Between Suspicion and Love. Reality, Postcritique, and Euro-American Modernization (An Introduction to the Debate)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.10152

Keywords:

Critique and Postcritique, Italian Theory, Modernism, Modernity, European-American Relations

Abstract

The essay introduces major tenets in the current debate on postcritique, focusing especially on the widespread rejection of symptomatic reading in literary studies and on the rejection of rupture as both a modernist and theoretical model for the conception of the new. Further, it presents theory as a phase of Euro-American modernization. Finally, it outlines a wider, more dynamic concept of critique, understood as a movement of intellectual—and geographical—displacements.

Author Biography

Mena Mitrano, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

Mena Mitrano conducts research in the field of Anglo-American Languages and Literatures [Lingue e Letterature Anglo-Americane] at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is the author of In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism (Edinburgh University Press 2016; paperback 2017), Gertrude Stein: Woman Without Qualities (Ashgate 2005), Language and Public Culture (Edizioni Q 2009), and the co-editor of The Hand of the Interpreter: Essays on Meaning After Theory (Peter Lang 2009). Her core interest is the intimate link between modernism and theory. She has written on modernism, American literature, literary theory/critical theory, psychoanalysis, visuality, and great women intellectuals. Currently, she is completing her new book on critique.  

References

Anker, Elizabeth S. and Rita Felski. “Introduction.” Critique and Postcritique. Durham:

Duke UP, 2017. 1-28.

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Introduction by Margaret Canovan. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2007.

Bryant, Levi Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, “Towards a Speculative Philosophy.” The

Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Eds. Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. Melbourne: re.press, 2011. 1-18.

Collini, Stefan. “The Identity of Intellectual History.” A Companion to Intellectual History.

Eds. Richard Whatmore and Brian Young. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015.<http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/luc/detail.action?docID=4529146>. Accessed April 30, 2020, n.p.

Dillet, Benoît .“What is Poststructuralism?” Political Studies Review Vol. 15. 4 (2017): 516–

Dimock, Wai Chee. “Weak Theory: Henry James, Colm Tóibín, and W. B. Yeats," Critical

Inquiry 39.4 (Summer 2013): 732-753.

Esposito, Esposito. "German Philosophy, French Theory, Italian Thought." Trans. Mena

Mitrano. Forum: American Studies and Italian Theory. RSA Journal 26 (2015): 104-114.

Esposito, Roberto. Pensiero Vivente: Origine e attualità della filosofia italiana. Turin: Einaudi, 2010.

Esposito, Roberto. Da Fuori: Una Filosofia per l’Europa. Turin: Einaudi, 2016.

Esposito, Roberto. Pensiero Istituente: Tre Paradigmi di Ontologia Politica. Turin: Einaudi,

Felski, Rita. "Introduction," Re-composing the Humanities -- with Bruno Latour, New Literary

History 47.2-3 (Spring & Summer 2016): 215-229; 222.

Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago P, 2015

Fleissner, Jennifer. "Romancing the Real: Bruno Latour, Ian McEwan, and Postcritical Monism." Critique and Postcritique. Ed. Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski. Durham and London, Duke UP, 2017. 99-126.

Friedman, Susan Stanford "Musing Modernist Studies." Modernism/Modernity 17.3 (Sept.

471-499.

Friedman, Susan Stanford .Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across

Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Groys, Boris. Introduction to Antiphilosophy. Trans. David Fernbach. London: Verso, 2012.

Hagen, Margareth. “Mapping, Bridging, Quilting: Tracing the Relations between

Literature and Science.” Margareth Hagen et al., The Art of Discovery: Encounters in

Literature and Science. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2010. 9-28.

Harman, Graham. Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Chicago

and LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 2005.

Harman, Graham. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: re.press,

Hayot, Eric. “Then and Now.” Critique and Postcritique. Eds. Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2017. 279-295.

Huxley, Aldous. Literature and Science. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Lacan, Jacques. “Discorso di Roma.” Altri scritti. Ed. Antonio di Ciaccia. Turin: Einaudi,

133-164.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Function and Field of Language in Psychoanalysis.” Ed. Alan

Sheridan. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977. 30-113.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catharine Porter. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard UP, 1993.

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2005.

Lesjak, Carolyn. “Reading Dialectically.” In Literary Materialisms. Eds. Mathias Nilges and

Emilio Sauri. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 17-47.

Love, Heather. “Close but Not Deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn.” New

Sociologies of Literature. Special issue of New Literary History 41.2 (2010): 371-391.

Love, Heather. “Close Reading and Thin Description.” Public Culture 25.3 (2013) 401-34.

Marcus, Sharon and Stephen Best, eds. Description Across Disciplines. Special

Issue. Representations 135.1 (2016).

Marcus, Sharon and Stephen Best. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations

Vol. 108, No. 1 (Fall 2009): 1-21.

Marcus, Sharon, Heather Love and Stephen Best, eds. Description Across Disciplines. Special

Issue. Representations 135.1 (2016).

Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England.

Princeton: Princeton UP 2007.

Rainey, Lawrence and Robert von Hallberg, “Introduction,” Modernism/Modernity 1.1

(1994): 1-3.

Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” Adrienne Rich’s Poetry

and Prose. Eds. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. 166-176.

Scarry, Elaine. The Difficulty of Imagining Other Persons. In The Handbook of Interethnic

Coexistence. Ed. E. Weiner. New York, Continuum, 1998. 40-62.

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012.

Sontag, Susan. As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals & Notebooks 1964–1980. Ed.

David Rieff. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012.

Stengers, Isabelle. “Wondering about Materialism.” The Speculative Turn: Continental

Materialism and Realism. Eds. Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. Melbourne: re.press, 2011. 368-380.

Tanning, Dorothea. "Graduation.” A Table of Content: Poems, New York: Graywolf Press,

20.

Williams, James. Understanding Poststructuralism. Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/luc/detail.action?docID=1900170. Accessed January 5, 2020. .

RIAS Vol. 12, Fall-Winter No. 2/2020

Downloads

Published

2020-12-31

How to Cite

Mitrano, M. (2020). Between Suspicion and Love. Reality, Postcritique, and Euro-American Modernization (An Introduction to the Debate). Review of International American Studies, 13(2), 185–208. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.10152

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 2 (2020): One World: The Americas Everywhere—RIAS Vol. 13, Fall–Winter (2/2020)

Section

VARIA

License

The Copyright Holder of the submitted text is the Author. The Reader is granted the rights to use the material available in the RIAS websites and pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative CommonsAttribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Any commercial use requires separate written agreement with the Author and a proper credit line indicating the source of the original publication in RIAS.

  1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY 4.0 license.

  1. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution - By the same conditions 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

  1. User Rights

Under the Creative Commons Attribution license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

  1. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.