Theory Aside

Published by Duke University Press 2014

Theory Aside

Edited by: Jason Potts and Daniel Stout

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822376637

Overview
Contents

About this book

Where can theory go now? Where other voices concern themselves with theory's life or death, the contributors to Theory Aside take up another possibility: that our theoretical prospects are better served worrying less about "what’s next?" and more about "what else?" Instead of looking for the next big thing, the fourteen prominent thinkers in this volume take up lines of thought lost or overlooked during theory's canonization. They demonstrate that intellectual progress need not depend on the discovery of a new theorist or theory. Moving subtly through a diverse range of thinkers and topics—aesthetics, affect, animation and film studies, bibliography, cognitive science, globalization, phenomenology, poetics, political and postcolonial theory, race and identity, queer theory, and sociological reading practices—the contributors show that a more sustained, less apocalyptic attention to ideas might lead to a richer discussion of our intellectual landscapes and the place of the humanities and social sciences in it. In their turn away from the radically new, these essays reveal that what’s fallen aside still surprises.

Contributors. Ian Balfour, Karen Beckman, Pheng Cheah, Frances Ferguson, William Flesch, Anne-Lise François, Mark B. N. Hansen, Simon Jarvis, Heather Love, Natalie Melas, Jason Potts, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jordan Alexander Stein, Daniel Stout, Irene Tucker

Author / Editor information

Jason Potts is Assistant Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

Daniel Stout is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi.

Reviews

“This insightful collection of essays regarding the use and place of theory in a post-theoretical realm dares to imagine how theory may successfully challenge and illuminate understanding of the world. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.”

-- S. Batcos Choice

"Potts and Stout call for a more ‘modest’ critical practice that gives attention to previously neglected thinkers and considers how theory might have developed in different ways....[The book's] approach disciplines including gender studies, film, poetics and postcolonial studies from surprising, and often enlightening, perspectives."

-- Forum for Modern Language Studies

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction On the Side: Allocations of Attention in the Theoretical Moment Jason Potts and Daniel Stout Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I chronologies aside
Chapter 1 Writing the History of Homophobia Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
Chapter 2 Late Exercises in Minimal Affirmatives Anne- Lise François Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
Chapter 3 Comparative Noncontemporaneities: C. L. R. James and Ernst Bloch Natalie Melas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Chapter 4 On Suicide, and Other Forms of Social Extinguishment Elizabeth A. Povinelli Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
Part II approaches aside
Chapter 5 What Is Historical Poetics? Simon Jarvis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Chapter 6 The Biopolitics of Recognition: Making Female Subjects of Globalization Pheng Cheah Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
Chapter 7 Before Racial Construction Irene Tucker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Chapter 8 Archive Favor: African American Literature before and aft er Theory Jordan Alexander Stein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	160
Chapter 9 What Cinema Wasn’t: Animating Film Theory’s Double Blind Spot Karen Beckman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Part III figures aside
Chapter 10 Hyperbolic Discounting and Intertemporal Bargaining William Flesch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Chapter 11 The Primacy of Sensation: Psychophysics, Phenomenology, Whitehead Mark B. N. Hansen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
Chapter 12 Reading the Social: Erving Goff man and Sexuality Studies Heather Love Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Chapter 13 Our I. A. Richards Moment: The Machine and Its Adjustments Frances Ferguson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
Chapter 14 Needing to Know (:) Theory / Afterwords Ian Balfour Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	280
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 328
Illustrations
- Other: 1 illustration

eBook

Published: May 14, 2014
ISBN: 9780822376637