Conflicting Humanities

Description

How might we reinvent the humanities? This is the question at the heart of this provocative volume. It is a difficult mission and definitely one which needs to be addressed with increasing urgency. There is no better cast to confront and problematize this question than the contributors to Conflicting Humanities. They are world-renowned thinkers who can tackle the problem as researchers and teachers but also as prominent public intellectuals. Taking the intellectual and political legacies of Edward Said as a point of departure and frame of reference, the contributors – working in a range of disciplinary settings – consider the current condition of humanism and the humanities. Said's definition of the core task of the Humanities as the pursuit of democratic criticism remains more urgent than ever, though it needs to be supplemented by gender, environmental, and anti-racist perspectives as well as by detailed analysis of the necro-political governmentality of our time. An innovative piece of scholarship, this volume is committed to the refusal of a world riven by new kinds of warcraft, injustice and exploitation. “The great merit of the collection is that it just shows the relationship between the burning issues of today.” – Vooys Literary Journal (Bloomsbury Translation) “This collection is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the legacy of Edward Said. It draws together an outstanding list of authors and thinkers who work tirelessly to place Said's writing at the forefront of our contemporary concerns. The essays mobilize the best of Said's thinking and politics to refresh and irrigate the diverse fields of the humanities today. They brilliantly place Said's avowed humanism at the centre of the contested spaces of the post-human and a post-humanities academy, challenging thought and provoking us to action.” – Martin McQuillan, Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis, Kingston University, UK Acknowledgements Introduction Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy Chapter 1: The Contested Posthumanities Rosi Braidotti Chapter 2: A Borderless World? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Chapter 1: Borderless Worlds? Ankhi Mukherjee Chapter 1: Humanities and Emancipation. Said's Politics of Critique Between Interpretation and Interference Jamila M. H. Mascat Chapter 1: Not Yet Humanism or the Non-Jewish Jew Becomes the Non-Humanistic Humanist Paul Gilroy The Political Enlightenment: A View from the South Akeel Bilgrami “We belong to Palestine still”: Edward Said and the Challenge of Representation Robert J.C. Young “Where Am I Supposed to Go Now?” Ariella Azoulay The Missing Homeland of Edward Said Aamir R. Mufti Versions of Binationalism in Said and Buber Judith Butler Further Reflections on Exile: War and Translation Étienne Balibar We, the Non-Europeans: Derrida with Said Engin Isin Musical Dis-Possessions Stathis Gourgouris In the Time of Not Yet: On the Imaginary of Edward Said Marina Warner Index