To be a teacher of literature at a university today is to occupy a problematic position in the production and codification of knowledge - a fact that has generated a great deal of critical comment in recent years. But this position in its problematic dimensions is not necessarily new. The teacher of literature has always been a propagator of an aberrant science - yet a science that in its aberrations has more to do with the methodological problems of the natural (...) sciences than is usually credited. In this article the author approaches an initial statement of what makes the study of literature aberrant in this way, and in the process, elaborates upon a central dynamic of teaching literature that draws its strength from such scientific aberrance. In the process he moves towards a statement of the role played by an aberrant science in negotiating cultural identity. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues (...) that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)