Abstract
Abstract: There are two points I aim to make here. One is that an appeal to a common sphere is woven into the very act of criticism. Criticism becomes urgent the moment something in the world outpaces our capacities for coping. Such confrontations urge us to speak—to do something—about this difficulty. That is the wellspring of criticism: when faced with an experience that capsizes our systems of ordering the world, we seek to make sense of what surpasses sense, and we do so by turning to others. The second point is that the shape, boundary, and texture of this common is not available as something that can be known and described ahead of time. It emerges (if it emerges) in the act of criticism itself. It is not there before, and it need not endure. An act of criticism can forge commonality, solidarity, and purpose, but it can also (and for the same reasons) divide and frustrate. That is because in a real encounter with a significant work not-knowing is as primal as knowing. A third idea follows from the first two: real criticism does not lend itself to becoming a tool for political action, not because it is not political, but because it is not a tool.
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