar and jena, which had been the focus of German studies since the 1850S. These unusual circumstances suggested a more radical ap­ proach to the discipline of literary criticismo The following essays are an attempt to come to terms with the crisis of criticismo They address themselves, from different perspectives, to the crucial question of what the task of criticism could be in the context of an advanced capitalistic industrial society. The traditional dis­ course on the method and the history of literary criticism has more or les s ignored this aspect, emphasizing instead aesthetic or theoretical issues. The history of criticism would thus appear to be the history of a self-contained discipline with its own sets of intrinsic problems. This approach presupposes that there are institutions like the university and the press which can serve as the basis for the production and distribution of literary criticismo My approach, although by no mean s indifferent to questions of aesthetic norms and problems of evaluation, is more concerned with the institutional side-that is, the social models which guide and control the activity called literary criticismo Since these essays focus on the mediation between the literary 1 2 Introduction and the sociocultural spheres, the position of their author must be taken into consideration. They do not merely de al with the problems of the sixties and early seventies; they are themselves part of those struggles and the controversy. Therefore, writing now in a significantly different social and political elimate, I have not tried to revise and update them. I have refrained from this accustomed academic practice because it reflects a notion of linear scholarly progress which these essays question in various ways and forms. Where this idea of progress-the notion that the results of scholarship are just building blocks for future scholarship-is dominant, a more challenging sen se of historic­ ity, emphasizing the commitment of the author, is repressed. In contrast to the German situation, there might be the chance that these essays could suggest new ways of looking at the discourse of criticism in this country precisely because this discipline has been problematized in recent years. Although most of the mate­ rial dealt with in my essays is taken from the literary and social history ofGermany, and therefore some ofthe observations and results cannot be generalized immediately, it is obvious that West Germany is an advanced industrial society, part of the Western world, and both politically and culturally elosely related to other European and American industrial societies. I do not wish to downgrade national traditions, which certainly play a significant role in the practice of literary criticism; yet it has to be noted that the essential problems are common to a11 advanced industrial societies, although they are expressed in various forms. Insofar as these essays refer to an individual national culture-that is, the literary life of Germany-they make a number of assumptions that may not be immediately evident to the American reader.