Description: In "The Reign of Ideology" Goodheart presents a powerful, tenacious critique of the prevailing fixation on ideology in literary theory. Exposing the debilitating effects of much "ideology critique" -which seeks to reveal the effects of power, privilege, and interest underlying critical approaches to works of art- whether practiced by feminists, neo-Marxists, Foucauldians, New Historicists, or post-colonialists, he argues for a new kind of criticism that will reintroduce the pleasures of literature.
Goodheart cedes nothing to the alarmist conservative or neo-conservative positions. He offers instead a genre of criticism that is neither purely aesthetic nor deterministic, but one opposed to all forms of dogma: "Genuine thinking is an activity against the grain of ideological formulas that petrify the mind, " he writes.
With chapters on the New York intellectuals, Kenneth Burke, Primo Levi and Jean Amry, and Richard Rorty, Goodheart appreciates a wide variety of writing. "The Reign of Ideology" will speak to historians, sociologists, political theorists, and thos interested in cultural studies.

Please Wait