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Consequences of Theory

Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1987-88

edited by Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson

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In Consequences of Theory, Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson bring together scholars from literature, philosophy, religion, history, and law—with specialties in African-American, American, Eglish, European, feminist, and postcolonial studies—to map some of the routes taken by theory in recent years. Anthony Appiah and Donal Pease analyze key tests of the "new historicism" in order to offer alternative models for understaing agency and resistance. Cornal West and nancy Fraser question the quietist premises of current pragmatism; in contrast they sktech a pragmatism neither of individuals nor of...

In Consequences of Theory, Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson bring together scholars from literature, philosophy, religion, history, and law—with specialties in African-American, American, Eglish, European, feminist, and postcolonial studies—to map some of the routes taken by theory in recent years. Anthony Appiah and Donal Pease analyze key tests of the "new historicism" in order to offer alternative models for understaing agency and resistance. Cornal West and nancy Fraser question the quietist premises of current pragmatism; in contrast they sktech a pragmatism neither of individuals nor of communities, but of moevments. Bruce Robbins and Lynn Hunt explore the relations between disciplines and the public, specifying the functions not only of professionalism but also of scandal. Gayatri Spivak and Patricia Williams focus on questions of marginality and minority, and they meditate on the forms and styles necessary to rethink these categories in today's world.

With contributors of divergent backgrounds and intersecting interests, Consequences of Theory proposes an agenda for the 1990s that demonstrates the continuing vitality of theoretical questions within the academy and in the public world of cultue, politics, and history.

Reviews

Reviews

Highly articulate, sophisticated, and tightly imbricated essays. This volume will make exceptionally fine reading for those well-acquainted with the rigorous techniques of theory.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
240
ISBN
9780801840456
Table of Contents

Introduction: Truth or Consequences
Chapter 1. Oppositional Professionals: Theory and the Narratives of Professionalization
Chapter 2. Theory, Pragmatisms, and Politics
Chapter 3. Solidarity or

Introduction: Truth or Consequences
Chapter 1. Oppositional Professionals: Theory and the Narratives of Professionalization
Chapter 2. Theory, Pragmatisms, and Politics
Chapter 3. Solidarity or Singularity? Richard Rorty between Romanticism and Technocracy
Chapter 4. Tolerable Falsehoods: Agency and the Interests of Theory
Chapter 5. History as Gesture; or, The Scandel of History
Chapter 6. Toward a Sociology of Literary Knowledge: Greenblatt, Colonialism, and the New historicism
Chapter 7. Theory in the Margin: Coetzee's Foe Reading Defoe's Crusoe/Roxana
Chapter 8. And We Are Not Married: A Journal of Musings upon Legal Language and the Ideology of Style
Chapter 9. The English Institute
Chapter 10. The Program
Sponsoring Institutions
Registrants, 1988

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Jonathan Arac

Jonathan Arac is professor of English at the University of Pittsburg and an editor of boundry.
Featured Contributor

Barbara Johnson

Barbara Johnson is professor of French and comparative literature at Harvard University. She is author of Défigurations du langage poétique and translator of Jacques Derrida's La Dissémination.