Ours is a time of institutional crisis. It is our institutions that are in crisis, and because they dominate and define our public order, it is our institutions that have plunged us into crisis. While a host of reasons might be summoned to explain how and why this is so, the identifying mark of our dominant institutions is that they are critical bodies. Whether in academia, media, jurisprudence, social science, or other prestigious knowledge-work industriesâ??—â??increasingly, even beyond that ambit, in sports and entertainmentâ??—â??criticism is what the institutional elite practices, produces, and promulgates.
One of the many consequences of this state of affairs is that this is an uncanny, uncertain time for what critics have long called the "Great Books"â??—â??what the great critic Harold Bloom called with a bit more specificity the "Western Canon." For here are found the theorists in whose critical thinking can be found the germ of our signature institutions, wave upon wave over time.
Read Full Article »
