in “Power: Articles“A new set of criticism from the past five years, Andrea Long Zhou explains that its goal is to make the reader feel” as if I was reading loudly what is already written from the inside of its skull. ”This approach is amazed by both excessively New York Magazine since 2021. Whether it takes a dictation of drilling on my skull or simply canceled it, I often find that after going under the Chu knife, I cannot remember what I previously thought about on the topic on hand.
Reviewing Rachel Kosk’s novel “procession“From 2024, he is a skull holder with distinction. Zhu recounts the many manifestations of Kosk’s imagination for women who want to be men and hate themselves for this secret desire, noting that Kosk has once described herself, apparently metaphorical, as“ self -duplicate. ”Zhu sees this self -hatred as a symptom of what the basic view of Cusk. About sex: In the hands of Chu-closely documented that women should be men with the result.
In a thread on Reddit – Chu writes a kind of literary criticism that starts battles on Reddit – one of the stickers complained that the review felt as if “The Senior in High School Include on the Freshman In Pe Pee” answered another person, in fact, Cusk is a large fish itself. Both are right. Zhu tends to write about very famous writers, but her style is so legal that she seems to be always winning.
In 2023, Chu received the Pulitzer Criticism Award for “Book reviews that examine the authors as well as their works.” Another way to put it is that it is less interested in the official complications of literature than bullying those who make it. “Why shouldn’t the book review be personal?” She asks in “power”. “I understand that people where the books come from.” Its reviews, Profantic, Bawdy, a thorny cycle are guaranteed, very enjoyable to read so that you can lose the extent of their impartiality of the crime. As Zhou says, “The villain is the dog that did not eat in three days; cruelty is the person who is quietly carrying the wheel. These days are aimed at cruelty.”
Since joining New YorkChu brought the dogs on what she calls the “far center”, a group in which it includes “democrats disappointed”, “journalists equivalent to the fall” and “Nakhdarians”, among others. The distant center does not lack easy marks, and sometimes it may sharpen its pencil on a Pamela Paul Or a Bret Eston Ellis. However, it generally chooses to write about the exciting and talented writers who complained once or twice from the roots of the campus or distortions. thus, Zadi Smith Accused of “sympathy for the less sympathetic party in any specific situation” and Maggie Nelson Crying to oversight whenever, to use a definition that Nelson borrows from the American Civil Liberties Union, “some people succeed in imposing their personal, political or moral values for others.” But Zhu writes, “Surely left He should Try to impose its political values on others; If I am not wrong, we call this victory. “
In two new importance about the criticisms that appear in “power”, Zhou blames the situation that gives our discourse on liberalism, especially the poor application of the liberal ideal for the neutrality of the view, which requires the government not to move in political discussions. As Zhou sees, the intellectuals were confused by the state TRUE Commitment to be neutral – for not arresting people or deporting their political discourse – with the critic Fake Commitment to pretending to art is political. This is impossible: There is no policy of art because the desire to remove politics from art is in itself a political position. However, Zhu claims that the remaining critics believe that politics is what other people do less enlightened, seeing their role as a neutral state, and his job is “simply”. weather The diversity of ideas.
Zhu argues that the liberal critic’s fear that a public politician is partly stems from professional insecurity. I have noticed that critics have been considered parasites that disturb their noble artistic rooms with their personal and political grip. How better to escalate to the flesh instead of declaring themselves neutral artists for art? Chu cited examples of four centuries of redemption ram from the “bad critic”, who imagines that art pollution with ideology and which must be “is constantly worse, in order to confirm it hysterically in order to make the good critic look good.”
Not so long ago, Zhu seemed to be concerned about the polluted influence of politics. In an interview with the literary magazine Point In 2018, I described work in an academic book that was to study “the imagination of criticism as a political action” in the hope of finding “evaluation patterns not necessarily political.” The book has never been published, but some of its articles seemed to be recycled in the new articles in “Power”, which are more clear than its typical purposes. Here, however, Chu turned her thesis. I have believed in sincerity in the imagination that once contemplated an explosion. The “supreme task of the critic”, writes in “power”, is not to avoid its eyes modestly from the spots that politics leaves on art, but to attract the reader’s attention to them.
Zhou seems to believe that society will be stronger if more people dare write a kind of criticism: personality and political, not definitely neutral. Reading the public has the right to judge [a critic] I wrote, through its actual values, which were created sincerely, “and not only through the extent of its application politely in the strangers company.” Certainly, more critics should write, if not for society, but this quote raises anxiety. It means something between “Bore Bore” and “The root of all evil”. It defines its left -wing policy in a clear opposition to liberalism.
Before Chu became terrorist in the distant position, it was a comparative doctorate. A student at New York University with some distinctive sex ideas. In 2018, I published an article entitled “I like women“The story of Chu’s transition to femininity with a history of feminist positions towards transit women. The article, which appeared in the literary magazine n+1, The second most reading article was in the history of the post, and was widely discussed with both eagerness and terror. Part of the controversy was that Zhu, who discusses allegations that the transgender women, as she put it, “the voices are sick conspiring to infiltrate the spaces of women only,” she said in an irreversible way that she “will be happy with this description.” But where Zhu really touched a nerve, with her argument that the transfer “is not a matter of anyone He is But what is the same Want“A question is not identity but desire.
The idea that someone may move to femininity in order to fulfill the desire, especially sexually, is generally related to radicals across transit,,,,,, or,, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, ors, or, or, or, or, ors. TerefS. The great thing about “women’s admiration” was how much it managed to find the common ground with this group. the Teref It is believed that the person who feels the desire to change the gender presentation is the victim of the strict sexual roles of the Patriarchate. To respond to this desire by changing a person’s body instead of the individual community, l TerefTo choose the wrong battle; Physical modification is not empowerment, but submission. Zhu agrees. “Terf’s position that I will do through the transition is to consolidate and reproduce the roles of normative sex” – I told Point– “I find this argument Fully convincing“But she continued,”everyone He must be allowed to want bad things for them. ” the TerefPoint is that we must fight against uncomfortable desires in a political point of view; Zhu’s point is that the freedom to follow the desires of the individual is the same as a policy. It is right. We call it liberal.
Zhou is dialectical, and this means that it may be difficult to separate what you really think about what you hope to get out of you. (This is a writer who once known “morals” as “a little commitment”.) In her first book,Female“A short and enjoyable work of gender theory of 2019, which takes a reading form close to the Valer Solanas play“ UP ESS ”, Chu writes that she shares Solanas in“ a preference for demands that cannot be defended. ”Recently, she admitted“ a weakness in strong and irresponsible sentences. ”But her commitment to the traditional values of liberalism is not a provocation or experience-I believed, it is, I think, as evidence of a sincere preference for choosing equality, for freedom for safety, in order to chaos on an organized matter.
