Why45? (or Why68?)
Across literary and cultural studies, many still regard 1945 as the clearest possible cutoff between the modernist movements of the early twentieth century and the authors, artists, and others who shaped subsequent decades. Meanwhile, across critical race and ethnic studies, many perennially return to 1968 as the year the Third World Liberation Front catalyzed the creation of university ethnic studies departments—and indeed, as the year the likes of House Made of Dawn popularized “Ethnic American” literature. With both 1945 and 1968 receding into the distance, we seek to reexamine their relations to other dates—to 1964 (the first in the series of Civil Rights Acts), to 1965 (the Immigration and Nationality Act), to 1991 (the end of the Cold War), to 2001 (the start of the Global War on Terror), and so on. More broadly, with both 1945 and 1968 often defined domestically, we hope to highlight how such “reterritorializations of US-centrism” obscure transnational, postcolonial, oceanic, diasporic, and other frames. Using ethnic studies to reinvigorate literary and cultural studies—and, at the same time, using literary and cultural studies to challenge calcified ideas of resistance or politics—we therefore ask how ‘45 and ‘68 are shaping who is hired (or not hired), what is taught (or not taught), and what is asked (or not asked)? Ultimately, we wonder, what are the possibilities and problems of these and other periodizations, and indeed, of non-temporal designations?
Most concretely, these questions concern how Post45, ASAP, and related institutions have tried to periodize literary, artistic, and cultural history since their establishment in 2005 and 2006. Much as Post45’s founding documents conceive the contemporary as so overwhelming that it can only be historicized in relation to a “post,” ASAP’s mission statement points to “the paradox of the contemporary: what is nearest to hand is hardest to grasp.” Post45 deals with this difficulty by focusing on cultural production since the end of World War II; ASAP does so by “present[ing] the best new writing on the international, post-1960s arts.” Ironically, left under- or unexamined in these documents are the best arguments for these dates, which involve how they shaped and were shaped by (de)colonization and (re)racialization. 1945 self-evidently signals not only the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War, but just as importantly the acceleration of independence struggles across Africa and Asia. Similarly, while the 1960s are the pivotal period for US-based movements for civil rights as well as the rise of US-based fields of ethnic studies, ASAP’s statement makes no mention of “race,” “ethnicity,” “colonialism,” “imperialism,” or variations thereof. Both institutions thus risk periodizing without historicizing. This begs the question of their own historicity: now that we have entered an epoch of global fascism (post-a different 45), their earlier aughts formulations seem to have missed forces that were then emergent.
But if Post45 and ASAP’s missions are ripe for reexamination from the perspective of critical race and ethnic studies, the reverse is also true. As Asian American studies, Black studies, Latinx studies, and Native American and Indigenous studies consolidate their literary, artistic, filmic, and other canons, they risk losing touch with what makes difference powerful. Only close reading and ideology critique can discern the import of the many aesthetic strategies that start before, continue beyond, or otherwise complicate the supposed turning points of 1945 and 1968. These signature tools of literary and cultural studies, turned inward, can help us escape both the overdetermined versions of both ethnic studies (dominated by the likes of Anzaldúa, Bulosan, and Silko) and “Ethnic American” (perhaps exemplified by the writing of Junot Díaz or Colson Whitehead, the visual art of Félix González-Torres or Kara Walker, and the performance art of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha or Carmelita Tropicana). Unlocking the full potential of work by these and other culture-makers requires re-historicization—and, perhaps, de-periodization.
Abstracts of 250–300 words should be emailed to both the co-editors, Carlos Alonso Nugent (can2162@columbia.edu) and Michelle N. Huang (michelle.n.huang@