There’s some irony in the fact that the people decrying postcritique as an expression of neoliberalism are working within the assumptions of a paradigm that’s coeval with neoliberalism.

The decline of the left in the Regan/Thatcher era is the very same moment that “the politics of _____” titles start appearing regularly, the implication being that those politics are not obvious and need to be unearthed through critique.

But fast forward to now, and many (young) academics are actively calling for and attempting real organization, so critique seems like weak tea by comparison. New critical readings don’t seem like a expedient path to political action.

Meanwhile, a large number of readings in the mode of critique have become insistent on their political relevance, but without explaining why a new reading of Ann Petry, Anthony Trollope, whoever is interesting; why these authors are worth attention in the first place.

In other words, suspicious readings often seem less contributions to a struggle for emancipation and more a replacement to political action.

Good postcritical approaches, as I see them, are taking it as given that literary texts are important, but that this importance must be demonstrated, not taken for granted—that scholars need to make the case for spending time with these texts.

Some works respond well to critique, but others call for other attitudes of engagement.

So to come full circle, it seems like many of those hostile to and dismissive of postcritique as a political quietism unjustifiably assume the salient political effects of their own work.