The next meeting of the Jesuit Scholarship in a Post-modern Age group will be at 3:30 PM on Sunday, May 5 at Barat House.
We have chosen for our discussion the article "Splitting the Difference: Textualism, Contextualism, and Post-Modern History" by Saul Cornell (American Studies, Spring 95, vol. 36, pp. 57-80)
This article explores the rich implications of the work of Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, and Habermas for the project of writing history. One way we can use this article is to see how these same implications suggest new perspectives and insights into the way we pursue the "project of scholarship" as Jesuits. Particular issues the article invites us to reflect on include:
1) the ways in which "contexts," distant and more recent, have shaped and constructed the ways practice scholarship, and determined the ways we explain to ourselves as well as to others the nature of our scholarly apostolate.Other engaging issues are also raised by the article! We will finish around 5:30, and those who wish are welcome to stay for pizza.
2) the ways in which "grand narratives" Ð valuable though they may be Ð may have led us to overlook local and particular dimensions of our tradition, dimensions rendered invisible by such narratives and dimensions whose retrieval can now help us imaginatively conceive of new possibilities for the future.
3) the important and delicate task of discovering, with the same controlled suspicion we bring to our scholarly work, the ways in which power relations in all their forms have become woven into the discourses about and between ourselves.
Please contact one of us if you would like a copy of the article.
Ron Anderson, S.J. (617 552 8226)
Frank Clooney, S.J. (617 552 8228)
Barat Jesuit Community
Boston College
April 20, 1996
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