Literary Attachment: From the Abstraction of Critique to the Unfolding of Story

Abstract

The aim of this article is to return literary criticism to an interpretation and evaluation of the “literary” in literature. Cognisant of the influence of critique in its intrusion of continental philosophy on literary studies, the contention is that a shift from the abstraction of critique to the unfolding of the story can remind us of what literature can do, as distinct from what, say, philosophical discourse can do. Rather than configure the work to a single idea or set of ideas—the preference of critique—the approach is less theoretically construed and more subjective, less interrogative of underlying causes and determinations and more affirmative of literary achievement. Drawing on the insights of critics such as Hedley Twidle, Duncan Brown, Rita Felski, and J. M. Coetzee on the value of the “literary”, the argument seeks to invoke and evoke a style of intimacy in a correlation between the creative work and the critical act. In illustration, I offer two case studies: my response to a compulsion to “storify” in the work of André Brink, and my application of a theoretical consideration to the literary criticism of Lewis Nkosi.