"The Critic's Duty Is to Refuse"

In Matthew Arnold's "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1864), the duty to refuse warrants the critic's independence. Rather than a timid inertia, refusal, resistance, make the critic's rejection of partisanship a sharply styled decision. In defining the new social role of the critic, Arnold sets loose that disquieting figure, the independent leftist, who stands apart from those you'd think of as being on the same side. In the history of criticism in the US, this role for the critic provided important opportunities for otherwise marginalized or minoritized figures such as Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, and Edward Said. It still has a future, if we dare.

In defining the new social role of the critic, Arnold sets loose that … disquieting figure, the independent leftist, who stands apart from those you'd think of as being on the same side.