Reference:
Review Excerpts 'We defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious
pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps
incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all these things take
place' (605).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | education | world |
'My position is that texts are worldly, to some degree they are events, and,
even when they appear to deny it, they are nevertheless a part of the social world,
human life, and of course the historical moments in which they are located and
interpreted' (607).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | world | 'In this book I shall use the word culture to suggest and environment,
process, and hegemony in which individuals (in their private circumstances) and
their works are embedded, as well as overseen at the top by a superstructure
and at the base by a whole series of methodological attitudes' (609).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | culture | embedded |
hegemony |
word |
'The dialectic of self-fortification and self-confirmation by which culture
achieves its hegemony over society and the State is based on a constantly
practiced differentiation of self from what it believes to be not itself'
(611).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | culture | dialectic |
differentiation |
hegemony |
state |
'All this, then, shows us the individual consciousness placed at a sensitive
nodal point, and it is this consciousness at that critical point which this book
attempts to explore in the form of what I call criticism' (613).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | criticism | form |
'If a filial relationship was held together by natural bonds and natural forms of
authority-- involving obedience, fear, love, respect, and instinctual conflict-- the
new affiliative relationship changes these bonds into what seem to be
transpersonal forms-- such as guild consciousness, consensus, collegiality,
professional respect, class, and the hegemony of a dominant culture. The filiative
scheme belongs to the realms of nature and of "life", whereas affiliation belongs
exclusively to culture and society' (616).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | culture | hegemony |
nature |
'What I am criticizing is two particular assumptions. There is first the almost
unconsciously held ideological assumption that the Eurocentric model for the
humanities actually represents a natural and proper subject matter for the
humanistic scholar.... Second is the assumption that the principal relationships in
the study of literature-- those I have identified as based on representation-- ought
to obliterate the traces of other relationships within literary structures that are
based principally upon acquisition and appropriation.... Two alternatives propose
themselves for the contemporary critic. One is organic complicity with the pattern I
have described.... The second alternative is for the critic to recognize the
difference between instinctual filiation and social affiliation, and to show how
affiliation sometimes reproduces filiation, sometimes makes its own forms'
(617-8).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | assumption |
difference |
literary |
pattern |
study |
'Were I to use one word consistently along with criticism ... it would be
oppositional....its identity is its difference from other cultural activities and from
systems of thought or of method' (621).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | criticism | difference |
identity |
method |
thought |
word |
Last Modified:
July-12-96 10:26:5
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