Visions of global America and the future of critical reading / Daniel T. O'Hara.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Hara, Daniel T., 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Purdy, James.

Baldwin, James, 1924-1987.

James, Henry, 1843-1916.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.

Badiou, Alain.

Criticism--United States.

Criticism.

Criticism and interpretation.

United States.

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Truth.

Badiou, Alain--Criticism and interpretation.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882--Criticism and interpretation.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo.

James, Henry, 1843-1916--Criticism and interpretation.

James, Henry.

Baldwin, James, 1924-1987--Criticism and interpretation.

Baldwin, James.

Purdy, James--Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xiii, 177 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2009]

Summary:

The forces of globalization have transformed literary studies in America, and not for the better. The detailed critical reading of artistic texts has been replaced by newly minted catchphrases describing widely divergent snippets and anecdotes--deemed mere documents--regardless of the critic's expertise in the appropriate languages and cultures. Visions of Global America and the Future of Critical Reading by Daniel T. O'Hara traces the origin of this global approach to Emerson. But it also demonstrates another, tragic tradition of vision from Henry James that counters the Emersonian global imagination with the hard realities of being human. Building on this tradition, on Lacan's insights into the Real, and on Badiou's original theory of truth, O'Hara points to how we can, and should, reground literary study in critical reading. In Emerson's classic essay "Experience" (1844), America appears in and as a symptom of the critic's self-making that sacrifices the power of love to this visionary project--a literary version of the American self-made man. O'Hara rescues critical reading using James's late work, especially The Golden Bowl (1904), and builds on this vision with examinations of texts by St. Paul, Emerson, Wallace Stevens, James Purdy, John Cheever, James Baldwin, John Ashbery, and others.

Contents:

Badiou's truth and the office of the critic : neither gods nor monsters

Figures of the void : on the subject of truth and the fundamentalist imagination

"The cry of its occasion" : the subject of truth, or the terror in global terrorism

Global America and the logics of vision

America, the symptom : on the post-9/11 allegory in American studies

Our worldly apocalypse : literature and everyday life

"Monstrous levity" : between realism and vision in Henry James

Toward a global democracy : James Baldwin and the stoic vision of amor fati

Bringing out the terror : James Purdy and the culture of vision.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780814211045

0814211046

9780814292020

081429202X

OCLC:

361947828