Occasions to reimagine critical practice: autotheory, postcriticism, and abolitionist study

This dissertation explores possibilities for different methods of literary interpretation as well as the collective practice of studying art and literature generally. For decades, literary and art interpretation have been dominated by methods that are highly critical, negative, and that try to unearth hidden, often problematic or nefarious, meanings in works of art. This dissertation seeks alternative methods that ask how art and literature might be engaged with more positively. In other words, how can art and literature do things like help us imagine the world differently? How can the study of art as a practice lead to different social formations, ones that are egalitarian, seek to remedy past and present wrongs, and are conducive to sustaining the earth? Furthermore, I assert here that the literary humanities, especially if it wishes to join with political and cultural struggle, needs to take seriously the role of universities in perpetuating capitalism, imperialism, and settler-colonialism. While changing interpretive methods and pedagogy are important, there is a need to challenge the structures that make interpretation materially possible, as those structures are bound up with the very problems that literary and cultural interpretation has sought to expose in works of art.