In this lecture Gordon Finlayson will outline and defend what he calls an ‘historically adequate’ conception of immanent criticism. He will test it out against some common alternatives and will take issue with the view that immanent criticism differs in kind from normative moral criticism, but show why this view came to be held by certain Marxist theorists, and Romantic critics of art. Gordon Finlayson refute two common views: first that immanent criticism is opposed to something called transcendent criticism, and is determined by that opposition; and second that criticism is always the better for being ‘immanent’. The parti pris in favour of immanent criticism emerges in certain contexts, and makes sense in those contexts, but does not generalize to all objects of criticism and all critical situations.

Flyer