Publication, Rasmus Vangshardt, "Coherence and the Longing for Modernity in Literary Historiography, or: Why History and Historicism Are Two Things"

CML PhD fellow Rasmus Vangshardt has published the article Coherence and the Longing for Modernity in Literary Historiography, or: Why History and Historicism Are Two Things in the open access philosophy journal Res Cogitans.

In a metahistorical perspective, the articles demonstrates that identifications of radical rupture in history often work as an attempt to deny the role of the historical within the humanities and especially within the discipline of comparative literature; it furthermore argues that these ruptures also influence the possibility of general cultural criticism because they presuppose certain ontological assumptions of time and history and a specific idea of what ‘modern society’ is.

Through a new critique of the infamous ‘Great Divide’ between the Middle Ages and the modern period, the article discusses two strategies for a more coherent notion of literary history in C.S. Lewis’ historiographical essays and Bruno Latour’s theory of science respectively. This leads to the claim of the inevitability of history within the humanities: One cannot get dispose of it, even if that were desirable; luckily that is not even the case.