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 Andre 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.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!