The Task of the CriticTodays critic must be something of a philosopher as well as a poet. Yet her work remains above all that of the close reader, and the emergence of the values embodied by the close reader to stand alongside those of the philosopher and the poet may be one of the most significant intellectual developments to emerge in the postWorld War II years. This book analyzes the language poets, Deleuze and Guattari, and above all Benjamin and Derrida, to trace the