Postcritique and the Problem of the Lay Reader

Abstract:This essay examines the figure of the lay reader in recent debates about critique and postcritique. It argues that an attachment to "lay reading" not only fuels the current emergence of countertrends to critical methodologies but also threatens the survival of such postcritical projects. The essay does so by demonstrating, first, how this attachment counterworks an elitist tendency in critical scholarship to regard such modes of reading—and those who value them—as politically dubious (e.g., Bruce Robbins). The essay then shows how this very same attachment also complicates the formulation of viable methodological alternatives to critique: In some cases, it entails a didactic of unschooling that strips literary critics of their status as academics (e.g., Elizabeth S. Anker and Cara L. Lewis); in others, it leads to generic accounts of reading that fail to provide distinct strategies for scholars specifically (e.g., Lucas Thomson and Toril Moi). On this basis, the essay calls for the postcritical project to loosen its attachment to the figure of the lay reader and look to neighboring fields for other ways of moving beyond critique, like, for instance, the current resurgence of Spinozian ethics in affect studies.