>> And certain 'to help people at large understand the rights
>> and responsibilities
>> that they have as social and political beings' is *not* the
>> 'object' of the
>> literary/cultural critic -- that's literature/culture.
>
>You're splitting hairs, Catherine. The critic helps to catalyze the
>public understanding of rights and responsibilities that art promotes.
If these are hairs, they're fairly substantial hairs. I do not think you have at all explained why lit critics or cultural critics are responsible for this more than any other group invested with comparable 'intellectual authority'. If I write an essay on say James Joyce, or give a lecture on say Australian politics, I may and perhaps hopefully will say something of relevance to these rights and responsibilities but that is not my object. This matters. By collapsing these roles and these discourses you both diminish the responsibility of other groups and roles and you water down the accomplishment of those who do use such forums to address these issues by making it just what they were expected to do all along.
Catherine