An Appropriating Aesthetic: Reproducing Power in the Discourse of Critical Scholarship

Abstract

Critical theory and cultural studies have articulated a substantial and vital challenge to the very foundations of traditional scholarship, which remains rigidly scientistic in its orientation. One outcome of this challenge is that claims of subjectivity on the part of the critic are accommodated. The stylistic dimensions of critical scholarship, however, also are noteworthy, and their political implications are perhaps no less significant. The aforementioned relative latitude in content has not been accompanied by a concurrent loosening of aesthetic mores. In this article engaging critical rhetoric as a case study, I argue that the aesthetic conventions of scholarship, as imposed upon the unique, ideologically overt character of critical scholarship, constrain and even undermine the critical project.