Situational Tensions of Critic-Intellectuals

Since there can be no literary theory without a theorist, theorizing must be taken to mean some "person-theorizing" or "theorizing with a certain personage." This book, using Edward W. Said and Frank Lentricchia as examples, analyses the -intellectual- as such, as an informing personage or self-image in contemporary -oppositional criticism-. The literary politics this self-image helps to conceptualize is also analyzed. Focusing on the discursive, institutional, and existential situatedness of the critic-intellectual, this book explores the specific forms of tensions embedded in and constituting his -oppositional criticism-."