Lived Craftwork

As contemporary literary scholars continue to debate the use-value of "lived experience" and testimonial evidence for the discipline—one arm of a larger debate over the ideologies of critique and postcritique—they often overlook the relevance of sites of literary making, or techne, where such distinctions are mediated. This essay argues that scholars need not choose between lived experience and critical distance ahead of their readings. By understanding how literary work depends upon techne and technologies, and how literary archives embody and inscribe transindividual craftwork and knowledge, we can better locate authorial and cultural causes of the texts we read without reducing either in the process.