{"product_id":"9781531505646-catastrophic-historicism-reading-julia-de-burgos-dangerously","title":"Catastrophic Historicism","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eReading Julia De Burgos Dangerously\u003cbr\u003eCatastrophic Historicism shows that historicism is a transcendental ontology that must be challenged by endangering the reduction of the past to a possession. The book then endangers the historicist reception of Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico’s most iconic writer, interpreting her work as the poetics of Puerto Rican modernity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCatastrophic Historicism\u003c\/i\u003e unsettles the historicist constitution of Julia de Burgos (1914–53), Puerto Rico's most iconic writer—a critical task that necessitates redefining the concept of historicism. Through readings of Aristotle, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Werner Hamacher, and Frank Ankersmit, Mendoza-de Jesús shows that historicism grounds historical objectivity in the historian's capacity to compose totalizing narratives that domesticate the contingency of the past. While critiques of historicism as a realism leave untouched the sovereignty of the historian, the book insists that \u003ci\u003ereading\u003c\/i\u003e the text of history requires an attunement to \u003ci\u003edanger\u003c\/i\u003e—a modality that interrupts historicism by infusing the past with a contingency that evades total appropriation.\u003cbr\u003e After desedimenting the monumental tradition that has reduced de Burgos to a totemic figure, \u003ci\u003eCatastrophic Historicism \u003c\/i\u003ereads the poet's first collection, \u003ci\u003ePoema en 20 surcos\u003c\/i\u003e (1938). Mendoza-de Jesús argues that the historicity of \u003ci\u003ePoema\u003c\/i\u003e crystallizes in the lyrical speaker's self-institution as an embodied ipseity, which requires producing racialized\/gendered allegorical figures—the bearers of an abject flesh—that lack any ontological resistance to modern alienation. Rather than treating de Burgos's poetics of selfhood as the ideal image of Puerto Rican sovereignty, Mendoza-de Jesús endangers this idealization by drawing attention to the abjection that sustains our attachments to ipseity as the form of a truly sovereign life. In this way, \u003ci\u003eCatastrophic Historicism\u003c\/i\u003e not only resets the terms of ongoing critiques of historicism in the humanities—it also intervenes in Puerto Rican historicity for the sake of its transformation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41609169174625,"sku":"9781531505646","price":28.56,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_34730170.jpg?v=1749675718","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781531505646-catastrophic-historicism-reading-julia-de-burgos-dangerously","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}