The new existentialism

by Emily S. Apter

In the face of radical transitions in social organization, technology, and the living environment, numerous thinkers have moved away from semiotic and psychoanalytic critical models in order to question human agency and imagine a broader material one existing in the world. Yet the language attending such endeavors?often put forward in the spirit of?scientific? or?objective? exercise?suggests we would benefit from revisiting another era's interrogations of rationalism to engage the dilemmas of our own time.0The New Existentialism takes stock of contemporary art in light of these...