Skimming the surface: critiquing anti-critique.

Contemporary forms of anti-critique take issue with critical distance as the root of critique’s ‘Olympian’ and hierarchical stance. Instead, they constantly call us to get closer: to immerse, network, touch or skim. Against claims to hidden or encrypted meaning to be revealed, they stress we stay as...

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Publicado en:Journal for Cultural Research Vol. 21; no. 4; pp. 295 - 309
Autor principal: Noys, Benjamin
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Dec2017
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Skimming the surface: critiquing anti-critique.
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        au: Noys, Benjamin
        affil: Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Chichester, Chichester, UK
      su:
        Critiques (Art education)
        Literature
        Marxist philosophy
        Psychoanalysis
        Barthes, Roland, 1915-1980
      sug:
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          Critiques (Art education)
          Literature
          Marxist philosophy
          Psychoanalysis
          Barthes, Roland, 1915-1980
      keyword:
        aesthetics
        affirmation
        anti-critique
        Critique
        distance
        negativity
        surface reading
      ab: Contemporary forms of anti-critique take issue with critical distance as the root of critique’s ‘Olympian’ and hierarchical stance. Instead, they constantly call us to get closer: to immerse, network, touch or skim. Against claims to hidden or encrypted meaning to be revealed, they stress we stay as close to the surface of things as possible. These forms of ‘surface reading’ characterise a common orientation of literary and critical studies at the present moment – from invocations of materialities, networks and objects, to statistical and cognitive methodologies. Taking issue with these orientations, I explore how such claims falsely characterise critique – notably psychoanalysis and Marxism – as based on distance and exteriority. In fact, these modes of critique constantly insist on our immersion and embeddedness in forms of relation: whether socio-economic or psychic. The forms of anti-critique dispute this form of immersion in the name of an affirmative form of taking a distance, escaping what they see as the problematic space of negativity that binds critique to its objects. So, while claiming to get us close, anti-critique inscribes an affirmative distance. I return to negativity as the inscription of a messy proximity that carves out an internal dissension and distance within the experience of immersion.
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    language: English
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