Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange (Cultural Memory in the Present)

This book investigates "cultural instruments," meaning normative forms of analysis and practice that are central to Western culture. It explores their history from antiquity to the early Enlightenment and their use and reworking by different cultures, moving from Europe to Africa and the Americas, especially the Caribbean, in the process giving close readings of a wide range of authors.

Timothy J. Reiss is Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of Knowledge, Discovery, and Imagination in Early Modern Europe: The Rise of Aesthetic Rationalism.