About the Author

Johanne Gormsen Schmidt

E-Mail: johanne@sdu.dk

Website: https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/persons/johanne/

Johanne Gormsen Schmidt received her Master of Arts in Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen and is currently a Ph.D. student in literature in the Department for the Study of Culture of the University of Southern Denmark. Her research project is part of The Niels Bohr Professorship Program Uses of Literature: The Social Dimensions of Literature led by Rita Felski at the University of Southern Denmark.

Contributions by Author: Johanne Gormsen Schmidt

Robert Walser’s Topicality and the Descriptive Turn

In his influential essay “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Bruno Latour famously asserts the untimeliness of critique. According to the essay, the mistrustful and skeptical attitude proudly cultivated and celebrated in academia has today become mainstream, a mindless automatic reaction, and is held hostage by right wing populist forces, e.g. to question the fact of global warming. The essay appeared in 2004. 40 years earlier, Susan Sontag wrote the essay “Against Interpretation” (1964) […]