OOO as Mode of Literary Criticism has an interesting point. It’s on a newer lit crit theory that I would actually agree with (as far as I understand it).
Object-oriented criticism for its part– and it is here where I am unsure as to whether or not Joy will agree with me –begins from the premise not of the meaningfulness of the text, but of the materiality of the text. The text is something. A text is an entity that circulates throughout the world. And like all bodies or objects that circulate throughout the world, texts have the capacity to affect other bodies. Here then we get the first sense of what it might mean to say that criticism comes after the text. This thesis is not the bland truism that the text must first exist for us to “criticize†it, but rather is the thesis that criticism is a production based on the affectivity of the text. In other words, the question is no longer the question of what the text means with the aim of closing the text, but rather is the question of what the text builds.
The text above is from another post on the OOO lit crit theory.
This is perfect for the revision of my dissertation! Thanks! I study translations of texts, and of course for the translation to exist, so too much the original. But then the translation goes on to have a different impact than the original text…
Perfect. I’m going to be mulling this a little bit.