University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series (Feb 2022)
THE POST-: THINKING DEPENDENCY
Abstract
Taking its conceptual cue from Fredric Jameson's ""Postmodernism. Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" and Jacques Derrida's essay "Racism's Last Word," this piece tries to think the post- at once in its dependence -- that is, in its relation to something other than itself (postmodernism, postcolonialism/postcolonialism, post-apartheid, post-Communist and so on) -- and as a thing in itself. Therein lies the difficulty, of course, the impossibility of wresting the post- out of its relation. To this end, this essay uses Jameson and Derrida to take up the difficulty of disarticulating the post- from its relation so that concepts such as postmodernism and post-apartheid figure critically but not, it is important to note, in such a fashion as to obscure entirely the "meaning" of the post- in its knotted, entangled singularity.
