Pub Date : 2021-12-24DOI: 10.13110/criticism.63.4.0381
Leah Allen
Abstract:Kate Millett has not been adequately located in the history of literary criticism. Although her 1970 text Sexual Politics was part of the breakdown of New Criticism's hegemony in US English departments, Millett's early readers primarily understood it as a work of social criticism linked to the emerging second-wave feminist movement. When critics did attend to Millett's use of literature, many found it scarcely literary criticism at all because it defied every tenet of then-dominant New Criticism. Others judged Millett's de-aestheticizing method as "bad" literary criticism for its attention to politics over artistic construction, especially as New Criticism's influence waned and her resistance to New Criticism became less obvious at the text's central struggle. As such, we have not fully appreciated Millett's anticipation of cultural studies, nor her influence on contemporary modes of reading. Feminist literary criticism appears as a political intervention into an ongoing enterprise rather than as a foundational driver of changes in modes of interpretation. Here, I contextualize Millett's method in the transitional moment when New Criticism lost its grip on US literary studies and reassess feminist literary criticism's influence on how we read in the present. This reconsideration matters now more than ever as we witness the resurgence of de-aestheticizing methods within yet another transitional moment in the history of criticism.
{"title":"From New Criticism to Postcritique: Kate Millett's Method in The History of The Present","authors":"Leah Allen","doi":"10.13110/criticism.63.4.0381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.63.4.0381","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Kate Millett has not been adequately located in the history of literary criticism. Although her 1970 text Sexual Politics was part of the breakdown of New Criticism's hegemony in US English departments, Millett's early readers primarily understood it as a work of social criticism linked to the emerging second-wave feminist movement. When critics did attend to Millett's use of literature, many found it scarcely literary criticism at all because it defied every tenet of then-dominant New Criticism. Others judged Millett's de-aestheticizing method as \"bad\" literary criticism for its attention to politics over artistic construction, especially as New Criticism's influence waned and her resistance to New Criticism became less obvious at the text's central struggle. As such, we have not fully appreciated Millett's anticipation of cultural studies, nor her influence on contemporary modes of reading. Feminist literary criticism appears as a political intervention into an ongoing enterprise rather than as a foundational driver of changes in modes of interpretation. Here, I contextualize Millett's method in the transitional moment when New Criticism lost its grip on US literary studies and reassess feminist literary criticism's influence on how we read in the present. This reconsideration matters now more than ever as we witness the resurgence of de-aestheticizing methods within yet another transitional moment in the history of criticism.","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88058955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MTV Video Stardom as Media Power: Madonna’s (Moving) Image Control","authors":"Landon Palmer","doi":"10.3998/fc.1786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.1786","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43145375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Blinded by the Light\" and Rock Tradition","authors":"Doyle Greene","doi":"10.3998/fc.1057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.1057","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46706054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vigilantism and the Law in \"Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri\"","authors":"J. McEntee","doi":"10.3998/fc.977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.977","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45862137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the smile that features in the climax of László Nemes’ Hungarian Holocaust film, Son of Saul (2015). The smile, a happy response in the face of death, is argued as emblematic of the film’s problematising of choice. The facial gesture re-presents the dilemma of choice in ways that expose the limits of Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance. In Holocaust discourse, Primo Levi and Lawrence L. Langer have spoken of death camps as sites of extreme coercion where choice was rendered inoperable. 1 This inoperability has been reflected on by Levi as a hindrance to accounting for acts of complicity committed by prisoners under duress. 2 This dilemma in Holocaust discourse is reworked in the Hungarian Holocaust film, Son of Saul ( Saul Fia , Nemes, 2015), which problematises choice in an affirmative context.
{"title":"The Smile in \"Son of Saul\": A Test of Différence","authors":"Ayesha Ahmed","doi":"10.3998/fc.1036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.1036","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the smile that features in the climax of László Nemes’ Hungarian Holocaust film, Son of Saul (2015). The smile, a happy response in the face of death, is argued as emblematic of the film’s problematising of choice. The facial gesture re-presents the dilemma of choice in ways that expose the limits of Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance. In Holocaust discourse, Primo Levi and Lawrence L. Langer have spoken of death camps as sites of extreme coercion where choice was rendered inoperable. 1 This inoperability has been reflected on by Levi as a hindrance to accounting for acts of complicity committed by prisoners under duress. 2 This dilemma in Holocaust discourse is reworked in the Hungarian Holocaust film, Son of Saul ( Saul Fia , Nemes, 2015), which problematises choice in an affirmative context.","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45867230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alice Leppert, \"TV Family Values: Gender, Domestic Labor, and 1980s Sitcoms\" (Rutgers University Press, 2019)","authors":"E. C. Yochim","doi":"10.3998/FC.1056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/FC.1056","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46814776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Forms: The Currents Program at the 2020 New Film Festival","authors":"Daniel Gómez Steinhart","doi":"10.3998/FC.1037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/FC.1037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41545944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"PANNING (and SCANNING) \"SKIDOO\" (1968): Watching TV on Otto Preminger's Widescreen","authors":"Henry Rownd","doi":"10.3998/fc.1033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.1033","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42834,"journal":{"name":"FILM CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41706595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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