Obliterature: Toward an Amateur Criticism

Postcritique and the Problem of the Lay Reader

“…By directing attention to the casual, minor, or ephemeral types of writing traditionally excluded from the purview of literary studies -such as editorial notes, diary entries, and Instagram posts -Micir and Vadde stress the value of developing alternative lines of inquiry that bring "unprofessional postures and exploited workers back into focus" in order to rethink "what expertise is and where it lies." 26 Or take Emre's above-mentioned work on the "paraliterary," which similarly -though unimpressed by many postcritical trends -suggests a renewed ethnographic interest in "bad" writers and readers "with little to no social value to the institutions of literature and the guardians of literary culture." 27 While such inclusions of lowbrow texts and their readers are certainly a key part of postcritique's anti-elitist impulse, one might also note the careful attention paid to readability by this group of scholars.…”