Redeemable Plots

VER THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS, GLOBAL ECONOMIC, INSTITUTIONAL, POLITICAL, AND social disinvestment in the humanities has contributed to what John Guillory has recently called a ‘crisis of legitimation’ (xiii). By overemphasising the political importance of contemporary literary culture, cultural discourse has largely focused on cementing literature’s political agency. Because humanities disciplines, in Guillory’s view, occupy positions of structural weakness, there is no winnable argument about the social relevance of criticism. ‘So long as there are scientists at work on a cure for cancer’, he notes, ‘the humanities will have a nearly insurmountable task in making a case in the public sphere for their great, if less obvious, social benefits’ (109). Feeling themselves, their works, and their institutions to be on shaky ground, critics have fallen into the habit of ‘romanticising’ the power and importance of literary criticism’s ability to advance progressive political positions or debate liberal or democratic functions.1