Memory, History, and Pluripotency: A Realist View of Literary Studies

摘要: Speculative realism has, over the course of its rapid and controversial emergence in past decade, been frequently criticized from perspective historical materialism, for putative reliance on abstraction eschewal a sufficiently rigorous ideological alignment. This paper takes such critiques as starting point an examination contributions recent thought area speculative has to offer study humanities – specifically, literature literary history. In particular, contemporary realist potential enable scholars move beyond anthropocentric specialized notions history exclusively cultural entity, which have dominated discipline since twentieth century. Paying especially close attention work Graham Harman Manuel DeLanda, it is my argument that emergent philosophy offers set powerful conceptual tools can be put toward accounting hitherto neglected ontological status text illuminating particular variety real physical object participates system memory.