Where Did Our Love Go: Postcritique and the Crisis of Literary Studies

Abstract

This article offered a brief, mid-2020s reassessment of the key concepts, theoretical arguments, and critical assumptions articulated by Rita Felski in her most influential books, The Uses of Literature (2008) and The Limits of Critique (2015) and in the volume she co-edited with Elizabeth S. Anker, Critique and Postcritique (2017). It reevaluated the accomplishments and practical implications of postcritique by placing Felski’s critical approach within the broader context of the (still ongoing) methodological and institutional crisis of literary studies in the United States and Europe. The distinctiveness and gravity of the present crisis were then reexamined by drawing parallels to the crisis of historicism at the end of the 19th century and its resolution in the first decades of the 20th century. The American postcritical moment was also interpreted as a national manifestation of a global crisis and compared to similar discussions in France from 2000 to 2010. This dual contextualization revealed a more or less consistent transhistorical and transnational pattern that warrants further, comparative study. Finally, the article argued that the current crisis has often been misdiagnosed, with its distinct aspects frequently conflated and suggested reasons why the proposed solutions have fallen short.