On Writing a Literary History of the Contemporary, or What Is, or Was, the Contemporary, and Should We Keep Calling It That?

by Margaret-Anne Hutton

“The contemporary” is an established term in a range of scholarly and disciplinary discourses, but what does it mean? Interweaving sections drawn from an (apparently) hypothetical and oxymoronic project—the writing of a literary history of “the contemporary”—with a critical analysis of the term(s) “the contemporary” and “contemporary” in the work of a range of theorists, Margaret-Anne Hutton sets out to expose the inconsistencies and ambiguities in its terminological usage, and to unpick some of the knots which bind the substantive and adjective. How can “(the) contemporary” function as a critical term, and how might we map its history?

The Contemporary Condition series edited by Geoff Cox and Jacob Lund, Volume 08
Copublished with Aarhus University and ARoS Art Museum

48 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

Reviews

[Lila Sandu · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the insights in this I found the most personally fascinating were the ones that pertained to translation. As the term “contemporary” takes on global connotations the matter of parsing out what different authors across said globe might mean by its usage becomes sort of weird and impossible (or at least very difficult). At what point in a words development does it become untranslatable? I have more thoughts on this than I can fit into a Goodreads review but rest assured the matter will stick with me.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. One of those essay-pamphlet-books that is a better bibliography than it is just to read.