In Contingencies of Value (1988), Barbara Herrnstein Smith developed a structurally contingent concept of value. The question of the good or the end that might determine the value of a work or a practice is inextricably bound to the situation in which that work or practice operates. There is no universal good, she argued, that might define literature’s worth. There are only the local goods, specific to the uses and functions of a work. Imagine, for instance, that someone has just published a well-received book on Proust. Its value will change depending on the social position the evaluator occupies relative to it Its worth changes from the point of view of the author, the author’s mother, an emerging Proust scholar, an established Proust scholar, the copyeditor, a peer reviewer, book reviewer or tenure case reviewer, a department chair endorsing a promotion case, the person who manages a university’s research repository,…
The Values of Critique
Abstract
This essay examines practices of evaluation in the archive of the important journal Critique, founded by Georges Bataille in 1946. The journal was a key forum for the development of postwar philosophy and theory in France, and its archive provides a unique resource for the study of the processes of evaluation and judgement that shaped the field. Considering a variety of archival materials (including advertisements for the journal, issue covers, tables of contents, author piece rate lists, letters and private communications) alongside reviews published in the journal, we examine the institutional processes, editorial practices and thus the more-or-less implied values that organised the journal’s operations. We argue that Critique’s archive reveals a complex, socially diffuse image of value and that the field of forces in which a volume is produced is multidimensional, integrating criteria from a plurality of different fields. The act of evaluative judgement encompasses capital; the prioritisation and ordering of content; operations of recommendation, friendship and mentorship; concerns for political impact; house codes; and norms of engagement.
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Published 30 October 2023 in Special Issue: Literary Value. Subjects: Literature - Study & teaching.
Cite as: Hughes, Joe and Jessica Marian. ‘The Values of Critique.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2023, doi: 10.20314/als.8d67b7762b.
- Joe Hughes — Joe Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in English and Theater Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has written widely on contemporary European thought. Full details →
- Jessica Marian — Jessica Marian is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Culture and Communication contributing to the ARC Discovery Project “Journals in Theory: Practices of Academic Judgement”.Full details →