Modern Criticism Between Culture and System

FAIN: FS-10890-78

Edward W. Said
Columbia University (New York, NY 10027-7922)

To study a group of 20th century writers in French, German, Italian and English whose work embodies a skeptical, individual and adversary critical consciousness. These writers are self-consciously situated between, on the one hand, the claims of a dominant culture (which they characterize and describe) and, on the other, the need for a systematic methodology (which they approach, but finally resist). Writers to be studied: Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Lionel Trilling, R. P. Blackmur, Raymond Williams, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin and Lucien Goldmann.