Contemporary Literary Theory: From Deconstruction Back to History

In: Central European history, Band 22, Heft 3-4, S. 360-380

Abstract

Variousattempts have been made to bring to the attention of a wider historical audience the debates that have taken place among intellectual historians over the past decade. Such summaries may soon be in need of some updating. Insofar as many of these discussions have been inspired by developments among our colleagues in departments of literature, it is worth noting that those scholars likewise have engaged in heated exchanges. Since those debates seem to have resulted in a triumph of "history," we may be looking forward to new modes of argument among intellectual and cultural historians as well. This essay will attempt to present a summary of the issues within poststructuralism that induced this turn to a "new historicism" in departments of literature, and it will conclude by offering some suggestions about the ways in which this tendency might be useful to the study of the German past.