Elizabeth Anker | Cornell University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Elizabeth Anker
Duke University Press eBooks, Mar 10, 2017
American Book Review, 2017
On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 2020
This essay analyzes the central architecture of critique. It argues that, across the humanities, ... more This essay analyzes the central architecture of critique. It argues that, across the humanities, critique has followed a uniform methodology, where in qualities like ambiguity, ambivalence, uncertainty, contradiction, and paradox have represented the main tools of not only critique and unmasking but also disclosure and transformation. Within teaching philosophy, critique has thus done more than to politicize the classroom; it has also ingrained an equation between pedagogy and therapeutic witnessing or confessionalism. For many, qualities like ambiguity and uncertainty have furthermore been imagined to bear distinctly ‘ethical’ fruits. This essay questions these staples of pedagogical theory, in particular the redemptive faith that paradox and contradiction will prove inherently critical and/or progressive. It therefore historicizes the architecture of critique, submitting that among other things the contemporary political climate challenges unbridled faith in those qualities. And i...
diacritics
One hallmark of literary criticism and theory has been an instinct for autocriticism, frequently ... more One hallmark of literary criticism and theory has been an instinct for autocriticism, frequently concerning the stakes of "how we read." Examples abound, and one could certainly trace this line of inquiry back to Plato and his oft-refuted allegation that "poets lie." Any student of the history of criticism would thereafter find their reading list populated by texts preoccupied with the need not only to exculpate poetry from versions of Plato's attack but also to justify the act of reading. Whether in the "defense of poetry" or the manifestos of the avant-garde, reflexive self-commentary has thus governed the critical tradition since its pre-and certainly early modern beginnings. The rise of modern critique only amplified this self-consciousness about method, for instance by instilling interpretive practices predicated on an opposition between reading subject and textual object. As Michael Warner explains, criticism since Immanuel Kant has been defined by an "ideal of critique" actualized through negative distantiation, whether via repudiation or disengagement. 1 Often, that dictate has been internally as well as outwardly directed, mandating compulsory self-scrutiny. Among countless sources of this mindset, we might for instance recall Michel Foucault's influential 1984 commentary on Kant's original 1784 "What Is Enlightenment?," in which Foucault characterizes the critical spirit as a "permanent reactivation of an attitudethat is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era." 2 Recent years have, in many ways, delivered on Foucault's injunction and visited new kinds of self-scrutiny on the intellectual traditions he helped to nurture. However, much of this energy has been targeted at the very brands of critique we would ordinarily associate with Foucault. Some have accordingly reckoned with the political and ideological yield of criticism and theory during their era of institutionalization, in debates that have ranged across a number of humanities disciplines each to varying degrees shaped by that tradition. 3 Yet within language and literature departments, many recent self-appraisals have foremost concerned how theory has influenced the scene of reading. And one recurrent worry has been that theory has caused the academic study of literature-ironically-to lose sight of the literary. These burgeoning disputes over method have placed heightened pressure on a range of doctrinal goals and assumptions motoring academic criticism over the past few decades. Such a commitment to rethinking is one that Jonathan Culler's 2015 Theory of the Lyric shares, and on multiple levels. In keeping with an array of critics invested in what I'll collect under the heading of "postcritique," Culler offers a trenchant diagnosis of where things went wrong, which he likewise answers with a conception of how literary criticism might rediscover and thereby revive the literary. For Culler, whose study focuses on poetry, an emphasis on "interpretation" inherited from novel studies represents the main culprit. Having overtaken poetry criticism, novelizing regimes of interpretation have enforced a neglect of poetics, eliding those elements of the lyric that for Culler are most valuable. Culler thus aims to rescue poetry studies from these misguided habits of reading by crafting a theory of the lyric that equally models how the analysis of poetry can reawaken an experiential engagement with literature.
American Literary History, 2011
... has discussed, Daisy's recitation of Matthew Arnold's “Dover Beach”... more ... has discussed, Daisy's recitation of Matthew Arnold's “Dover Beach” is not only what averts the tragedy—overwhelming Baxter with emotion, short ... Tassie's freshman year includes a romance with the ostensibly Brazilian “Reynaldo,” although Tassie is naïvely unable to decipher ...
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2014
Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First Century Theater, 2000
James Joyce Quarterly, 2007
... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation co... more ... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation contains much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect (Treatise 25). ... This negative epiphany finally allows Bloom to perform his modern, truly heroic ethics. ...
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2013
The SAGE Handbook of Human Rights, 2014
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2013
James Joyce Quarterly, 2008
... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation co... more ... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation contains much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect (Treatise 25). ... This negative epiphany finally allows Bloom to perform his modern, truly heroic ethics. ...
New Literary History, 2011
... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character... more ... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character of ethical responsibility. ... approaches to Coetzee's writing neglect his emphasis on the paradoxes of embodiment, this essay draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to ...
New Literary History, 2011
... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character... more ... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character of ethical responsibility. ... approaches to Coetzee's writing neglect his emphasis on the paradoxes of embodiment, this essay draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to ...
New Literary History, 2011
... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character... more ... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character of ethical responsibility. ... approaches to Coetzee's writing neglect his emphasis on the paradoxes of embodiment, this essay draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to ...
Mfs-modern Fiction Studies, 2008
Mfs Modern Fiction Studies, 2008
Duke University Press eBooks, Mar 10, 2017
American Book Review, 2017
On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 2020
This essay analyzes the central architecture of critique. It argues that, across the humanities, ... more This essay analyzes the central architecture of critique. It argues that, across the humanities, critique has followed a uniform methodology, where in qualities like ambiguity, ambivalence, uncertainty, contradiction, and paradox have represented the main tools of not only critique and unmasking but also disclosure and transformation. Within teaching philosophy, critique has thus done more than to politicize the classroom; it has also ingrained an equation between pedagogy and therapeutic witnessing or confessionalism. For many, qualities like ambiguity and uncertainty have furthermore been imagined to bear distinctly ‘ethical’ fruits. This essay questions these staples of pedagogical theory, in particular the redemptive faith that paradox and contradiction will prove inherently critical and/or progressive. It therefore historicizes the architecture of critique, submitting that among other things the contemporary political climate challenges unbridled faith in those qualities. And i...
diacritics
One hallmark of literary criticism and theory has been an instinct for autocriticism, frequently ... more One hallmark of literary criticism and theory has been an instinct for autocriticism, frequently concerning the stakes of "how we read." Examples abound, and one could certainly trace this line of inquiry back to Plato and his oft-refuted allegation that "poets lie." Any student of the history of criticism would thereafter find their reading list populated by texts preoccupied with the need not only to exculpate poetry from versions of Plato's attack but also to justify the act of reading. Whether in the "defense of poetry" or the manifestos of the avant-garde, reflexive self-commentary has thus governed the critical tradition since its pre-and certainly early modern beginnings. The rise of modern critique only amplified this self-consciousness about method, for instance by instilling interpretive practices predicated on an opposition between reading subject and textual object. As Michael Warner explains, criticism since Immanuel Kant has been defined by an "ideal of critique" actualized through negative distantiation, whether via repudiation or disengagement. 1 Often, that dictate has been internally as well as outwardly directed, mandating compulsory self-scrutiny. Among countless sources of this mindset, we might for instance recall Michel Foucault's influential 1984 commentary on Kant's original 1784 "What Is Enlightenment?," in which Foucault characterizes the critical spirit as a "permanent reactivation of an attitudethat is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era." 2 Recent years have, in many ways, delivered on Foucault's injunction and visited new kinds of self-scrutiny on the intellectual traditions he helped to nurture. However, much of this energy has been targeted at the very brands of critique we would ordinarily associate with Foucault. Some have accordingly reckoned with the political and ideological yield of criticism and theory during their era of institutionalization, in debates that have ranged across a number of humanities disciplines each to varying degrees shaped by that tradition. 3 Yet within language and literature departments, many recent self-appraisals have foremost concerned how theory has influenced the scene of reading. And one recurrent worry has been that theory has caused the academic study of literature-ironically-to lose sight of the literary. These burgeoning disputes over method have placed heightened pressure on a range of doctrinal goals and assumptions motoring academic criticism over the past few decades. Such a commitment to rethinking is one that Jonathan Culler's 2015 Theory of the Lyric shares, and on multiple levels. In keeping with an array of critics invested in what I'll collect under the heading of "postcritique," Culler offers a trenchant diagnosis of where things went wrong, which he likewise answers with a conception of how literary criticism might rediscover and thereby revive the literary. For Culler, whose study focuses on poetry, an emphasis on "interpretation" inherited from novel studies represents the main culprit. Having overtaken poetry criticism, novelizing regimes of interpretation have enforced a neglect of poetics, eliding those elements of the lyric that for Culler are most valuable. Culler thus aims to rescue poetry studies from these misguided habits of reading by crafting a theory of the lyric that equally models how the analysis of poetry can reawaken an experiential engagement with literature.
American Literary History, 2011
... has discussed, Daisy's recitation of Matthew Arnold's “Dover Beach”... more ... has discussed, Daisy's recitation of Matthew Arnold's “Dover Beach” is not only what averts the tragedy—overwhelming Baxter with emotion, short ... Tassie's freshman year includes a romance with the ostensibly Brazilian “Reynaldo,” although Tassie is naïvely unable to decipher ...
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2014
Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First Century Theater, 2000
James Joyce Quarterly, 2007
... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation co... more ... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation contains much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect (Treatise 25). ... This negative epiphany finally allows Bloom to perform his modern, truly heroic ethics. ...
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2013
The SAGE Handbook of Human Rights, 2014
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2013
James Joyce Quarterly, 2008
... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation co... more ... Finally, Bloom's epiphany is reminiscent of Spinoza's insistence that revelation contains much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect (Treatise 25). ... This negative epiphany finally allows Bloom to perform his modern, truly heroic ethics. ...
New Literary History, 2011
... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character... more ... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character of ethical responsibility. ... approaches to Coetzee's writing neglect his emphasis on the paradoxes of embodiment, this essay draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to ...
New Literary History, 2011
... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character... more ... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character of ethical responsibility. ... approaches to Coetzee's writing neglect his emphasis on the paradoxes of embodiment, this essay draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to ...
New Literary History, 2011
... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character... more ... the conclusion that their radical otherness marks first and foremost the impossible character of ethical responsibility. ... approaches to Coetzee's writing neglect his emphasis on the paradoxes of embodiment, this essay draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to ...
Mfs-modern Fiction Studies, 2008
Mfs Modern Fiction Studies, 2008