The title of this double special issue of Post45 invites us to consider whether each individual essay endorses, condemns, practices or in some way “unbinds” formalism. It also raises the question about…
Archive for January, 2021
Notes on Shade
Many things in this world haven’t yet been named; many things, even if they have been named, have barely been described. One of these is the practice of “reading” —…
Queer Formula
In literary studies, queer theory came on the scene around 1990 wielding its formalism as the sign of its politics. Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s cheeky description of queer theory…
Zadie Smith’s Style of Thinking
Form, writes Ali Smith, can be “a matter of need and expectation,” offering “clear rules and unspoken understandings.” But in practice, she adds, form is “also a matter of breaking…
Form contra Aesthetics
Enjoying a second act that seemed all but inconceivable a couple decades ago, form has recently reclaimed center stage in academic literary studies. This time around it claims greater power…
Formalism at the End Times: A Modest Account
At fourteen years old, I took a job as a cashier at a Christian bookstore. The owners were Christian fundamentalist-lite, whereas I was coerced by my parents to attend a…
Furnishing the Novel, Feeding the Soul: Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Dickens sees human beings with the most intense vividness, but he sees them always in private life, as ‘characters’, not as functional members of society; that is to say, he…