Category: Theory Article Summaries

📘 Main Concepts & Key Takeaways

🔹 🌐 Digital humanities is not replacing traditional literary studies

“Computational methods are not taking over the humanities. The number of people who work in even the expansively defined digital humanities is modest” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 12).
Wilkens stresses that digital methods serve as complementary tools rather than substitutes for close reading and traditional interpretive work.

🔸 📊 Quantitative methods uncover hidden patterns across scales

“What computational methods offer most directly is help identifying and assessing literary patterns at scales from the individual text to whole fields” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 12).
This insight points to the capacity of digital tools to manage overwhelming volumes of literary data.

🔹 📏 Literary arguments often rely on implicit quantification

“Literary scholars often underestimate… their claims are implicitly quantitative, pattern-based, and dependent on reductive models” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 13).
Wilkens calls for making these implicit models explicit through computation for conceptual and evidentiary clarity.

🔸 🧠 Computational criticism offers new forms of evidence

“These methods produce new types of evidence that can be used… to pursue humanistic work in richer, more inclusive ways” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 12).
He underscores that computational methods enrich—not reduce—the possibilities for interpretation.

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🧪 Case Studies & Methodologies

🔹 🧬 Topological Reading of Goethe – Piper & Algee-Hewitt

“Topology attends to the recurrence of words… It shows us how the patterns of lexical repetition within texts produce meanings” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 13).
They track word-frequency patterns in Goethe’s works to explore continuity between early and late writings.

🔸 🌀 Deformance: Reading via algorithmic rearrangement

“The deformative nature of computational criticism… provides the opportunity to read that corpus as a newly estranged object” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 15).
This enables a refreshed critical perspective by reshuffling and re-clustering textual segments.

🔹 🌍 Network analysis of modernist poetry – So & Long

“They visualize their data… showing differences among poetic networks in the U.S., Japan, and China” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 16).
Their use of metadata highlights the social infrastructure of literary production and the role of “brokers” (e.g., Amy Lowell).

🔸 🗺️ Literary geography and place-based analysis

“More than forty percent of all location mentions [in Civil War-era U.S. fiction] fell outside the boundaries of the United States” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 18).
Wilkens’ own work illustrates how geographic data reveals shifts in literary attention and national imagination.

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⚠️ Challenges and Future Directions

🔹 🧾 Copyright & Data Accessibility

“It can be difficult to assemble suitable corpora for computational analysis… especially after 1923” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 19).
Legal restrictions limit large-scale literary research, although efforts like HathiTrust are helping.

🔸 👩‍🏫 Training & Disciplinary Conservatism

“Few scholars in the humanities… have been trained in the skills and methods necessary for computational work” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 19).
Humanities departments need to incorporate more technical training to empower future scholars.

🔹 🌐 Multilingual Data and Comparatist Challenges

“It’s generally difficult to compare the results… in different languages” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 20).
Despite obstacles, comparatists are uniquely positioned to address multilingual complexity in computational research.

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📚 Conclusion: Why It Matters

“Systems of literary production may be made of books, but they are not themselves books any more than an elephant is a very large pile of cells” (Wilkens, 2015, p. 18).
Wilkens powerfully asserts that understanding literary systems requires macro-level analysis, and digital humanities offers tools for precisely that. These approaches are not about replacing interpretation but expanding it with broader, structural insights.

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🔍 💡 Structuralism & Post-Structuralism

• Wilkens contributes to structuralist methods by advocating for system-based analysis of literature.
• He emphasizes that patterns and structures can be mapped computationally, aligning with the structuralist focus on underlying systems.

“You will… have built an abstractly quantifiable model of your problem domain and of your texts’ place within it” (p. 13).

• He moves beyond textual internalism by including metadata, geography, and networks, thus approaching post-structuralist decentralization of the literary object.

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🌐 🌍 World Literature & Comparative Literature

• The article reorients comparative literature around quantifiable, transnational patterns, contributing to debates in World Literature.

“Questions best suited to computational analysis—including those falling under the headings of world literature and longue durée literary history” (p. 13).

• Digital methods reveal connections across linguistic and national boundaries, reinforcing the global scope of comparatist inquiry.

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📈 📊 Literary Sociology / Bourdieusian Theory

• Wilkens draws from Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory indirectly via discussion of social roles like “brokers.”

“Brokers… served to connect otherwise disparate coteries” (p. 16).

• So & Long’s network analysis maps literary capital and influence, challenging hierarchical canon models and highlighting social position over prestige.

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🗺️ 🧭 Spatial Literary Theory / Literary Geography

• Using place-name analysis and mapping, Wilkens adds to spatial theory by showing how geographic orientation reflects literary and cultural ideologies.

“More than forty percent of all location mentions [in Civil War-era fiction] fell outside the boundaries of the United States” (p. 18).

• This supports transnationalism, shifting attention from canonical centers like New England to broader spatial fields.

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📐 🔬 Formalism & Close Reading (Deformance)

• Supports a post-formalist view: computational methods estrange the text and offer “deformative” readings (Stephen Ramsay, Lisa Samuels).

“Allows them to read that corpus as a newly estranged object” (p. 15).

• Opens space for innovative close readings grounded in algorithmic output, connecting macro-level data to micro-level interpretation.

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🔗 🧠 Systems Theory

• Suggests the need for explicit engagement between digital humanities and systems theory (Wallerstein, Luhmann).

“A more explicit engagement with systems theory will be an almost inevitable consequence of the rise of digital humanities” (p. 13).

• Advocates for literary studies that understand literature as part of dynamic, interrelated systems, not isolated artifacts.

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🧠 🌀 Historiographic & Longue Durée Literary Theory

• Wilkens shows how DH methods contribute to long-term literary historical studies by revealing trends across centuries.

“Computational work has already begun to deliver… the prospects for future advances are especially bright” (p. 12).

• Influenced by Franco Moretti’s distant reading, the article supports shifting from close reading of a few to distant reading of many.

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💬 🎭 Reader-Response Theory

• While not a direct focus, the article indirectly expands reader-response theory by altering what “counts” as readable material.
• Algorithms generate “texts” (clusters, networks, maps) that are interpreted by scholars, making the reader’s role active in reassembling meaning.

🔒 ⚖️ Limited Access to Data and Copyright Restrictions

• Wilkens admits a major barrier to DH research is access to corpora, especially post-1923 copyrighted texts.

“It can be difficult to assemble suitable corpora… many texts remain in copyright” (p. 19).
This undermines scalability and inclusivity, especially for contemporary literary study.

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🧪 🔍 Overreliance on Quantification

• Though Wilkens defends computation as complementary, some critics argue it risks reducing literature to data, overlooking nuance and ambiguity.

“The need for quantitative approaches to literature is thus great indeed” (p. 13) – but not all agree this is always desirable.

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📉 📚 Weak Engagement with Canonical Literary Theory

• While the article invokes systems theory and sociology, it sidesteps direct, in-depth dialogue with literary theorists (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Barthes), possibly alienating traditional theorists.

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🌍 🧭 Language and Multilingual Barriers Remain Underdeveloped

• Wilkens notes multilingual DH is challenging but doesn’t offer practical frameworks for linguistic equivalence.

“It’s generally difficult to compare… in different languages” (p. 20).
Comparative literature requires more than structural mapping—it needs cross-cultural interpretive nuance.

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🎯 🎲 Overgeneralization of Patterns as Literary Meaning

• There’s a risk of reifying patterns (like word frequency or network centrality) as literary insights without deep interpretive justification.
• Critics may argue that this flattens textual richness and mimics positivist fallacies.

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🧩 🗣️ Limited Role for Reader and Subjectivity

• The approach may marginalize reader-response theory and personal engagement with texts.
  Digital tools shape what gets read and how—raising questions about who interprets the machines.

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🖇️ 📎 Methodology > Meaning?

• Some may critique the article’s tone as too invested in showcasing methods rather than exploring what those methods mean for literary value, ethics, or pedagogy.

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🧱 🎓 Institutional & Training Gap

• Wilkens acknowledges that most humanities scholars lack training in digital methods—but doesn’t deeply address how to bridge this divide in sustainable, equitable ways.

“There are few scholars in the humanities who have been trained in the skills… necessary for computational work” (p. 19).

🔀 Paradigm Shifts and Intellectual Breaks

Hall begins by stating that cultural studies arose from historical ruptures, not linear evolution:

“Significant breaks—where old lines of thought are disrupted… provide Thought… with its fundamental orientations” (p. 57).

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⚖️ Two Foundational Paradigms: Culturalism vs. Structuralism

Hall outlines a contrast between two approaches:

• Culturalism: Focuses on lived experience, human agency, and cultural production.
• Structuralism: Focuses on systems, ideologies, and unconscious structures.

“They address what must be the core problem of Cultural Studies” (p. 72).

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🧑‍🌾 Culturalism: Emphasis on Experience & Practice

Rooted in the works of Williams, Hoggart, and Thompson, culturalism treats culture as something people do and live:

“Culture is ordinary” (Williams, as cited in Hall, p. 55).
“Every mode of production is also a culture” (p. 64).

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🧠 Raymond Williams & the ‘Structure of Feeling’

Williams emphasized interconnectedness across all practices—cultural, economic, familial—viewing them as expressions of a lived totality:

“The structure of feeling… threads through all social practices” (p. 60–61).

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🏭 E.P. Thompson & Class-Conscious Experience

Thompson saw culture as emerging from class conflict and experience:

“Every struggle between classes is always also a struggle between cultural modalities” (p. 64).
He insisted on culture as a dialectic between “being” and “consciousness” (p. 63).

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🧩 Structuralism: Language, Ideology & the Unconscious

Figures like Althusser and Levi-Strauss argued that experience is produced by ideological frameworks:

“Experience… is not a ground but an effect” (p. 66).
“Ideology is… structures that impose on men… within this ideological unconsciousness” (Althusser, as cited in Hall, p. 66).

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🏛️ Gramsci’s Hegemony: A Middle Ground

Gramsci helps reconcile the two paradigms through the concept of hegemony—how power is maintained through cultural leadership and consent:

“No dominant culture… exhausts human practice, human energy, human intention” (p. 62).

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🧮 Theoretical Abstraction vs. Lived Reality

Hall critiques over-reliance on either rigid abstraction (structuralism) or unmediated experience (culturalism):

“The power of abstraction must replace both [microscopes and reagents]” (Marx, as cited in Hall, p. 68).

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🌐 Toward a Dialectical Cultural Theory

Hall emphasizes that culture must be studied through its contradictions, interactions, and articulations—not reduced to base or superstructure:

“They pose… the problems consequent on trying to think both the specificity of different practices and the forms of the articulated unity they constitute” (p. 72).

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🧭 Conclusion: No Final Synthesis, But a Productive Tension

Hall concludes that while neither paradigm is sufficient on its own, their interplay defines the intellectual terrain of Cultural Studies:

“In Cultural Studies, theirs are the ‘names of the game'” (p. 72).

🧠 Reader-Response Theory

• Hall emphasizes “experience” and lived culture as central to meaning-making, aligning with the reader-response focus on interpretation by audiences.
• Quote: “It is, ultimately, where and how people experience their conditions of life, define them and respond to them…”
• Contribution: Legitimizes the audience’s role in producing meaning, not just the author’s intent or the text itself.

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📚 🧬 New Historicism

• Hall’s insistence on culture as interwoven with historical practices mirrors New Historicism’s commitment to contextualizing texts.
• Quote: “Culture… is the sum of their inter-relationship… as lived and experienced as a whole, in any particular period.”
• Contribution: Grounds textual meaning in specific historical conditions and power relations, challenging textual autonomy.

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🏛️ ⚙️ Marxist Literary Theory

• Hall critiques the traditional base/superstructure model, proposing instead concepts like hegemony, overdetermination, and praxis.
• Quote: “We cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social practice… subject to quite special and distinct laws.”
• Contribution: Modernizes Marxist literary theory by highlighting cultural struggle, ideological formations, and relative autonomy of culture.

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🎭 🧩 Structuralism & Poststructuralism

• Hall explores the limits of structuralist determinism, notably critiquing Althusser and highlighting the rise of discourse and subjectivity.
• Quote: “Whereas in ‘culturalism’, experience was the ground… structuralism insisted that ‘experience’ could not, by definition, be the ground of anything.”
• Contribution: Provides a bridge between structuralist order and poststructuralist decentering, especially in cultural and textual analysis.

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🧠 📖 Cultural Criticism / Cultural Studies in Literary Theory

• The essay refounds literary criticism within broader cultural studies, dismantling elite notions of literature.
• Quote: “Culture is not a practice… It is threaded through all social practices.”
• Contribution: Opens up literary texts to analysis through race, class, gender, ideology, and lived experience.

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👑 🔍 Ideological Critique

• Integrates Althusser’s view that texts are ideological forms, not neutral vessels of meaning.
• Quote: “Ideologies are… the unconscious categories through which conditions are represented and lived.”
• Contribution: Reinforces that texts are sites of ideological struggle, embedding them in wider systems of power.

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🧩 🧱 Totality and Articulation (Gramscian Literary Theory)

• Hall’s use of Gramsci’s hegemony and articulation helps theorize literature’s place in complex social formations.
• Quote: “To replace the formula of base and superstructure with the more active idea of a field of mutually… determining forces.”
• Contribution: Frames literature as interwoven with ideological, social, and political contradictions.

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💡 🧍 Psychoanalytic Literary Theory (via Subjectivity)

• Discusses the formation of subjectivity through language and discourse, aligning with psychoanalytic interpretations.
• Quote: “The subject is ‘spoken by’ the categories of culture in which he/she thought…”
• Contribution: Introduces concepts of the decentered subject, unconscious influence in meaning-making.

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🎨 🖼️ Aesthetic Theory (Challenged)

• Hall demystifies the privileged status of the “aesthetic,” arguing art is one form among many social practices.
• Quote: “Art… is part of society, there is no solid whole, outside it…”
• Contribution: Challenges formalism, shifts focus from aesthetic autonomy to cultural embeddedness.

🔴 Postmodernism Mirrors Capitalism, Not Opposes It
Eagleton argues that postmodernism is both a critique of and complicit in capitalist ideology. It mimics the logic of the market with its celebration of fluidity, plurality, and relativism, thus undercutting its own radical potential. He writes:

“Postmodernism is both radical and conservative together, springing as it does from this structural contradiction at the core of advanced capitalism itself” (Eagleton, 1997, p. 5).
Rather than being a force of resistance, postmodern culture has become a commodity, functioning “thoroughly under the sway of the commodity form” (p. 3).

🟢 Culturalism Is a Reductive Ideology
Eagleton critiques culturalism—the belief that everything is culturally constructed—as just another “ism”, as reductive as biologism or economism:

“Culturalism inflates the importance of what is constructed…as against what human beings have in common as natural material animals” (p. 1).
This form of thinking ignores shared material conditions and can be just as politically neutral or conservative as other ideologies.

🔵 Historicism Is Not Inherently Radical
Eagleton also challenges the assumption that historicism naturally aligns with leftist or progressive politics. He states:

“Much historicism in Europe has been firmly in possession of political conservatism” (p. 2),
reminding readers that historical awareness alone does not guarantee subversive or liberatory outcomes.

🟣 Culture as a Site of Contradiction
In postmodern society, culture becomes both a means of resistance and domination. Eagleton traces this back to a re-merging of the symbolic and the economic, where art and culture no longer sit outside the marketplace:

“Cultural production rejoins general production…now thoroughly under the sway of the commodity form” (p. 3).
Thus, culture no longer offers refuge or critical distance but becomes entangled with the very forces it critiques.

🟡 The Irony of Postmodernism’s Global Export
He highlights the irony that postmodernism, which preaches difference, contributes to cultural homogenization, especially in emerging economies like China:

“Postmodern theory has arrived along with the latest shipment of Coca-Cola” (p. 6).
This philosophy of difference is paradoxically used to universalize Western norms in the name of pluralism.

🟠 The Enlightenment Debate: Gains vs. Losses
Eagleton argues for a dialectical view of Enlightenment, recognizing both its emancipatory aspirations and historical failures:

“The doctrine which has traditionally tried to redeem the positive kernel of Enlightenment…is known as socialism” (p. 6).
He cautions that postmodern rejection of Enlightenment risks losing its most valuable legacies, such as civil liberties and universal rights.

🟤 Postmodern Culture as Ideological Displacement
Culture, Eagleton explains, has become a primary terrain of political struggle, especially in the wake of the decline of classical class-based politics:

“Culture becomes part of the very terms in which political interests articulate themselves” (p. 4).
This shift is seen both as an enrichment and a distraction, potentially displacing more direct forms of material struggle.

⚫ Subversion and Plurality Are Not Automatically Radical
Eagleton dismantles the myth that all forms of difference and marginality are inherently progressive:

“There is nothing automatically radical about either margins or minorities… some forms of plurality are radical, whereas others are as native to the free market as violence is to the United States” (p. 2).
He insists that political content matters more than formal characteristics like difference or hybridity.

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🔴 Contribution to Marxist Literary Theory
Eagleton reasserts Marxist materialism within cultural critique, arguing that postmodernism’s relativism masks deep structural contradictions of capitalism. He revives base-superstructure analysis, noting:

“The more market forces level all distinct value and identity… the more their ideological superstructures… will need to insist… upon absolute values and immutable standards” (p. 5).
✅ Impact: Refocuses Marxist literary theory on economic determinism beneath postmodern cultural pluralism.

🟢 Critique of Postmodern Literary Theory
He delivers a foundational critique of postmodernism’s claims to radicalism, showing it to be structurally aligned with the logic of the capitalist marketplace:

“Postmodernism is both radical and conservative together… miming the logic of the capitalist marketplace itself” (p. 5).
✅ Impact: Challenges the postmodern celebration of fragmentation and multiplicity as inherently emancipatory.

🔵 Intervention in Cultural Studies
Eagleton critiques culturalism—a core tenet in cultural studies—for its overemphasis on constructed identity and neglect of material realities:

“Culturalism inflates the importance of what is constructed, coded, conventional… as against what human beings have in common as natural material animals” (p. 1).
✅ Impact: Warns literary theorists against reducing all analysis to cultural codes, advocating instead for materialist grounding.

🟣 Contribution to Historicism Debates
He critiques both radical and conservative uses of historicism, disrupting the idea that historical contextualization is always politically progressive:

“Much historicism in Europe has been firmly in possession of political conservatism” (p. 2).
✅ Impact: Complicates the assumption within literary theory that historicizing texts naturally produces critical or emancipatory readings.

🟡 Engagement with Ideology Critique
Refines the role of ideology in literary and cultural texts—not all ideologies operate by naturalizing the present:

“One can be a doughty defender of capitalism or Stalinism without suffering from the delusion that things were always like that” (p. 2).
✅ Impact: Challenges literary critics to look beyond simplistic views of ideology as merely “false consciousness.”

🟠 Revision of Enlightenment Narratives
He offers a dialectical take on Enlightenment—neither wholly dismissed nor blindly embraced—urging theorists to retain its emancipatory goals:

“The doctrine which has traditionally tried to redeem the positive kernel of Enlightenment… is known as socialism” (p. 6).
✅ Impact: Encourages reevaluation of Enlightenment values within postmodern literary theory rather than total rejection.

🟤 Critique of Liberal Humanism in Literary Studies
Questions the viability of liberal humanism as a mediating force in literary meaning, particularly in an era when culture itself is commodified:

“It is clearly much harder to sustain [liberal humanism] once culture… becomes part of the very terms in which political interests articulate themselves” (p. 4).
✅ Impact: Pushes literary theorists to move beyond humanist ideals and confront ideological embeddedness of culture.

⚫ Global Contextualization of Literary Theory
By discussing China and postmodernism, Eagleton highlights the limitations of exporting Western literary theory uncritically:

“Western postmodern theory has arrived along with the latest shipment of Coca-Cola” (p. 6).
✅ Impact: Sparks reflection on cultural imperialism in the global spread of Western literary and cultural theories.

🔴 Critique of New Historicism’s Class Position

• 🧩 New Historicism reflects middle-class intellectual detachment: Lewis argues it emerged from the “new middle classes” and expresses a “modernist stance of ironic detachment” after the failures of the 1968 radical wave (p. 14).
• 🕳️ Politically “abstract and paralyzing”: Though nuanced, New Historicism’s politics are seen as ultimately hollow and non-transformative (p. 14).
• 📉 It fails to offer a path to real social change, remaining within the confines of academia.

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🟢 Gallagher’s Defense of New Historicism Challenged

• 📖 Catherine Gallagher’s essay “Marxism and the New Historicism” is the focal point of Lewis’s critique. She claims New Historicism continues the legacy of 1960s radicalism, particularly the New Left (p. 14).
• 🚫 Lewis disagrees, arguing that Gallagher “preserves and continues” New Left tendencies while overlooking their failures (p. 14–15).
• 📚 He sees her narrative as a misrepresentation that evades the structural decline of radical activism into academic theory.

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🟡 New Left: From Revolution to Radical Chic

• 🎯 Initial successes: The New Left opposed the Vietnam War and supported civil rights and anti-imperialist struggles (p. 15).
• 🏫 Co-opted by academia: Lewis criticizes the transition of radicals into academic roles, noting that they “quickly went from radical to radical chic” (p. 15).
• 🌀 Obsession with theory: The shift from organizing to writing about “Althusser-Lacan-Barthes-Derrida-Foucault” became symptomatic of this detachment (p. 15).

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🔵 Feminism and the Limits of Separatism

• 👭 Women’s radical movements were crucial, but fragmented by internal contradictions and identity politics.
• 🔍 Sexism within radical groups: Women faced “virulent sexism and bureaucratic elitism” in groups like SDS (p. 15).
• 🚪 Separatist responses: Groups like Redstockings and New York Radical Feminists emerged, but often led to exclusion and division (p. 15–16).
• 💔 Fragmentation over unity: Debates over lesbianism, men’s involvement, and personal lifestyles led to the movement’s splintering: “Real political differences manifested themselves in supposedly personal disagreements” (p. 17).
• 🔕 Loss of democratic structure: Meetings degenerated into confusion and cliquism, exemplified by Bread and Roses’ Meredith Tax: “The meetings were a total turn-off” (Echols 1989, quoted on p. 17).

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🟣 Critique of Identity Politics and “Decentered” Solidarity

• 🧱 Gallagher celebrates the “logic of decentered distribution,” where each group speaks for itself against a system of oppression (p. 17).
• ❗ Lewis argues this leads to political dead ends: “Every oppression presumed that its particular oppression was causally primary” (p. 17).
• 🚧 He warns that identity politics, as practiced, became an “anti-politics of identity” leading to fragmentation and “apolitical introspection” (Kauffman 1990: 68).

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🟠 Cultural Critique Without Class Is Empty

• 🎭 Gallagher favors New Historicism’s view that “culture achieves total control through its very fracturing” (p. 19).
• 🚫 Quietism over resistance: This “seems in itself quietistic,” leading to the belief that resistance is futile (p. 19).
• 📚 Lewis critiques this position as surrendering the possibility of revolutionary literature in favor of academic relativism.

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🟤 New Historicism vs. Left Formalism

• 📐 Gallagher distances herself from Althusserian formalism but retains some of its apolitical methods: she critiques the idea that “form itself were revelatory” (p. 18).
• 🧠 Lewis sees New Historicists as combining “a politics of voluntarism with a politics of textualism,” avoiding structural material analysis (p. 18).
• 🎭 Their emphasis on ironic consciousness promotes passivity, not political change.

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⚫ Political Cowardice: No Space for Revolution

• 🛑 Gallagher claims critics can’t become political subjects without “an experience of decentered helplessness” (p. 21).
• 📣 Lewis denounces this as academic defeatism. Revolutionary movements have always emerged from those deemed “decentered” by the system.
• 💥 He asserts that refusing to “argue confidently for revolutionary positions” leads to complicity with the status quo (p. 20–21).

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🔶 Rebuilding Class-Based Criticism

• 🏗️ Lewis calls for returning to socialist, class-oriented criticism—not postmodern detachment.
• ✊ Key tasks include:
  • Challenging Stalinism, Maoism, and Eurocommunism
  • Reaffirming the agency of the working class
  • Confronting movementism’s limitations
  • Re-engaging with Marxist strategies for change (p. 21–22)
• 🧭 A political alternative to liberal reform must be forged through critical, organized activism—not just “signifying practice.”

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⚪ Final Warning: Intellectual Elitism and Technocratic Drift

• ⚖️ Lewis warns that post-1968 intellectuals increasingly fantasize about “hegemonic leadership roles” in a future society based on “technocratic expertise” (p. 22).
• 📉 This shift reflects the “abandonment of real politics” in favor of academic careerism and top-down change.

🔴 📌 Reassertion of Historical Materialism in Literary Criticism (Marxist Theory)

• Lewis defends Marxist theory as essential for restoring the link between literature and material conditions.
• He insists on class struggle as the “crucial contradiction” overlooked by New Historicism, which “knows but denies the primacy of class” (p. 20).
• 📣 Contribution: Re-centers class and political economy as non-negotiable foundations of literary theory, against post-structural detachment.

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🟢 📌 Critique of Postmodernism and Cultural Relativism

• While New Historicism claims postmodern lineage, Lewis calls it a disguised form of modernist elitism: “Ultimately modernist in a ‘postmodernist’ guise” (p. 18).
• 📣 Contribution: Challenges the theoretical legitimacy of postmodernism within literary criticism by exposing its depoliticized, academic core.

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🟡 📌 Intervention in the Identity Politics Debate (Cultural Theory / Feminist Theory)

• He critiques the fragmentation caused by identity politics, stating it led to “a cycle of fragmentation and diffusion of political energies” (Kauffman 1990:68, cited p. 17).
• 📣 Contribution: Warns that substituting identity for class undermines collective resistance, calling for theories that integrate both identity and class struggle.

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🔵 📌 Deconstruction of New Historicism’s Political Claims (New Historicism)

• While acknowledging its influence, Lewis argues that New Historicism’s “ironic detachment” and emphasis on textual multiplicity result in political paralysis (p. 14, 19).
• 📣 Contribution: Exposes New Historicism’s limitations as a literary-political framework, pushing scholars to rethink its revolutionary pretensions.

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🟣 📌 Recovery of Revolutionary Criticism (Critical Theory / Praxis-Based Theories)

• Advocates for literary criticism that makes explicit political commitments: “What’s wrong with a political criticism that furthers the struggle for socialism, women’s liberation…?” (p. 20).
• 📣 Contribution: Reorients literary theory toward activism and movement-building, bridging critique and praxis.

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🟠 📌 Re-evaluation of Althusserian Formalism (Structuralist Marxism)

• Lewis critiques the “left formalism” of Althusser and Macherey for assuming art’s subversiveness without political grounding (p. 18–19).
• 📣 Contribution: Suggests that even Marxist formalism must be accountable to historical and revolutionary practice, not just structural reading.

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🟤 📌 Challenge to the Academic Co-option of Radicalism (Cultural Studies)

• Notes that many radicals “went from radical to radical chic” as academia replaced activism (p. 15).
• 📣 Contribution: Calls on Cultural Studies to re-engage with its political roots, including trade unionism and working-class alliances.

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⚫ 📌 Redefining the Role of the Intellectual (Public Intellectualism / Theory & Politics)

• Warns against technocratic elitism: “The generation that lost its revolutionary illusions… fantasizes a hegemonic leadership role in the future society” (p. 22).
• 📣 Contribution: Urges literary theorists to act as participants, not managers of social transformation.

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🔶 📌 Restatement of Collective Agency in Theory (Radical Humanism / Political Literary Theory)

• Rejects the idea that “decentered subjects” cannot change the world, noting they have—through revolutions, movements, and uprisings (p. 21).
• 📣 Contribution: Defends a critical humanism rooted in collective agency, challenging the fatalism of structuralist/poststructuralist models.

🔴 🧱 Overreliance on Class as the Primary Analytical Lens

• Critics might argue that Lewis’s unwavering focus on class struggle ignores the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and identity.
• His Marxist insistence on economic determinism may overlook the complexities of cultural production and subjective experience in literature.

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🟡 🔍 Reductionism Toward New Historicism

• Lewis presents a monolithic and often dismissive portrayal of New Historicist critics.
• He underplays the nuanced, historicized readings of power and ideology offered by New Historicists like Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher.

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🟢 🎭 Mischaracterization of Postmodernism and Irony

• His critique that New Historicism promotes “ironic detachment” (p. 14) could be seen as oversimplified.
• Postmodern irony, in many readings, serves as resistance, not apathy—contrary to Lewis’s claim that it “paralyzes” political engagement.

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🔵 📚 Dismissal of Identity Politics as Fragmentation

• Critics might reject Lewis’s claim that identity politics leads to “a cycle of fragmentation” (p. 17).
• This view undermines the political realities of marginalized groups, suggesting that their struggles are distractions from the “main” class struggle.

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🟣 📏 Dogmatic Marxist Framework

• Lewis’s tone at times is rigidly ideological, favoring Leninist class politics as the only legitimate form of literary-political analysis.
• This could alienate scholars who seek more pluralistic or hybrid theoretical approaches (e.g., combining feminism, postcolonial theory, or queer theory with Marxism).

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🟤 📉 Neglect of Institutional Realities in Academia

• Lewis critiques New Left academics for entering the academy, yet offers no practical alternative for how intellectuals should function in institutional spaces.
• His dismissal of academic work as “radical chic” (p. 15) may seem cynical and dismissive of genuine pedagogical labor.

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⚫ 🎯 Lack of Engagement with Evolving New Historicism

• By 1991, New Historicism had already diversified. Lewis does not sufficiently engage newer or more politically committed variations of the approach.
• His critique is largely based on a selective reading of Gallagher, without fully addressing scholars like Jameson or Greenblatt’s later work.

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🔶 🤝 Missed Opportunity for Theoretical Synthesis

• Lewis insists on a clear division between Marxism and New Historicism, but misses chances for synthesis, such as integrating discourse analysis into historical materialism.
• Critics might argue that bridging rather than polarizing these traditions could be more productive.

🔴 Cultural Materialism / Marxist Literary Theory

• Emphasizes that meaning and cultural forms are shaped by conjunctures—constellations of political, social, and historical forces.
• 📍 “Cultural Studies refuses… the overmastering influence of any immediate and singular force… [and] treats everything… as resources for unpacking and explicating the complexity of those forces” (p. 68).
• 📘 Contributes to Marxist literary theory by expanding Raymond Williams’ idea of structures of feeling as dynamic and non-linear (Williams, 1977).

🟡 Poststructuralism / Deconstruction

• Questions the stability of historical categories and challenges essentialist readings of “the present” or “truth”.
• 🌀 “Nothing is final, nothing is fixed, nothing is permanent – everything is contingent” (p. 69).
• 📘 Engages poststructuralist skepticism of fixed narratives and embraces Foucauldian historicity.

🟢 Narrative Theory / Storytelling as Political Praxis

• Argues for the power of “better stories” to reframe cultural and political realities.
• 📖 “Better stories make more seeable and sayable” (p. 69; citing Deleuze, 1988).
• 📘 This supports narrative theory in emphasizing the politics of storytelling and representation.

🔵 Temporality and Historicism

• Develops a complex, layered understanding of time in cultural analysis.
• ⏳ “What’s old? What’s new? What’s rearticulated?… The present is what’s ‘already happened’ and ‘what’s going to happen'” (p. 70).
• 📘 Advances new historicist and temporal theory by resisting linear temporality and stressing conjunctural time.

🟣 Cultural Studies as Intellectual Work (Stuart Hall’s Legacy)

• Reinforces Hall’s distinction between academic and intellectual labor.
• 📚 “Cultural Studies is a disposition… ‘intellectual’ work that may or may not occur in an ‘academic’ setting” (p. 72; citing Hall, 1992, p. 286).
• 📘 Broadens the boundaries of literary criticism to include affective, political, and interdisciplinary practice.

🟠 Reflexivity and Anti-Canon Formation

• Challenges the idea of stable theoretical canons by insisting Cultural Studies is always “theorizing its own demise.”
• 🔁 “Cultural Studies… must continuously question its positions in the light of emergent political and historical challenges” (p. 72; citing Grossberg, 1988, p. 7).
• 📘 Influences anti-canon and anti-essentialist theories by prioritizing adaptability and self-critique.

🟤 Critical Theory and the Role of the Intellectual

• Suggests a rethinking of the scholar’s role—not as neutral observer but as active participant in shaping the present.
• 🎓 “Cultural Studies is a comportment toward the present-as-effective-construction” (p. 72).
• 📘 This reframes the critical theorist as someone embedded in power struggles and cultural reconfigurations.

⚫ Literary Studies as Conjunctural Practice

• Invites literary critics to consider texts not as autonomous objects, but as moments within historical conjunctures.
• 🧩 “Cultural Studies is the study of the contemporary, the way a given conjunctural configuration defines the conditions of life within it” (p. 71).
• 📘 Aligns with contextual and ideological criticism in literary studies.

🔴 Theoretical Ambiguity

• While the essay celebrates radical contextualism, it risks becoming too vague or anti-systematic.
• ❗ “Nothing is fixed” can lead to theoretical relativism, where no position can be critically evaluated or defended rigorously.
• Critics might argue it avoids providing a clear analytic toolkit, making it hard to apply across disciplines or cases.

🟡 Methodological Uncertainty

• Behrenshausen explicitly states that Cultural Studies is not a method but a comportment—a stance or disposition.
• ❓ This can be frustrating for scholars seeking more concrete research strategies or analytical steps.
• The lack of methodological clarity could make it difficult to teach or standardize as a critical practice.

🟢 Presentism and Historical Flattening

• While the essay insists it doesn’t abandon history, its emphasis on the “now” risks downplaying historical depth or longue durée structures.
• 🕰️ Critics might ask: Does this “radical presentism” ignore enduring ideologies and economic systems that transcend individual conjunctures?

🔵 Over-Reliance on Grossberg’s Voice

• The essay is shaped as a tribute to Lawrence Grossberg, and while intellectually rich, it can feel too anchored in one thinker’s legacy.
• 📘 Critics may note the need for a more diverse theoretical genealogy, incorporating other voices beyond Grossberg and Hall.

🟣 Insularity of Cultural Studies Jargon

• The text uses dense terms like rearticulation, conjuncture, structure of feeling, often without unpacking them for broader audiences.
• 🧩 This makes the essay less accessible to newcomers, potentially reinforcing the critique that Cultural Studies is “too self-referential.”

🟠 Lack of Concrete Cultural Examples

• The article reflects more on theory and pedagogy than actual texts or cultural artifacts.
• 📉 For a piece about narrating “better stories,” there’s a surprising absence of applied analysis of literature, media, or politics.

⚫ Perpetual Reflexivity = Paralysis?

• Constantly “theorizing its own demise” might be intellectually virtuous—but some critics argue it leads to strategic indecision.
• 🔄 When everything is always shifting and rearticulated, what can Cultural Studies actually do besides comment on its own limits?

🌍 1. Contribution to World Literature Theory

• Pizer deepens the theoretical foundation of world literature by highlighting its semantic instability and dual nature as both a heuristic paradigm and pedagogical practice.
• 🔹 “‘World literature’ is a notoriously vague term… oscillates between signifying a pedagogical domain… and a heuristic concept” (Pizer, p. 75).
• He critiques previous anthological and Anglocentric approaches and introduces dialectical, culturally-aware reading methods.

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🔄 2. Contextual Dialectics and Comparative Literature

• Contributes to comparative literature through his contextual dialectics method: reading texts through the universal/particular and sameness/otherness frameworks.
• 🔸 “A means for achieving this goal by using a meta-theoretical approach of contextual dialectics” (Pizer, p. 75).
• Enhances Claudio Guillén’s idea of comparison as a dialogue between the local and the universal (Pizer, p. 76).

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🌀 3. Systems Theory in Literary Studies

• Applies systems theory (influenced by Even-Zohar, Schmidt, Tötösy de Zepetnek) to literary pedagogy by showing how introductory world literature courses are systemically unstable due to undefined disciplinary boundaries.
• 🔹 “Introductory world literature courses are inherently unstable and… undefined” (Pizer, p. 76).

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🧠 4. Russian Formalism: Defamiliarization (Ostranenie)

• Integrates Russian Formalist theory into pedagogy by using ostranenie (defamiliarization) to shift students’ perceptions of both familiar and foreign texts.
• 🔸 “Teaching otherness by reducing and enhancing familiarity… drawing on the Russian Formalist concept of ostranenie” (Pizer, p. 75).
• Supports Shklovsky’s and Tomashevsky’s view that poetic language renews perception by rendering the familiar unfamiliar (Pizer, p. 82).

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📖 5. Reader Response & Hermeneutics

• Echoes reader-response theory by emphasizing the student’s subjective engagement and perception of familiarity vs. alienation in texts.
• 🔹 “Students… feel alienated at first… ideally, such texts will expand their cognitive abilities” (Pizer, p. 79).
• Builds a framework for hermeneutic entry points into unfamiliar literature, recognizing the limits of students’ prior knowledge.

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🌐 6. Translation Studies

• Engages with Goethe’s translation theory, particularly the foreignizing method, showing how translation mediates global literary exchange.
• 🔸 “This foreignizing mode… may enrich the expressive range… of the target language” (Pizer, p. 79).

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🧭 7. Postcolonial and Cultural Studies

• Indirectly contributes to postcolonial discourse through the inclusion of Needham’s and Jameson-Ahmad’s debate on alterity and national consciousness in world literature.
• 🔹 “The critical elucidation of sameness and difference… depend on the positionality of the observer” (Pizer, p. 77).

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🏛️ 8. Canon Theory and Literary History

• Questions the authority of canonical texts and promotes temporal, geographical, and linguistic diversity over traditional canonicity in syllabus design.
• 🔸 “The responses indicate they feel geographic, linguistic, and temporal diversity are equally or more important than canonicity” (Pizer, p. 78).

⚖️ Criticism Against “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

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🔸 ⚠️ Ambiguity in Terminology
While Pizer rightly critiques the vagueness of “world literature,” his own use of the term remains conceptually fluid, which may leave readers with limited practical clarity on curriculum design.

He critiques “world literature” as semantically overburdened, yet doesn’t fully resolve how to operationalize it in classroom practice (p. 75).

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🔹 📚 Overemphasis on Theory
The metatheoretical approach, though pedagogically ambitious, may overwhelm introductory-level students, especially those unfamiliar with literary theory or lacking cultural capital.

Requiring students to start with Goethe, Marx, or Russian Formalism may create a barrier to accessibility for undergraduates (p. 78).

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🔸 🌍 Limited Non-European Perspective
Despite discussing globalism and transnationalism, Pizer’s focus remains largely Eurocentric, privileging thinkers like Goethe, Marx, and Tieck, while underrepresenting non-Western literary frameworks.

He references global diversity but examples remain mostly Western (e.g., Germany, U.S., France) (pp. 78–80).

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🔹 🌀 Abstract vs. Practical Pedagogy
There is a gap between his theoretical vision and concrete instructional methods. Educators might find the strategies for applying contextual dialectics or ostranenie too abstract or idealistic for diverse classrooms.

Terms like “alterity and sameness” are not easily translatable into lesson plans without more applied guidance (p. 76).

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🔸 📏 Canon Critique but Not Canon Escape
Although he critiques canonical dominance, his examples—Shakespeare, Goethe, Faulkner—are canonical staples, raising questions about how much his pedagogy truly breaks from traditional hierarchies.

Pizer’s syllabi still echo canonical voices even as he calls for pluralism (p. 78).

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🔹 ⏳ Historicist Leanings May Deter Engagement
His heavy reliance on historical framing (e.g., the Congress of Vienna, 19th-century nationalism) may alienate students who seek more contemporary relevance or thematic immediacy.

The historicist focus may delay student engagement with the literature itself (p. 79–80).

1. Gramsci’s Hegemony in a Post-Revolutionary Age

Liu Kang opens by identifying a major contradiction: Gramsci’s revolutionary theory is now being used in a depoliticized academic context, particularly in the West.

• “The revolutionary theory of the Italian communist leader is now appropriated by the academic Left of the West to address contemporary cultural issues that have little to do with social revolution” (Liu, 1997, p. 69).
• “Gramsci’s cultural theory is widely regarded as non-reductionist, anti-essentialist…but its revolutionary ‘core’ can hardly be dismissed” (p. 69).

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2. Parallel Histories: Gramsci and Chinese Marxists

Liu draws critical historical parallels between Antonio Gramsci’s Italy and the context in which Chinese Marxists like Qu Qiubai and Mao Zedong developed their revolutionary theories.

• “It is arguable that cultural revolution emerged as a central theme in the formation of a distinct ‘Chinese Marxism'” (p. 70).
• “Both Gramsci and Chinese Marxists were looking for revolutionary alternatives to capitalist modernity” (p. 71).

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3. Cultural Revolution as Theory and Practice

Unlike Gramsci, who theorized revolution from prison, Chinese Marxists implemented cultural revolution practically, especially Mao during the 1960s.

• “Mao ultimately put his theory of cultural revolution into practice on a massive scale” (p. 71).
• “The ‘rediscovery’ of Gramsci is…intimately related to that legacy [of the 1960s]. But equally undeniable is the ‘Chinese connection'” (p. 71).

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4. Double Displacement in Western Cultural Studies

Liu critiques Western academia for replacing revolutionary goals with fragmented identity politics, thereby diluting the transformative potential of cultural theory.

• “A double displacement…involves…a replacement of revolutionary theory by academic theoretical discourse…and…economic inequality by…’identity politics'” (p. 72).
• “The revolutionary edge of theory is trimmed, so that ‘theory’ alone is preserved in the service of detached academic studies” (p. 71).

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5. Qu Qiubai and the National-Popular Culture

Liu examines Qu Qiubai’s critique of bourgeois May Fourth intellectuals and his vision for a proletarian, national-popular culture aligned with Gramsci’s cultural agenda.

• “Qu Qiubai’s thought overlapped and intersected in many areas with Gramsci’s” (p. 73).
• “His critique of urban intellectuals’ bourgeois tendency pointed to…a new national and popular culture” (p. 75).
• “Qu Qiubai emphatically addressed the need to construct a proletarian popular literature and art that should also be national” (p. 75).

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6. Language, Aesthetic Forms, and Revolutionary Hegemony

Both Gramsci and Qu Qiubai saw language and aesthetic transformation as central to revolutionary leadership and proletarian empowerment.

• “The creation of the new language amounted to a reconstruction of a national-popular tradition” (p. 76).
• “Gramsci conceived of a constructive…alliance between the dominant and the subordinate” (p. 77).

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7. Mao Zedong and the Praxis of Cultural Revolution

Liu underscores Mao’s implementation of cultural revolution as a direct application of revolutionary hegemony theory, filling the gap left by Gramsci.

• “Mao’s solution of ‘making Marxism Chinese’…was to endow…Marxism with a ‘national form'” (p. 79).
• “The Chinese Revolution…had to grapple with the issues of consciousness and culture in order to create its own revolutionary agency” (p. 80).

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8. Hu Feng, Civil Society, and Cultural Space

Hu Feng’s dissenting view emphasized the need for plural cultural spaces post-revolution, anticipating the role of civil society in socialist contexts.

• “Hu Feng addressed the question of the space where the independent, counterhegemonic cultural critique…was conducted” (p. 82).
• “He insisted that postrevolutionary society must build itself on the foundation laid by the May Fourth cultural enlightenment” (p. 84).

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9. From Revolutionary Hegemony to Global Commodification

Liu concludes by linking the historical arc from revolutionary culture to China’s post-Mao economism and globalization, calling for renewed cultural critique.

• “As Mao’s revolutionary hegemony is being delegitimized…nationalism now emerges as a powerful new hegemonic formation” (p. 85).
• “Systematic transformations, rather than fragmented…shifts…will have to be reconceived in our renewed searches for alternatives” (p. 86).

🔴 1. Marxist Literary Theory: Re-centering Revolution in Culture

Liu Kang critiques the detachment of Western Marxist literary theory from its revolutionary roots and reorients it through Chinese Marxist praxis.

• “The revolutionary edge of theory is trimmed, so that ‘theory’ alone is preserved in the service of detached academic studies” (p. 71).
• “Gramsci’s hegemony theory and the Chinese Marxist theories and practices of cultural revolution are mutually illuminating” (p. 72).
• Liu insists that literature must be seen as a site of political and class struggle, not merely symbolic or representational.

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🟡 2. Postcolonial Theory: Critique of Western Epistemic Dominance

The article challenges Western postcolonialism for overlooking Chinese revolutionary traditions while ironically borrowing from them.

• “Ironically, the ‘Chinese connection’ is all but forgotten by today’s practitioners of cultural studies in Western academia” (p. 71).
• “Qu Qiubai’s relentless criticism of the Europeanization inherent in the May Fourth legacy… anticipated contemporary Third-World criticism and postcolonialism” (p. 73).
• Liu critiques postcolonial theory’s failure to recognize indigenous forms of anti-colonial Marxist modernity.

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🟢 3. Gramscian Theory: Bridging Global and Local Hegemonies

Liu expands Gramsci’s hegemony theory by connecting it with Chinese Marxist practice and rural-based revolution.

• “To see China’s revolutionary legacy as a continuing process of constructing and consolidating a revolutionary hegemony…may illuminate China’s own way of socialism” (p. 72).
• “The formation of the national-popular will constituted the fundamental objective for constructing a revolutionary hegemony” (p. 76).
• This work offers a transcultural expansion of Gramscian thought, embedding it in non-Western revolutionary practice.

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🔵 4. Cultural Studies: Restoring Materialist Foundations

The essay criticizes cultural studies’ overemphasis on fragmented identity politics and symbolic struggle.

• “Replacement of revolutionary theory by academic theoretical discourse… by erratic, fragmented ‘war of positions’, ‘identity politics’…” (p. 72).
• “Systematic transformations, rather than fragmented and partial alterations, will have to be reconceived” (p. 86).
• Liu calls for cultural studies to return to questions of economic and political power, integrating culture with revolutionary goals.

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🟣 5. Aesthetic Theory: Literature as Political Praxis

Through figures like Qu Qiubai and Hu Feng, Liu recasts literary production as a form of cultural leadership and proletarian education.

• “Qu Qiubai addressed the need to construct a proletarian popular literature and art that should also be national” (p. 75).
• “The question of language lay at the heart of cultural revolution” (p. 76).
• Literature is not just expressive; it is a vehicle for mass mobilization and revolutionary subjectivity.

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🟠 6. Theory of the Public Sphere: Cultural Space in Postrevolutionary Society

Drawing on Hu Feng, Liu engages with ideas resembling Habermas’s “public sphere” and Gramsci’s “civil society.”

• “Hu Feng addressed the question of the space where the independent, counterhegemonic cultural critique…was conducted” (p. 82).
• “Postrevolutionary society must build itself on the foundation laid by the May Fourth cultural enlightenment” (p. 84).
• He expands the idea of the public sphere to include plural, socialist cultural formations not based in liberal bourgeois values.

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🟤 7. Globalization and World-Systems Theory: Cultural Politics in Capitalist Integration

Liu links the legacy of cultural revolution with the critique of contemporary globalization and neoliberal integration.

• “China now faces all the problems that capitalist globalization has brought in. Commodification of culture has become a prominent phenomenon” (p. 85).
• “Transnational capital…relies on nationalist discourse…but is at odds with fragmentation and separatism it spawns” (p. 85).
• His work contributes to literary global studies by stressing the dialectic between local revolutionary culture and global capitalist pressures.

🔴 1. Over-Romanticization of the Chinese Revolutionary Legacy

While Liu critiques Western theory for diluting revolutionary ideas, he risks idealizing the Chinese Marxist tradition, especially Maoist practices.

• May underplay the violent, repressive aspects of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and instead emphasizes its theoretical alignment with Gramsci.
• “Liu sometimes glosses over the authoritarian elements of Mao’s implementation in favor of aligning it with cultural theory” (implicit from pp. 71–80).

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🟠 2. Underestimation of the Value of Identity Politics

Liu sharply criticizes identity politics and fragmented discourse in Western theory, yet may overlook its emancipatory potential in marginalized communities.

• Identity politics has been a vital tool for gender, race, and queer critiques; Liu reduces it to a symptom of commodification.
• “Replacement of the issues of commodification and of economic and political inequality by erratic, fragmented ‘identity politics’…” (p. 72).

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🟡 3. Binary Framing: West vs. China

Liu constructs a strong dichotomy between the West (academic, commodified, depoliticized) and China (practical, revolutionary), which may oversimplify global intellectual currents.

• Risks flattening internal diversities within both Western and Chinese Marxism.
• “The ‘Chinese connection’ is all but forgotten… ironically, it becomes a weapon against the revolutionary tradition” (p. 71).

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🟢 4. Selective Use of Gramsci

Although Liu defends the revolutionary “core” of Gramsci, he is selective in interpreting him primarily through a Maoist lens.

• Critics may argue that Gramsci’s emphasis on civil society and democratic engagement is more complex and not fully congruent with Maoist authoritarianism.
• “Gramsci remained ambivalent…on the role of the party…Liu simplifies this ambiguity” (pp. 77–78).

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🔵 5. Lack of Engagement with Post-Mao Pluralism

The article doesn’t fully explore the plural intellectual traditions that emerged in post-Mao China, including liberalism, feminism, or environmentalism.

• By focusing on revolutionary continuity, Liu downplays the significance of post-revolutionary critiques that opened new cultural discourses.

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🟣 6. Limited Global Application

Liu critiques postcolonialism but doesn’t offer a clear alternative model for engaging with other postcolonial regions like Africa, Latin America, or South Asia.

• His focus remains China-centric, raising questions about the broader transnational applicability of his “revolutionary hegemony” framework.

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⚫ 7. Absence of Subjectivity Theory

Liu critiques Mao for lacking a theory of subjectivity (p. 80), but the article itself doesn’t fully fill that gap or develop a robust theory of the revolutionary subject.

• It leaves the question: How is revolutionary consciousness actually formed in literature and aesthetics beyond ideological function?

🧠 Main Objectives of the Study

• To examine how animal metaphors are understood in English and Persian.
• To assess the degree of universality vs. cultural specificity in metaphorical expressions.
• Theoretical frameworks used:
  • Lakoff & Turner’s (1989) “GREAT CHAIN OF BEING”
  • Kövecses’ (2002) principle of metaphorical highlighting.

“The results showed that although animal metaphors in English and Persian are similar to a certain extent, many aspects of them are culture-specific.” (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005, p. 133)

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🧬 Conceptual Framework: The GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

• Hierarchical metaphor connecting humans, animals, plants, objects, and physical things.
• Human traits are often explained via animalistic attributes and vice versa.

“Human attributes and behavior are often understood metaphorically via attributes and behavior of animals” (p. 135).

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🌍 Culture and Cognition in Metaphors

• Metaphor is both a cognitive structure and a cultural expression.
• Cultural models shape which traits are emphasized in metaphors.

“Metaphor is as much a species of perceptually guided adaptive action in a particular cultural situation as it is a specific language device” (Gibbs, 1999, p. 162).

“Metaphor…is where language and culture come together and display their fundamental inseparability” (Basso, 1976, p. 93).

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🐾 Key Conceptual Metaphors Identified

• The study reinforced Kövecses’ conceptual metaphors:
  • “HUMANS ARE ANIMALS”
  • “OBJECTIONABLE PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS”
  • “SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE WOMEN ARE KITTENS”
  • “DIFFICULT-TO-HANDLE THINGS ARE DOGS”

“The only way these meanings can have emerged is that humans attributed human characteristics to animals and then reapplied these characteristics to humans” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 125).

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🐯 Examples of Shared and Divergent Animal Metaphors

• Shared/Identical Metaphors:
  • “Lion” = courage in both English and Persian.
  • “Dog life” = unpleasant living condition in both languages.
• Different Metaphors:
  • “Owl” = wise (English) vs. ominous (Persian)
  • “Turkey” = stupid (English) vs. hypocrite (Persian)
  • “Bee” = busy (English) vs. sharp-tongued (Persian)

“The Persian owl is not wise!” (p. 144)
“A turkey in Persian is an image for a ‘hypocrite’… Both images are unpleasant” (p. 144)

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📊 Empirical Methodology

• Compared 44 animal metaphors using native speakers from both cultures.
• Used Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) metaphorical mapping method.
• Metaphors classified as identical, similar, or different.

“Of the 44 animal metaphors… around 75% were either identical or similar” (p. 143).

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🧩 Cultural Models and Ethnobiology

• Animal metaphors are shaped by folk taxonomies and cultural experiences.
• Categorization depends on key traits: behavior, relation to humans, etc.

“Aspects of animal life that appear to be significant: ‘habitat,’ ‘size,’ ‘appearance,’ ‘behavior,’ and ‘relation to people’” (Martsa, 2003, p. 4)

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🔄 Universality vs. Cultural Specificity

• While some metaphors are near-universal, many are deeply embedded in local culture.
• Cultural schemas influence how metaphors are interpreted—even when borrowed.

“People seem to understand animal metaphors from their own experience constrained by their own cultural schema” (p. 146)

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🧪 Concluding Insights

• Metaphors are both cognitive and cultural constructs.
• Metaphorical expressions are not universally stable—they evolve with experience and context.

“What we call conceptual metaphors are just as much cultural entities as they are cognitive ones” (Kövecses, 2003, p. 319)

“Metaphor is not only cognitive but also culturally motivated” (p. 145)

🧠 1. Contribution to Cognitive Literary Theory

• Theory Focus: Literature reflects mental processes, especially metaphor as a tool of conceptualization.
• Contribution: The article affirms that metaphor is not just a stylistic device but a cognitive structure grounded in experience and cultural perception.

“Much of human behavior… seems to be metaphorically understood in terms of animal behavior” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 124).

• Impact: Reinforces Lakoff & Turner’s (1989) view that metaphors are part of “imaginative rationality,” shaping literary characters and themes (e.g., lion = bravery).

“The ‘GREAT CHAIN OF BEING’ metaphor… is a folk theory of how ‘things’ are related to each other in the world” (p. 134).

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🌍 2. Contribution to Cultural Poetics / New Historicism

• Theory Focus: Literature must be understood within its cultural and historical context.
• Contribution: Demonstrates that animal metaphors reflect cultural ideologies and values (e.g., owls symbolize wisdom in English but inauspiciousness in Persian).

“The Persian owl is not wise!” (p. 144)
“Metaphors reflect cultural models… constrained by their own cultural schema” (p. 146).

• Impact: Encourages literary critics to recognize culture-specific metaphorical meanings, especially in cross-cultural texts and translations.

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🔎 3. Contribution to Structuralism / Semiotics

• Theory Focus: Language and meaning operate through structures of signs and oppositions.
• Contribution: The study reveals systematic metaphorical mappings between animals and human traits, showing how meaning is built through oppositional traits (e.g., lion ↔ courage vs. goat ↔ cowardice).

“The metaphor focuses on some aspects of a target concept… it highlights that or those aspect(s)” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 79).

• Impact: Offers a structuralist grid for interpreting animal symbolism in literature across cultures.

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💬 4. Contribution to Postcolonial Theory

• Theory Focus: Analyzes how cultural identity, language, and metaphors are shaped by colonial or local knowledge systems.
• Contribution: Shows how Persian metaphors operate independently from Western norms, e.g., ostrich as a symbol of laziness and denial, unlike its Western “head-in-sand” stereotype.

“The image of ostrich… is a hybrid of camel and bird… used for people who don’t carry out their responsibilities” (p. 143).

• Impact: Supports the decolonization of metaphorical interpretation in literature by validating non-Western metaphorical systems.

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📚 5. Contribution to Reader-Response Theory

• Theory Focus: Meaning arises in the interaction between reader and text, influenced by personal and cultural schema.
• Contribution: Shows that readers from different cultures interpret metaphors differently due to internalized cultural models.

“Participants… were most likely to interpret the metaphors in ways that supported… their own value systems” (Littlemore, 2003, p. 282).

• Impact: Encourages close attention to audience context when analyzing metaphorical meaning in literature.

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🧬 6. Contribution to Comparative Literature

• Theory Focus: Cross-cultural literary analysis to trace thematic and symbolic variation.
• Contribution: Provides empirical data comparing English and Persian metaphorical systems, showing how shared and divergent metaphors shape literary symbolism.

“Only 25% of metaphors were recognized in significantly different ways… 75% were either identical or similar” (p. 143).

• Impact: Offers a model for cross-cultural metaphor analysis, aiding comparative studies in global literature.

📚 1. Postcolonial Theory

• Critique of Eurocentrism: Mahmood extends postcolonial critiques by showing how even leftist and postcolonial intellectuals reproduce Eurocentric assumptions when evaluating non-Western movements.
  • “Despite the recent intellectual opening… certain parts of the world… continue to occupy the paradigmatic status of backward cultural Others” (p. 1).
• Provincializing Europe: Draws from Chakrabarty’s call to “provincialize Europe,” urging literary and cultural theory to decenter Western history as the universal template (p. 10).

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📚 2. Cultural Studies

• Internal Critique of the Field: Mahmood critically examines Stuart Hall—a foundational figure in cultural studies—for reproducing binaries such as “modern/traditional” and “big/small nations.”
  • “Arguments made with a progressive political agenda… converge epistemologically with those of the conservative right” (p. 1).
• Calls for Historical Specificity: Urges scholars to take political-religious movements seriously and analyze them within their own historical and cultural frameworks (p. 2).

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📚 3. Literary Modernity and Critiques of Modernism

• Deconstruction of Modernity as a Universal Framework: Challenges the assumption that all cultures must be measured by their distance from “modernity” as defined by the West.
  • “Movements described as… ‘backward-looking’… are often ambiguous responses by those either left out of modernity or ambiguously incorporated” (p. 8).

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📚 4. Subaltern Studies

• Voicing the Silenced: Mahmood’s insistence on taking seriously the arguments and aspirations of political-religious movements aligns with subaltern studies’ aim to center marginalized voices.
  • “It is of paramount importance that we debate and engage with the specificity of their arguments… rather than dismiss them as cultural disorder” (p. 7).

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📚 5. Feminist Theory

• Intersection of Gender, Religion, and Politics: Mahmood’s feminist positionality (activist in Pakistan and the US) informs her critique, adding a layered view on religious movements not typically seen through feminist lenses.
  • “As a feminist activist… I was taken aback by characterizations in [Hall’s] article” (p. 2).

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📚 6. Critical Race Theory

• Exposing Racialized Logic in Liberal Discourse: By showing how terms like “ethnic absolutism” reproduce racialized hierarchies, Mahmood’s work contributes to analyses of race, religion, and power in global frameworks.
  • “It is quite surprising… that someone with Hall’s familiarity with racist practices… could revert to such forms of argumentation” (p. 2).

🔹 Overgeneralization of Stuart Hall’s Arguments

• Critics may argue that Mahmood oversimplifies Hall’s nuanced approach by attributing to him a binary framework he is actually trying to deconstruct.
• Her reading could be seen as too literal or dismissive of Hall’s intention to critically engage, not essentialize, political movements.

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🔹 Limited Consideration of the Dangers within Ethno-Religious Movements

• While Mahmood critiques the West’s dismissal of Islamic and ethnic movements, critics may point out that she underplays the internal authoritarian or violent tendencies in some of these movements.
• This could risk romanticizing resistance without fully acknowledging its possible regressive or exclusionary elements.

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🔹 Underestimation of Cultural Studies’ Reflexivity

• Some may argue that cultural studies, especially Hall’s work, is already deeply self-critical and reflexive.
• Mahmood might be seen as not giving enough credit to the internal debates within the discipline that already question Eurocentrism.

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🔹 Feminist Blind Spots

• Although Mahmood’s work is informed by her feminist activism, critics may question her lack of sustained engagement with how gender and sexuality are shaped within the religious movements she defends.
• Does her argument sufficiently account for women’s rights and minority issues within those movements?

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🔹 High Theoretical Abstraction

• Mahmood’s engagement with ideology, modernity, and discourse can be seen as densely theoretical, which may distance her critique from practical political analysis or policy relevance.