I meant the business of academic "critical theory," which produces, I suspect, a great deal many books that are read by hardly anyone -- but such is the "madness of crowds," they are necessarily produced to advance professors' careers.
----The labels proliferate: new historicism, cultural materialism, materialist feminism, ecofeminism, postcolonialism, deconstruction, structuralism, poststructuralism, race theory, gender theory, queer theory, postmodernism … the list might go on. This extensive list of labels seems to signal genuine range and diversity; however, in terms of their ideas, these approaches are somewhat narrower in scope and focus than one might expect. Virtually every approach listed here lays claim to be ‘radical’, which is to say politically of the left or even hard left – with roots in Marxist theory – hostile to capitalism, the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, liberal humanism, and even to the West itself. Virtually all are also committed to ‘social justice’. It must be noted that, since about 1980, these labels accurately register the genesis of literary studies as a discipline, but what they do not register is that, as they were rising, dissenting voices were systemically hounded out of the academy.---
Many universities and colleges currently advertise literary theory courses which purport to introduce students to a range of different approaches to literary texts.
quillette.com
That's what I had in mind. This isn't the place for a discussion, much less a debate, about these matters. But my sense is that the books Dask mentioned above by Van Wyck Brooks will be good reading for some of us who would not find the current stuff rewarding.
