Abstract

A prominent strand of literary criticism today assumes that literature as literature is not significant enough to merit critical scrutiny. Instead of attending to the features that distinguish literature from everyday expression, this criticism values literature for its closeness to and reflection of life. Different as they might appear in their subject matter and approach, Character, The Disposition of Nature, and None Like Us share this “literature-as-life” orientation. In Character, Toril Moi, Rita Felski, and Amanda Anderson remind us of the pleasures of identification, embracing the layperson’s native inclination to consider “characters as objects of identification, sources of emotional response, or agents of moral vision and behavior” (4). Blending life writing with cultural criticism, Stephen Best uses his own narrative to attempt to rewrite the “‘traumatic model of black history’ in which the present is merely an endless, Oedipal repetition of slavery and Jim Crow” (6). Instead of the presence of an identity founded on this never-ending circuit of remembrance and despair, Best wants to dwell in impossibility, contradiction, paradox, and in-betweenness. Jennifer Wenzel’s study, The Disposition of Nature, blends paraphrases of literary representations of real-world environmental problems with references to political and cultural theories and to historical and journalistic accounts. In Wenzel’s case studies on such things as the story of oil extraction in the Niger Delta, the lifelikeness of literature engenders a meditative kind of outrage and skepticism. Given the fact that literary critics are no more expert in life than are their readers, the literature-as-life orientation shared by these authors leads to a kind of critical self-destruction.

中文翻译：

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批评自己

摘要

当今文学批评的一个重要分支认为文学作为文学不足以值得进行严格的审查。这种批评没有关注将文学与日常表达区分开的特征，而是重视文学对生活的亲近和反思。由于它们在主题和方法上可能出现的不同，因此，“性格”，“自然的性格”和“没有像我们一样”具有这种“文学即生活”的取向。在字符，Toril Moi，Rita Felski和Amanda Anderson提醒我们身份认同的乐趣，他们接受外行人的本地倾向，将“字符视为身份认同的对象，情绪反应的来源或道德视野和行为的代理人”（4）。斯蒂芬·贝斯特（Stephen Best）将生活写作与文化批评相结合，试图用自己的叙述来改写“黑人历史的创伤模型”，在这种模型中，现在只是奴隶制和吉姆·克劳的无休止的俄狄浦式重复”（6）。与其建立一个基于这种永无止境的追忆与绝望的身份的身份，贝斯特想将注意力集中在不可能，矛盾，悖论和中间立场上。詹妮弗·温泽尔（Jennifer Wenzel）的研究，《自然的处置》，将现实世界环境问题的文学表现形式的措辞与政治和文化理论以及历史和新闻报道相结合。在温泽尔（Wenzel）对尼日尔三角洲采油故事的案例研究中，文学的栩栩如生引发了一种沉思的愤怒和怀疑态度。鉴于文学评论家在生活上并不比其读者更精通，这些作家所分享的作为生活的文学取向导致了一种批判性的自我毁灭。