Description
Dainotto synthesizes a vast array of literary, philosophical, and historical works by authors from different parts of Europe. He scrutinizes theories that came to dominate thinking about the continent, including Montesquieu's invention of Europe's north-south divide, Hegel's "two Europes," and Madame de Stael's idea of opposing European literatures: a modern one from the North, and a pre-modern one from the South. At the same time, Dainotto brings to light counter-narratives written from Europe's margins, such as the Spanish Jesuit Juan Andres's suggestion that the origins of modern European culture were eastern rather than northern and the Italian Orientalist Michele Amari's assertion that the South was the cradle of a social democracy brought to Europe via Islam.
A postcolonial study of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century theorizations that have informed the dominant idea of Europe, a concept that has marginalized the southern "other" within it's own borders
About the Author
Roberto M. Dainotto is Associate Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities.
Reviews
"Remarkably lucid and accessible, Europe (in Theory) is a superb antidote to the 'clash of civilizations' mindset. It ought to be required reading in any course on imperialism and/or postcolonialism."-Joseph A. Buttigieg, editor of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks
"What does Europe look like when you look at it from Sicily? It looks very much like Europe seen from its ex-colonies. Roberto M. Dainotto has shifted the geography of understanding and made a signal contribution to an 'epistemology of the South.' Europe (in Theory) is a landmark. A neglected archive, like the work of Michele Amari, becomes the anchor for a de-colonial take on Eurocentrism from inside Europe itself."-Walter D. Mignolo, author of The Idea of Latin America
"Written in a lively style, Europe (in Theory) is fresh, innovative, and brings the most advanced post-colonial and historiographic positions into Italian studies and conversely suggests that an understanding of Italy's complex past could enrich American cultural studies, Mediterranean area studies and the thorny issue of the relation of Islamic culture to Christian Europe." -- Peter Carravetta * Journal of Modern Italian Studies *
Book Information
ISBN 9780822339274
Author Roberto M. Dainotto
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 413g