首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Our present generation of cultural critics, arriving after the assault of postmodernism and the increasingly widespread commerci
Our present generation of cultural critics, arriving after the assault of postmodernism and the increasingly widespread commerci
admin
2015-04-24
31
问题
Our present generation of cultural critics, arriving after the assault of postmodernism and the increasingly widespread commercialization of culture, has been cast adrift, without any firm basis for judgments. Publications and institutions to support serious criticism, in this view, either no longer exist or are few in number.
Critics today, it is also claimed, are too cozy behind the ivied walls of academe, content to employ a prose style that is decipherable only to a handful of the cognoscenti. The deadly dive of University critics into the shallow depths of popular culture, moreover, reveals the unwillingness of these critics to uphold standards. Even if the reasons offered are contradictory, these Jeremiahs huddle around their sad conclusion that serious cultural criticism has fallen into a morass of petty bickering and bloated reputations.
Such narratives of declension, a staple of American intellectual life since the time of the Puritans, are misplaced, self-serving, and historically inaccurate, so difficult to prove. Has the level of criticism declined in the last 50 years? Of course the logic of such an opinion depends on the figures that are being contrasted with one another. Any number of cultural critics thriving today could be invoked to demonstrate that cultural criticism is alive and well.
But many new and thriving venues for criticism and debate exist today, and they are not limited solely to the discussion of literary works. Actually, they became so entrusted with their own certitude and political judgments that they became largely irrelevant. Today the complaint is that literary culture lacks civility. We live in an age of commercialism and spectacle. Writers seek the limelight, and one way to bask in it is to publish reviews that scorch the landscape, with Dale Peck as the famous, but not atypical, case in point. Heidi Julavits, in an essay in The Believer, lamented the downfall of serious fiction and reviewing. She surveyed a literary culture that had embraced "snark" , her term for hostile, self-serving reviews.
The snark review, according to Julavits, eschews a serious engagement with literature in favor of a sound-bite approach, an attempt to turn the review into a form of entertainment akin to film reviews or restaurant critiques. A critic found cultural criticism to be in "critical condition." For him, the postmodern turn to theory, in its questioning of objectivity, cut the critical, independent ground out from under reviewers. The rise of chain bookstores and blockbuster best sellers demeaned literary culture, making it prey to the commercial values of the market and entertainment.
The criticism does not seem discontinuous. Nor should we forget that civility rarely reigned in the circles of New York intellectuals. The art critic Clement Greenberg physically pummeled the theater critic Lionel Abel after Abel rejected the view that Jean Wahl, the French philosopher, was anti-Semitic. Though Robert Peck has the reputation of a literary hatchet man, so far as I know his blows thus far have all been confined to the printed page.
Cultural criticism has certainly changed over the years. The old days of the critic who wielded unchallenged authority have happily passed. Ours is a more pluralistic age, one not beholden to a narrow literary culture. The democratization of criticism — as in the Amazon system of readers’ evaluating books — is a messy affair, as democracy must be. But the solution to the problems of criticism in the present is best not discovered in the musty basements of nostalgia and sentiment for the cultural criticism of a half-century gone. Rather the solution is to recognize, as John Dewey did almost a century ago, that the problems of democracy demand more democracy, less nostalgia for a golden age that never was, and a spirit of openness to what is new and invigorating in our culture.
What does " the snark review" refer to according to Heidi Julavits?
选项
A、Cultural reviews which are unfriendly and selfless.
B、Literary reviews avoiding serious criticism.
C、Entertainment reviews in the film industry.
D、Postmodern reviews independent of objectivity.
答案
A
解析
细节判断题。根据题干信息定位到原文第四段尾句。此句中的She指代Heidi Julavits,原句中的hostile,self-serving与选项A中的unfriendly,selfless对应。故答案为A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/MgLO777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
Thereisanewtypeofsmalladvertisementbecomingincreasinglycommoninnewspaperclassifiedcolumns.Itissometimesplaced
Thereisanewtypeofsmalladvertisementbecomingincreasinglycommoninnewspaperclassifiedcolumns.Itissometimesplaced
Thereisanewtypeofsmalladvertisementbecomingincreasinglycommoninnewspaperclassifiedcolumns.Itissometimesplaced
Theriseof"temp"workhasfurthermagnifiedthedecreasingrightsandalienationoftheworker.ItiscommoncorporatePractic
Theriseof"temp"workhasfurthermagnifiedthedecreasingrightsandalienationoftheworker.ItiscommoncorporatePractic
ThemilitaryaspectoftheUnitedStatesCivilWarhasalwaysattractedthemostattentionfromscholars.Theroarofgunfire,t
Researchiscommonlydividedinto"applied"and"pure".Thisclassificationisarbitraryandloose,butwhatisusuallymeantis
Priortothe20thcentury,manylanguageswithsmallnumbersofspeakerssurvivedforcenturies.Theincreasinglyinterconnected
TheAmericaneconomy,whetheringovernmentorprivateindustry,hasfoundretirementaconvenientpracticeformanagingthelab
Theageatwhichyoungchildrenbegintomakemoraldiscriminationsaboutharmfulactionscommittedagainstthemselvesorothers
随机试题
Anyonecananswersuchaquestionasthisone,______?
长期卧床易导致呼吸道感染,主要是由于分泌物沉积在呼吸道何处引起
马方综合征引起的主动脉改变,其超声表现错误的是
女性,22岁,口服不详农药60ml后,呕吐,流涎,走路不稳,视物模糊,呼吸困难,口中有大蒜样气味。最重要的实验室检查是
A、β1B、β2受体C、M受体D、N1受体E、N2受体神经节细胞膜上的受体是
()是预期未来收入的现值,其现值就是通过数量化来衡量人身风险。
某企业财务资料显示,2015年会计利润为370万元,其中营业外支出100万元(其中90万元为公益性捐赠支出),上年度经税务机关核定的亏损为30万元。2015年企业所得税前可以扣除的捐赠支出为()万元。
1946年首台电子数字计算机ENIAC问世后,冯.诺依曼在研制EDVAC计算机时,提出两个重要的改进,它们是( )。
Howmanyessaytitlescanstudentschoosefromfortheirfirstassignment?
I’mgoingtotalkaboutthepreservingoffruitshere.Attheendofeverysummer,astheheapsoffreshfruitstarttodwindle(
最新回复
(
0
)