On his book The History of Missed Opportunities: British Romanticism and the Emergence of the Everyday
Cover Interview of June 27, 2017
The wide angle
A brief look at the Oxford English Dictionary
indicates that the “everyday” (as opposed to the “ordinary” which was primarily
a class designation) developed into a necessary descriptor sometime in the
mid-eighteenth century, eventually achieving a conceptual apotheosis in the
notion of “everydayness” in the 1840s. Thus it is the development toward
conceptualization, especially in the new century, that interests me. This is not
only because the emergence of the everyday as a parallel, indeed
possible, world––in contrast to the one that Hume and insurance companies came to
rely on––is diametrically opposed to the withering probabilism that “everydayness”
would eventually signify as an urban, postindustrial phenomenon. It is also
because this emergence is a transit (back) to the future in formulating a “theory
of the everyday” that has gained considerable traction in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, beginning with Heidegger and continuing in the social
theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, the philosophy of Stanley
Cavell, and most recently the political theory of Jane Bennett and Thomas Dumm.
To political theorists especially, an appreciation of (and
submission to) ordinary actuality holds what may well be the last promise for
democracy and solidarity, not just between people, but between humans and the
environment. Dumm speaks of a politics of resignation, where anonymity and
commonality join in an unprecedented sense of belonging. Bennett goes even further,
viewing the ordinary as a site of enchantment, which she defines as a state of
openness to the “disturbing-captivating elements in everyday experience.” Heidegger
is the seminal figure here, postulating an impersonality that he calls being or
being-in-the-world (Dasein), and naming “everydayness” (as he terms it) ––in,
for example, the things/tools ready-to-hand that we take for granted and are
paradoxically possessed by––as the “mode” in which being “operates…preeminently.”
In general, what recent theories of the everyday stress over and over––and what
Romantic-period writers discovered to their surprise––is “the extraordinary,”
as Bennett, Cavell, and Lefebvre all frame it, “that lives amid the familiar.”
We see this in the double takes by which a poet like
Wordsworth disencumbers history of memory in demonstrating what a self-involved
engagement with the world forgets. We see it also in Jane Austen––the subject
of my last book (The Historical Austen) and a germ for this one––whose
practice of revision, especially of narratives drafted at least a decade earlier,
enables a return to a world and a milieu that time and progress have erased and
that reemerges, thanks to previous documentation, as something different and
valuable. And we witness it most dramatically in Lord Byron, thanks to the “history”
to which he consigned marriage before it even happened, creating a nostalgia
for something not-yet realized and destined to fail (as he saw it) that was the
more exotic as a result. Domesticity gains prestige and a certain palpability not
because it was missed or overlooked at the time; it comes into focus for Byron because
there was no such time––no memory but only a history of missed opportunities.
[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012
The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010
The wide angle
A brief look at the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the “everyday” (as opposed to the “ordinary” which was primarily a class designation) developed into a necessary descriptor sometime in the mid-eighteenth century, eventually achieving a conceptual apotheosis in the notion of “everydayness” in the 1840s. Thus it is the development toward conceptualization, especially in the new century, that interests me. This is not only because the emergence of the everyday as a parallel, indeed possible, world––in contrast to the one that Hume and insurance companies came to rely on––is diametrically opposed to the withering probabilism that “everydayness” would eventually signify as an urban, postindustrial phenomenon. It is also because this emergence is a transit (back) to the future in formulating a “theory of the everyday” that has gained considerable traction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, beginning with Heidegger and continuing in the social theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, the philosophy of Stanley Cavell, and most recently the political theory of Jane Bennett and Thomas Dumm.
To political theorists especially, an appreciation of (and submission to) ordinary actuality holds what may well be the last promise for democracy and solidarity, not just between people, but between humans and the environment. Dumm speaks of a politics of resignation, where anonymity and commonality join in an unprecedented sense of belonging. Bennett goes even further, viewing the ordinary as a site of enchantment, which she defines as a state of openness to the “disturbing-captivating elements in everyday experience.” Heidegger is the seminal figure here, postulating an impersonality that he calls being or being-in-the-world (Dasein), and naming “everydayness” (as he terms it) ––in, for example, the things/tools ready-to-hand that we take for granted and are paradoxically possessed by––as the “mode” in which being “operates…preeminently.” In general, what recent theories of the everyday stress over and over––and what Romantic-period writers discovered to their surprise––is “the extraordinary,” as Bennett, Cavell, and Lefebvre all frame it, “that lives amid the familiar.”
We see this in the double takes by which a poet like Wordsworth disencumbers history of memory in demonstrating what a self-involved engagement with the world forgets. We see it also in Jane Austen––the subject of my last book (The Historical Austen) and a germ for this one––whose practice of revision, especially of narratives drafted at least a decade earlier, enables a return to a world and a milieu that time and progress have erased and that reemerges, thanks to previous documentation, as something different and valuable. And we witness it most dramatically in Lord Byron, thanks to the “history” to which he consigned marriage before it even happened, creating a nostalgia for something not-yet realized and destined to fail (as he saw it) that was the more exotic as a result. Domesticity gains prestige and a certain palpability not because it was missed or overlooked at the time; it comes into focus for Byron because there was no such time––no memory but only a history of missed opportunities.