Abstract

AbstractRecent advocates of postcritique urge scholars not to read texts suspiciously but instead to regard texts as capable of saying what they mean and, accordingly, to take those meanings seriously. While a suspicious disposition underlies much of introductory composition pedagogy, especially the teaching of argument, postcritique has made little entry into discourses of undergraduate instruction. Attending to the New Sincerity movement in American literature, film, and music after 1980, this essay examines how teaching texts that emphasize their own sincerity (and the difficulty of achieving sincere expression) can encourage students to regard argument and interpretation not as suspicious practices but as means for a generous mode of description that does not sacrifice the complexity of a given text.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2023-10-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-10640124
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 10 works outside this index ↓
  1. Surface Reading: An Introduction
    Representations  
  2. Writing without Teachers
  3. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process
  4. Uses of Literature
  5. The Limits of Critique
  6. Hooked: Art and Attachment
  7. The Limits of Critique and the Affordances of Form: Literary Studies after the Hermeneuti…
    American Literary History  
  8. Close but Not Deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn
    New Literary History  
  9. Building a Better Description
    Representations  
  10. Interpret or Describe?
    Representations  
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →