After the Contemporary: An Introduction

Abstract Since its emergence as a critical category in the postwar decades, the contemporary has been a marker of periodization that, by default, is ill-suited for the task of delimiting historical time. In assuming that what we understand as the contemporary has come to an end, this special issue probes an understanding of it as a kind of Trojan horse in the history of post45 literary criticism: a period that unraveled conventional period-based models of literary history while still asking us to make sense of the nexus between historical time and literary narrative. What would it mean to write the next chapter of this history? And how can new and emerging literary forms and genres lead the way?