Foregone Conclusions

Foregone Conclusions
Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Total Pages : 198
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780520414471
ISBN-13 : 0520414470
Rating : 4/5 (470 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Foregone Conclusions by : Michael André Bernstein

Download or read book Foregone Conclusions written by Michael André Bernstein and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-07-26 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are continually trying to make sense of our world through the stories we tell and are told, but in our search for coherence, we often sacrifice our freedom and the rich randomness of life. In this passionate and lucid book, Michael André Bernstein challenges our practice of "foreshadowing," in which we see our lives as moving toward a predetermined goal or as controlled by fate. Foreshadowing, he argues, demeans the variety and openness that exist in even the most ordinary moments of life. And it is precisely ordinary life, with its random, haphazard, and contradictory choices, that Bernstein celebrates in his call for "sideshadowing"—an alternative practice that reminds us that every present is dense with possible futures. Bernstein sees the Holocaust as the prime example of how our tendency to "foreshadow" and "backshadow" misrepresents history. He argues eloquently against politicians and theologians who posit the Holocaust as foreordained and who depict its victims as somehow complicit with a fate that they should have been able to foresee. Instead, Bernstein proposes a radically new understanding of the relationship between the Holocaust and earlier Jewish experience, transforming how we read and write both individual and communal history. Foregone Conclusions is an extraordinarily wide-ranging book, both in its scope and in its broader intellectual and moral implications. From the latest biographies of Kafka to the peace accords between Israel and the PLO, from the role of cultural diversity in universities to the Crown Heights riots, Bernstein warns us against passively accepting our identities as being shaped primarily by historical or personal victimization. His book liberates us from stereotyped patterns of understanding the relationship between our lives as individuals and as members of racial, sexual, and historic/ethnic communities. Berstein ultimately opens a powerful new way to understand the principles governing how we read and write narratives--whether historical, personal, or literary. In striking original juxtapositions and critical evaluations of Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, and Aharon Appelfeld, Bernstein sugests the need for a new literary model based on the prosaics of daily life. Bernstein speaks directly and persuasively to many of the most pressing issues in Jewish history, Holocaust studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. Foregone Conclusions is a provocative and poignant attempt to find coherence in our world without accepting either ineluctable destiny of pure coincidence. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.


Foregone Conclusions Related Books

Foregone Conclusions
Language: en
Pages: 198
Authors: Michael André Bernstein
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-07-26 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

We are continually trying to make sense of our world through the stories we tell and are told, but in our search for coherence, we often sacrifice our freedom a
Rethinking the Foundations of Statistics
Language: en
Pages: 402
Authors: Joseph B. Kadane
Categories: Mathematics
Type: BOOK - Published: 1999-08-13 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This important collection of essays is a synthesis of foundational studies in Bayesian decision theory and statistics. An overarching topic of the collection is
Essential Outtakes
Language: en
Pages: 93
Authors: Frieda People
Categories: Body, Mind & Spirit
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-01-11 - Publisher: Balboa Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Take drama, trauma, and adversity and scrub them clean. In Essential Outtakes, through her own personal experiences, author Frieda People shows you how to uncov
Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Language: en
Pages: 306
Authors: Susan M. Griffin
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-07-29 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Griffin analyses anti-Catholic fiction written between the 1830s and the turn of the century in both Britain and America.
The Quarterly Review
Language: en
Pages: 588
Authors: Anonymous
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1859 - Publisher: Wentworth Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced