Not So Well Attached

Extract

Faultfinding is the fault that Rita Felski's The Limits of Critique attributes to literary criticism. Faultfinding is also, of course, what Felski's book spends most of its time doing. Had it not abandoned itself so completely to faultfinding, its central insight might have led it to do more interesting things. (The fact that these more interesting things are already being done by much socially engaged criticism is one obvious weakness of her argument, which puffs itself up by expanding its range of targets so as to take in nearly the whole profession and then, sensing a challenge, steps back in mock horror so as to suggest, “No, of course, I didn't mean that!”) As an example of these alternative, nonfaultfinding versions of critique, the book might have tried to explore the reasons the humanities are as susceptible as they are to the holier-than-thou self-righteousness that Felski both accuses and, however reluctantly, also personifies.