Hooked

Over the past decade, Felski has been a breath of fresh air: working to nudge literary criticism away from an exclusive focus on politics. . . Felski is not against critique, the world being what it is. She is one of the growing number of malcontents who merely want to discuss other ways in which people respond to art. . . [Hooked] is an expose aimed at critics who disavow their personal allegiances. -- Matthew Rubery * Public Books * The chief virtue of Hooked is that it encourages scholars to be more honest. . . . If accepted, Felski's proposals would lead to aesthetic engagements which speak openly about why the interaction is happening in the first place. Such honesty can only be welcomed as a step forward in that old philosophical project-namely, knowing ourselves. -- Thomas Millay * Marginalia Review of Books * Among professors of English and comparative literature, Felski is one of the most influential scholars writing about aesthetics today. . . . Hooked: Art and Attachment picks up where The Limits of Critique leaves off by homing in on a crucial dimension of aesthetic experience discounted by critique: the attachments we form to works of art, the sources of their appeal to us, the personal growth they can excite and sustain. . . . Hooked honors this indispensable attachment to the arts and bolsters our efforts to understand and share what we care about. -- Michael Fischer * The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism * Hooked is concerned with the phenomenological and sociological vagaries of aesthetic experience; the seemingly intangible or impenetrable nature of our attachments with art. . . . Felski's argument-art isn't a 'microcosm of the world,' but part of the ordinary fabric of sociality itself-is useful and rewarding, as is her particular interest in 'diversifying the scales of criticism.' Attachment is fundamental to all processes of meaning-making, in art as elsewhere. Aesthetics matter because they 'create, or cocreate, enduring ties' but we need methods capacious enough to reflect the messiness of this reality. -- Nell Osborne * Review 31 * The book invites a conversation that ranges widely beyond literature; its arguments span media and its scope is expansive. . . . There are many insights in Hooked that will facilitate a productive interdisciplinary conversation about aesthetics, politics, and the future of critique. -- Michael Gallope * nonsite.org * In Hooked Felski examines aesthetic experience in terms of co-creation and enduring ties. . . . Using essays, memoirs, works of fiction, ethnographic research and a variety of examples from high to popular culture, Felski argues that works of art make a difference in the world and matter - they act - because they 'create, or co-create, enduring ties' . . . Hooked offers a plethora of hypotheses and a wealth of ideas to think with and to research empirically. The book will be of interest to sociologists and social theorists interested in cultural objects, emotion and aesthetic experience. -- Maria Angelica Thumala Olave * Theory, Culture & Society * Hooked is the third in a de facto trilogy defending the varied ways in which people like and care about works of art, both inside and outside the academy and its various critical traditions. Felski argues that we write about works of art because we care about them and get pleasure from them- we're hooked!-and that examining them critically is neither the same as, nor opposed to, being hooked in other ways. Hooked provides a way forward, not only a description of what we already do or a reason to stop doing it, but a way to say more and do more. * Stephanie Burt, Harvard University * Hooked is a marvelous achievement. It is a rousing book that returns to one of the main questions at the heart of Felski's scholarship-how people become attached to particular works of literature or art. Hooked offers a form of reception studies that invites alliances with different schools and modes of inquiry, from book history and curation theory to biography, ethnography, and practical pedagogy. It will excite and energize readers for years to come. * James English, University of Pennsylvania *