The proliferation of critics and critical approaches has produced a trend toward fragmentation and isolation among the practitioners involved. A suggestive counter-trend indicates that there is intense curiosity among critics to watch colleagues encounter texts, grapple with the preliminary questions of stance and method, and share the experience of criticism as encounters with a text. Preoccupation with reflection on critical methods and stances usually occurs at the expense of the understanding of the critical experience that occurs prior to such reflection. An apt metaphor--the bureaucrat--describes this state of affairs because a bureaucrat's first duty is to perpetuate the rules and regulations of a solidified bureaucracy. How can scholars strike a balance between the habits and inclinations of the critic and the autonomy of the text, without resorting to a bureaucracy of method, especially when pressures from academia work to maintain this bureaucracy? A way is needed to remove methodological formalism from its central role in critical practice, without obliterating the importance of critical rigor in the process, so that the experience and interpretation of texts can return to main stage in criticism. For change to occur, it must begin at the individual level, with individual acts of rebellion against the bureaucracy. Ultimately, critics must realize that the experience of criticism is itself fundamentally anti-bureaucratic. What makes criticism interesting is the collision between a text, with all of its own tradition and context, and a critic, with all of his or her interests, intuitions, commitments, and curiosity. (References are attached.) (NKA)