From Metacriticism to Normative Ethos: The Applied Turn of Theory

Abstract

Theory ensemble dominant critical practices humanities social sciences since 1970s from reflexive metacritique poststructuralism postmodernism philosophical deconstruction into normative and applicative ethos It examines how the internal crises of structuralism combined with the external pressures of 1960s countercultural movements detached literature from the liberal arts tradition and redefined it as a tool of socio-political emancipation Consolidated by poststructuralism and neo-Marxist critical theories the hermeneutics of suspicion became hegemonic in Western universities shifting literary studies away from epistemic aesthetic and universalist-humanist criteria toward the imperatives of identity politics and Critical Social Justice The revision of the canon the rewriting of classics the institutionalization of citation justice and the redefinition of critical thinking illustrate Theory's conversion into a militant project of cultural and social reengineering.