In The Age of Epimodernism

Talk by Emmanuel Bouju

This talk coins the term epimodernism to denote a kind of “post-postmodernism”. It replaces the double post by six different values of the Ancient Greek prefix epi: surface contact, origin, extension, duration, authority, and finality. Epimodernism sets up six different relations to the heritage of modernist utopias, re-orienting postmodern critique and rebooting, with all due irony, its forms of anti-late-capitalist engagement and paradoxical empowerment.

Emmanuel Bouju is currently Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle and Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He’s been Visiting Prof. at IU in Bloomington and Harvard U. Prof. Bouju’s publications include Réinventer la littérature : démocratisation et modèles romanesques dans l’Espagne post-franquiste (with a préface by Jorge Semprún, 2002), La transcription de l’histoire. Essai sur le roman européen de la fin du vingtième siècle (2006), Fragments d’un discours théorique (2016, 2022), and Épimodernes. Nouvelles « leçons américaines » sur l’actualité du roman (2020).