Historicizing Theory provides the first serious examination of contemporary theory in relation to the various twentieth-century historical and political contexts out of which it emerged. Theory—a broad category that is often used to encompass theoretical approaches as varied as deconstruction, New Historicism, and postcolonialism—has often been derided as a mere "relic" of the 1960s. In order to move beyond such a simplistic assessment, the essays in this volume examine such important figures as Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt, and Edward Said, situating their work in a variety of contexts inside and outside of the 1960s, including World War II, the Holocaust, the Algerian civil war, and the canon wars of the 1980s. In bringing us face-to-face with the history of theory, Historicizing Theory recuperates history for theory and asks us to confront some of the central issues and problems in literary studies today.

Historicizing Fear is a historical interrogation of the use of fear as a tool to vilify and persecute groups and individuals from a global perspective, offering an unflinching look at racism, fearful framing, oppression, and marginalization across human history.The book examines fear and Othering from a historical context, providing a better understanding of how power and oppression is used in the present day. Contributors ground their work in the theory of Othering—the reductive action of labeling a person as someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the Other—in relation to historical events, demonstrating that fear of the Other is universal, timeless, and interconnected. Chapters address the music of neo-Nazi white power groups, fear perpetuated through the social construct of black masculinity in a racially hegemonic society, the terror and racial cleansing in early twentieth-century Arkansas, the fear of drug-addicted Vietnam War veterans, the creation of fear by the Tang Dynasty, and more. Timely, provocative, and rigorously researched, Historicizing Fear shows how the Othering of members of different ethnic groups has been used to propagate fear and social tension, justify state violence, and prevent groups or individuals from gaining equality. Broadening the context of how fear of the Other can be used as a propaganda tool, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, anthropology, political science, popular culture, critical race issues, social justice, and ethnic studies, as well as the general reader concerned with the fearful framing prevalent in politics. Contributors: Quaylan Allen, Melanie Armstrong, Brecht De Smet, Kirsten Dyck, Adam C. Fong, Jeff Johnson, Łukasz Kamieński, Guy Lancaster, Henry Santos Metcalf, Julie M. Powell, Jelle Versieren

Epistemology, as generally understood by philosophers of science, is rather remote from the history of science and from historical concerns in general. Rheinberger shows that, from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century, a parallel, alternative discourse sought to come to terms with the rather fundamental experience of the thoroughgoing scientific changes brought on by the revolution in physics. Philosophers of science and historians of science alike contributed their share to what this essay describes as an ongoing quest to historicize epistemology. Historical epistemology, in this sense, is not so concerned with the knowing subject and its mental capacities. Rather, it envisages science as an ongoing cultural endeavor and tries to assess the conditions under which the sciences in all their diversity take shape and change over time.

In this bold book, Samuel Cohen asserts the literary and historical importance of the period between the fall of the Berlin wall and that of the Twin Towers in New York. With refreshing clarity, he examines six 1990s novels and two post-9/11 novels that explore the impact of the end of the Cold War: Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, Roth's American Pastoral, Morrison's Paradise, O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods, Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted, Eugenides's Middlesex, Lethem's Fortress of Solitude, and DeLillo's Underworld. Cohen emphasizes how these works reconnect the past to a present that is ironically keen on denying that connection. Exploring the ways ideas about paradise and pastoral, difference and exclusion, innocence and righteousness, triumph and trauma deform the stories Americans tell themselves about their nation’s past, After the End of History challenges us to reconsider these works in a new light, offering fresh, insightful readings of what are destined to be classic works of literature. At the same time, Cohen enters into the theoretical discussion about postmodern historical understanding. Throwing his hat in the ring with force and style, he confronts not only Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalist response to the fall of the Soviet Union but also the other literary and political “end of history” claims put forth by such theorists as Fredric Jameson and Walter Benn Michaels. In a straightforward, affecting style, After the End of History offers us a new vision for the capabilities and confines of contemporary fiction.

Focussing upon both canonical figures such as Woolf, Eliot, Pound, and Stein and emergent themes such as Christian modernism, intermedial modernism, queer Harlem Renaissance, this volume brings together previously unseen materials, from various archives, to bear upon cutting-edge interpretation of modernism. It provides an overview of approaches to modernism via the employment of various types of primary source material: correspondence, manuscripts and drafts, memoirs and production notes, reading notes and marginalia, and all manner of useful contextualising sources like news reports or judicial records. While having much to say to literary criticism more broadly, this volume is closely focused upon key modernist figures and emergent themes in light of the discipline's 'archival turn' – termed in a unifying introduction 'achivalism'. An essential ingredient separating the above, recent tendency from a much older and better-established new historicism, in modernist studies at least, is that 'the literary canon' remains an important starting point. Whereas new historicism 'is interested in history as represented and recorded in written documents' and tends toward a 'parallel study of literature and non-literary texts', archival criticism tends toward recognised, oftentimes canonical or critically-lauded, writers, presented in Part 1. Sidestepping the vicissitudes of canon formation, manuscript scholars tend to gravitate toward leading modernist authors: James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett. Part of the reason is obvious: known authors frequently leave behind sizeable literary estates, which are then acquired by research centres. A second section then applies the same empirical methodology to key or emergent themes in the study of modernism, including queer modernism; spatial modernism; little magazines (and online finding aids structuring them); and the role of faith and/or emotions in the construction of 'modernism' as we know it.

Fran�ois Hartog explores crucial moments of change in societyÕs Òregimes of historicityÓ or its way of relating to the past, present, and future. Inspired by Arendt, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, Hartog analyzes a broad range of texts, positioning the The Odyssey as a work on the threshold of a historical consciousness and then contrasting it against an investigation of the anthropologist Marshall SahlinsÕs concept of Òheroic history.Ó He tracks changing perspectives on time in Ch‰teaubriandÕs Historical Essay and Travels in America, and sets them alongside other writings from the French Revolution. He revisits the insight of the French Annals School and situates Pierre NoraÕs Realms of Memory within a history of heritage and our contemporary presentism. Our presentist present is by no means uniform or clear-cut, and it is experienced very differently depending on oneÕs position in society. There are flows and acceleration, but also what the sociologist Robert Castel calls the Òstatus of casual workers,Ó whose present is languishing before their very eyes and who have no past except in a complicated way (especially in the case of immigrants, exiles, and migrants) and no real future (since the temporality of plans and projects is denied them). Presentism is therefore experienced as either emancipation or enclosure, in some cases with ever greater speed and mobility and in others by living from hand to mouth in a stagnating present. Hartog also accounts for the fact that the future is perceived as a threat and not a promise. We live in a time of catastrophe, one he feels we have brought upon ourselves.

Historicizing Fiction/Fictionalizing History brings together two authors, Umberto Eco and Orhan Pamuk, not frequently studied in comparison. By focusing on their non/fictional works to present a unique study of the methods and concepts of representation, Murthy uses contemporary historical novels to examine fictional depictions of reality, and provides a fresh perspective on representation studies in literature. Written in an accessible style, and tapping into fields as varied as literary and critical theory, the historical novel, postmodernism, and historiography, Historicizing Fiction/Fictionalizing History considers the ways in which reality, as discourse, confronts a text-external reality, and how this confrontation affects the autonomy of the fictional space – topics that remain persistently problematic areas within literary studies. Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Baudolino, and Pamuk’s My Name is Red and Snow, with their topical concerns and methods of representation, promise a rewarding comparative study. This book provides an early critical framework for these four works, placing them within the rubric of the postmodernist historical novel, as creative works that also comment on the process of literary writing through their recreation of historical pasts. In this respect, Historicizing Fiction/Fictionalizing History promises to be an engaging read in literary criticism and historiography, as well as a handy companion for Eco and Pamuk enthusiasts.