The article is a critique of the increasingly navel-gazing direction literary criticism has taken.<p>It would be a mistake to paint all the "humanities" with the same brush, particularly philosophy (which is more like the wayward, less rigorous brother of math than any of the other humanities) and history (which actually deals with factual content). In fact, "the humanities" is probably a mistaken grouping for these subjects, since they vary widely.
One of the many things I've read since I dropped out of a english lit PhD program that I really, really, really wish I had read before I applied.<p>I know now that the information is there for students who ask the right questions or correctly analyze their surroundings (particularly, the professional activities of their professors), but it isn't front-and-center.