Literature after Feminism by Rita Felski
In LAF, Felski introduces readers to feminist literary criticism by way of four guiding questions with the purpose of showing how feminist criticism has changed how we read, think, and dialogue with texts:

The 4 questions (corresponding to each of the four chapters)
1. How, I ask, does feminist criticism change the way we think about readers?
2. How have feminists talked about female authors?
3. Does plot have a gender?
4. What is the role of value in feminist scholarship?
(20).

According to Felski, the most egregious error non-feminists have committed has been to say that critics cannot successfully focus on both the literature and the politics of a text. In refuting this “Either/Or” fallacy, Felski takes aim at John Ellis’s text, Literature Lost, a prime example of this fallacy. For example, Felski charges, “Nowhere does Ellis seriously engage the work of a feminist literary scholar or show any knowledge of the main trends in the field. Indeed, many of his comments reveal an astonishing level of ignorance” (7). Now I haven’t read Ellis’s text, but if Felski’s criticism is accurate, as I suspect it is, then why didn’t Ellis engage with feminists’ arguments? I’m guessing here — to engage fully with an argument is to grant it at least some measure of validity.
Felski also reviews the concept of the hermeneutic circle on her way to rebutting the “Either/Or” fallacy. The HC is the process where readers enter into a dialogue with a text and as the reader progresses, meaning is negotiated back and forth between reader and text. As Felski states, “Asking questions of the text, we must also be willing to let the text ask questions of us” (9). It is impossible to separate what we bring to the text, for what we bring to readings enriches (or enrages) our understanding. As Felski points out, it’s not a case of “either/or,” but “both/and.”
The other erroneous line of thinking that Felski discusses is a notion of universality of texts. Felski, as most feminists do, have issues with the concept of universality. While a particular text may speak to all of us, it probably doesn’t say the same thing.
Analogy may be an answer to notions of universality, for when we seek to make a connection or a comparison with the text, then we’re acknowledging how the text works on us, but unlike universality, we are not saying that there is anything inherent to the text, but our personal reading of it that leads us in a particular direction.
Felski wants us to have “double vision” (22). To hold more than one vision, or perspective in mind is not to have to choose between, but to have a dialog among. This makes sense to me. Everything really is connected and to argue that it’s not seems to me to be an awfully weak arguing position.
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