Afterword

Abstract

That the question of what is meant by criticism and critique seems internal to each, making up a topic that both have traditionally assigned themselves, is what, at least to my ear, gives the writings in this volume their unusual ardor, transforming what might otherwise be a rarified conflict over subsequence—over what, if anything, comes after what—into a struggle for criticism’s possibility. I understand the word “possibility” to be the idiom of critique, suggesting that, if there actually is a conflict, that fact must be established by the words in which it is fought. Despite obvious, possibly irreconcilable differences, all those represented here seem to agree that if critique actually were replaced by criticism, at least as both are understood now, it would be a bad thing. I take this view to be as characteristic of those who, like Alan Dunn and Sue-Im Lee, consider criticism’s persistence a problem for critique, as of those for whom, like Christian Moraru, critique remains a present horizon. Saying as much, I do not mean to be conciliatory. David R. Shumway does not speak for everyone when claiming that “the fundamental conflict between the text as object of critique and the text as bearer of knowledge or wisdom cannot be overcome within the humanities,” but in venturing a relation, regardless how vexed, he introduces the dominant theme. Since the late 1960s, criticism has had in theory the most to lose. If, as virtually everyone here hopes, its practice was never in reality excluded by critique, then the question remains where either criticism or critique can now conceive itself without the other’s subsumption—that is, without becoming critique? And if the answer is no, in what sense is critique a practice at all?