Constellations of a Contemporary Romanticism

Download or read book Constellations of a Contemporary Romanticism written by Jacques Khalip and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constellations of a Contemporary Romanticism takes its title and point of departure from Walter Benjamin’s concept of the historical constellation, which puts both “contemporary” and “romanticism” in play as period designations and critical paradigms. Featuring fascinating and diverse contributions by an international roster of distinguished scholars working in and out of romanticism—from deconstruction to new historicism, from queer theory to postcolonial studies, from visual culture to biopolitics—this volume makes good on a central tenet of Benjamin’s conception of history: These critics “grasp the constellation” into which our “own era has formed with a definite earlier one.” Each of these essays approaches romanticism as a decisive and unexpired thought experiment that makes demands on and poses questions for our own time: What is the unlived of a contemporary romanticism? What has romanticism’s singular untimeliness bequeathed to futurity? What is romanticism’s contemporary “redemption value” for painting and politics, philosophy and film?