"The modern proliferation of theoretical means and critical methods barely conceals the fact that we still allow ourselves to write about these works only within the narrowest disciplinary boundaries. We move from rigorous scholarship (the phrase is already too obvious) to ideological commitments that often seem, even when they are put forward in the name of History, to have forgotten the perils of devotion to an idea; to some straitened notion of pleasure; to the fantasy that some new science of rhetorical displacements will finally release us from the cold regime of the final signified. We have plenty of psychoanalytic criticism, formalist criticism, ideological criticism, etc., but where is our fear criticism? our despair criticism? our disgust criticism? our criticism of resentment? of petty ambition? of treachery, deceit, jealousy, hysterical rage? Nowhere in sight; and yet it would hardly require much effort to discover them all just beneath the thin civility of the strictest critical decorum. Then what if we were able to pursue critical fear, to identify critics with their fear, to prove that service to the text is driven by jealous desires, horrified resentment, abject loathing."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Paul Mann, "Masocriticism," SubStance, Vol. 23, No. 3, Issue 75 (1994), pp. 3-29
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Criticism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Criticism
107 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Criticism →
Related Quotes
"I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known…"
"We should never let support blind us, or become a substitute for continuing to be both self-critical, and dedicated t…"
"Whatever else he may do, a critic reveals and criticises himself."
"CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him."
"Great art is a religious function...great criticism is, therefore—since it is necessary for great art—a religious fun…"
"In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, fooli…"
"He was in Logic, a great critic, Profoundly skill'd in Analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair 'twixt south…"
"I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peep…"
"Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a …"
"They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write, Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite."