"Closed Encounters "was first published in 1998. Minnesota
Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable
books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the
original University of Minnesota Press editions.
It's committed. It's political. It's socially engaged. It's
academic criticism in the nineties. But what does it achieve? In a
provocative and fair-minded look at current critical practices and
the future of the academy, Jeffrey Wallen draws a disturbing
picture of public intellectuals in search of a public and cultural
critics unable to enter a dialogue with others.
Wallen argues that literary politics is no substitute for debate
on genuine political issues. Taking up several of the most
influential critics of recent years-Edward Said, Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick, Michael Berube, Gerald Graff, Richard Rorty, Stanley
Fish, and many others-Wallen asks: Can their desire to persuade an
audience beyond the classroom be fulfilled? And can cultural
critics realize their ambitious social and institutional goals for
change? In a work that is neither of the Left nor of the Right, but
likely to unsettle both, Wallen argues that literary criticism
actually undermines the prospects for the dialogue it calls out
for.
In addition, Wallen argues that the institutionalization of
critiques of truth and difference-critiques that appear to liberate
us by revealing that knowledge and values are constructed, and can
therefore be transformed-often leads to a further constraining of
thought and narrowing of outlooks. In his analysis of the
administration of conflict, Wallen describes the troubled state of
academic freedom and points to a shift from the institutional
protection of dissenting views to the institutional protection from
views one finds unpleasant.
Yet the prospects are not bleak: Wallen emphasizes that academic
critics continue to play a crucial role in crafting what we expect
from discussion. In this spirit, Closed Encounters lays the
groundwork for fashioning a truly public, socially engaged
criticism.
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