Date of Graduation
Spring 2023
Degree
Master of Arts in English
Department
English
Committee Chair
Matthew Calihman
Abstract
The twenty-first century, marked by neoliberalism and suspicious, visibly violent far-Right politics, has presented new challenges to critical and literary theorists. In response, some theorists advocate for a postcritical turn, challenging both the surface/depth picture of language and the privileged status of suspicion in interpretation in order to explore alternative pictures of language and reading that can better address the challenges of our own day. In this thesis, I connect one of these alternatives, Toril Moi’s use of Ordinary Language Philosophy in literary studies, to Wendell Berry’s prioritization of place in environmentalist activism. In connecting these two thinkers, I contend for ordinary placed reading, or a practice of reading that interprets literature according to the way it intervenes in the critic’s own place of residence, in the natural, social, and agricultural realms. I then analyze Berry’s novel Jayber Crow in order to illustrate how his protagonist, Jayber, exemplifies this mode of reading in his shift from displaced, suspicious reader to a reader embedded in his place and interpreting historical and technological developments according to its consequences for his placed community.
Keywords
American literature, regionalism, Wendell Berry, postcritique, ordinary language philosophy and literary studies
Subject Categories
American Literature | Literature in English, North America
Copyright
© Calvin L. Coon
Recommended Citation
Coon, Calvin L., "Reading in Place: Ordinary Language Philosophy, Wendell Berry, and Post Critique" (2023). MSU Graduate Theses. 3803.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3803
Open Access
