ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between politics and method in the history of twentieth-century literary criticism. Rather than describing the range of different kinds of political criticisms practiced in academic circles today, this chapter argues that a specific idea of political value has become so commonplace within literary studies that it defines and limits our sense of what criticism can be and do without even noticing it. After reviewing the ways in which politics and method have always been linked in the history of literary criticism, the chapter reviews the re-emergence of three seemingly apolitical methods that have been methodological outcasts for decades: formalism, evaluative, and phenomenological criticism. Far from being a return to apolitical criticism, these methods seek to justify themselves on explicitly political grounds. They do so by asking us to expand the range of relationships between politics and method that we tend to admit. In the end, the chapter argues that despite the growing pains around this method, they in fact strengthen the political claims of criticism.
