Cultural Criticism by Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghadami: A Critical Approach to Theory and Practice

Abstract

    Literary criticism has had a history that began with an impressionistic appreciation of taste. It then attempted to move to reasoned judgment, but this was a general reasoning, in keeping with the oral culture of that era, and one that could be preserved by memory. Details and theories, however, would come with documentation. This is an important stage, in which the critic combines analysis, interpretation, explanation, and evaluation. These steps are inseparable from one another, and they proceed in this order, if we are to encompass the literary phenomenon. This was the task of the literary critic. Cultural criticism came to shift this historical mission from the study of beauty to culture, or rather, to the ugly patterns that pass under the cloak of aesthetics. These patterns continued to grow, using aesthetics as a pretext, until they became a behavioral model that controls us, our behavior, and our creative texts, both mentally and practically. Since literary criticism is not qualified to uncover cultural dysfunction, Al-Ghadami called for its demise and its replacement by cultural criticism. Our research plan resembles Al-Ghadami's: we began with the memory of the concept, then moved to the transformative process within it.