The Postliberal Aesthetic; or, How Can Literary Criticism Help Unsettle America’s Polarization?

Abstract

Abstract This essay interprets the present moment as marked by democratic crisis and assigns to American literary criticism the task of responding to it. While American democracy faces multiple crises, the essay contends that current levels of polarization make it impossible to effectively address any of them. In this situation, literary studies confronts a dual challenge: it must, first, come to terms with its own contribution to the dynamics of polarization and, second, consider whether it can help undo it. Adopting a cultural–sociological perspective, the essay identifies literary studies as an institution that consolidates the politico-cultural identity of the “new middle class” and contributes to the culturalization of politics underlying contemporary polarization. However, the essay contends, American literary studies has the capacity to help revive democratic culture if it nurtures reading practices that unsettle fixed identities. To that end, the essay singles out various recent theories of reading whose democratic potential is grounded in their shared premise that literature is a communicative act. In interpreting these models of criticism as a potential way out of the malaise of polarization, the essay makes a call to revisit, reevaluate, and reformulate the tradition of liberalism.