Paul A. Bove

From Philosopedia

Bové, Paul A. (1949— )

Bové has been a professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s English department since 1984 and is editor of boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture published by Duke University Press. Since 2003 he has co-edited an annual Chinese volume of boundary 2, published by the People’s Literature Publishing House.

When asked about categories of humanism, he responded:

Coming of age among the Jesuits in the 1960’s humanism seemed an ideal lost sight of by our country, its ruling classes, and its institutions. “Humanism” - that is, respect for others, other classes, other peoples, other races, other genders - all this needed to be accomplished to fulfill the promise of the humanistic vision that arose in the Renaissance, prospered in the Enlightenment, and seemingly disappeared in the miasma of misdirected American liberalism. The failure of the youth movements of the sixties to change our society and culture has made many academics, writers, and intellectuals of my generation realize that our own humanistic impulses were too consistent with the values of the State and its use of violence to provide the grounds for a reasonable opposition. So we turned to “anti-humanistic” writers to see how our most cherished traditions were complicit in and helped lead us to the worst acts of our recent history. Ironically, I think many of us did this because our own commitment to the most desirable elements of humanism never failed. We simply needed to understand more about how complex the phenomenon and ideology of humanism has been in the genealogy of our culture and politics. One must follow the road indicated by the best of “humanism” - including its critique of androcentrism - until some other historical possibility can be brought about. Somewhere in some library is a longish book by me of this subject, dating from 1986.

In 2005, Bové was named a Distinguished Professor of English by the University of Pittsburgh.

Included among Bové's books are the following:

Destructive Poetics: Heidegger and Modern American Poetry (1980)

Intellectuals in Power: A Genealogy of Critical Humanism (1988)

In the Wake of Theory (1992)

Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture (1992)

Boundary 2: Latin America (1993)

Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture (1998)

Early Postmodernism: Foundatonal Essays (1995)

Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power (2000)

The University: A Special Issue of Boundary 2 (2000)

Arabic Literature and the World from World Literature Today (2002)

iLife '4 All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies with Cheryl Rhodes (2004)

Correspondence

Bové wrote to the author of Who's Who in Hell about his understanding of "humanism":

{WAS, 22 May 1989}