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KINGSLEY WIDMER
low Barr and John Aldridge, among others). Modern literary
criticism runs with literature but hunts with the methodologies
(social, psychological, theological, scholastic); consequently it,
aspires to imaginative works but calculates increasingly (as
Aldridge insists) on reputation, foundation suitability, depart–
mental production, and other forms of academic rationalization.
The criticism written, and dramatized in academic novels, against
criticism by critics (like that cruder sort done by beatniks, and
weekly reviewers) shapes up as a critique (frequently confused) of
prevailing power and, probably, a demand for counterpower.
The attacks on literary criticism don't stop at the demolition
of the analytic pedagogy which has become the new pedantry,
but extend against all polemical, discursive, philosophical
criticism: against the whole tradition of literary intelligence.
Furthermore, much of the force of modern literature, directed
against a hyper-rationalized society, and, indeed, much of the
specific burden of the best criticism, defends "irrational" modali–
ties of knowing and being. Hence the defensive or remorseful tales
written by the literary critic about the institutionalization and
rationalization of literature and criticism in the academy. They
never had it so good and that, quite rightly, is bad. For better and
worse, our forms of sensibility have long required heterodoxy,
contrariety, even perversity, and the critics know it well.
Intellectuals in the academy, that is those whose primary
identity does
not
derive from technical scholarship, pedagogy,
gentlemanly
noblesse
(a nearly dead tradition), or bureaucratic
ambition, lack justification in the current schemes of pedagogy,
research, and civil ideals. There now
av~ils
no real academic
justification for peculiar and intense kinds of sensibilities and
speculative and critical minds. That intellectuals should exist
simply by and for their own values and purposes is, and probably
will always remain, formally incomprehensible and generally re–
pugnant to the academy. It is true, however, that intellectuals
have spawned their own critical and discursive "disciplines" in
self-justification, especially in the social sciences and literary
criticism. Restricted by the nets of academic power-rationalizations,
these disguised speculations and explorations
be~ome
largely dull
