"The rhetoric of literary criticism" revisited: Mistaken critics, complex contexts, and social justice

Fahnestock and Secor's "The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism" characterized literary criticism of the 1970s as conservative and self-celebratory. However, although literary theory has since undergone significant change, few rhetorical analyses of recent literary criticism as the preferred genre of a disciplinary discourse community have been conducted. This analysis of 28 articles of literary criticism published between 1999 and 2001 reveals that because of their flexibility, the stasis and special topoi conventions of earlier literary criticism continue to function. However, the shared values assumed in literary criticism have shifted away from a preference for isolated meditation on textual particulars. Instead, criticism is now portrayed as a conversation in which knowledge about literary texts and their historical contexts is socially negotiated and accumulative. Moreover, this scholarly project is frequently assumed to work toward social justice. The article ends with implications for understanding how knowledge is built within disciplinary communities.