An unmethodical method: Contextualising the critical essay

This paper charts a theoretical and literary genealogy for what I term the critical essay, which I define as a literary essay that includes analysis of an artwork amongst its objects of inquiry. After briefly outlining the increasing prevalence of the critical essay in contemporary letters, I review theoretical schemas surrounding the critical essay, and grapple with the terminological slippage of labels like “essay” and “criticism”. Drawing from Marxist and feminist schools of literary studies, I argue that alternative forms of critical writing have generally been propounded not as literary modes but rather as scholarly revolts against disciplinary strictures. I argue that such alternative forms of critical writing share a desire to invent modes of analysis and expression capable of challenging dominant class, race and/or gendered ideologies. I go on to propose that the critical essay may be capable of disrupting the epistemological frameworks undergirding public criticism, making space for writers who, due to their subject positions, have not historically been conferred critical authority.