The Reign Of Ideology

In The Reign of Ideology Goodheart presents a powerful tenacious critique ofthe prevailing fixation on ideology in literary theory. Exposing thedebilitating eff... » 

In The Reign of Ideology Goodheart presents a powerful tenacious critique ofthe prevailing fixation on ideology in literary theory. Exposing thedebilitating effects of much ideology critique which seeks to reveal theeffects of power privilege and interest underlying critical approaches toworks of art whether practiced by feminists neoMarxists Foucauldians NewHistoricists or postcolonialists he argues for a new kind of criticism thatwill reintroduce the pleasures of literature.Goodheart cedes nothing to the alarmist conservative or neoconservativepositions. He offers instead a genre of criticism that is neither purelyaesthetic nor deterministic but one opposed to all forms of dogma Genuinethinking is an activity against the grain of ideological formulas that petrifythe mind he writes.With chapters on the New York intellectuals Kenneth Burke Primo Levi and JeanAmry and Richard Rorty Goodheart appreciates a wide variety of writing. TheReign of Ideology will speak to historians sociologists political theoristsand thos interested in cultural studies. «