Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism

by Tobin Siebers

In Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism, Tobin Siebers claims that modern criticism is a Cold War criticism. Postwar literary theory has absorbed the skepticism, suspicion, and paranoia of the Cold War mentality, and it plays them out in debates about the divided self, linguistic indeterminacy, the metaphysics of presence, multiculturalism, canon formation, power, cultural literacy, and the politics of literature. The major critical movements...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195079655
• ISBN13: 9780195079654
• Release Date: April 1993
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

From the Cold War to the Culture Wars

This book is a fine exploration of the influence the cold war has had on literary criticism during the past fifty years. Siebers shows how apparent opposites (New Critics and Paul de Man, say) are strange bedfellows in that they all avoid genuine political engagements by insulating themselves with skepticism. Real politics, Siebers shows in his chapter on Hannah Arendt, is defined by costs. Well written, fun to read. This book hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves.