To the Editor:
Simon During’s essay “The Conservative Turn in Literary Studies,” (The Chronicle Review, January 6) grabbed my attention instantly. I expected “conservative” to refer to certain worrisome trends in higher education–anti-DEI initiatives, the dismantling of the humanities, and the attacks against fields like gender studies and critical race theory. By “conservative,” however, During implies that literary studies is retreating to its foundations in aesthetic concerns rather than social inquiry. This retreat, he affirms, is not conservative in the partisan sense of the term, but rather embrace of the field’s declining social relevance as a defense mechanism against continuous attacks against it by actual conservatives.
There are certain assumptions that complicate During’s lukewarm endorsement of this “pivotal” conservative turn. First, as a discipline, literary studies is not synonymous with English departments, as it encompasses the study of literatures in languages other than English. As Ignacio Sanchez-Prado has pointed out, developments in non-English literary studies, and particularly in heritage speaker languages like Spanish, paint a different picture of the field “literary studies.” Even if we were to accept that literary studies is akin to disciplinary methods discussions in English alone, referring to aesthetic and social concerns as separate categories flattens the task of critics, who blend the study of genre and language with that of culture a society. Referring to criticism on identity — meaning race, gender, sexuality, disability, but interestingly not social class — as “evangelical” implies that the denunciations of systemic oppression are loud, annoying, and orthodox. Overall, During defends two binarisms that scholars of literature have long undermined: aesthetics/society and materialism/identity politics.
As a literary critic, I sympathize with During’s alarming remarks on the decline of literary studies as an institution within higher education. Yet I do not think a retreat into the wisdom of the barely one century old-ancients, political quietism, and an embrace of elitism are effective strategies against it. If anything, they amount to accepting the defeat of the profession, hoping that the few privileged tenured professors in English get to keep their positions by assuring the right-wing that they will silently retreat back to their scholastic corners.
Salvador Lopez Rivera
Visiting assistant teaching professor of French
Loyola University Maryland