Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Showing 1 - 5 of 5 matches in All Departments
"The Confessions of the Critics" shatters a certain silence.
Autobiographical criticism has until now skated relatively free
from the challenges that usually assail a new literary critical
method. It has had this immunity from critique largely because
feminists and third-world liberation fighters--such as Alice
Walker, Adrienne Rich and Jane Gallop--ushered it to the North
American academic stage. Other women and men, including Rigoberta
Menchu, Nawal al-Sadawi, Mahasweta Devi and Malcolm X, wrote in the
tradition and genre of "testimonio." These and other unimpeachably
militant backgrounds gave confessional criticism a certain cache
among the largely liberal community of literary scholars. We have
hesitated to express misgivings about a form that seemed
intrinsically tied to the most vital, powerful strivings.
This insightful critical biography shows us an Edward Said we did not know. H. Aram Veeser brings forth not the Said of tabloid culture, or Said the remote philosopher, but the actual man, embedded in the politics of the Middle East but soaked in the values of the West and struggling to advance the best European ideas. Veeser shows the organic ties connecting his life, politics, and criticism. Drawing on what he learned over 35 years as Said's student and skeptical admirer, Veeser uses never-before-published interviews, debate transcripts, and photographs to discover a Said who had few inhibitions and loathed conventional routine. He stood for originality, loved unique ideas, wore marvelous clothes, and fought with molten fury. For twenty years he embraced and rejected, at the same time, not only the West, but also literary theory and the PLO. At last, his disgust with business-as-usual politics and criticism marooned him on the sidelines of both. The candid tale of Said's rise from elite academic precincts to the world stage transforms not only our understanding of Said-the man and the myth-but also our perception of how intellectuals can make their way in the world.
Selling the Humanities explores the challenges facing literature, philosophy, and theory at a time when the humanities appear to some as burnt out. There is incredible pressure to demonstrate the value of the humanities within institutions dedicated to economic feasibility and job placement, not intellectual power and social commitment. This situation is further intensified by the demand that one must always be prepared to sell the humanities to others in an effort to save them. But is it even possible to commodify the humanities? And if so, might our efforts to sell the humanities also have the potential to kill them in the process?
|
You may like...
We Were Perfect Parents Until We Had…
Vanessa Raphaely, Karin Schimke
Paperback
|