Writing that W/rights Politics? -- An Examination of the Re-viewing Practices of Telos, The Public Interest, and the Journal as an Institution of Criticism

Abstract

My dissertation explores the relationship between journals and the political. Using the modern examples of The Public Interest and Telos, I analyze how critical journals write politics. As a scholar, I am interested in writing practices and how they shape epistemologies, ontologies, and Weltanschauungen; in essence, how they act as narratives of power. The practice I have undertaken to study in this dissertation is the practice of reviewing. The etymology of the word "review" is "to see again." Tracing the review form to its institutionalization in the early 19th century in Great Britain and bringing it forward to the late 20th century in the United States, I analyze how critical journals "see again," whether they challenge how the state "sees," or whether they conform to the state's view. I argue that by writing about politics and re-viewing the state's writing of politics, critical journals also contribute to the wrighting (or making) of political realities.