Description
Taking stock of contemporary social, cultural, and political currents, Timothy Brennan explores key turning points in the recent history of American intellectual life. Wars of Position documents how alternative views were chased from the public stage by strategic acts of censorship, including within supposedly dissident wings of the humanities. He explores how the humanities entered the cultural and political mainstream and settled into an awkward secular religion of the "middle way." In a series of interrelated chapters, he considers narratives of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Clinton impeachment; reexamines Salman Rushdie's pre-fatwa writings to illuminate their radical social leanings; presents a startling new interpretation of Edward Said; looks at the fatal reception of Antonio Gramsci within postcolonial history and criticism; and offers a stinging critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire and the influence of Italian radicalism on contemporary cultural theory. Brennan challenges the conventional view that claims upon the state, or the public interest, have been rendered obsolete by the march of events in the years before and after Reagan. Instead, he lays out a new path for a future infused with a sense of intellectual and political responsibility.
About the Author
Timothy Brennan is professor of comparative literature, cultural studies, and English at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now and Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation.
Reviews
A rich and erudite account of recent struggles among Euro-American intellectuals concerning cultural theory... Highly recommended. Choice Brennan's vigorously interrogative style dramatizes an unsettling yet productive skepticism, a sobering homeopathic injection into the current euphoria about the possibilities of globalization. American Book Review An important book. Interventions Throughout Wars of Position, Brennan exhibits a remarkable knowledge of theoretical and historical traditions, and an ability to move across them with deftness,fluently summarizing deeply complex arguments. -- Joseph Keith Postmodern Culture
Book Information
ISBN 9780231137300
Author Timothy Brennan
Format Hardback
Page Count 360
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press