In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

USER'S MANUAL xiii
change in retrospect; it also may suffer from the usual problems of
self-reflexive assessments.) At any rate, the present appears to be a
moment of great sophistication when it comes to affirming that some
certainties and assumptions "no longer work"-and of even greater
reluctance when it comes to filling the gaps that the vanished certainties
and assumptions have left. The present moment seems to correspond
to the "end of metaphysics," as Derrida describes it in Of
Grammatology: we are beyond metaphysics but will never really
leave metaphysics behind us. We also lack strong alternatives to
options that no longer seem viable. Marxism is but a nostalgic or
embarrassing memory, especially in its more recent resurrections and
reembodiments (good intentions will not fix an outdated epistemology!).
Deconstruction has either turned sour and sectarian (there's an
air of Latter-Day-Saintliness about some of today's deconstructors in
their black apparel), or has been absorbed by the general interpretative
and hermeneutic mood. The charm (and the punch) of New
Historicism has withered all too rapidly. And so on. To make matters
worse, the author feels that a great deal of pressure is being brought
to bear upon his generation to come up with something new, something
not exclusively skeptical; but he thinks that he is not particularly
good at programmatic writing-i.e., at the genre of writing that,
undoubtedly, is required here. Still, he feels that he and the scholars
of his generation should become for the scholars of the next generation
what Reinhart Koselleck, Niklas Luhmann, Jean-Fran