Prejudice Depraves Criticism: A Critique of “How to Escape My Own Shadow”

An article related to literary criticism requires precise definitions, theory and methodology. In literary criticism, one must distance himself/herself from personal criteria and seek for objective and scientific criteria. A literary critic with knowledge and experience, by adopting an objective method, distances himself/herself from prejudice and provides a disinterested criticism. Distraction from the principles of objective and disinterested criticism leads to the destruction of criticism. But sometimes there are writings that refuse to adhere to these principles; they are based only on personal criteria or conspiracy theories. Mehdi Javid Shad has published an article, “How to Escape My Own Shadow; A Critique of “Ideology and Interpellation of Black Americans’ Community in Amiri Baraka’s “In Memory of Radio”, in Literary Criticism Quarterly (no. 42). He has refused to provide accurate and scientific definitions, hypothesis and methodology because by referring to scientific and objective definitions, the basis of his writing (the charge of plagiarism) faces serious questions. He based his argument on personal assumptions and dismissed disinterested criticism to finish his note by relying on mistakes, secrecy, and conspiracy theories. By relying on the definition of plagiarism, the views of Matthew Arnold, Michel Foucault, Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the principles and methods of research, the present research attempts to highlight the mistakes made by Javid Shad in order to shed light on the other articles of this type.