Tactical Formalism: A Response to Caroline Levine

Abstract

of Caroline Levine's Strategic Formalism, and is indeed inspired by a conviction of her essay/manifesto's importance. She wants to invigorate our reading of culture by making us better readers of form; so do I. Advancing this agenda at the present time is going to involve, as Levine's emphases demonstrate, both some therapeutic work at the level of theory and some calisthenic working-out at the level of practice. We need to relax the taboo on formalism that was instituted a long methodological generation ago by advocates struggling-with excellent cause and against established inertia, if not concerted opposition to relegitimize historical and cultural meanings as primary objects of literary inquiry. Making this happen called for strong medicine in high dosage; and, as usual in such a case, there were side effects, one of which was to force the profession into an antiformalist crouch. Without going so far as to call this cure worse than the disease, we may still admit that its rigor has deformed literary studies in unwholesome ways. For some time now, a knee-jerk contempt for formal inquiry as such has, in its own turn, become as firmly established within programs of advanced training as the dogma of formalism used to be. One need not be new-critically trained, I trust, to be struck by a resulting paradox: the long views commended by ideology critique, identity politics, or empire mapping start to look short-sighted as soon