ABSTRACT
Among academic literary critics, the general proposition that writing literature, reading literature, analyzing literature, and teaching literature are frequently “political” tasks is well established. To be clear, “the political” and elsewhere signifies and entails more than merely an adjectival form of politics. The idea that both literature and literary criticism are not just political but substantively “the political”—that is, bound to the realm of meaning that precedes and constitutes the conditions for perceiving, representing, understanding, and performing those particular acts that qualify as political acts—is shared across populations that are much wider and more diverse than the relatively narrow academic world. Of course, the idea that literature and teaching have only recently become politicized is flatly absurd. Neither does literary-critical autonomy, whether rooted in practices of the group or the individual. Neither does literary-critical autonomy, whether rooted in practices of the group or the individual.
