Situational Tensions of Critic-Intellectuals: Thinking through Literary Politics with Edward W. Said and Frank Lentricchia

by Ben Xu

Since there can be no literary theory without a theorist, theorizing must be taken to mean some person-theorizing or theorizing with a certain personage . This book, using Edward W. Said and Frank Lentricchia as examples, analyses the «intellectual» as such, as an informing personage or self-image in contemporary «oppositional criticism». The literary politics this self-image helps to conceptualize is also analyzed. Focusing on the discursive, institutional, and existential situatedness of the critic-intellectual, this book explores the specific forms of tensions embedded in and constituting his «oppositional criticism».

207 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992