Archive for the ‘ Literary Criticism ’ Category
Following an unwritten rule critics must take into account their position vis a vis the cultural objects they write about. Today this often means telling a story about a personal interaction with it. “When I first read Huck Fin…” “In Rome I saw Titian’s portrait of…” The first person pronoun is the minimum of reflection [ READ MORE ]
Watching an American detective show with Korean subtitles, set in the Korea town of Las Vegas, I became witness to a most remarkable sleight of hand: the name 박 (Pak), anglicized into “Park,” became “바크” (pak’ŭ). A slight difference shatters the propriety of the proper name: a most remarkable property theft. Having passed through [ READ MORE ]
The oddest effect of the internet has been to restore a conjuring power to the name. Thus the name “Martin Hägglund” has brought many comers, and perhaps a few revenants as well, to Wozu. Why is this? Certainly, more would have been interested in Paris Hilton, Tyra Banks, Sarah Palin (if not what was said [ READ MORE ]
What happens when the famous become critics, or worse — the critics become famous? One should ask a more pointed question first: what does a critic have to do to become famous, and why would she want to do it? The pros are easy to calculate. The deepest dreams of a critic are to become [ READ MORE ]
Perhaps there is a modesty that consists in doing what others are doing. But the moment one believes one is doing anything at all by doing in this way, modesty becomes arrogance. A truer modesty consists in becoming and doing nothing by doing nothing that has been done; nothing that could yet be recognized as anything. The modesty of [ READ MORE ]
A thinker must be a partisan not only of certain thoughts, but of thought. Heidegger warned us against forgetting the original meaning of words. But let us not forget that the truest sense of a word often belongs not to the past but the future. The poet invokes the muses; the philosopher, reason. Who then [ READ MORE ]
