After Critique
Twenty-First-Century Fiction in a Neoliberal Age
Mitchum Huehls
Reviews and Awards
"Huehls's erudite close-readings successfully demonstrate the contemporary authors have utilized the unique aesthetic attributes of literature to consider new, post-critical ways to challenge neoliberal ontology." -- Kieran Smith , American Book Review
"Provocative and engaging, After Critique raises, and goes a long way toward answering, crucial questions about what a twenty-first-century novel -- and a twenty-first-century politics -- must do" -- Gabriella Friedman , Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S
"After Critique is challenging and worthwhile, demanding much of the reader and offering provocative insights in return." -- Ursula McTaggart , Contemporary Literature
"What is the relationship between neoliberalism and literary art? While many critics have begun to address this question, Huehls' work stands out for its rigor, clarity, and analytical precision. Through a series of evocative case studies, he shows that contemporary fiction writers have turned away from critique in order to pioneer new modes of challenging the political economy of the present. The result is a timely and convincing book that goes a long way toward developing a critical vocabulary for the literature of our era." --David J. Alworth, author of Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form
"After Critique is a game changer, a penetrating study of contemporary fiction that identifies the false oppositions in the way literary critics talk about neoliberal capitalism and illuminates a compelling path forward. A quantum leap in the critical conversation, this book will shape the field of contemporary fiction studies for years to come." --Andrew Hoberek, author of Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics
"Arguments against the use of the term neoliberalism focus on how ubiquitous it has become, and as a result on how it has lost its critical specificity. After Critique offers a different perspective by arguing with admirable wit and clarity that the term circulates so much in the present moment because it is literally ubiquitous." --Min Hyoung Song, author of The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American