Ecstatics

Yet despite some last-minute disclaimers that she is not condemning all critical commentary and some advice to critics to pay more attention to form, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that in her opinion interpretation impoverishes art and that its practice for a number of decades by most academic and professional critics had been unquestionably harmful. She concluded with the pronouncement that "in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art."
Such a view would seem to place her in general agreement with Leslie Fiedler, who, addressing a national convention of the College English Association in the early 1970s, advocated "ecstatics" as a response to literature.
(Note: It's talking about Susan Sontag who believed interpreting and criticizing literature, destroys it. She was against the criticism.)
Source: A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature Fifth Edition by Wilfred L. Guerin

Hello,
The blue part does not make sense to me. I have checked the dictionaries but in spite of that, I can not get head or tail of that. Would you please be kind enough to clarify it to me? Does it mean ==>[joyful people]? or what?

Many thanks