Future Theory: A Handbook to Critical Concepts

by Patricia Waugh (Editor), Marc Botha (Editor)

Overview

By interrogating the terms and concepts most central to cultural change, Future Theory interrogates how theory can play a central role in dynamic transition. It demonstrates how entangled the highly politicized spheres of cultural production, scientific invention, and intellectual discourse are in the contemporary world and how new concepts and forms of thinking are crucial to embarking upon change.

Future Theory is built around five key concepts – change, boundaries, ruptures, assemblages, horizons – examined by leading international thinkers to build a vision of how theory can be applied to a constantly shifting world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472567345
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/20/2023
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Marc Botha is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Theory in the Department of English Studies at Durham University, UK. He is the author of Persistence and Transfiguration: A Theory of Minimalism (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Patricia Waugh is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University, UK.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: RETHINKING CHANGE
Memory: Enzo Traverso (Cornell University, USA)
Community: Mick Smith (Queen's University, Canada)
Risk: Marc Botha (Durham University, UK)
Remainder: Andrew Gibson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
Institution: Simon Critchley (New School for Social Research, USA)
Movement: Esther Leslie (Birkbeck, University of London, UK)

PART TWO: BOUNDARIES AND CROSSINGS
Threshold: Matthew Calarco (California State University, USA)
Periphery: Paulina Aroch Fugellie (Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico)
Exception: Justin Clemens (The University of Melbourbane, Australia)
Migration: Mieke Bal (The University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Privacy: Alexander Garcia Düttmann (Berlin University of the Arts, Germany)

PART THREE: RUPTURE AND DISRUPTIONS
Catastrophe: JeanMichel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Event: Mark Currie (Queen Mary, University of London, UK)
Revolution: Aleš Erjavec (The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Interference: Emily Apter (New York University, USA)
Turban: Christopher Norris (Cardiff University, UK)

PART FOUR: ASSEMBLAGES AND REALIGNMENTS
Paradigm: Patricia Waugh (Durham University, UK)
Fragmentation: Maebh Long (The University of Waikato, New Zealand)
Hybrid: Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck, University of London, UK)
Network: Graham Harman (Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA)
Dissemination: Jon Adams (London School of Economics, UK)

PART FIVE: HORIZONS AND TRAJECTORIES
Climate: Timothy Clark (Durham University, UK)
Decolonization: Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Rutgers)
Irreversibility: Claire Colebrook (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Resilience: Sarah Atkinson (Durham University, UK)
Hospitality: Derek Attridge (York) Hope: Caroline Edwards (Birkbeck, University of London, UK)

Editorial Reviews

Future Theory is not just a handbook explaining current critical concepts but a series of wide-ranging explorations, by an impressive international group of thinkers, of concepts that are likely to be critical for the future of theory, such as risk, catastrophe, climate, threshold, and, fortunately, hope.” —Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cornell University, USA

From the Publisher