Lovers and Knowers: Moments of the American Cultural Left

《情人与诺尔斯》探讨了二十世纪美国文化左派的发展历程。这本书致力于探讨美国研究与理论界的关系，重点分析了一个具体的理论问题。它试图阐明反基础论者与基础论者、反理论者与理论家、(自由主义)反讽论者与形而上学者之间关系的多层次复杂性。这项研究提出了反基础主义和反本质主义的世俗和对立批评的观点，认为有可能形成一种反基础主义和反本质主义的思维，其对政治的概念和对文学和文化批评功能的理解明显不同于理查德·罗蒂和斯坦利·菲什等新语用主义者所提出的观点。本文认为，康奈尔·韦斯特的新语法主义应该被理解为反基础主义理论框架内的激进左翼文化和政治立场，即他阐明了通过辩证地使用(新)实用主义反基础主义的见解来发展对立的和世俗的批评(在赛迪亚意义上)是可能的。

Lovers and Knowers discusses the development of the American cultural Left in the twentieth century. Seeking to contribute to the discussion of the relation between American Studies and the field of theory, the book focuses on the analysis of a specific theoretical problem. It attempts to elucidate the multilayered complexity of the relation between antifoundationalists and foundationalists, antitheorists and theorists, and (liberal) ironists and metaphysicians. Proposing the idea of an antifoundationalist and antiessentialist worldly and oppositional criticism, the study argues that it is possible to develop an antifoundationalist and antiessentialist thinking whose notion of the political and whose understanding of the function of literary and cultural criticism clearly differ from those suggested by neopragmatists such as Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish. It is shown that Cornel West's version of neopragmatism ought to be understood as a radical leftist cultural and political position within an antifoundationalist theoretical framework, that is, he illustrates that it is possible to develop an oppositional and worldly criticism (in the Saidian sense) by dialectically using the insights of (neo)pragmatist antifoundationalism.