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This book participates in the ongoing debate about the alleged "death of theory" and the current post-theoretical condition, arguing that the "finitude" of theoretical projects does not mean "end", but rather contingency and transformation of thinking, beyond irreconcilable doctrines. Contributors from different cultural and scholarly backgrounds and based in three different continents propose new areas of investigation and interpretive possibilities, reopening dialogues with past and present discourses from a plurality of perspectives and locations. After a first section that reassesses the status and scopes of critique, theory, and literature, the book foregrounds new or neglected critical vocabulary, literary paradigms, and narrative patterns to reread texts at the intersection with other branches of the humanities-history, philosophy, religion, and pedagogy. It then explores geopolitical, cultural, and epistemological domains that have been historically and ideologically overdetermined (such as postsocialist, postcolonial, and cosmopolitan spaces), recodifying them as unstable sites of both conflicts and convergences. By acknowledging the spatio-temporal and cultural delimitations of any intellectual practice, the book creates awareness of our own partiality and incompleteness, but treats boundaries as zones of contact, exchange, and conceptual mobility that promote crossings and connections.
List of contents
1. Critiquing the Critique, Ming Xie.- 2. The Scope of Literary Theory; Patrick Colm Hogan.- 3. In Defense of an Unstable Literature, Sébastien Doubinsky.- 4. Illegitimacy as Norm: On the Temporal Structure of Science and Theory; Kirk Wetters.- 5. On Aristocratic Reading: The Ordeal of Conversion; Peter Paik.- 6. Reconstructing Religion and Literature; Vincent Pecora.- 7. Transcreationl Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère.- 8. Space, Mobility, and Materiality: Rethinking Notions of Geographic Coherence; Diana Sorensen.- 9. Outsourcing Post-Colonialism; Rukmini Bhaya Nair.- 10. Provincializing Posthumanism; Neda Atanasoki.- 11. Experimental Cosmopolitanism; Didier Coste.- 12. Critical Pedagogy: Practical Occidentalism in the Classroom; Robert Cowan.
About the author
Nicoletta Pireddu is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University, USA. Her research focuses on literary and cultural theories, history of ideas, European and Mediterranean studies, borders, migration, and identity. She has recently authored The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders (Palgrave 2015), and edited Scipio Sighele’s The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings on Mass Society (2018). She was granted fellowships from the NEH and Howard Foundation, and received the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award, the Distinguished Service Award, and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Summary
This book participates in the ongoing debate about the alleged “death of theory” and the current post-theoretical condition, arguing that the “finitude” of theoretical projects does not mean “end”, but rather contingency and transformation of thinking, beyond irreconcilable doctrines. Contributors from different cultural and scholarly backgrounds and based in three different continents propose new areas of investigation and interpretive possibilities, reopening dialogues with past and present discourses from a plurality of perspectives and locations. After a first section that reassesses the status and scopes of critique, theory, and literature, the book foregrounds new or neglected critical vocabulary, literary paradigms, and narrative patterns to reread texts at the intersection with other branches of the humanities—history, philosophy, religion, and pedagogy. It then explores geopolitical, cultural, and epistemological domains that have been historically and ideologically overdetermined (such as postsocialist, postcolonial, and cosmopolitan spaces), recodifying them as unstable sites of both conflicts and convergences. By acknowledging the spatio-temporal and cultural delimitations of any intellectual practice, the book creates awareness of our own partiality and incompleteness, but treats boundaries as zones of contact, exchange, and conceptual mobility that promote crossings and connections.
