Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of mainta...ining the professional standing of the critic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shame can make you so angry you can barely function. It is the rage you feel when someone slights you because of the color of your... skin, your accent or the clothes you wear. The ultimate in shame, however, is the humiliation, self-blame you feel when someone has raped or abused you. In that instance, you turn your shame or rage on yourself, asking "What have I done wrong to be so abused?" With guilt we know what the wrong is, the car was stolen, the curfew was broken, the contract was bogus. Usually guilt is less intense and destructive an emotion than shame because it is less involved with the perception and evaluation of the whole self. With guilt there is a motivation to change, to make amends, and pay the dues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creators! Evaluating is itself the most valuable treasure of all that we value. It is only th...rough evaluation that value exists: and without evaluation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for a ...strict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
More than thirty-five years of psychoanalytic practice and comparative observation in Europe and America have given me the impress...ion that women in general have a lower opinion of their sex than men have of theirs. This difference cannot have its origin in biological divergences but must reflect the evaluation of social environment. No analyst who has listened with the third ear to women talk sincerely and unconventionally about their own sex will deny that their opinion of females is surprisingly low. It seems rather a prejudice than an opinion, and one attributes it to inferiority feelings taken over from men's conceit or to feelings of inadequacy born out of competition with men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, what does "good" mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among t...hem is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Employees from families where all adults work are still coping with rules and conditions of work designed, as one observer put it,... to the specifications of Ozzie and Harriet. These conditions include rigid adherence to a 40-hour workweek, a concept of career path inconsistent with the left cycle of a person with serious family responsibilities, notions of equity formed in a different era, and performance evaluation systems that confuse effort with results by equating hours of work with productivity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation.... The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. The...y equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Modern criticism has concerned itself more with poetry than with fiction for several reasons. First, fiction does not lend itself ...so readily as verse to the close analytical approach. Second, there is no body of critical theory upon the subject of fiction comparable to the poetic theory available to the critic of poetry. Third, the tremendous output of short fiction and novels tends to obscure the total picture and to make the initial problem of selection and evaluation extremely difficult. The result is that fiction, when it has been examined, has been subjected to the same criteria as those applied to verse; sometimes, as in the case of such authors as James, Joyce, or Kafka, with excellent results; at other times, with authors such as Tolstoi, Mann, or Hemingway, the results have either been bad or criticism has limited itself to discussion of the authors' lives, their social background, or their historical importance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted b...y audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator's lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »