Criticism of criticism... from literary criticism to discourse analysis

The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies published the book **Critique of Criticism: From Literary Criticism to Discourse Analysis**, written by Muhammad Bouazza. The book deals with the reality of Arab criticism by studying critical texts by the most important contemporary Arab critics, and proposes a new conception of the concept of “criticism” based on discourse theory. By tracing the development of the practice of this field in Arab critical discourse, he highlights the dominance of two methodological approaches over it. The first is the ideological approach that prevailed until the 1980s, in which the function of this criticism focused on the sociological diagnosis of the material and social factors that shape the positions of Arab critics and determine their methodological choices. Then he criticizes this approach, because it has ideologicalized this function, and reduced his mission to the political evaluation of the positions of Arab critics, ignoring the cognitive dimension of critical discourse itself. As for the second approach, it is the epistemological approach that appeared since the 1990s, and attempted to overcome the ideological tendency that dominated in the previous period, by calling for the construction of a scientific model, in which the function of criticism is focused on studying the cognitive and methodological aspect of critical discourse, and describing its mechanisms in producing knowledge. Although the epistemological approach constituted a qualitative shift in the discourse of Arab criticism, it fell into the dilemma of ideal modeling of critical discourse. It imposed a single methodology in its approach, which it claimed was applicable to all critical discourses, practices, and writings, regardless of their differences. This contradicts the dynamic systematicity that characterizes the identity of critical discourse.