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Historicism and Its Discontents

  • Erik Wade (author)
Chapter of: Burn after Reading: Vol. 1, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies + Vol. 2, The Future We Want: A Collaboration(pp. 113–118)

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Metadata
TitleHistoricism and Its Discontents
ContributorErik Wade (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0067.1.24
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/burn-after-reading/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightWade, Erik
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2014-04-28
Long abstractA text is being historicized. As with Freud's famous essay on the fantasy “a child is being beaten,” what matters most is the fantasy that the vague statement covers over.1What is the fantasy that historicism supports? Numerous arguments have been raised against historicism. However, my interest here lies less in those arguments than in exploring the fantasy that undergirds both historicism as well as its renunciation. What might it mean to give up historicism? Moreover, what might it mean to abandon a practice, as opposed to abandoning an object? This essay troubles the idea of letting go of historicism by suggest-ing that historicism is itself a kind of letting go, a relin-quishing of the historical object to a distant past. So, to let go of historicism is to refuse to let go of the historical object. This refusal, however, remains obscured and unacknowledged beneath a fantasy of historicism’s historicity.
Page rangepp. 113–118
Print length6 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors