Modernity's pretenses : making reality fit reason from Candide to the Gulag / Karlis Racevskis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Racevskis, Karlis.

Series:

SUNY series in postmodern culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rationalism--Controversial literature.

Rationalism.

Reason--History.

Reason.

History.

Postmodernism.

Controversial literature.

Physical Description:

xi, 161 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [1998]

Summary:

Modernity's Pretenses undermines modernity's authority through a cultural and historical examination of texts and thinkers from the Enlightenment to post-Stalinist Europe. Racevskis argues that modernity's elaborate designs for rationalizing the world have mainly functioned as covers and alibis (i.e., pretenses). Modernity's promise to liberate humanity from superstition, injustice, and want has been a tactic for making exploitation seem noble and for lending barbarism an aura of progress. Racevskis examines the mechanisms and history of the pretending that mark the modern world and surveys the critical approaches that have proven most effective in dispelling the credibility of pretenses.

Contents:

1. Voltaire and the Limits of Reason 19

2. The Postmodern Outlook for Hermeneutics 33

3. Michele Le Doeuff's Philosophy of Disinvolvement 51

4. The Dialectic of Reason 65

5. Foucault's Critique of the Enlightenment 77

6. Reason in the Age of Atrocity 89

7. Ethnic Identity in a Post-Stalinist Age 111.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0791439534

0791439542

OCLC:

38030156