A Time for the Humanities: Futurity and the Limits of Autonomy

Tim Dean

ISBN 10: 0823229203 / ISBN 13: 9780823229208

Published by Fordham University Press, 2008

About this Item

"Opens a battlefront and conversation that is likely to preoccupy the next generation."-Tom Cohen, University at Albany Num Pages: 283 pages, black & white illustrations, figures. BIC Classification: DS; H. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly. Dimension: 221 x 150 x 20. Weight in Grams: 395. . 2008. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780823229208

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Time for the Humanities: Futurity and the Limits of Autonomy
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823229203
• ISBN 13: 9780823229208
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This book brings together an international roster of renowned scholars from disciplines including philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and literary studies to address the conceptual foundations of the humanities and the question of their future. What notions of the future, of the human, and of finitude underlie recurring anxieties about the humanities in our current geopolitical situation? How can we think about the unpredictable and unthought dimensions of praxis implicit in the very notion of futurity?

The essays here argue that the uncertainty of the future represents both an opportunity for critical engagement and a matrix for invention. Broadly conceived, the notion of invention, or cultural poiesis, questions the key assumptions and tasks of a whole range of practices in the humanities, beginning with critique, artistic practices, and intellectual inquiry, and ending with technology, emancipatory politics, and ethics. The essays discuss a wide range of key figures (e.g., Deleuze, Freud, Lacan, Foucault, Kristeva, Irigaray), problems (e.g., becoming, kinship and the foreign, "disposable populations" within a global political economy, queerness and the death drive, the parapoetic, electronic textuality, invention and accountability, political and social reform in Latin America), disciplines and methodologies (philosophy, art and art history, visuality, political theory, criticism and critique, psychoanalysis, gender analysis, architecture, literature, art).

The volume should be required reading for all who feel a deep commitment to the humanities, its practices, and its future.

About the Authors

TIM DEAN is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo.

EWA PLONOWSKA ZIAREK is Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature and Founding Director of the Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo.

JAMES J. BONO is Associate Professor of History and of Medicine at the University at Buffalo.