For a Ruthless Critique of All that Exists
by Robert T. Tally Jr.

Facing an uncertain future and an unstable present, our most urgent task today involves a ruthless critique of all that exists.

For a Ruthless Critique of All that Exists takes as its point of departure two profound and interrelated phenomena. The first is the pervasive sense of what Mark Fisher had called “capitalist realism", in which (to cite the famous expression variously attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek) it is easier to imagine the end of the world than then end of capitalism.

As Jameson in particular has noted, “perhaps this is due to some weakness in our imaginations,” and the attenuation of the imaginative function in cultural criticism has far-reaching implications for the organization and reformation of institutions more generally. This manifests itself as a waning of speculative or theoretical energy, which in turn leads to a general capitulation to the tyranny of “what is,” the actually existing state of affairs, and the preemptive disavowal of alternative possibilities.

Connected to this is the second phenomenon: the prevalent tendency in literary and cultural criticism over the past 30 or more years to eschew critical theory and even critique itself, while championing approaches to cultural study that emphasize surface reading, thin description, ordinary language philosophy, object-oriented ontology, and post-critique. Together these forms of anticritical and antitheoretical criticism have constituted a tendency that has in its various incarnations come to dominate the humanities and other areas of higher education in recent years. The latter has served to reinforce the former, and the result has been to align literary and cultural criticism with the broad-based forces of neoliberalism whose influence has so deleteriously transformed not only higher education but the whole of society at large.

Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that, in order to counter these trends and empower the imagination, the time is ripe for “a ruthless critique of all that exists,” to borrow a phrase from the young Marx. This book is intended as a provocation, at once a polemic and a call to action for cultural critics.

Reviews:
Tally’s new book, For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism, is particularly concerned with this question of the conditions of imagination under late capitalism, the ways in which it might be kept alive in the face of market forces that conspire to deaden it.

If we want to imagine the end of capitalism, and not merely the end of the world, we cannot dispense with the critical reading of literature. ~ Robert Scott, Los Angeles Review of Books

"An exuberant and erudite take-down of those who think things are pretty much okay, so critique is superfluous. Tally calls out both the logic and the timing of the dog-whistle school of anti-critique, who have done their part to encourage the recent frenzy over Critical Race Theory and other bits of populist anti-intellectualism. But rather than calling its opponents names, this book lays before them a formidably nuanced and eloquent example of critique. We nattering nabobs of negativism have found ourselves a joyous and principled defender." ~ Bruce Robbins, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, is the author of Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction

"Against the vogue retreat from critique and ecstatic embrace of the immanent, Tally offers a bounding defense of the mutual project of critique and literature to depart from the given world to make better social orders, compellingly insisting on that project’s imaginative quality and its many joys." ~ Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois at Chicago, author of The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space

"Over and against the caricature promulgated by 'postcritiquers,' according to which critique is inherently at odds with the literary text, Tally demonstrates how true critique works not only to draw out and complement the utopian dimension of literature—its crucial role in helping us to imagine new and better worlds—but to advance it as well. The result is a far more accurate and robust understanding of critique as a praxis that is fundamentally generative rather than destructive, committed rather than disinterested, joyous rather than dour. For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists so ruthlessly sets the record straight on the continued importance—indeed, the indispensability—of critique that the next time one hears it averred that 'critique has run out of steam,' their immediate reply should be, 'Wait, haven’t you read Tally’s book?!'" ~ Russell Sbriglia, Seton Hall University, editor (with Slavoj Žižek) of Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism

“Here is a work composed with profundity, conciseness, and brilliance, essential to not only scholars and critics, but us writers, reminding us of the salience of diving intensely into the message and meaning of the stories we create, given the role and necessity of critique, if effectively applied, in making the world a better place.” ~ Sabah Carrim, PhD, author of novels "Humeirah" and "Semi-Apes," among other writings