ON THE RELEVANCE OF THE POSTCRITICAL ATTITUDE. READING W. H. AUDEN AS AN ADDRESSEE

Abstract

This paper examines the possibility of a systematic and rigorous mode of thought capable of accounting for how works of art address us. Indeed, postcritical literary theory today is increasingly articulating, in a more refined form, the view that being affected by a work of art cannot be summarily dismissed as mere naïve susceptibility. Within a context where the critical ethos asserts its exclusive authority, the aesthetic domain appears able to sustain its legitimacy only through a process of self-critique—dismantling its own claims in favor of ontologically more fundamental structures. The postcritical approach, however, reframes the debate. It makes professionally relevant a different kind of question: What is it that artworks do to us? Building on this postcritical foundation, I suggest that the attitude of the φίλος towards the artistic object—one that affirms the artwork in its very being—may offer a meaningful response to the crisis of self-legitimation and methodology in the humanities. My argument is that one of the foremost tasks confronting literary studies today is to attend to the addressing force inherent in works of art. Finally, to substantiate my theoretical claims, I juxtapose two readings of W. H. Auden’s poem, But I can’t: one critical, based on the assumptions of identity politics, another motivated by the attitude of the φίλος.