Literature that goes against itself

Author: Gerald Graff [USA]
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-06-01
Features: The main content of Literature against Itself is to expose the fundamental weaknesses of literature and criticism. This criticism targets the "guilt by association" logic described in the chapters of this book: in other words, based on this logic, literary criticism, criticism, and culture are conflating reason and objectivity with their misuse, thereby discarding both the child and the bathwater. Especially with the emergence of "avant-garde" consumer culture, traditional literary avant-garde strategies have become negligible, and this confusion has become more destructive. The implicit and subtle aspects of this book, however, represent a more constructive and positive approach to exploring the political nature of knowledge and its issues. An important truth element in the arguments of this book is that knowledge is always related to politics. Of course, treating objectivity with ideological skepticism is more common than dealing with any other idea. When the Vatican recently declared homosexuality to be "a disorder of vision," a large number of literary radicals were more capable of proving the incredible difficulty of objectivity. However, what confuses all aspects of the issue is the failure to distinguish between knowledge and the social application of knowledge.