In much of the critical discourse of the seventies, eighties, and
nineties, scholars employed suspicion in order to reveal a given
text's complicity with various undesirable ideologies and/or
psychopathologies. Construed as such, interpretive practice was
often intended to demystify texts and authors by demonstrating in
them the presence of false consciousness, bourgeois values,
patriarchy, orientalism, heterosexism, imperialist attitudes,
and/or various neuroses, complexes, and lacks. While it proved to
be of vital importance in literary studies, suspicious hermeneutics
often compelled scholars to interpret eudaimonia, or well-being
variously conceived, in pathologized terms. At the end of the
twentieth century, however, literary scholars began to see the
limitations of suspicion, conceived primarily as the discernment of
latent realities beneath manifest illusions. In the last decade,
often termed the "post-theory era," there was a radical shift in
focus, as scholars began to recognize the inapplicability of
suspicion as a critical framework for discussions of eudaimonic
experiences, seeking out several alternative forms of critique,
most of which can be called, despite their differences, a
hermeneutics of affirmation. In such alternative reading strategies
scholars were able to explore configurations of eudaimonia, not by
dismissing them as bad politics or psychopathology but in complex
ways that have resulted in a new eudaimonic turn, a
trans-disciplinary phenomenon that has also enriched several other
disciplines. The Eudaimonic Turn builds on such work, offering a
collection of essays intended to bolster the burgeoning critical
framework in the fields of English, Comparative Literature, and
Cultural Studies by stimulating discussions of well-being in the
"post-theory" moment. The volume consists of several examinations
of literary and theoretical configurations of the following
determinants of human subjectivity and the role these play in
facilitating well-being: values, race, ethics/morality, aesthetics,
class, ideology, culture, economics, language, gender,
spirituality, sexuality, nature, and the body. Many of the authors
compelling refute negativity bias and pathologized interpretations
of eudaimonic experiences or conceptual models as they appear in
literary texts or critical theories. Some authors examine the
eudaimonic outcomes of suffering, marginalization, hybridity,
oppression, and/or tragedy, while others analyze the positive
effects of positive affect. Still others analyze the aesthetic
response and/or the reading process in inquiries into the role of
language use and its impact on well-being, or they explore the
complexities of strength, resilience, and other positive character
traits in the face of struggle, suffering, and "othering."
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