The author proposes that ageing and old age can be seen as a universal process but also as something that can be differentiated both by time and place. In the central part of the article, the author ...contends that one way of approaching the topic, particularly if it is addressed as part of the United States polity, is through the lens of American Studies and, more specifically, through the work of R.W.B. Lewis and his idea of the American Adam. It is precisely the self-image of the United States as a country of youth that elides the significance of ageing from the disciplinary agenda. In addition, the author contends that the American socio-economic order marginalizes
ageing as incompatible with its dynamics. In the conclusion, the author up-dates the issue and shows how today’s pension schemes affect what was precisely designated as a time of retirement.
The article begins with a brief discussion of what the author judges to be an overproduction of publications in literary studies. He offers an explanation of this development and contends that the ...causes are endemic to the humanities. Two causes of this overproduction are particularly pertinent for his reading of Melville: firstly, the constant change of interpretative paradigms and, secondly, the striving of the humanities to reflect upon the contemporary moment. The departure point of the reading is the spatial turn and the author's contention that this geographical knowledge has failed to address the sea. Elaborating on this contention, the author foregrounds the need for a maritime criticism and proceeds to read Moby Dick by excavating the manner in which Melville represents and thinks of the sea. On the basis of this evidence, the author argues that in Moby Dick, Melville offers a meontological thinking of the sea. Consequentially, the author argues that this meontology has a bearing on the present economic crisis and that it can be used in understanding the latest mutation of money. In the conclusion, the author claims that literary studies can make an important contribution to efforts to cope with the challenges of the present moment.
The departure point of this article is that however one conceives the practice of American Studies one has to recognize that it is a disciplinary practice. In accordance with this contention the ...author proceeds to discuss the notion of the discipline as such before he goes on to ask and answer the question: “How do American Studies constitute themselves?” The author argues that American Studies, like other disciplines, constituted itself by objectifying an exceptional polity. The crux of his argument is that this self-constitution was founded on an act of erasure, whereby the evidence of capitalism was elided from the research agenda of the discipline. Contending that this erasure is paradoxical considering that American Studies has as its object the exemplary capitalist nation, the author proceeds to delineate the reasons for this erasure. He goes on to contend that American Studies was complicit with the capitalist system of production and that one can speak of it as being a part of an ideological apparatus. However, he proceeds by showing that the discipline of American Studies has always had to address the evidence of its object, namely the historical transformations in the United States, which have forced the discipline, at different points of the historical continuum, to revise its protocols and research agenda. In the last part of the article the author maintains that the unfolding economic crisis sets the ground for one such transformation and that the “command of money,” which has been revealed by the crisis, beckons us to undertake a new interdisciplinary networking, this time with economics. In the conclusion of the paper the author argues that the challenges of the present moment force the discipline to attend to postdisciplinary developments which have been proposed as ways with which to address the intractability of the present mutation of capitalism. At the very end of the article the author articulates and identifies the political position which is implied in his reading of American Studies as a disciplinary practice.
On the basis of ever-mounting evidence, amongst which is the “zone” problematic of the Zadar conference that occassioned these notes, it can be concluded that the spatial turn has insinuated itself ...as an all-pervading heuristic tool throughout the humanities and the social sciences. The extent to which space and spatiality have usurped the central stage in the various branches of reasearch can be gauged by admonishments that what we are witnessing is a new fundamentalism that has simply inverted the terms of the dualism of time and space (May and Thrift 2001: “Introduction”). According to Michael Dear the sway of space is manifested in multifold ways: in the ubiquity of spatial analysis in social theories and practices; in the explosion of publications devoted to the exploration of the interface of the social and the spatial; in the reintegration of human geography into various domains of knowledge; in the focus given to difference and the consequent diversification of theoretical and empirical practices; in a theoretically informed exploration of the relation between geographical knowledge and social action; and, finally, in the unprecedented proliferation of research agendas and publications pertaining to these isuuses (Dear 2001: 24). Two recent collections of papers are indicative of the ubiquity of spatial issues in scholarly work.
The following contribution to a discussion that purports to “rethink the humanities” stems from the field of American Studies which has, since its beginnings, challenged and put pressure on ...disciplinary borders and institutional structures of both the humanities and the social sciences. The approaches it has espoused has led observers to see it as a domain of inquiry where virtually anything goes. One of the explanations that has been put forth to account for the heterogeneity of both the research agendas and the multiplicity of methods within American Studies is the dynamics of demography within the United States and the way that this dynamic has impacted both the enrollment statistics at American universities and the diversifications of its teaching staff. According to this oft-repeated view, the research agenda of American Studies reflects the stages of empowerment of the different groups making up the United States polity. Although one would be hard put not to acknowledge these, distinctly American, developments, on the present occasion my point of departure is a more general rationale which American Studies, like other disciplines today, rely upon when setting their research agenda and deploying their methods: in simplest terms, they harbor a desire and feel a need for relevancy.
CAPITALIST REALISM, FINANCE AND DON DELILLO
The author begins his paper by recalling his qualms about the fact that the Split conference subsumed capitalist realism under the overall conference topic ...of Words and Images. His first step is to engage with Fisher’s notion of capitalist realism. After a brief overview of what Fisher understands by this notion, the author argues that any discussion of capitalist realism has to take into consideration the changes that have taken place in the nature of money. It is only when these changes are taken into account, changes that have to do with the fact that we recognize money as a system if not the system of representation, that one recognizes how relevant words and images are to discussions of capital. After a discussion of the ascendancy of finance during the latest mutation of capitalism, the author proceeds to give a reading of Don DeLillo’s short story “Hammer and Sickle” in which he shows how the text deals with finance, how DeLillo thematizes the difficulty of understanding finance and how all of this has a bearing on the lack of an alternative to capitalism announced in Fisher’s explanation of capitalist realism.
„i u metaforičkom i u praktičnom smislu vremensko je obzorje tijela, njegovi funkcionalni imperativi, njegova nesavršena imitacija ideala ono što potiče čovjeka na emocije, veze, na kajanje; naša je ...zajednička sudbina da moramo ići tamo kamo nas nosi tijelo.“ Rita Charon i Maura SpiegelLjudsko tijelo, da odmah na početku omeđim predmet kojim ću se baviti, koliko god sudbinski tako i samorazumljivo važno, kao da je marginalizirano u teorijskim raspravama. Razlozi za to su mnogostruki i u ovom ću se radu nekih izravno dotaći dok ću na druge posredno uputiti. Čini mi se da je možda ključni razlog zanemarivanja tijela u različitim disciplinama upravo njegova prividna samorazumljivost pa se mozganje o njemu činilo nepotrebnim. Međutim niz indikacija, među koje valja ubrojiti i odabir teme koja je motivirala ovaj članak, pokazuju da je pretpostavka kako je pitanje tijela „riješeno“, citirajući Donn Weltona iz uvoda zborniku posvećenu tijelu, preuranjena i neodrživa. Welton ondje piše:
Grgas discusses how Marx fared in the twenty-first century. Before the 2008 crisis and during the two previous decades that elapsed from the demise of "really existing socialism," Marx and Marxism ...were a kind of blind spot in discourses on man and his world. The apparent disapproval of his eschatology was used to disparage the whole of his thinking. Marx returned onto the scene with the outbreak of the last financial crisis.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
When we think about what it is we do in academic literary studies, we do so taking account of time - the time of the institution in which this disciplinary practice takes place, and the history of ...the discipline itself. Since literary studies engage contemporary issues and how they impact the reader, we must also acknowledge processes and events outside the field. The contributions to this volume engage with the idea of temporality not only in Anglophone literature studies, but in the humanities as a whole. In the first section, the literary contributions show that the humanities owe a debt to the past - new paradigms question and challenge the validity of older ones without necessarily discarding them. The second section shows how the disciplinary archive can be modified and expanded to engage its present condition, while the last deals with what that condition forebodes. Despite the range of perspectives adopted here, all contributions echo the history of the discipline of literary studies itself, its present condition, and the possibilities for its survival in an age in which the relevance of humanities is being disputed.
The author begins his paper by recalling his qualms about the fact that the Split conference subsumed capitalist realism under the overall conference topic of Words and Images. His first step is to ...engage with Fisher’s notion of capitalist realism. After a brief overview of what Fisher understands by this notion, the author argues that any discussion of capitalist realism has to take into consideration the changes that have taken place in the nature of money. It is only when these changes are taken into account, changes that have to do with the fact that we recognize money as a system if not the system of representation, that one recognizes how relevant words and images are to discussions of capital. After a discussion of the ascendency of finance during the latest mutation of capitalism, the author proceeds to give a reading of Don DeLillo’s short story “Hammer and Sickle” in which he shows how the text deals with finance, how DeLillo thematizes the difficulty of understanding finance and how all of this has a bearing on the lack of an alternative to capitalism announced in Fisher’s explanation of capitalist realism.
PDF
