How to shake the routine of standardized knowledge? The power of literary criticism and its disciplinary crosses

Abstract

This article is a response (on request) to the article Discussion on sociology of literature, by Hernán Maltz, which aims to account for the importance of the analysis of literary criticism in the field of the social without the need to force its disciplinary belonging to the field of sociology of literature. The analysis indicates three characteristics of criticism linked to the social that escape the sociological analysis. The first has to do with the importance of a characteristic element of the exercise of criticism linked to the level of the word in an insinuating and non-communicative sense. On the other hand, the need to reaffirm the value of certain investigations within the field of literary studies in order to expand the boundaries of literature, given that their displacement to the terrain of the sociology of literature ends up reaffirming the assumption that certain literary objects are anthropological exceptions rather than aesthetically studied products. Finally, the study of the social from the perspective of literary criticism can also provide a performative perspective of analysis that the sociological discipline could not carry out.