ROMANTICISM'S LONGUE DUREE: 1968 AND THE PROJECTS OF THEORY

Prof. Galin Tihanov will develop the intellectual agenda formulated in his latest book, The Birth and Death of Literary Theory (Stanford UP 2019). He will offer a brief reflection on 1968 as a nodal point in the appropriations and deployments of Romanticism. Prof. Tihanov will delineate the continuous after-life of Romanticism in the various guises of post-romanticism, a process that de-emphasizes notions of period or event, constructing instead a complex discursive formation that re-negotiates past intellectual agendas and resources by framing them within a discursive longue durée. Concentrating on the French and German scenes of theory and the student protests during the late 1960s, he traces their mediated links, showing how this intellectual and political constellation is traversed by Romantic discursive energies mobilized to make sense of, and respond to, the new developments. In this lecture, Prof. Tihanov will distinguish two understandings (and projects) of “theory” and the manner in which May ’68 influenced them.