The prefix “post” belongs to the most successful inventions in the field of the humanities and social sciences after 1945. It has played an instrumental role in numerous influential theoretical endeavors, among them the posthistorical age including “the-end-of-history” thesis, postmodernism, postindustrial and postsocialist societies, postheroic warfare, postmetaphysical thought, postcolonialism, posthumanism, postfeminism, post-Black, post-work, post-critique, and many others. That this prefix has developed an appeal across disciplines and generations can be regarded as an achievement of a kind.
Yet these “postisms” – as they have been called – are marked by a troubling ambivalence. While promising to take a step forward, they are indebted to what they pretend to leave behind. Every “postism” depends on established vocabulary. While keeping concepts at a distance by bringing them under the yoke of “post”, this prefix tends to have the effect of empowering the past. As William Faulkner famously said, “The past isn’t dead. It is not even past.” What if the prefix “post” complemented the ghostly presence of the past by an equally ghostly pastness of the presence?
Organizers: Dieter Thomä, Michael Festl, Federica Gregoratto, Thomas Telios, Barbara Jungclaus, Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Gallen
Contact: barbara.jungclaus@unisg.ch