• Against Afuturistic Reading
• Will Bridges (bio)

They even think that they have spent such days well,in a truly useful and worthy manner, these days spentin contemplation of the possible forms of the future….They are calm and unworried enough to set out with theauthor on a long road whose endpoint only a much latergeneration will see. When the greatly agitated reader, incontrast, springs into action … we must fear he has failedto understand the author.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions

It is not particularly controversial to suggest that the study of literature is an invaluable endeavor due to the insights literary studies provide. Likewise, it is easy to hinge a case for the importance of literary studies on the notion of hindsight—this is why literary studies are often informed by, and expand, our sense of history. Alternatively, some literary studies aspire for omnividence. If omnividence is possible, the result of such strong theorization would be oversight, transtemporal truths unaffected by the flows of time. [End Page 435]

The aim of this special section is to add a third temporal dimension to our vision of the epistemological breadth of literary studies: foresight. If literature can be "foresightful"—if, in other words, literature invites readers to both imagine and reimagine what might come to be—then perhaps literary studies should start asking, in the future tense, questions such as these: how do the cultural signs we see today help us re-envision what might come tomorrow? What will readers ten years from now make of this novel? How does a given poem expand our sense of the parameters of the possible? Which metaphors does a given world leader employ to narrate their vision of intergenerational justice, and how do often tacit flashes of immanent futurity foreclose the imagining of one set of futures and forebode the legislation of another?

Or, to re-introduce the central concern of this special section with a bit of an antagonistic spin: it is not particularly controversial to suggest that some literary studies decrease in value because they lack insight. Let's call such studies "apresentist." The visions provided by apresentist scholarship are not in tune with the scholarly times, they don't resonate with the intellectual needs of the present. Just as a study can suffer from presentism, or a myopic imposition of the cognitive biases of the present, so too can a study slide down the presentist spectrum into apresentism, or myopia, regarding the cognitive bases of contemporary scholarship. Likewise, the value of a literary study can be attenuated by a deficit of hindsight. We call these studies "ahistorical," and the charge we level against them is that a failure to sufficiently situate an object of inquiry in its historical moment has produced a distorted vision of the object in question. I will not belabor this point, because we all, more or less, agree on the intellectual dangers of ahistorical reading. Mark McGurl once called our overwhelming scholarly consensus on this point "the hegemony of history" in literary studies (2010, 322).

The aim of this special section is to further the democratization of the temporalities of literary studies, to propose foresight as an epistemological contribution of literary studies just as worthy of scholarly enfranchisement as insight, hindsight, and theoretical oversight. The mission-statement desires of literary studies—critical and creative thinking, imaginative empathy, hermeneutic honesty, and so on—are just as dependent on forward-thinking as they are on its historical counterpart. Given this dependence, the degree of forethoughtfulness of a work of literary studies is often a constitutive determinant of our assessment of its thoughtfulness. My [End Page 436] thinking here is simply a recapitulation of Helen Small's claim in The Value of the Humanities: "the work of the humanities is frequently … imaginative, or provocative, or speculative" (2014, 26).

In other words, the papers collected for this special section do not make a case against historicist reading. (In fact, the papers suppose that one cannot imagine possible futures—or at least one cannot imagine them well—without simultaneously rethinking pasts and presents.) Rather, each contribution makes a case against afuturisitic reading...

• 反对未来主义阅读
• 威尔·布里奇斯（生物）

他们甚至认为，他们已经花了这样的日子很好，在一个真正有用和有价值的方式，这几天花了在未来的可能形式的沉思......。他们足够冷静和无忧无虑，与作者一起踏上漫长的道路，其终点只有更晚的一代才能看到。相反，当极度激动的读者开始行动时……我们必须担心他没有理解作者。

——弗里德里希·尼采，《反教育：论我们教育机构的未来》

由于文学研究提供的洞察力，因此认为文学研究是一项无价的努力并没有特别争议。同样，很容易将文学研究的重要性归结于事后的观念——这就是为什么文学研究经常被我们的历史感所启发并扩展。或者，一些文学研究渴望无所不知。如果无所不知是可能的，那么这种强有力的理论化的结果将是监督，不受时间流逝影响的超时间真理。[第435页结束]

本节的目的是为我们对文学研究的认识论广度的看法增加第三个时间维度：远见。如果文学可以是“有远见的”——换句话说，如果文学邀请读者去想象和重新想象可能会发生的事情——那么也许文学研究应该在未来时开始提出这样的问题：文化如何我们今天看到的迹象有助于我们重新设想明天会发生什么？十年后的读者会怎么看这本小说？一首给定的诗如何扩展我们对可能参数的认识？某个特定的世界领导人使用哪些隐喻来叙述他们对代际正义的看法，以及内在未来的默认闪光如何经常排除对一组未来的想象并预示另一组未来的立法？

或者，用一点对立的方式重新介绍这个特别部分的中心问题：认为某些文学研究由于缺乏洞察力而贬值的说法并没有特别的争议。让我们称这些研究为“apresentist”。apresentist 学术提供的愿景与学术时代不协调，它们与当今的知识需求不产生共鸣。正如一项研究可能遭受当下主义或对当下认知偏见的短视强加的影响一样，关于当代学术的认知基础，一项研究也可能从当下主义谱系滑落到不存在主义或近视。同样，文学研究的价值会因缺乏后见之明而减弱。我们称这些研究为“非历史性的”，我们对他们提出的指控是，未能在其历史时刻充分定位研究对象，导致对所研究对象的扭曲愿景。我不会在这一点上赘述，因为我们或多或少都同意非历史阅读的智力危险。Mark McGurl 曾将我们压倒性的学术共识称为文学研究中的“历史霸权” (2010, 322)。

本专题的目的是进一步推动文学研究的时间性民主化，提出远见作为文学研究的认识论贡献，与洞察力、后见之明和理论监督一样值得学术授权。文学研究的使命宣言愿望——批判性和创造性思维、富有想象力的同理心、诠释学的诚实等等——既依赖于前瞻性思维，也依赖于历史对应物。鉴于这种依赖性，文学研究作品的深思熟虑的程度通常是我们对其深思熟虑的评估的构成性决定因素。我的[End Page 436]这里的想法只是对 Helen Small 在《人文价值的价值》中的主张的概括：“人文学科的工作经常……富有想象力，或具有挑衅性，或具有推测性”（2014, 26）。

换句话说，为这一特殊部分收集的论文并不反对历史主义阅读。（事实上​​，这些论文假设，如果不同时重新思考过去和现在，就无法想象可能的未来——或者至少一个人无法很好地想象它们。）相反，每一个贡献都反对阅读未来主义……