> Although they seldom feel powerful themselves, Euro-American critics today still typically function as defenders of the rights of elites. In their writing and teaching, critics speak on behalf of and help to educate the capital possessing and capital managing classes. Williams points out that whereas in earlier eras scholars and critics offered learned commentary on and elaborations of knowledge, later critics of the reconceived literary focused on "the conscious exercise of 'taste,' 'sensibility,' and 'discrimination'" (1977, 49).