Within literary studies, the term "presentism" or "presentist" is widely used to attack scholarship or criticism that appears not to respect what T.S. Eliot called the "pastness of the past." ❋ Unknown (2002)
The errors that Clark has in his sights are, however, not only racial myths but, importantly, what he calls a 'presentist' mentality which assumes that constructive historical conflict and negotiation are essentially over and that there is now a self-evident state of political rationality prevailing, which lays down clear and universal principles for social stability and equity. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Employed as a term of opprobrium, "presentist" refers to criticism perceived as blithely and un-selfconsciously projecting a critic's own political or social concerns onto literature of another era. ❋ Unknown (2002)
As someone who has always considered it both intellectually and politically vital to articulate the fundamental connections between my scholarly efforts and my own sense of ethics and social values as an out, gay man, I confess that my own work strikes me as precisely the kind of presentist scholarship that Simpson sets out to critique. ❋ Unknown (2002)
This way of teaching may strike the resolute historical scholar as too "presentist," and the present-minded theorist as too "universalist." ❋ Delbanco, Andrew (1999)
The idea that the same rules of access exist all over the world is very presentist. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The Legal Adviser might have stopped merely with armed conflict, taking a narrow and presentist view that all that matters is Al Qaeda today, and not presidents tomorrow. ❋ Unknown (2010)
Far from allowing a “presentist” confusion of historical and current ideas to compromise research, the ongoing process of adjusting the canon requires a nuanced separation of historical, current, and projected values. ❋ Unknown (2008)
Morris, who had also rejected a similar question earlier in the show, bridled and told Schieffer the question was inappropriate: You keep asking these presentist questions Bob. ❋ The Huffington Post News Team (2010)
One that prevails at Zenith is that undergraduates are intrinsically presentist, and that this is a bad thing. ❋ Tenured Radical (2009)
On the other hand, there is a point -- usually early in the semester when some member of my class has offered up a stinging, presentist judgement on a conquistador or a plantation mistress in place of analysis -- that brings discussion to a screaming halt. ❋ Tenured Radical (2009)
The historicist (or presentist) considers the events of Revelation now in the process of fulfillment, while the futurist believes that the bulk of the book refers to events to come. ❋ Unknown (2008)
Within the novel's overall narrative, with its very presentist reading of the Marian persecution's significance, this fictional history of the vernacular Bible marks both the emergence of a Protestant future and its potential other, the lurking threat of a resumed Catholic persecution a response, of course, to the growing visibility of Catholicism during the nineteenth century. ❋ Unknown (2008)
The title is unfortunate, since it implies that contemporary constitutional originalism had its roots in Athens and seems to portend a presentist approach to ancient history. ❋ Mary L. Dudziak (2008)
