In this review of Rita Felski’s The Limits of Critique, the author looks at contemporary literary criticism.
Felski asks what might happen if we looked not “behind the text” but “in front of the text, reflecting on what it unfurls, calls forth, makes possible.” In doing so, she seeks to rehabilitate the validity and importance of what we might call “literary desire”: the force that drives you to reread your favorite book yet again; or to finish that work of genre fiction even when you know the ending; or to press a beloved book awkwardly into a distant acquaintance’s hands in hopes that she, too, will come to love what you love and might one day talk with you about it.
Painting by Brianna Keeper
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I don’t want suicide to seem glamorous, but I really liked how the story sheds light on so many issues. The rape storyline was particularly powerful. I love that it still affected jessica and those around her even though she was passed out and wasn’t sure what happened to her.