Procedures of Resistance Contents, Positions and the 'Doings' of Literary Theory

This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed end of theory. It builds on the idea that theory is historically constituted as it is “always becoming something else” as Leslie Fiedler claimed in the 1950s, arguing that the historical constitution of theory relies on theory’s procedural nature. In order to assess theory’s procedural challenge to the fundamental notions that all the disciplines within an episteme have brought to the fore, it addresses these questions: What are the procedures theory has relied on? Are they a secret to its resistance, or is resistance its primary procedure? And if so, a resistance to what? Secondly, if resistance were theory’s principal vehicle, at which point does resistance, conceptualized only procedurally (as resisting something, questioning anything, criticizing whatever), display hallmarks of a disciplinary closure that must call for new resistances, and perhapsfor a fundamentally another kind? The book turns to what theory does in order to avoid a partial answer to what theory is.

1: Introduction (Davor Beganovic, Zrinka Božic, Andrea Milanko, and Ivana Perica).- PART I:  SYNECDOCHIC PROCEDURES.- 2: Analytical vs Synthetic Theories in 1920s Russia (Aage A. Hansen-Löve).- 3: The Leopard in the Temple: Svetozar Petrovic and the Zagreb School (Predrag Brebanovic).- 4: An Analysis of Cultural Icons: A Synecdochic Procedure (Dagmar Burkhart).- 5: The Points of No Return: The Avant-Garde and the Institutional Crisis (Marina Protrka Štimec).- PART II: PROCEDURES OF ACCOUNTABILITY.- 6: Inter-esse: Narrative, Theory, and the Stakes of Literature (Tomislav Brlek).- 7: Studying Literary Multilingualism, Revisiting National Philology: Post-Imperial East-Central European Literature as a Testing Ground (Stijn Vervaet).- 8: The Rhetoric of the Unsayable (Renate Lachmann).- 9: Reading the Cultural Trauma: Újvidék Raid (Nevena Dakovic).- PART III: PROCEDURES OF MATERIALISM     172.- 10: The Economies of Theory and Resistance (Stipe Grgas).- 11: Procedures of Synthesis: Mannheim’s and Lukács’s Third Ways (Ivana Perica).- 12: On the Heuristic Validity of Aesthetics: Economy, Media and Power in Arkadij and Boris Strugatskijs’ Monday Begins on Saturday (1965) (Jurij Murašov).- 13: Justice and Guilt: Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimovic (Davor Beganovic).- PART IV: MASTERING PROCEDURE.- 14: Is Literary Theory Possible? Interpreting Crisis, Mastering Procedures (Zrinka Božic).- 15: Literature’s Theories (Svend Erik Larsen).- 16: Literary Theory and the Return of the Lyric (Andrea Milanko).- PART V: RESISTING PROCEDURES.- 17: On Halt! (Vivian Liska).- 18: Writing the Theoria: Genre occidental, Jean-Luc Nancy and Pascal Quignard, a Footnote to Plato’s Seventh Letter, 344c (Nenad Ivic).- 19: The Stereoscopic Effects of Theory: Procedures of Contingency or Contingencies of Procedure? Notes on the Relationship Between Speculative Realism and Aleatory Materialism (Aleksandar Mijatovic).

Davor Beganovic is Lecturer in the Slavic Department of the University of Tübingen and a Research Fellow at the Slavic Department of the University of Münster, Germany. He is the author of Pripovijedanje bez kraja: "Hrvatska pripovjedacka Bosna" od Ive Andrica do Nebojše Lujanovica (2022). 

Zrinka Božic is an Associate Professor of Literary Theory and History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of The Community in Avant-Garde Literature and Politics (2022). 

Andrea Milanko is an Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of Pripovjedna proza Slobodana Novaka (forthcoming). 

Ivana Perica is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL), Berlin, Germany, and author of Die privat-öffentliche Achse des Politischen: Das Unvernehmen zwischen Hannah Arendt und Jacques Rancière (2016).