The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Thursday, 25 April 2024, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium

Gregory Jones-Katz
»A Democratic Knowledge Machine: The Theory and History of Literature Series and the Postmodern Epoch of »Strong Theory« across the North Atlantic, 1979-1997«

Abstract
Academic book series in Western Europe have received historians’ attention, yet similar series in the United States have not. In fact, a landmark event in critical thought and one of the stunning successes of university publishing in America has received only cursory notice: the Theory and History of Literature series, published by the University of Minnesota Press from 1981–1998. THL’s initial aim was to provide English translations of 20th century literary criticism and Continental philosophy--the series made available essential work by European thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jean-Luc Nancy, and many others. But the 87 volume series went on to publish influential American scholars as well, becoming an indispensable resource for »theory« in the U.S. In the late twentieth century, academic humanists in America remained tuned to THL texts, using them as intellectual fuel for research and inspiration for interdisciplinary dialogues, aiding build the epoch of »Strong Theory«.

This talk explores how and why THL’s »packaging strategies« helped make it into a »democratic knowledge machine«. »Packaging strategies« comprised the chosen THL texts’ design, above all their paperback form, and content, which included not simply the main text but their self-subversive introductions. Also central to this talk is an engagement with how and why THL texts’ compositional elements mirrored contemporary postmodern inclinations, principles, and conventions. For THL’s external postmodern contexts were not »outside the text,« but operational in and constitutive of THL texts’ power and persuasiveness. Transforming cohorts of American academic humanists’ reading habits and practices, THL helped to spawn third wave feminism, gender theory, Black studies, and other democratically-inflected intellectual programs. Hence, the series was an engine or mechanism for new forms of democratic thinking and living.

The speaker
Gregory Jones-Katz is a postgraduate in American History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From September 2023 until August 2024 he is, at the invitation of research focus Forschungsschwerpunktes »Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Atlantic World«, a Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.

Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de).