Humanism

A special issue of differences (issue 14:1)

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Edited by Elizabeth Weed and Ellen Rooney

Duke University Press

Due/Published June 2003, 184 pages, paper

ISBN 0822365820

Twentieth-century ideologies, from liberalism to fascism, are rooted in humanism--the faith in the sovereignty of human reason and potential that grew out of Renaissance thought and discovery. This special issue asks if it is true that all vestiges of humanism have been dismantled, or whether humanism has taken on new forms. Have new versions of historical analysis and cultural studies reanimated humanist themes? What is posthumanism? These essays examine relationships among structuralism, poststructuralism, and the subject; explore the challenge of anticolonialist critique to the coherence of antihumanism; reconsider the canon of antihumanists such as Heidegger and Foucault, and broach the intractable problems posed by efforts to comprehend the Holocaust, the camps, and ethnic cleansing. 

Contributors: Athena Athanasiou, Etienne Balibar, Mara de Gennero, Carolyn Dean, Brady Heiner, Lynne Joyrich, Jacques Lezra