Geoffrey Galt Harpham is President and Director of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. His many books include On the Grotesque, The Ascetic Imperative inCulture and Criticism, Getting It Right: Language, Literature, and Ethics,One of Us: The Mastery of JosephConrad, Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the JustSociety, and, most recently, Language Alone: The CriticalFetish of Modernity, also published by Routledge.
Chapter 1The Character of Criticism1. What Matter Who's Speaking2.
Criticism as Confession3. Griffes of the GreatChapter 2Criticism as Dream:
Elaine Scarry and the Dream of PainChapter ThreeCriticism as Therapy: The
Hunger of Martha NussbaumChapter Four Criticism as Symptom: Slavoj Zizek
and the End of Knowledge1. As Other2. And Otherness3. And OthersChapter
FiveCriticism as Obsession: Said and Conrad1. Emulations2.
Identifications3. Prolongations4. NegationsConclusion Criticism in a State
of Terror