Theory in the "Post" Era

Alexandru Matei is Professor of French at Transilvania University of Bra?ov, Romania, and Visiting Professor in the Anthropology Department of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Assistance of University of Bucharest, Romania. He is the author of books such as The Last Days of Literature’s Life: Enormous and Insignificant in Contemporary French Literature (2008), A Captivating Tribune: Television, Ideology, and Society in Socialist Romania (2013), and Jean Echenoz et la Distance intérieure (2012). Christian Moraru is Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA. His recent publications are the monographs Cosmodernism: American Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary (2011) and Reading for the Planet: Toward a Geomethodology (2015) and coedited essay collections such as The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century (2015), Romanian Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2018), and Francophone Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury, 2020).Andrei Terian is Vice Rector of Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania, and Professor of Romanian literature at the same institution. His latest books are the monographs G. Calinescu: The Fifth Essence (2009) and Exporting Criticism: Theories, Contexts, Ideologies (2013). He is also a main contributor to the General Dictionary of Romanian Literature (first edition: 2004-2009; second edition: 2016-2021) and Chronology of Romanian Literary Life: 1944-1989 (2010-2021).

• Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Toward a “Post” Vocabulary-- A Lab ReportAlexandru Matei, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania; Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA; and Andrei Terian, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, RomaniaPart I: Aesthetics1. Constructualism: Literary Evolution as Multiscalar DesignTeodora Dumitru, G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania2. Post-Aesthetics: Literature, Ontology, and Criticism as DiplomacyAlexandru Matei, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania 3. Eastethics: The Ideological Shift in NarratologyAlex Goldis, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania 4. Metapolitics: Recommitting Literature in the Populist AftermathIoana Macrea-Toma, Central European University of Budapest, Hungary5. Communality: Un-Disciplining Race, Class, and Sex in the Wake of Anti-“PC” MonomaniaAndrei Terian, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania6. Anarchetype: Reading Aesthetic Form after “Structure”Corin Braga, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, RomaniaPart II: Temporalities7. Post-Synchronism: “Cultural Complex,” or Critical Theory’s Unfinished BusinessCarmen Musat, University of Bucharest, Romania8. Post-Presentism: The Past, the Passed, and “Now” as Critical OperatorBogdan Cretu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania9. Postfuturism: Contemporaneity, Truth, and the End of World LiteratureChristian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA10. Post-Memory: The Labor of Critical Remembrance after CommunismAndreea Mironescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania11. Biofiction: Metamorphoses of Life-Writing across Criticism, Theory, and Literature Laura Cernat, Independent Scholar Part III: Critical Modes12. Geocritique: Siting, Poverty, and the Global SoutheastStefan Baghiu, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania13. Neocritique: Sherlock Holmes Investigates LiteratureMihai Iovanel, G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory of the Romanian Academy, Romania14. Digicriticism: Profession On(the)LineAdriana Stan, Sextil Puscariu Institute of Linguistics and Literary History of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania15. Somatography: Writing as Incorporated Cognition, or the Body Knows MoreCaius Dobrescu, University of Bucharest, Romania16. Post-Canonicity: Curating World Literary Archives after PostmodernismCosmin Borza, Sextil Puscariu Institute of Linguistics and Literary History of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, RomaniaBibliographyContributorsIndex

Theory in the “Post” Era manages to assemble a heterogenous collection of interventions which capture the essential cultural gestures and ethical reflexes of “an era that seems at once epistemologically insurgent and blasé” (173). In doing so, it lays the lexical groundwork for its envisioned projects of communal futurity.