Definitions

A Reading Note

“Criticism,” in its Enlightenment sense, consists in recounting to someone what is awry with their situation, from an external, perhaps “transcendental” vantage-point. “Critique” is that form of discourse which seeks to inhabit the experience of the subject from the inside, in order to elicit those “valid” features of that experience which point beyond the subject’s present condition. “Criticism” instructs currently innumerate men and women that the acquisition of mathematical knowledge is an excellent cultural goal; “critique” recognizes that they will achieve such knowledge quickly enough if their wage packets are at stake.

Eagleton, Ideology, page xxiii

In other words, from-the-heavens versus on-the-ground. In reality I think the division here is often less clear-cut, but I won’t argue with a good metaphor.

Selected essays

Writing essays & notes

  1. An addiction

    On To Write Like a Woman and Why We Fear AI

  2. In the world

    In memory of Nevan Scott, 1985–2026

  3. There and here

    On Always Coming Home and Orality and Literacy

  4. The open universe

    On The Language of the Night and The Real World of Technology

Reading books

  1. Lavinia

    by Ursula K. Le Guin

A creative space to practice the future →