Editorial [CounterText, 9(2)]

Abstract

One of the ideas guiding CounterText is that some of literature’s most trenchant and provocative articulations are now to be found in forms and spaces not typically associated with the literary (see the editorial in 1: 1 (2015)). Annette Gilbert’s book, Literature’s Elsewheres (MIT Press, 2022), powerfully explores a similar view. It discovers literary propensities in various contemporary expressions of conceptual art, as well as a capacity for penetrating critique. As the introduction to the interview states, the book therefore offers the journal ‘an allied critical gaze and a displaced selfrecognition’. Gilbert’s generous responses make for fascinating reflections on her critical vision and on the ‘elsewheres’ she discusses. They also offer rich prompts for reassertion and refinement of CounterText’s own rationale.