Since there can be no literary theory without a theorist, theorizing must be taken to mean some person-theorizing or theorizing with a certain personage. This book, using Edward W. Said and Frank Lentricchia as examples, analyses the intellectual as such, as an informing personage or self-image in contemporary oppositional criticism. The literary politics this self-image helps to conceptualize is also analyzed. Focusing on the discursive, institutional, and existential situatedness of the critic-intellectual, this book explores the specific forms of tensions embedded in and constituting his oppositional criticism.