Carlson, Liane (Author)
Columbia University Press
Physical Details: 304
Language: English
Central to the historicizing work of recent decades has been the concept of contingency, the realm of chance, change, and the unnecessary. Following Nietzsche and Foucault, genealogists have deployed contingency to show that all institutions and ideas could have been otherwise as a critique of the status quo. Yet scholars have spent very little time considering the genealogy of contingency itself—or what its history means for its role in politics.In Contingency and the Limits of History, Liane Carlson historicizes contingency by tying it to its theological and etymological roots in “touch,” contending that much of its critical, disruptive power is specific to our current historical moment. She returns to an older definition of contingency found in Christian theology that understands it as the lot of mortal creatures, who suffer, feel, bleed, and change, in contrast to a necessary, unchanging, impassible God. Far from dying out, Carlson reveals, this theological past persists in continental philosophy, where thinkers such as Novalis, Schelling, Merleau-Ponty, and Serres have imagined contingency as a type of radical destabilization brought about by the body’s collision with a changing world. Through studies of sickness, loneliness, violation, and love, she shows that different experiences of contingency can lead to dramatically dissimilar ethical and political projects. A strikingly original reconsideration of one of continental philosophy and critical theory’s most cherished concepts, this book reveals the limits of historicist accounts.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Peter Harrison;
(2016)
What was historical about natural history? Contingency and explanation in the science of living things
(/isis/citation/CBB972800240/)
Article
Zachary D. Blount;
(2016)
A case study in evolutionary contingency
(/isis/citation/CBB801728986/)
Article
John Beatty;
(2016)
What are narratives good for?
(/isis/citation/CBB867181599/)
Book
Steward, M. A.;
(2001)
English Philosophy in the Age of Locke
(/isis/citation/CBB000102186/)
Book
James A. Harris;
(2019)
Hume: An Intellectual Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB460332792/)
Book
Condren, Conal;
Gaukroger, Stephen;
Hunter, Ian;
(2006)
The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a ContestedIdentity
(/isis/citation/CBB000931015/)
Article
Joachim L. Dagg;
(2017)
How counterfactuals of Red-Queen theory shed light on science and its historiography
(/isis/citation/CBB638039701/)
Book
Lagueux, Maurice;
(2001)
Actualité de la philosophie de l'histoire
(/isis/citation/CBB000301504/)
Article
Stump, David J.;
(2009)
Pragmatism, Activism, and the Icy Slopes of Logic in George Reisch's Portrait of the Philosophy of Science as a Young Field
(/isis/citation/CBB001032855/)
Article
Douglas, Heather;
(2009)
Philosophy of Science, Political Engagement, and the Cold War: An Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001032853/)
Article
Edgar, Scott;
(2009)
Logical Empiricism, Politics, and Professionalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001032856/)
Book
Proctor, James D.;
(2005)
Science, Religion, and the Human Experience
(/isis/citation/CBB000773074/)
Article
Olson, Storrs L.;
(2015)
The Myth of the Malaspina Expedition in the Galapagos Islands
(/isis/citation/CBB001500449/)
Article
Persson, Mats;
(2000)
Upplysningen och historismen: Utsikt över ett forskningsläge
(/isis/citation/CBB000330352/)
Chapter
Penman, Leigh T. I.;
(2011)
The Wicked and the Fair: Changing Perceptions of Terra Australis through the Prism of the Batavia Shipreck (1629)
(/isis/citation/CBB001201516/)
Book
Kelley, Donald R.;
(2002)
The Descent of Ideas: The History of Intellectual History
(/isis/citation/CBB000302192/)
Article
J. C. Pinto de Oliveira;
(2020)
Kuhn, Condorcet, and Comte: On the Justification of the "Old" Historiography of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB123737042/)
Article
Myron P. Gutmann;
(2018)
Beyond Social Science History: Population and Environment in the US Great Plains
(/isis/citation/CBB780470005/)
Book
Gierl, Martin;
(2012)
Geschichte als präzisierte Wissenschaft: Johann Christoph Gatterer und die Historiographie des 18. Jahrhunderts im ganzen Umfang
(/isis/citation/CBB001214209/)
Article
Hudson, Wayne;
(2014)
Philosophy, Theology, and the Humanities
(/isis/citation/CBB001201206/)
Be the first to comment!