Situatedness, or, Why We Keep Saying Where We're Coming From (Post-Contemporary Interventions) - Softcover

Simpson, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822328399 ISBN 13: 9780822328391

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2002

Synopsis

“Let me tell you where I'm coming from . . .”—so begins many a discussion in contemporary U.S. culture. Pressed by an almost compulsive desire to situate ourselves within a definite matrix of reference points (for example, “as a parent of two children” or “as an engineer” or “as a college graduate”) in both scholarly inquiry and everyday parlance, we seem to reject adamantly the idea of a universal human subject. Yet what does this rhetoric of self-affiliation tell us? What is its history? David Simpson’s Situatedness casts a critical eye on this currently popular form of identification, suggesting that, far from being a simple turn of phrase, it demarcates a whole structure of thinking.
Simpson traces the rhetorical syndrome through its truly interdisciplinary genealogy. Discussing its roles within the fields of legal theory, social science, fiction, philosophy, and ethics, he argues that the discourse of situatedness consists of a volatile fusion of modesty and aggressiveness. It oscillates, in other words, between accepting complete causal predetermination and advocating personal agency and responsibility. Simpson’s study neither fully rejects nor endorses the present-day language of self-specification. Rather it calls attention to the limitations and opportunities of situatedness—a notion whose ideological slippage it ultimately sees as allowing late-capitalist liberal democracies to function.
Given its wide scope and lively rendering, Situatedness will attract a range of scholars in the humanities and legal studies. It will also interest all those for whom the politics of subjectivity pose real problems of authority, identity, and belief.

About this title

About the Author

David Simpson is G. B. Needham Fellow and Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. His previous books include The Politics of American English and The Academic Postmodern and the Rule of Literature.

From the Back Cover

"An exciting work, phenomenally erudite, informative, shrewdly and scrupulously argued, and very attractively written in vivid, non-jargony prose spiked with wry wit. "Situatedness "makes a striking contribution to current debates in humanities and social science scholarship, and it will be a touchstone for theoretical commentary in a range of different fields for a good while to come."--Christopher Herbert, Northwestern University

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0822328399
• ISBN 13: 9780822328391
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304