Nonmodern Practices: Latour and Literary Studies

This collection of essays responds to the urgent call in the humanities to go beyond the act of negative critique which, so far, has been the dominant form of intellectual inquiry in academia. The contributors take their inspiration from Bruno Latour's pragmatic, relational approach and his philosophy of hybrid world where culture is immanent to nature and knowledge is tied to the things it co-creates. In such a world, nature, society, and discourse relate to, rather than negate, each other. The 11 essays, ranging from early modern humanism and modern theorization of literature to contemporary political ecology and animal studies, propose new productive ways of thinking, reading, and writing with, not against, the world. In carrying out concrete practices that are inclusive, rather than exclusive, contributors strive to exemplify a form of scholarship that might be better attuned to the concerns of our post-humanist era.

Table of Contents:
Foreword William Paulson (University of Michigan, USA) Introduction Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) Part I Early Modern Tradition from a Latourian Relational Perspective 1. “Nonmodern Humanism”: A Relational Reading of Latour and Montaigne Jan Miernowski (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) 2. Practices of Early Modern Orientalism: A Latourian Perspective Oumelbanine Zhiri (University of California, San Diego, USA) Part II Reassessing the Literary and Political Modernity with Latour 3. Nonmodern Flaubert William Paulson (University of Michigan, USA) 4 Latour, Stengers, and Nonmodern Poetry Claire Chi-ah Lyu (University of Virginia, USA) 5. Kafka's Whipper and Joyce's Pandybat: Reading Scenes of Discipline with Latour Gabriel Hankins (Clemson University, USA) 6. Michelet's Nonmodernity Maxime Goergen (University of Sheffield, UK) Part III Latour's Contributions to the Field of Contemporary Animal Studies 7. Landing in Animal Territories Vinciane Despret (University of Liège, Belgium) 8. Composing with the “Animal Side” Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) Part IV Issues of Practical Concern Related to Latour's Thinking 9 Latour's Interpretation of Donald Trump Graham Harman (SCI-Arc, USA, and European Graduate School) 10. The Literary Worlds: Indigenous and Western Network Ethnography Stephen Muecke (Flinders University, Australia) Afterword Rita Felski (University of Virginia, USA, and University of Southern Denmark) Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield is Associate Professor of French at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. She is the author of Georges Bataille, la terreur et les lettres (2009). Claire Chi-ah Lyu is Associate Professor of French at the University of Virginia, USA. She is the author of A Sun within a Sun: The Power and Elegance of Poetry (2006).

Review :
Nonmodern Practices assembles an outstanding body of distinguished international scholars to consolidate the multifaceted work of Bruno Latour as a provocation to comparative literary studies. William Paulson’s foreword and Rita Felski’s afterword join co-editor Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield’s lucid introduction to provide a short course in Latour’s master trope of the nonmodern. His actor-network theory comes forward as opening a field of empirical and interpretive possibilities ready to inform a renovated literary academy following Latour’s lead beyond the (im)postures of ideological critique. A suite of spare and spirited essays—with standout contributions by Vinciane Despret and Graham Harman—model the practice of nonmodernity by stepping over the purified national, periodic, and disciplinary boundaries of standard literary discussion. To a man holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a modern scholar, everything looks like an occasion to prove one’s mastery by devising neat distinctions between science and illusion, progress and tradition, emancipation and servitude. We may never have been (fully) modern, but neither can we simply trash modernity as a bad idea. Our most important task may be to complement modernization—and to contain its dramatic excesses, leading to the sixth great extinction and climate change—by reclaiming “nonmodern practices”, which trade self-righteous hammers for careful attention. Literary studies are best positioned to do so, as this volume brilliantly demonstrates. What has been held against them (not being “scientific” enough) may be their strongest asset: in fact, literary studies have always been nonmodern. They mobilize the power of illusions in their solicitude towards fiction, they are intrinsically rooted in cultural traditions, and they often uncover the hidden servitudes of emancipatory claims. From Montaigne to Donald Trump through Kafka, via orientalism and animal territories, this volume joyfully illustrates the platform of transdisciplinarity provided by Latour-inspired literary studies.