Vol. 1, No. 15: Crisis of Criticism
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Dear Soft Labor,
I’m an arts worker who side hustles as a freelance cultural critic. I’ve been writing on and off for the better part of twenty years but 2025 is the year that almost broke me: Criticism, it seems, is in some exceptional degree of crisis—or so other, better known and published critics would have me believe—and as we close out this horrific year, I’m considering quitting publishing altogether.
A while back I read a Vulture interview with the (enviable!) critic Andrea Long Chu. They said something characteristically provocative that stuck with me:
So on a practical level, if you’re being paid $100 for a thousand words, you should turn in $100 worth of content. Give them exactly what they pay for, because they’re not paying for good work. If you’re going to get paid pennies to train someone’s AI, at least you should be doing as little work as possible.
Firstly, yes, I know that Andrea Long Chu has likely written for $100 or less: Most writers have. But I also think they have a point. In the age of AI hype—and in a moment of true crisis for the arts—is it even worth pitching editors anymore?
I don’t care about Andrea Long Chu’s general affect, or whether or not their comment was meant in jest or not. It rang true to me: Why bother?
From the existential vortex,
A Critic in Crisis
Dear Crisis,
We once had an extraordinary mentor, the late sociologist Susana Wappenstein—her memory is our blessing—who implored us to ask ourselves two questions at the outset of every project.:
- What knowledge is being created?
- Who cares?
More than twenty years on, her questions still haunt us. They’ve paralyzed us many times, in fact. Who does care, anyway? We’re hardly ever sure.
Listen, Crisis, the world is a mess. It is very, very easy to fall into despair in a moment like the present—forget about the "new year, new leaf" adage. We suggest that you keep writing while having a deeper conversation with yourself about who you're writing for. Criticism is crucial. In short, it's a means of reflecting, processing, and even memorializing the culture. Define your critical style for yourself—and for the audience of people that matter to you, whether you know them or not.
We learned something in the 90s, back when publishing involved late night runs to Kinko’s on our bike, the cutting of Rubylith in the print shop, and the purchasing of an iMac G3 with a tiny inheritance.: It is possible to create one’s own audience, offline or on. It is possible to grow that readership if doing so is important to you.
Go rogue, Crisis. Pitch editors when you feel it, but do your own thing when you don’t. There is (yet another) renaissance around self-publishing: zines, blogs, newsletters. Writing for yourself is not Pollyanna-ish! It's a strategy. Get on it. People notice.
Who cares? We do.
Yours,
Soft Labor
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Here’s a somewhat brief, incomplete, and highly-subjective syllabus on readings related to the so-called crisis of criticism. It is a worthwhile endeavor to think about how criticism has been considered over the arc of time; this (very Internet-y) list traverses the last 20 years or so, organized in reverse chronological order.
2025 threw a lot of shade, yes, but you’ll see that criticism is in perpetual, perennial crisis! It never ends, people.
🧠 Steinhauer, Jillian. “Critics Page”. The Brooklyn Rail. December/January 2025 issue.
🧠 Lilly Wei and Barbara A. MacAdam. “For Love or Money: Surviving Art Criticism.” The Brooklyn Rail. December/January 2025 issue.
🧠 Perl, Jed. “Impassioned Ferocity.” New York Review of Books. November 6, 2025 issue.
🧠 Sanneh, Kalifa. “How Music Criticism Lost its Edge.” The New Yorker. August 25, 2025.
🧠 Brody, Richard. “In Defense of the Traditional Review.” The New Yorker. July 24, 2025.
🧠 Bashira, Hakim. “The Fabricated Crisis of Art Criticism.” Hyperallergic. May 14, 2025.
🧠 Lozano, Kevin. “Is Criticism Really in Crisis?” The Nation. May 14, 2025.
🧠 Angel, Arielle. "'I'm Looking for Someone to Fight With, Not Someone to Run Over With My Car.'" Vulture. April 30, 2025
🧠 Byron, Grace. “Criticism as Apologetics.” The LA Review of Books. April 7, 2025.
🧠 Vanderberg, Colin. Crise en Abyme. N+1. Spring 2025.
🧠 Remnick, David. “Are Critics Too Nice?” The New Yorker. September 2, 2025.
🧠 Wilson, Andrew Norman. “Do you Trust Art Critics?” Spike. Summer 2024.
🧠 Emre, Merve and Andrea Long Chu. “I Want a Critic.” New York Review of Books. January 30, 2024.
🧠 Molesworth, Helen. “Embracing Uncertainty: In Defense of Question-Seeking Criticism.” Literary Hub. December 2023.
🧠 Haylock, Brad and Megan Patty, Eds. Art Writing in Crisis. Sternberg Press, London, United Kingdom. 2021.
🧠 Foster, Hal. What Comes After Farce: Art and Criticism at a Time of Debacle. Verso, 2020.
🧠 Menand, Louis. “Cultural Criticism and the Way We Live Now.” The New Yorker. October 17, 2016.
🧠 Godden, Sky. “Post Crisis: What’s Next for Art Criticism in a Digital Age.” Momus. June 26, 2015.
🧠 Bartelik, Marek. “Is there a Crisis in Art Criticism?” The Brooklyn Rail. December/January 2012-2013.
🧠 Schwabsky, Barry. “Criticism and Self-Criticism.” The Brooklyn Rail. December/January 2012-2013.
🧠 Elkins, James and Michael Newman, Eds. The State of Art Criticism. Routledge, New York, New York. 2008.
🧠 Elkins, James. What Happened to Art Criticism? Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago, Illinois. 2003.
🧠 Berger, Maurice. The Crisis of Criticism. The New Press, New York, New York. 1998.
