"An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared as "Avant-Garde in a Different Key: Karl Kraus's The Last Days of Mankind," Critical Inquiry 40, no. 2 (Winter 2014):

The edge of irony, says Linda Hutcheon, is always a social and political edge. Irony depends upon interpretation; it happens in the tricky, unpredictable space

Behler discusses the current state of thought on modernity and postmodernity, detailing the intellectual problems to be faced and examining the positions of suc

“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pai

Austere and uncompromising, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had no use for the avant-garde art works of his own time. He refused to formulate an aesthetic,