Literary Theory after Populism
The article proposes three theses on the status of literary and critical theory after the populist incursions of the “long 2016.” First: that an already-ailing “theory” failed to distinguish itself from professional class anti-populism during the political upheavals of Trump, Brexit, Corbyn, Bernie...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institute of English Studies
2024-10-01
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| Series: | Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://anglica-journal.com/resources/html/article/details?id=625743 |
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| Summary: | The article proposes three theses on the status of literary and critical theory after the populist incursions of the “long 2016.” First: that an already-ailing “theory” failed to distinguish itself from professional class anti-populism during the political upheavals of Trump, Brexit, Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, and others. Second: that there is within literary theory’s history a concealed tradition of “literary populism”; the normative belief that good or desirable writing has some surreptitious connection to the idioms of ordinary people. And third: that there are lessons to learn from the broadly forgotten episode of Terry Eagleton’s critique of Raymond Williams in the late 1970s – where the charge was that Williams himself was a populist. |
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| ISSN: | 0860-5734 2957-0905 |