Essays from the Edge: Parerga and Paralipomena

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments no body of work, however self-contained it may appear, is really closed off from the world around it. no author is isolated from the influences of those he or she encounters in that world. no edge of a text is really an impermeable frontier protecting the integrity of what is allegedly “inside” its boundaries. Whether or not explicitly acknowledged, we are always at the crossroads of many different paths that converge momentarily and then diverge to go their separate ways. For a collection such as this, containing work from different periods and emerging from a series of distinct projects, those paths are bewilderingly entangled, so much so that no amount of recuperative effort will succeed in recovering their individual trajectories. as a result, any attempt at acknowledging the debts owed by its author will be even more inadequate than usual. With that disclaimer, let me at least nod gratefully in the direction of the many friends, colleagues, family, and institutions who left traces on these pages. to take the latter first, i have benefited enormously from the hospitality of the Stanford Humanities Center, the institute for advanced Study, the national Humanities Center, and the american academy in Berlin, all of which gave me shelter from the storm of everyday life to work on my most recent major projects . abiding support has been provided as well by the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Chair in the Berkeley History Department, as well as the Humanities research Fellowship program. Let me also mention with immense gratitude the journal Salmagundi and its stalwart editor, robert Boyers. Without the freedom granted me by the opportunity i have twice a year to publish a column in its pages, several of the pieces in this volume and many more republished in previous collections would never have seen the light of day. the other journals and publishing x essays from the edge houses where earlier versions of these essays have appeared also warrant thanks for their gracious permission to republish them: New German Critique, Berghahn Press, Parallax Press, Journal of Visual Culture, University of Pittsburgh Press, Fordham University Press, Blackwell, Verso, MaSS MoCa Editions, and Peter Lang Verlag. Without spelling out all the myriad ways they helped over the years, and at the risk of neglecting many who did as well, i want to thank in particular the following friends and colleagues: Frank ankersmit, Keith Baker, Christoph Bartmann, John Bender, James Bono, Warren Breckman, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Pheng Cheah, Detlev Claussen, Jean Cohen, Michele Cometa, John Connelly , Carolyn Dean, tim Dean, Hubert Dreyfus, rodrigo Duarte, John Efron, aleš Erjavec, andrew Feenberg, Jaimey Fischer, Hal Foster, timo Gilmore, Peter Gordon, Michael Gubser, Suzanne Guerlac, J. Laurence Hare, Jr., Diane Harris, agnes Heller, Jeffrey Herf, Carla Hesse, ian Heywood, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, David Hollinger, isak Winkel Holm, Guo-Juin Hong, axel Honneth, Dick Howard, robertHullot-Kentor,andreasHuyssen,JohannaMicaelaJacobsen,PrafullaKar, robert Kaufman, Leszek Koczanowicz, Dominick LaCapra, thomas Laqueur, Benjamin Lazier, Lloyd Kramer, rosalind Krauss, Marek Kwiek, W. J. t. Mitchell , Olli-Pekka Moisio, Joanne Morra, a. Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, Elliot neaman , Matthias Obert, Ewa Pionowska, Mark Poster, irina Prokhorova, anson rabinbach, Gerhard richter, Paul robinson, Michael rosen, Emmanuel rota, D. Fairchild ruggles, Eduardo Sabrovsky, Barry Sandywell, Jonathan Sheehan, richard Shusterman, Hans Sluga, Marquard Smith, David Sorkin, Paul thomas, nato thompson, Michael Ure, Slyvio Vaccaro, richard Wolin, Mark Wrathall, and Lewis Wurgaft. i also benefited from the assiduous research assistance of Knox Peden, Benjamin Wurgaft, radhika Varadharajan, and Larry Fernández. Let me also express my gratitude once again to the University of Virginia Press and its editorial team, led by richard Holway, for their expert guidance through the publication process. Ellen Satrom and raennah Mitchell deserve special thanks, as do the two anonymous reviewers for the press. i would also like to thank terence renaud for performing the onerous task of providing an index for the book. Finally, as always, i must thank my family for all the ways they kept me both on edge and from jumping off it: Shana, ned, Frankie, and Sammy, on the eastern edge of the country, and Becca, Grayson, Beth, Maggie, Pete, and Patrick on the western edge. But my most heartfelt debt of gratitude is owed to my most relentless reader and untiring muse, my wife, Catherine Gallagher, who is forever at the center of it all. Essays from the Edge ...