Genre Blindness in the New Descriptivism Tim Dean Abstract This essay considers the “descriptive turn” in literary studies from the vantage point of poetics, arguing that the history of Western poetry, from the Greeks to the present, offers through the category of epideixis a theory and practice of description that illuminates some of the methodological impasses of contemporary literary studies. Epideixis, a basic mode of pointing or linguistic ostension, confers value, often by way of praise or blame, without trying to persuade its audience with the practical immediacy of political or forensic rhetoric. Drawing on the ordinary language philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, the essay suggests that praise constitutes a philosophically rigorous alternative to critique. This argument is exemplified via the work of Mark Doty, a contemporary poet of description-as-praise. Keywords critique, description, epideixis, poetics, praise O ver the past couple of decades English literary studies has grown restless with the methodological protocols of critique and demys- tification established during the late twentieth century. In the wake of various broadsides against those protocols, we are casting about for the next big thing. Among the candidates jostling for prominence is “descriptive reading,” an approach that advocates not merely greater attention to descriptive passages in literature but description as a critical method. No longer simply a feature of literary works distinct from nar- rative, description has been proposed as a critical methodology supe- rior to interpretation and critique. This approach —I call it the new descriptivism —finds inspiration in a range of sources, among them the French philosopher of science Bruno Latour (2005: 136 –37), who Thanks to the following readers for invaluable suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript: Rachel Ablow, Marshall Brown, Antoinette Burton, Robert Caserio, Eleni Coundouriotis, Theo Davis, Lauren Goodlad, Christopher Kempf, Robert Dale Parker, Elizabeth Renker, and Ramón Soto-Crespo. Modern Language Quarterly 81:4 (December 2020) DOI 10.1215/00267929-8637950 © 2020 by University of Washington Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/modern-language-quarterly/article-pdf/81/4/527/830469/527dean.pdf by UNIV OF ILLINOIS LIB-E user on 02 December 2020