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Uses of Literature
Uses of Literature bridges the gap between literary theory and common-sense beliefs about why we read literature.
Explores the diverse motives and mysteries of why we read
Offers four different ways of thinking about why we read literature: for recognition, enchantment, knowledge, and shock
Argues for a new "phenomenology" in literary studies that incorporates the historical and social dimensions of reading
Includes examples of literature from a wide range of national literary traditions
Explores the diverse motives and mysteries of why we read
Offers four different ways of thinking about why we read literature: for recognition, enchantment, knowledge, and shock
Argues for a new "phenomenology" in literary studies that incorporates the historical and social dimensions of reading
Includes examples of literature from a wide range of national literary traditions
162 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2008
60 people are currently reading
856 people want to read
About the author
Rita Felski
21 books81 followersRita Felski is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and editor of New Literary History. Felski is a prominent scholar in the fields of aesthetics and literary theory, feminist theory, modernity and postmodernity, and cultural studies.
Felski received an honors degree in French and German literature from Cambridge University and her PhD from the Department of German at Monash University in Australia. Before coming to the University of Virginia in 1994, she taught in the Program for English and Comparative Literature at Murdoch University in Perth. She served as Chair of the Comparative Literature Program at Virginia from 2004 to 2008.
From 2003-2007 Felski served as U.S. editor of Feminist Theory. She has also served on the editorial boards of Modernism/Modernity, Modern Fiction Studies, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, Criticism, and Echo: A Music-Centered Journal. Her work has been translated into Korean, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish.
(from Wikipedia)
Felski received an honors degree in French and German literature from Cambridge University and her PhD from the Department of German at Monash University in Australia. Before coming to the University of Virginia in 1994, she taught in the Program for English and Comparative Literature at Murdoch University in Perth. She served as Chair of the Comparative Literature Program at Virginia from 2004 to 2008.
From 2003-2007 Felski served as U.S. editor of Feminist Theory. She has also served on the editorial boards of Modernism/Modernity, Modern Fiction Studies, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, Criticism, and Echo: A Music-Centered Journal. Her work has been translated into Korean, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish.
(from Wikipedia)
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February 16, 2025
Edebiyatın bir işe yaraması şart mıdır? Bence hiç değildir ama çok işe yaradığı da muhakkaktır. Üzerine çok düşündüğüm bu soruyu kendine isim seçmiş bir kitap olduğunu öğrenince alıp okumam şarttı, yaptım.
Epey zorlu bir okuma olduğunu baştan söyleyeyim. Yazar son 60 yılın sosyoloji, antropoloji ve siyaset bilimi kuramlarına aşina olduğunuz ön kabulüyle yazıyor. Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Nancy Fraser, Chantal Mouffe gibi isimlerin ve tabii Marx'ın, Adorno'nun, Benjamin'in tezlerine dair bilgi sahibi olmak, Proust'u, Woolf'u, Baudelaire'i, Mann'ı, Flaubert'i, Ibsen'i biraz da olsa okumuş olmak lazım tadına varmak için.
Ben edebiyat teorisi okumayı pek sevmem aslında çünkü "her şeyi de yapısöküme uğratmasak olmaz mı ya" gibi bir yerde duruyorum, neyse ki Rita Felski yapısökümcü çıkmadı, şükürler olsun. Yapısökümcü eleştiriler üzerine akıl yürütüyor elbette ama metne teknik bakan eleştirmenlerin kaçırdığı / küçümsediği dört maddeye odaklanıyor asıl, fenomenolojiyi inkar edemeyiz diyor ve bence derdini çok iyi anlatıyor. Felski'nin edebiyatla kurduğumuz ilişkiye dair sıraladığı dört madde şöyle:
1. Tanıma: İngilizcesinden daha iyi anlaşılacak gibi; "recognition". Hem bir kitapta kendimizi bulmak / tanımak, hem kitapla başkalarını tanımak hem de bir kamusal talep olarak "tanınmak" - bu bölümde Ibsen'in Hedda Gabler'i üzerinden anlattığı savı nefisti.
2. Büyülenme: Weber'in büyü bozumu kavramı üzerinden okurun kitapla kurduğu yeni bağlama gelip, büyü bozumunun eş zamanlı bir yeni büyülenme hali de yaratan / kurucu bir versiyonunu tanımlıyor, buna da bayıldım.
3. Bilgi: Bu bence en zayıf bölümdü, kurmacadan epistomolojik anlamda ne öğreniriz / nasıl öğrenirize dair.
4. Şok: Bugünün edebiyatının şokla kurduğu ilişki bize ne yapıyor, bu çağda yaşayan ve artık "şok bağımlısı" haline gelmiş bizler edebiyata neden hala şaşırırız, orada hangi mekanizma çalışır sorusu üzerine akıl yürüten son bölüm yine çok ufuk açıcıydı.
Zor ama çok iyi bir metin bence bu. Çok fazla kavram ve kuram içerse de yazarın konuşma diline yakın biçimde yazmış olması okumayı kolaylaştırıyor. Bu konuları didikleyenlerin ilgisini çekecektir. Arz ederim.
Epey zorlu bir okuma olduğunu baştan söyleyeyim. Yazar son 60 yılın sosyoloji, antropoloji ve siyaset bilimi kuramlarına aşina olduğunuz ön kabulüyle yazıyor. Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Nancy Fraser, Chantal Mouffe gibi isimlerin ve tabii Marx'ın, Adorno'nun, Benjamin'in tezlerine dair bilgi sahibi olmak, Proust'u, Woolf'u, Baudelaire'i, Mann'ı, Flaubert'i, Ibsen'i biraz da olsa okumuş olmak lazım tadına varmak için.
Ben edebiyat teorisi okumayı pek sevmem aslında çünkü "her şeyi de yapısöküme uğratmasak olmaz mı ya" gibi bir yerde duruyorum, neyse ki Rita Felski yapısökümcü çıkmadı, şükürler olsun. Yapısökümcü eleştiriler üzerine akıl yürütüyor elbette ama metne teknik bakan eleştirmenlerin kaçırdığı / küçümsediği dört maddeye odaklanıyor asıl, fenomenolojiyi inkar edemeyiz diyor ve bence derdini çok iyi anlatıyor. Felski'nin edebiyatla kurduğumuz ilişkiye dair sıraladığı dört madde şöyle:
1. Tanıma: İngilizcesinden daha iyi anlaşılacak gibi; "recognition". Hem bir kitapta kendimizi bulmak / tanımak, hem kitapla başkalarını tanımak hem de bir kamusal talep olarak "tanınmak" - bu bölümde Ibsen'in Hedda Gabler'i üzerinden anlattığı savı nefisti.
2. Büyülenme: Weber'in büyü bozumu kavramı üzerinden okurun kitapla kurduğu yeni bağlama gelip, büyü bozumunun eş zamanlı bir yeni büyülenme hali de yaratan / kurucu bir versiyonunu tanımlıyor, buna da bayıldım.
3. Bilgi: Bu bence en zayıf bölümdü, kurmacadan epistomolojik anlamda ne öğreniriz / nasıl öğrenirize dair.
4. Şok: Bugünün edebiyatının şokla kurduğu ilişki bize ne yapıyor, bu çağda yaşayan ve artık "şok bağımlısı" haline gelmiş bizler edebiyata neden hala şaşırırız, orada hangi mekanizma çalışır sorusu üzerine akıl yürüten son bölüm yine çok ufuk açıcıydı.
Zor ama çok iyi bir metin bence bu. Çok fazla kavram ve kuram içerse de yazarın konuşma diline yakın biçimde yazmış olması okumayı kolaylaştırıyor. Bu konuları didikleyenlerin ilgisini çekecektir. Arz ederim.
August 16, 2014
A Positive Aesthetic
In this book Felski explores the simple fact that engagements with literature change people's lives. Students come to the formal study of literature often because they have been enchanted by the way art and literature change things, recontextualize and alter experience of the world.
The book maintains a consistent polemic against the contemporary interpretative tendency to conflate critical reading to suspicious reading with its heavily freighted explanatory frameworks and distanced analytic. A feminist theorist herself, she challenges the dogmas and defaults of contemporary critical theory - feminist, marxist, historicist and post-structuralist. She argues that what they hold in common is 'the discourse of disenchantment' which 'reiterates and reinforces the very condition that it describes, sinking us ever deeper into the void of a dispiriting, self-corroding skepticism' (58).
The book is a manifesto which builds on growing discontent among cultural and literary critics who sense that dialogue with literature has given way to 'permanent diagnosis' assigning 'all value to the act of reading (and the reader) and none to the objects read' (3). Felski wants to recover the way a text can 'bite back' (7) in the process of interpretation. Following Marjorie Perloff, Felski argues for respect of an artwork's ontology rather than 'treating it as a confirmation of our own pet theories' (5).
The book roughs out a positive aesthetic which, while appreciative of the language of interrogation of texts combines 'analysis and attachment, critique and love' (22). The question the book asks and answers in the affirmative is this: "Is it possible to discuss the value of literature without falling into truisms and platitudes, sentimentality and Schwarmerei?"
Uses of literature is divided into four chapters: recognition, enchantment, knowledge and shock. And each is a consideration (neo-phenomenological) of the act of reading under these rubric. Felski draws on a broad repertoire of examples to illustrate the power of what is read to resonate, enchant, propose and dis/re-disorient the reader.
The chapter on enchantment is particularly powerful. She pushes back against reductive 'contextual' reading, which almost always dissolves texts into the circumstances of origin. She beautifully describes how texts have a power to recontextualize the reader. "If we are entirely caught up in a text, we can no longer place it in a context because it is the context, imperiously dictating the terms of its reception. We are held in a condition of absorption . . . transfixed and immobilized by the work and rendered unable to frame, contextualize or judge' (57). The affective and absorbing aspects of reading are featured here in a manner that connects with recent interest in beauty as a way of reorienting critical conversation. The chapter concludes with a defense of enchantment against the main charges of delusion and disablement. 'Once we face up to the limits of demystification as a critical method and a theoretical ideal, once we relinquish the modern dogma that our lives should be thoroughly disenchanted, we can truly begin to engage the affective and absorptive, the sensual and somatic qualities of aesthetic experience' (76).
The final chapter on 'shock' explores the power of texts to resonate across time. Here the polemic against historicism, 'synchonic historicism,' comes to the fore. Felski argues that literary meaning isn't limited to a flash and that texts have power to resonate across time. Shock is difficult in our time, since moderns and postmoderns have institutionalized shock, we are 'shockaholics.' Nevertheless, she makes the case that texts are always ticking. 'We might think of such texts as time travelers, incendiary bombs packed with an explosive force that unleashes itself long after the moment of manufacture' (115). She deploys the German term 'Nachtraglichkeit' - afterwardness - to capture the sense that texts are not embedded once and for all in the circumstances of their production, but 'diffused across a temporal medium' (119).
In a particularly interesting passage, especially for someone like me who interprets the two testaments of the Christian bible, she explores the power of retrospective reading. Felski offers language which I think makes explicit what Christians, beginning with the New Testament writers, have done with first testament interpretation. Because there is lag-time between an occurrence and its resonance, meaning can be 'washed forward into the future rather than anchored in one defining moment. . . . Retrospection recreates the past even as it retrieves it, in a mutual contamination and co-mingling of different times' (119).
My appreciation for the book was three-fold:
1) I just loved Felski's articulation of a mode of interpretation which is able to receive the otherness of a text, rather than simply to use the text as a confirmation of a heavily freighted suspicion. Her direction to the work of Eve Sedgwick ('Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: or, You're so Paranoid, you Probably Think This Essay is About You') - who characterized suspicious hermeneutics as 'paranoid' was instructive. Suspicious reading (paranoia) is a strong theory, in the sense that very often it can't do anything other than prove the assumptions with which it begins;
2) I found some great help for the work of biblical interpretation here. Biblical interpretation suffers from the same malaise as interpretative theory more generally with its heavy investments in suspicious orientations of one sort or another. This piece with it's attention to how texts (the Bible) recontextualize the reader by recognition, enchantment, revelation and shock, was very helpful. Her suspicion of suspicion helps break-up the current interpretative monopoly; and
3) while a technical book, it is beautifully written. It is clear and descriptively powerful.
In this book Felski explores the simple fact that engagements with literature change people's lives. Students come to the formal study of literature often because they have been enchanted by the way art and literature change things, recontextualize and alter experience of the world.
The book maintains a consistent polemic against the contemporary interpretative tendency to conflate critical reading to suspicious reading with its heavily freighted explanatory frameworks and distanced analytic. A feminist theorist herself, she challenges the dogmas and defaults of contemporary critical theory - feminist, marxist, historicist and post-structuralist. She argues that what they hold in common is 'the discourse of disenchantment' which 'reiterates and reinforces the very condition that it describes, sinking us ever deeper into the void of a dispiriting, self-corroding skepticism' (58).
The book is a manifesto which builds on growing discontent among cultural and literary critics who sense that dialogue with literature has given way to 'permanent diagnosis' assigning 'all value to the act of reading (and the reader) and none to the objects read' (3). Felski wants to recover the way a text can 'bite back' (7) in the process of interpretation. Following Marjorie Perloff, Felski argues for respect of an artwork's ontology rather than 'treating it as a confirmation of our own pet theories' (5).
The book roughs out a positive aesthetic which, while appreciative of the language of interrogation of texts combines 'analysis and attachment, critique and love' (22). The question the book asks and answers in the affirmative is this: "Is it possible to discuss the value of literature without falling into truisms and platitudes, sentimentality and Schwarmerei?"
Uses of literature is divided into four chapters: recognition, enchantment, knowledge and shock. And each is a consideration (neo-phenomenological) of the act of reading under these rubric. Felski draws on a broad repertoire of examples to illustrate the power of what is read to resonate, enchant, propose and dis/re-disorient the reader.
The chapter on enchantment is particularly powerful. She pushes back against reductive 'contextual' reading, which almost always dissolves texts into the circumstances of origin. She beautifully describes how texts have a power to recontextualize the reader. "If we are entirely caught up in a text, we can no longer place it in a context because it is the context, imperiously dictating the terms of its reception. We are held in a condition of absorption . . . transfixed and immobilized by the work and rendered unable to frame, contextualize or judge' (57). The affective and absorbing aspects of reading are featured here in a manner that connects with recent interest in beauty as a way of reorienting critical conversation. The chapter concludes with a defense of enchantment against the main charges of delusion and disablement. 'Once we face up to the limits of demystification as a critical method and a theoretical ideal, once we relinquish the modern dogma that our lives should be thoroughly disenchanted, we can truly begin to engage the affective and absorptive, the sensual and somatic qualities of aesthetic experience' (76).
The final chapter on 'shock' explores the power of texts to resonate across time. Here the polemic against historicism, 'synchonic historicism,' comes to the fore. Felski argues that literary meaning isn't limited to a flash and that texts have power to resonate across time. Shock is difficult in our time, since moderns and postmoderns have institutionalized shock, we are 'shockaholics.' Nevertheless, she makes the case that texts are always ticking. 'We might think of such texts as time travelers, incendiary bombs packed with an explosive force that unleashes itself long after the moment of manufacture' (115). She deploys the German term 'Nachtraglichkeit' - afterwardness - to capture the sense that texts are not embedded once and for all in the circumstances of their production, but 'diffused across a temporal medium' (119).
In a particularly interesting passage, especially for someone like me who interprets the two testaments of the Christian bible, she explores the power of retrospective reading. Felski offers language which I think makes explicit what Christians, beginning with the New Testament writers, have done with first testament interpretation. Because there is lag-time between an occurrence and its resonance, meaning can be 'washed forward into the future rather than anchored in one defining moment. . . . Retrospection recreates the past even as it retrieves it, in a mutual contamination and co-mingling of different times' (119).
My appreciation for the book was three-fold:
1) I just loved Felski's articulation of a mode of interpretation which is able to receive the otherness of a text, rather than simply to use the text as a confirmation of a heavily freighted suspicion. Her direction to the work of Eve Sedgwick ('Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: or, You're so Paranoid, you Probably Think This Essay is About You') - who characterized suspicious hermeneutics as 'paranoid' was instructive. Suspicious reading (paranoia) is a strong theory, in the sense that very often it can't do anything other than prove the assumptions with which it begins;
2) I found some great help for the work of biblical interpretation here. Biblical interpretation suffers from the same malaise as interpretative theory more generally with its heavy investments in suspicious orientations of one sort or another. This piece with it's attention to how texts (the Bible) recontextualize the reader by recognition, enchantment, revelation and shock, was very helpful. Her suspicion of suspicion helps break-up the current interpretative monopoly; and
3) while a technical book, it is beautifully written. It is clear and descriptively powerful.
November 6, 2018
Bu kitap edebiyatın ne işe yaradığını eleştiri kuramları üzerinden bize bahsediyor. Yani kuramlarla alakanız hiç yoksa söylenen çoğu şey askıda kalıyor. Ayrıca konu üzerine örnek verilen eserler hakkında da bilginiz olmalı. Onlar hakkında da bilginiz yoksa yabancı kalabiliyorsunuz. Yani bu kitabı okuyacaksanız belli bir bilgi birikimine ihtiyacınız var.
Rita Felski beyaz sayfadaki siyah noktaların nasıl insanı etkilediğini, olmayan bir dünyanın imgeleri zihnimizde oluşturup onun içinde gerçekmiş gibi yaşamımızı büyücülük gibi olağanüstü bir hal olduğunu, okurun bu siyah noktalara nasıl bağlandığını bizlere bölüm bölüm anlatıyor. Kitabı eleştirdiğim nokta üstte belirttiğim gibi herkese hitap etmiyor. Böyle eleştiri kitaplarına merak ediyorsanız başka kitaplardan başlamanızı tavsiye ederim ederim.
Rita Felski beyaz sayfadaki siyah noktaların nasıl insanı etkilediğini, olmayan bir dünyanın imgeleri zihnimizde oluşturup onun içinde gerçekmiş gibi yaşamımızı büyücülük gibi olağanüstü bir hal olduğunu, okurun bu siyah noktalara nasıl bağlandığını bizlere bölüm bölüm anlatıyor. Kitabı eleştirdiğim nokta üstte belirttiğim gibi herkese hitap etmiyor. Böyle eleştiri kitaplarına merak ediyorsanız başka kitaplardan başlamanızı tavsiye ederim ederim.
July 19, 2016
Felski is one of the "many-gendered mothers of my heart," to quote Maggie Nelson quoting somebody else. I think she is a better essayist than book writer, but you can't beat her for clarity and I <3 her ability to summarize huge trends so succinctly. Gender of Modernity was a transformative book for my thinking, and also, now I no longer have to Google "what is modernism" when I'm writing about modernism.
what I would add to her work: even though she is critiquing the western lit canon, she remains fairly firmly within the parameters of that intellectual tradition. It's like.. she's kinda highbrow even when she's calling out the highbrow. (don't tell her though, bc that's how I'm going to build on her work!!) I also think that it would be real interesting to put her in conversation with Lorde + also Anzaldua, both of whom I've been reading a lot of for syllabus prep. It seems like a lot of the political urgency of queer of color writing ("poetry is not a luxury" / "poetry makes something happen") + the borderlands / new mestiza consciousness / queer sensibility stuff (not seeing strict divisions between reality and fiction, approaching reading/imaginative engagement as a visceral experience that engages the body and not just the mind) could be really productive for envisioning new models for literary criticism. I think that there are already richer vocabularies available for reworking academic conceptions of literature and it would be cool if Felski were more in dialogue with those, instead of sometimes according almost undue importance to the male-dominated critical tradition she is taking to task. citational practices are one of the ways that canons get reproduced! we gotta be careful!
oh and also she doesn't know it yet but she and sara ahmed are going to adopt me and raise me in the wild. they will edit all my chapters and help me get published in NLH and braid my hair around the campfire before bed, etc etc
what I would add to her work: even though she is critiquing the western lit canon, she remains fairly firmly within the parameters of that intellectual tradition. It's like.. she's kinda highbrow even when she's calling out the highbrow. (don't tell her though, bc that's how I'm going to build on her work!!) I also think that it would be real interesting to put her in conversation with Lorde + also Anzaldua, both of whom I've been reading a lot of for syllabus prep. It seems like a lot of the political urgency of queer of color writing ("poetry is not a luxury" / "poetry makes something happen") + the borderlands / new mestiza consciousness / queer sensibility stuff (not seeing strict divisions between reality and fiction, approaching reading/imaginative engagement as a visceral experience that engages the body and not just the mind) could be really productive for envisioning new models for literary criticism. I think that there are already richer vocabularies available for reworking academic conceptions of literature and it would be cool if Felski were more in dialogue with those, instead of sometimes according almost undue importance to the male-dominated critical tradition she is taking to task. citational practices are one of the ways that canons get reproduced! we gotta be careful!
oh and also she doesn't know it yet but she and sara ahmed are going to adopt me and raise me in the wild. they will edit all my chapters and help me get published in NLH and braid my hair around the campfire before bed, etc etc
March 3, 2015
This is an inspiring book. Felski calls it a "delinquent" manifesto because its purpose, from my perspective, is to critique monolithic theories about the "use" of literature, hence the plural "uses" in the title. Felski provides a taxonomy of four uses but makes it clear in her conclusion that she does not think any work (or specific reading of a work) can be or should be categorized exclusively. Her four uses of literature are "enchantment," "recognition," "knowledge" and "shock." Enchantment is that pleasure of surrender we experience when we give ourselves to the virtual worlds evoked by literary works. Recognition is the satisfaction we enjoy when we read about our distinctive experiences and view that experience being honored or at least acknowledged in a work. Knowledge is an intriguing "use" of literature she discusses. Essentially, Felski presents literary works as being able to provide a kind of "phenomenological" or "experiential" knowledge that cannot be provided by other kinds of knowledge-producing enterprises like science or philosophy. Finally, we use literature to be "shocked" to perceive the limits of our "social ordinary" and the horizons of our personal normal. This is a brief book, schematic in nature, but it is nevertheless dense: rich with claims that stagger, frustrate, inspire, and discourage.
July 22, 2024
Felski argues that literary theory has been characterized with "hermeneutics of suspicion". She offers, instead, a trust in literature and the uses it has: Recognition, Enchantment, Knowledge and Shock. The argument of the book is intentionally polemical, yet serves well to abjure the complacency of a lot of literary theory and criticism.
February 19, 2019
As a student of literature, I've (mostly) been exposed to literary theories that ignore the sheer power of (ordinary) books as everyday objects. However, I've always felt the urging need to maintain my position as both a theoretical and an "ordinary" reader, shifting between minute analyses of underlying meanings on the one hand, and pure abandon on the other. Felski gives comfort and reassurance to everyone who struggles between the two standpoints, as well as provides proof that such "ordinary" reading modes are, in fact, legitimate.
November 6, 2024
(de retour sur goodreads, slt la team)
Une intro tellement efficace que tout le reste pâlit un peu en comparaison mais vivent les universitaires qui savent écrire des trucs intelligents sans jargon.
Une intro tellement efficace que tout le reste pâlit un peu en comparaison mais vivent les universitaires qui savent écrire des trucs intelligents sans jargon.
October 30, 2023
edebiyatın işlevlerini dört başlık altında incelemiş kitap. ben büyük bir keyif aldım okurken, edebiyat alanında okunması gerekenlerden bence
İnsanın bir kitapta kendini bulması, tanıması ne anlama gelir? Aynı anda hem düpedüz sıradan hem de gene eşsiz gizemde bir deneyim gibidir. (...) Her iki durumda da, bana hitap edildiğini, çağrıldığımı, davet edildiğimi hissederim: Okuduğum sayfalarda kendi izlerimi bulmaktan alamam kendimi. Bir şeylerin değiştiği su götürmez; perspektifim başka bir yöne kaymıştır; daha önce görmediğim bir şeyi görüyorumdur.
September 15, 2020
This book explained to me the reasons why I sometimes don't vibe with my English studies and I'm so glad to properly know that there's a way to look at literature that isn't super impersonal. Loved the Recognition chapter, and also the fact that while there were a lot of theories/philosophers being discussed, none of it felt like it was being discussed in that gross elitist way that a lot of academic readings/critiques use!
May 18, 2019
YEAH THATS MY PROFESSOR YOU GO PROFESSOR FELSKI YOURE THE BEST
October 5, 2021
Siis tää on mulla tenttikirjana, mut tää oli oikeesti superkiinnostava ja Felski käyttää upeasti kieltä
January 31, 2023
Literary theory is snobby and Felski has written a beautiful anit-manifesto to combat this.
October 8, 2022
Yapısökümcü eleştiriye karşı olmamakla birlikte bunun tek yöntem olmadığını, okurun metinde kendisiyle karşılaşması, bilgi edinmesi, hayranlık ya da şok duygusuyla metne yaklaşması gibi meslekten eleştirmenlerin burun kıvırdığı şeylerin de kurgunun değerine içkin olduğunu anlatıyor yazar.
Edebiyatı önceden belirlenmiş hakikatleri bir doğrulama aracı olarak gören ve metne abartılı bir etki gücü ve alanı misyonu yükleyen ideolojik eleştiriye de oldukça mesafeli duruyor. Öte yandan avangart, biricik ve put kırıcı olmanın eserin tek değeri olmadığını, daha önceki metinlerle yapısal veya tematik ortaklığı olmasının eserin degerini azaltmadığını öne sürüyor.
Tarihsel eleştiriyi eserin günümüz okuru üzerindeki etkisini ihmal ettiği için eleştiriyor.
Buna karşın Yazar fenomenolojik okumayı öneriyor. Bu da okurun okuduğu metne tepkisini öne çıkaran bir okuma biçimi. Edebiyat metninin kişisel yaşam, zaman ve mekâna göre farklı yorumlanabileceğini, asla değişmez hakikatleri gösteremeyeceğini öne sürüyor.
Edebiyatı önceden belirlenmiş hakikatleri bir doğrulama aracı olarak gören ve metne abartılı bir etki gücü ve alanı misyonu yükleyen ideolojik eleştiriye de oldukça mesafeli duruyor. Öte yandan avangart, biricik ve put kırıcı olmanın eserin tek değeri olmadığını, daha önceki metinlerle yapısal veya tematik ortaklığı olmasının eserin degerini azaltmadığını öne sürüyor.
Tarihsel eleştiriyi eserin günümüz okuru üzerindeki etkisini ihmal ettiği için eleştiriyor.
Buna karşın Yazar fenomenolojik okumayı öneriyor. Bu da okurun okuduğu metne tepkisini öne çıkaran bir okuma biçimi. Edebiyat metninin kişisel yaşam, zaman ve mekâna göre farklı yorumlanabileceğini, asla değişmez hakikatleri gösteremeyeceğini öne sürüyor.
October 29, 2015
Felski calls her book a "defective or delinquent" manifesto. What she's about can be summarized in these few sentences from her introduction: "In retrospect, much of the grand theory of the last three decades now looks like the last gasp of an Enlightenment tradition of roi philosophes persuaded that the realm of speculative thought would absolve them of the shameful ordinariness of a messy, mundane, error-prone existence. Moreover, the various jeremiads against commodification, carceral regimes of power, and the tyranny of received ideas and naturalized ideologies mesh all too comfortably with an ingrained Romantic tradition of anti-worldliness in literary studies. In adealizing an autonomous, difficult art as the only source of resistance to such repressive regimes, they also shortchange the heterogeneous, and politically variable, uses of literary texts in daily life."
January 18, 2020
Farklı okuma biçimlerini öneren Felski, akademik okumaların ve sınırlı teorilerin edebi metinleri bir bakıma körleştirdiğini öne sürüyor. Marxist, feminist vb. bir yorumlamanın dışında kurmacaya farklı alanlardan bakmaya çalışıyor. Bunlar da özdeşleşme, kendini tanıma, bilgi ve şok olarak sınıflandırılmış. Başlık altındaki tartışmalar ufuk açıcı. Byung Chul Han’ın denemelerini akla getiriyor Felski’nin şok üzerine söyledikleri. Ama bunlar yeni bir yorumlama yöntemi değil gibi geldi bana. Sosyolojik bir okumaya rahatlıkla intibak ettirilebilir. Akademiye eleştirel bir bakış açısıyla yaklaştığı ilk bölümdeki örnek tekrarları da biraz lüzumsuz geldi.
June 14, 2021
فلسکی در این کتاب میکوشد تا از مکاتب نارضایتی (مارکسیسم، فمنیسم، روانکاوی و ...) که در قرن اخیر پا به عرصه نقد ادبی گذاشتهاند و قرائتهای سیاسی و اجتماعی را در اولویت خوانش ادبی قرار دادهاند، فاصله بگیرد و ادبیات را به مثابه ادبیات بررسی کند.
فلسکی میکوشد تا تاثیرات فردی خوانش ادبیات را از منظر زیباییشناسی (جمالشناسانه به انتخاب مترجم) بررسی کند. او چهار نوع واکنش برای این خوانش در نظر میگیرد شامل: بازشناخت (Recognitin)، افسونگری (Enchantment)، معرفت (Knowledge) و تکاندهندگی (Shock). که البته مرز مشخصی به گفته نویسنده بین آنها برقرار نیست و در هم تنیده به نظر میرسند.
* ترجمه دارای اشکالات فراوان و سختخوان است و کاش از این اثر پیشرو ترجمه بهتری در دسترس قرار میگرفت.
فلسکی میکوشد تا تاثیرات فردی خوانش ادبیات را از منظر زیباییشناسی (جمالشناسانه به انتخاب مترجم) بررسی کند. او چهار نوع واکنش برای این خوانش در نظر میگیرد شامل: بازشناخت (Recognitin)، افسونگری (Enchantment)، معرفت (Knowledge) و تکاندهندگی (Shock). که البته مرز مشخصی به گفته نویسنده بین آنها برقرار نیست و در هم تنیده به نظر میرسند.
* ترجمه دارای اشکالات فراوان و سختخوان است و کاش از این اثر پیشرو ترجمه بهتری در دسترس قرار میگرفت.
February 27, 2014
The point that Felski makes is clear and she gives her statements extra strength by using plenty of interesting and entertaining examples, which make this book very readable. However, it seems to all stay a bit too much on the surface. It would have been better if the book had contained some more pages so that Felski had room to go more in-depth on the subject.
June 16, 2016
this is a lot to take in, but it's been a hugely thought-provoking reading experience. Felski raises a lot of interesting and useful questions that I've been trying to think through, and I'm looking forward to digging more into both this and The Limits of Critique, once I get a chance to read it, in future.
December 16, 2018
If you are going to teach literature in any capacity or you had your love of books messed up by contemporary criticism in college, this is a must read. Felski is a joy to read, never satisfied with simple resolutions to hard questions of why lit matters. Her arduous thinking is presented clearly and precisely. Excellent.
July 20, 2010
Literature After Feminism is still my favorite, but I'm a Felski fan.
November 2, 2017
Skal jeg til at bruge Felski i samtlige af mine akademiske opgaver på universitetet fra nu af?
Ja. Ja det skal jeg.
Ja. Ja det skal jeg.
February 2, 2023
Felski’s project of post-critique, begun here and continued in her following work (The Limits of Critique, Critique and Post-Critique, Hooked) is fed up with what she perceives as the utterly dominant form of literary criticism and theory: of endless ideology critique and hermeneutics of suspicion; the stuff of Fredric Jameson. But strangely, both Uses of Literature and Limits of Critique function largely as pamphlets which *announce* a new way of reading (“post-critique”) without ever really going through the trouble of *performing* this new way of reading. This is, to put it uncharitably, the luxury of being an established and tenured academic: one merely points toward supposed new methods without doing them. Having now read both, I am still unclear as to what exactly this type of work looks like. At a short 130 pages, The Uses of Literature does not deign to actually get much into the thick of it. (Bruno Latour’s ANT, as expounded in Re-Assembling the Social, does something similar, advocating for a kind of “thick description” that he never gets around to actually doing). Even more curiously, despite advocating for a more direct engagement with the experience of reading -- the phenomenology of it -- she rarely describes her own experiences with literature. Indeed, a lot of the descriptions instead come from *fictional literary characters describing their experiences with literature*.
The problem with her approach is that it offers very little for those of us who still -- if we want to remain within academia -- need to publish regularly to actually make it in academia. Indeed, there is a stubborn refusal in Felski’s project to talk about the institutional realities of academia. In her chapter on enchantment (the others are on recognition, shock, and knowledge), she discusses Miyazaki’s anime Spirited Away -- for about 400 words. She never lingers on any examples, and one never gets a sense of how extensive an analysis in her vein could be. To do so would be, I think, to realize that what she is advocating is for academics to write in a different register or even genre entirely. To engage less in constant ideological critique is all fine and well; but it would look a lot less like what the academy considers productive and a lot more like, say, film reviews (Roger Ebert’s review of Spirited Way is about 800 words, and touches on some of the same points as the ones Felski makes). That would be work I would gladly do; but then, senior academics like Felski would first have to fight for it to be valued within the institution.
The problem with her approach is that it offers very little for those of us who still -- if we want to remain within academia -- need to publish regularly to actually make it in academia. Indeed, there is a stubborn refusal in Felski’s project to talk about the institutional realities of academia. In her chapter on enchantment (the others are on recognition, shock, and knowledge), she discusses Miyazaki’s anime Spirited Away -- for about 400 words. She never lingers on any examples, and one never gets a sense of how extensive an analysis in her vein could be. To do so would be, I think, to realize that what she is advocating is for academics to write in a different register or even genre entirely. To engage less in constant ideological critique is all fine and well; but it would look a lot less like what the academy considers productive and a lot more like, say, film reviews (Roger Ebert’s review of Spirited Way is about 800 words, and touches on some of the same points as the ones Felski makes). That would be work I would gladly do; but then, senior academics like Felski would first have to fight for it to be valued within the institution.
December 24, 2025
If I were teaching an introductory literature course, I would use this as my textbook.
Although this book seems to be a general-reader essay about the pragmatic or utilitarian benefits of the literary text, her reflections go deep into a great many aspects of literary studies and the philosophy of literature. Her chapters on recognition, enchantment and shock were to me thought provoking. In many ways she gives voice to my own sense and undeveloped ideas concerning the value of literature. Oddly, her chapter on knowledge was not as strong as the other chapters. I could sense that she struggled with this usage of literature. From reading novels and other literary works on kindle, and noticing with something like contempt the type of ideas others underline in these works, I would venture to say that most people, particularly non academic readers, demand from the literary text useful knowledge, even epiphanies and revelations. But as an academic, Felski --despite her self-awareness as an academic-- would find it difficult to espose this view because, most of the time, reading literature as a means of acquiring direct knowledge is problematic and naive.
Excellent essay.
Although this book seems to be a general-reader essay about the pragmatic or utilitarian benefits of the literary text, her reflections go deep into a great many aspects of literary studies and the philosophy of literature. Her chapters on recognition, enchantment and shock were to me thought provoking. In many ways she gives voice to my own sense and undeveloped ideas concerning the value of literature. Oddly, her chapter on knowledge was not as strong as the other chapters. I could sense that she struggled with this usage of literature. From reading novels and other literary works on kindle, and noticing with something like contempt the type of ideas others underline in these works, I would venture to say that most people, particularly non academic readers, demand from the literary text useful knowledge, even epiphanies and revelations. But as an academic, Felski --despite her self-awareness as an academic-- would find it difficult to espose this view because, most of the time, reading literature as a means of acquiring direct knowledge is problematic and naive.
Excellent essay.
February 5, 2022
Kan de literatuurwetenschap de reactie van gewone lezers nog serieus nemen? Dankzij Felski misschien weer wel. Literatuur is niet alleen een samenzwering van het grootkapitaal en het patriarchaat om de lezers dom en braaf en in de pas te houden, om de bestaande maatschappelijke ordening voor te stellen als natuurlijk en onvermijdelijk; literatuur is niet alleen iets wat moet worden gedeconstrueerd door een 'hermeneutics of suspicion'. Literatuur is ook een bron van herkenning, betovering en kennis en kan de lezer daadwerkelijk schokken.
'Thanks to the institutional entrenchment of negative aesthetics, a spectrum of reader responses has been ruled out of court in literary theory, deemed shamefully naive at best, and rationalist, reactionary, or totalizing at worst'.
Met theory, marxisme en Franse denkers heb ik nooit veel gehad, maar het is goed te weten dat je dat wel kunt hebben gedaan en toch de belevenis van het lezen accepteren.
'Thanks to the institutional entrenchment of negative aesthetics, a spectrum of reader responses has been ruled out of court in literary theory, deemed shamefully naive at best, and rationalist, reactionary, or totalizing at worst'.
Met theory, marxisme en Franse denkers heb ik nooit veel gehad, maar het is goed te weten dat je dat wel kunt hebben gedaan en toch de belevenis van het lezen accepteren.
November 12, 2024
Though I could not easily relate to each example Felski offered, I found this to be an enlightening framework with which to consider literary engagement. Felski aims to explore "why we read" and categorizes readers' motivations into a few broad (non-exhaustive) reasons: Recognition, Enchantment, Knowledge, and Shock.
I appreciated the exploration of these literary experiences. Depending on work, mood, context, and desire, I've certainly pursued each of these in all my (non)fiction reading. There's a reason I seek out pulpy horror thrills or enthralling mysteries or unexplored authorial voices. I couldn't have articulated the "why" behind my literary choices before reading Uses of Literature for a course and I recommend it for a fun bit of introspection and analysis of analysis!
I appreciated the exploration of these literary experiences. Depending on work, mood, context, and desire, I've certainly pursued each of these in all my (non)fiction reading. There's a reason I seek out pulpy horror thrills or enthralling mysteries or unexplored authorial voices. I couldn't have articulated the "why" behind my literary choices before reading Uses of Literature for a course and I recommend it for a fun bit of introspection and analysis of analysis!
April 29, 2020
Felski takes four responses to literature, Recognition, Enchantment, Knowledge, and Shock, and engages with them from a variety of literary critical perspectives, illustrated by a variety of sources (novels mostly, but also plays, poems and movies). Felski takes her categories from the uses that most people make of literature rather than the uses that literary critics make of literature. Thus, this book is a reorientation of the critical engagement with literature towards a set of categories that have broad appeal, the stuff that really matters for a majority of readers. The result is a high-level theoretically rich engagement with four big themes.
August 23, 2025
Takakannessa on ronski vale: ”kirjoitettu helposti lähestyttävällä tavalla”. Ehkä niin, jos lukija on kirjallisuustieteen ammattilainen. Tavislukijalle kirjan sisältö hukkuu raskaaseen kirjallisuustieteelliseen jargoniin.
Luin tämän väkisin läpi, mutta eipä kirjasta jäänyt mitään käyttökelpoista mieleen. Lukemisen aloittaminen oli työn takana ja vaati kirjan lainaamista uudestaan; olisi vain pitänyt kuunnella intuitiotaan ja palauttaa kirjastoon lukematta.
Luin tämän väkisin läpi, mutta eipä kirjasta jäänyt mitään käyttökelpoista mieleen. Lukemisen aloittaminen oli työn takana ja vaati kirjan lainaamista uudestaan; olisi vain pitänyt kuunnella intuitiotaan ja palauttaa kirjastoon lukematta.
December 29, 2022
Not necessarily a bad work on its own merit, but Felski's problematic of critique is much better developed in her later work, The Limits of Critique; Uses of Literature is an earlier manifesto to that which covers broader ground by outlining an aesthetic toolbox of Recognition, Knowledge, Enchantment, and Shock in opposition to critical reading techniques.
September 29, 2020
She writes in such precise and descriptive language, as she speaks about the more elusive concepts and effects of literature - how it uniquely works.
Read excerpts of "Recognition", "Shock", and "Knowledge"
Read excerpts of "Recognition", "Shock", and "Knowledge"
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews