This is a study of the relationship between postmodernism and post-enlightenment German thought reading the contemporary theoretical scene through its nineteenth-century counterpart and examining the intersections.

Acknowledgments Introduction Speculations: Idealism and its Rem(a)indersTilottama Rajan and David L. Clark  I: Between Idealism and Deconstruction Fictions of Authority: Kierkegaard, de Man, and the Ethics of ReadingChristopher Norris Mimesis and the End of ArtJohn Sallis "The Necessary Heritage of Darkness": Tropics of Negativity in Schelling, Derrida, and de ManDavid L. Clark Language, Music, and the Body: Nietzsche and DeconstructionTilottama Rajan II: Rethinking the Subject Stubborn Attachment, Bodily Subjection: Rereading Hegel on the Unhappy ConsciousnessJudith Butler The Ring of Being: Nietzsche, Freud, and the History of ConscienceNed Lukacher Immediacy and Dissolution: Notes on the Languages of Moral Agency and Critical DiscourseThomas Pfau "Non-Identity": The German Romantics, Schelling and AdornoAndrew  Bowie III: Reinscribing History Complementarity, History, and the UnconsciousArkady Plotnitsky Reconstructing Aesthetic Education: Modernity, Postmodernity, and Romantic HistoricismEric Meyer The Romanticism  of Contemporary IdeologyPaul Hamilton IV: The End(s) of Theory The Return of the Romanticjean-Pierre Mileur Moments of Discipline: Derrida, Kant, and the Genealogy of the SublimeMark Cheetham On Death and the Contingency of Criticism: Schopenhauer and de ManStanley Corngold Notes on Contributors Index

"This book does much more than reassess certain currents in poststructuralism by returning to its preoccupation with such writers as the Jena Romantics, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. This book reminds us that poststructuralism is indeed only part of a larger coming to terms with philosophical issues of post-enlightenment theory. The writing in this book is characterized by integrity, care, andand brilliance. What is remarkable about this book is less its overall conception than its superb execution." — Alice Kuzniar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill