Ordinary language and the spirit of criticism

: reading after postcritique

Abstract

In the humanities and social sciences, a growing number of scholars are taking issue with the current paradigm of critical theory. For those scholars, most notably Rita Felski, challenging the status quo, which they claim is a negative, destructive, and ultimately unproductive “hermeneutics of suspicion,” postcritique has become something of a catchall term for the various lines of inquiry into replacing critique now that it has “run out of steam,” as Latour says. In this paper I add to this two additional arguments against critique: that it is inhumane in its “craving for generality” and misguided attempts to be scientistic; and that because of this, critique is not compatible with contemporary literature, in which the author is fully present and demands acknowledgment. This thesis connects the thread of postcritique to Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), a midcentury linguistic philosophy originating in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and later developed by J.L. Austin and Stanley Cavell, among others, who used OLP to engage with literature, culture, music, and film. Using Toril Moi’s Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell (2017) and Stanley Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say (1976), as well as other texts, I identify common elements of this particular philosophy of reading in order to create guidelines, as opposed to a theoretical framework, for a different kind of literary criticism that answers the call of postcritique and responds to the demands of contemporary literature. These guidelines are then put to the test; first, by looking at how examples can be used to communicate and discuss complex ideas in Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” (1981) and second by taking a critical look at the work of contemporary author Lauren Groff, in particular her story “Ghosts and Empties” (2017).

Date of Award	23 Feb 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Luísa Leal de Faria (Supervisor)