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Article: The bottlenecks of literary Darwinism.(Responses)
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- June 22, 2008
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In his book, Literary Darwinism, Professor Carroll observes that "the professional advantages of poststructuralist doctrine should be obvious. It enables literature professors to adopt a prefabricated critical stance that depends in no way on the empirical validity of their findings" (16). Couldn't literary Darwinism afford its practitioners similar "professional advantages?" With the corporatization of the academy in full swing, empirical studies on literature, in their pursuit of "practical" and/or "valid" claims, wish to make literary criticism into a more "marketable" field. By transforming the literary arm of the humanities into an increasingly scientific or factual ...