Writing Literary Criticism

Abstract

THE DRAMA OF CU RRE NT literary criticism lies in the attempt of many talented people to cross a threshold between two conceptions of what it is they are doing. On the one side there is the idea that criticism is an activity or process of the mind that operates upon the literary work as its designated object; on the other side is the idea of criticism as a social and cultural practice?something that goes on in the world or in rather than in the mind or between a subject and object. The first idea is unmistakably Cartesian-Romantic in character; the second is not so easy to name because it is not so well understood, but it is clearly related to Wittgenstein's reflections on what it means to make sense of anything, when making sense is not an epistemological process but simply a matter of knowing how to do such a thing when the situation calls for it. Think of making sense as something customary rather than as something mental, and you will have an idea of what sort of threshold literary critics now seem prepared to cross. Perhaps not quite fully prepared: the wise man probes with his foot. Take Geoffrey Hartman, the most artful and scrupulous critic now writing.1 Geoffrey Hartman can be described as a Cartesian-Romantic who, however, knows that everything occurs in history, even those most prestigious events called acts of the mind. In order to understand what goes on in anyone's mind, one must first understand what goes on in history. History here is not as an object of knowledge but as a horizon of life. It is not the conceived and studied by professional historians but in the sense of history of philoso phy, which is not a of ideas but a of philosophical practices?ways of doing what is called philosophy, such as knowing how to talk about Plato and Kant. To become a philosopher does not require the having of philosophical ideas; rather, what is required is the close and meticulous study of philosophical texts from the Pre-Socratic fragments to Jacques Derrida's Glas. To understand these texts (that is, to be able to talk about them in a way that makes sense to those who also read them) is to be a philosopher. Philosophy in this social sense is not something that goes on in the mind; it is something that goes on