Selective Affinities: Literature and New Critical Theory

Rita Felski’s new work brings literary studies into conversation with more affirmative and democratic forms of critical theory. Literary critics associate the phrase “Frankfurt School” with early twentieth-century thinkers like Adorno or Benjamin, but contemporary German critical theory remains largely unknown. In this new book, Rita Felski draws on the work of a group of important philosophers and social theorists to offer fresh readings of literary texts by Robert Walser, Didier Eribon, Zadie Smith, Magda Szabo, John Williams, and Dionne Brand. Through five key concepts derived from her reading of German theory—disclosure, recognition, self-realization, lifeworld, and resonance—Felski asks how these literary texts articulate the relationship between intellectuals and others. Contrary to critical theories that discount everyday experience, new German thought reveals the ethical, existential, and political richness of such experience. Through this framework, Felski shows that literature, theory, and experience are not opposed but mutually constitutive.