Generation and Class Antagonism

Abstract

In a recent special issue of modernism/modernity entitled weak theory, a group of scholars debated, receptively but appropriately gently, the merits of “weak thought,” a notion that the editor Paul Saint-Amour derived from his readings of Eve Sedgwick, Wai Chee Dimock, and Gianni Vattimo—a mode of argument, and even intellection, designed to deflate expansive or overconfident epistemological and ontological claims. The issue occasioned a great deal of online dispute, then no fewer than four sets of responses from the various partisans and antagonists of “weak theory,” and eventually, in a final invaginating flourish, a set of responses to the responses by the initial authors (including me). In their response, Melanie Micir and Aarthi Vadde brought into the conversation a tweet by Jacquelyn Ardam: I've been watching the conversations around @MModernity's “Weak Theory” issue unfold from the sidelines and here is my take: sure is easy to claim weakness when you have tenure or TT job. The Q of weakness looks v different from the land of the contingent. (@jaxwendy)