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by Henry Sussman (Author)
Veteran scholar and critic Henry Sussman deploys anecdote, reportage, and memoir to lament and scrutinize the rise of anti-intellectualism in the past few decades. How are we to reckon with the decline of impartiality and sharp increase in self-interested interference in politic, legal, and cultural spheres; the normalization of pathological narcissism in public life; and the blanket dismissal of scientific findings and their counterparts in the humanities and social sciences?
In retracing his own intellectual and experiential steps, Sussman revisits many of his lasting inspirations, including Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Immanuel Kant, and J. Hillis Miller. The result is an intellectual meditation on 'the great dismissal, ' in public and political life, of venerable and vital humanistic traditions, ethics, and ways of thinking
Author Biography
Henry Sussman retired in 2017 as Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at Yale University, USA, after a 45-year teaching career. He is the author of 11 books, including Around the Book (2011), The Aesthetic Contract (2007), Psyche and Text: The Sublime and the Grandiose in Literature, Psychopathology and Culture (1993), and High Resolution: Critical Theory and the Problem of Literacy (1989). He has edited five volumes, including Acts of Narrative, co-edited with Carol Jacobs (2003). He is the founder and co-editor of the curated, theory-driven weblog, Feedback (www.openhumanitiespress.org/feedback). Professor Sussman is currently Visiting Professor of German at Rutgers University, USA.
