Like many volumes of conference proceedings, Joseph Buttigieg's Criticism without Boundaries offers a mixed collection of presentations that display varying degrees of quality as well as shifting foci. Three of these texts—by Bove, Buttigieg, and O'Hara—are superb; five of the essays are competent and interesting; and two are quite weak. In Buttigieg's view, the "presence of the boundary 2 'group' helped in no small measure to give the 1984 Ward-Phillips Lectures their distinctive character." What is perhaps most distinctive throughout the volume is the recurring idea that critics "must work incessantly against all diose barriers that diversely shield intellectuals, individually and collectively, from the major social, cultural, political, economic, and moral struggles of their times." Here the scope of the activity renders criticism a cultural project rooted in sociohistorical modes of analysis. Among the surprises in this boundary 2 collection are an exposition of French feminism by Donna Przybylowicz, a study of Freud's appeal to critics by Daniel O'Hara, an "explanation" of Heidegger's politics by Fred Dallmayr, and a defense of die boundary 2 school by Donald Pease. These are surprises because in the past the members of this group have shown little interest in feminism or psychoanalysis and less interest in apologetics or self-justification.

Criticism Without Boundaries PDF

The list of books you might like