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[First paragraph]The Repeating Mand: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. ANTONIO BENITEZ-ROJO. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1992. xi + 303 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.95, Paper US$ 15.95)Myth and History in Caribbean Fiction: Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, and Edouard Glissant. BARBARA J. WEBB. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. x + 185 pp. (Cloth US$ 25.00)Caribbean literature has been overtaken of late by the quarrels that have pitted postmodernists against modernists in Europe and North America for the past twenty years. The modernists, faced with the fragmentation of the region that hard-nosed pragmatists and empiricists could only see as hostile to the emergence of any common culture, had sought in myth and its literary derivatives the collective impulse to transcend the divisions wrought by colonial history. Fifteen years ago I wrote a book that combined in its lead title the terms Modernism and Negritude in an effort to account for the efforts by mid-century Caribbean writers to come to grips with this problem. A decade later I demonstrated that one of the principal Caribbean modernists, Aimé Césaire, late in his career adopted stylistic characteristics that we associate with the postmodern (Arnold 1990). The example of Césaire should not be taken to suggest that we are dealing with some sort of natural evolution of modernism toward the postmodern. In fact the two terms represent competing paradigms that organize concepts and data so differently as to offer quite divergent maps of the literary Caribbean.

This version is B-version of the pre-reviewed article appeared in the journal Problems of Literary Genres/ Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich 48 (95-96), 2005:1-2. ; In our paper, we present a review of recent developments in literary theory especially in the theory by Martha Nussbaum focusing on a role of compassion in literary studies. Our main thesis is that neo-sentimentalism is visible in three areas of Martha Nussbaum's thought: first, in her views of emotions (she try to persuade readers that this stance is neo-stoicism, but it should be properly called neo-sentimentalism); secondly, in her theory of the literary genres, in which she represents the anti-formalist turn in literary studies; thirdly, in her theory of compassion and love in the reception of literature, in ethics and in social thinking. In order to characterise Martha Nussbaum's literary theory, we try to summarise the motive of empathy occurring in 18th century sentimentalism and in many forms of the later aesthetic sentimentality. We interpret so called ethical criticism (involving, besides Martha Nussbaum, Stanley Cavell, Wayne Booth, Martin Price) as a political movement using, as its rhetorical device, reference to sentimental motives of absolute empathy (G. Lakoff and M. Johnson's concept). We also argue that in the current era we should abandon an ideal of apolitical criticism and theory of literature. Literary scholarship has many ethical and, subsequently, political dimensions and empathy is a basic term in literary studies which associates itself with other sociological and political issues. But recent developments in cognitive science make us to treat empathy as a basic term of understanding human behaviours and language, so the neo-sentimentalism has a solid grounds in science.

Before the rise of contemporary literary theory, literary study mainly concerned with the nature, role, function of literary works and general schema for literary criticism. The rise of contemporary literary theories, such as structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, new historicism, postcolonialism, and so on have changed the nature of literary study. By applying concepts and paradigms taken from other spheres of intellectual activity, such as culture, linguistics, aesthetics, politics, history, psychology, economics, gender, and so on, current literary study starts questioning and criticizing literary study basic assumptions. Contemporary literary theory brings a broad array of fundamental issues to attention, such as the act of reading, interpretative strategy, epistemology of literary scholarships, nationalism, genre, gender, originality, intertextuality, social hegemony, authorial intention, truth, representation and so on.

This article places particular emphasis on the criticism of cultural imperialism that began in the mid-1980s and that is now subsumed under the rubric of `cultural studies' and its key concepts: the active audience, audience `resistance' to media messages, and polysemy. It contrasts the political economy school with cultural studies. The positions of Herbert Schiller and Armand Mattelart on the `resistance debate' are outlined, with the author concluding that while Schiller still asserts the validity of cultural imperialism thinking, Mattelart has moved in a slightly different direction. Nonetheless, while the latter has welcomed the departure from monolithic research models, he by no means endorses cultural studies positions, particularly their political implications. The article also contrasts the way `resistance' has been used by postmodernists in the field of communications with its meaning as articulated by two prominent writers in the field of comparative literature: Edward Said and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. Both writers still validate the notion of cultural imperialism and use the term `resistance' to refer to the struggles against colonialism and imperialism in the countries of the South.

Reaganism is a discourse of devotion and disqualification, combining a neoliberal negative theology of the market with a neoconservative demonization of opponents. Reagan's personality cult shelters the aggressivity of a war of all against all by representing the market as a moralistic standard of perfection, a representation of goodness and freedom. In literary theory and criticism, a homologous valuative system centered itself on the canon, representing culture as a study of perfection. Paul de Man argued for the displacement of this positive moralistic reference, but his proposals ultimately replace it with a negative moralistic reference to literariness. De Man's premises have been perpetuated in subsequent theory by persistent misrecognitions of dialectic as suspicious hermeneutics, of materialism as reference to materiality, and of demands for democratic equity as identity politics. Tracing this motivated reasoning through misreadings of Eve Sedgwick's critique of conspiracy theory and Edward Said's "secular criticism," we are led back to the unexamined premises of Paul de Man's negative moralism and the opportunistic competition of academic careerism.