Resilience and the Humanities
Critique and Testing
Will be published approx. on 16. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-64825-185-6 (ISBN)
Description
Explores the concept of 'resilience' by proposing that it is a contested idea, susceptible to criticism, and not a predetermined notion whose consequences are fixed.
"Resilience" is all around us. It is a buzzword in domains that range from engineering, through moral psychology, coaching and self-help manuals, to military strategy. The word has varied meaning across these fields, but all definitions share the idea that it accounts for the protection and maintenance of different environments through the adaptation of its individuals to the changes or disruptions these might undergo. The apparently obvious meaning of resilience and its normative consequences are the result of a series of intellectual, social and epistemic processes. Resilience and the Humanities: Critique and Testing proposes that, regardless of its ubiquity, resilience is a concept that cannot be accepted without interrogating and testing its value, thereby contesting and critiquing it.
This edited volume explores the possibilities and shortcomings of the concept through philosophy, literature, history and film studies in fifteen chapters that seek to understand the promises and limitations of resilience through different case studies. The authors discuss the way the concept fills a discourse with ideas that have consequences upon subjects and bodies on a social, cultural and political level.
An overall view of these different approaches to resilience allows this collection to establish the multivocal nature of the concept when used in different disciplines. Put simply, there is a multiplicity of ways in which the concept of resilience can be applied across the humanities.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
"Resilience" is all around us. It is a buzzword in domains that range from engineering, through moral psychology, coaching and self-help manuals, to military strategy. The word has varied meaning across these fields, but all definitions share the idea that it accounts for the protection and maintenance of different environments through the adaptation of its individuals to the changes or disruptions these might undergo. The apparently obvious meaning of resilience and its normative consequences are the result of a series of intellectual, social and epistemic processes. Resilience and the Humanities: Critique and Testing proposes that, regardless of its ubiquity, resilience is a concept that cannot be accepted without interrogating and testing its value, thereby contesting and critiquing it.
This edited volume explores the possibilities and shortcomings of the concept through philosophy, literature, history and film studies in fifteen chapters that seek to understand the promises and limitations of resilience through different case studies. The authors discuss the way the concept fills a discourse with ideas that have consequences upon subjects and bodies on a social, cultural and political level.
An overall view of these different approaches to resilience allows this collection to establish the multivocal nature of the concept when used in different disciplines. Put simply, there is a multiplicity of ways in which the concept of resilience can be applied across the humanities.
This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Rochester
United States
Publishing group
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
2 b/w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-64825-185-6 (9781648251856)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Stephen M. Hart | Camila Gatica Mizala | Nicolas Lema Habash
Resilience and the Humanities
Critique and Testing
Book
approx. 06/2026
University of Rochester Press
€131.50
Not yet published
Persons
STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Latin American Film, Literature and Culture at University College London, UK. CAMILA GATICA MIZALA is an Assistant Professor at Universidad de Chile's Department of Historical Sciences. NICOLAS LEMA HABASH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota. CARLOS FONSECA is Assistant Professor and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. NICOLAS LEMA HABASH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota. STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Latin American Film, Literature and Culture at University College London, UK. CAMILA GATICA MIZALA is an Assistant Professor at Universidad de Chile's Department of Historical Sciences.
Content
General introduction: Contested and contesting resilience
Stephen M. Hart, Camila Gatica Mizala and Nicolas Lema Habash
Part I: Critique (Philosophy, Ecology, Sustainability)
1. Towards Destruction: An Essay on How Resilience Affects Resistance
Nicolas Lema Habash (University of Los Andes, Bogota)
2. Countering Resilience and its Consensual Logic: Persistence, Resistance, Re-existence
Laura Quintana (University of Los Andes, Bogota)
3. 'How each particle, when it bangs into another, either bounces back or passes on a part of its motion': On a famous Spinozist occurrence about the resilience problem, and its inadequacy
Vincent Legeay (Universite Paris-Creteil)
4. Resilience and Sustainability as Complementary Concepts in Political Thought
Anna Wienhues (KU Leuven)
5. Resilience, ecosystems, and places: can resilience delineate dynamic entities?
Patrik Baard
6. Adapt Creatively or Perish: How Resilience Carved the Grave of Strong Sustainability
Andrea Lehner (University of Los Andes, Bogota)
Part II: Application
7. Resilience and Race in the Hagiographic Tradition of Saint Martin of Porres
Celia Cussen (University of Chile)
8. Resilience in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Stephen M. Hart (University College London)
9. Discovering Women's Resilience: The Development Film in the 1970s
Molly Geidel
10. Reimagining home: Exile and resilience in Chilean film, 1970-1990
Jennifer Alpert (Stanford University) and Camila Gatica Mizala (University of Chile)
11. 'A Time that Has Not Yet Been'. Futurity and Survival in Marta Aponte's Caribbean Archive
Carlos Fonseca
12. Beyond resilience: Debrouillardise in civil war novels
Hannah Grayson
13. Resilience in the Latin American Anthropocene Western
Leidy Paola Bolanos Florido (University of Los Andes, Bogota) and Wolfgang Fuhrmann (Leipzig University)
14. 'Now Where Am I?': Endurance in Peter Loizos's Sophia and Her People (1985)
Ignacio Albornoz (University of Paris) and Katerina Hatzikidi (University of Tuebingen)
15. When I'm Down I Just Get up-or Do I? Contentiousness of Resilience in the Face of Natural Disasters in Jamaica
Victoria Carpenter (University of Bedfordshire)
List of Contributors
Index
Stephen M. Hart, Camila Gatica Mizala and Nicolas Lema Habash
Part I: Critique (Philosophy, Ecology, Sustainability)
1. Towards Destruction: An Essay on How Resilience Affects Resistance
Nicolas Lema Habash (University of Los Andes, Bogota)
2. Countering Resilience and its Consensual Logic: Persistence, Resistance, Re-existence
Laura Quintana (University of Los Andes, Bogota)
3. 'How each particle, when it bangs into another, either bounces back or passes on a part of its motion': On a famous Spinozist occurrence about the resilience problem, and its inadequacy
Vincent Legeay (Universite Paris-Creteil)
4. Resilience and Sustainability as Complementary Concepts in Political Thought
Anna Wienhues (KU Leuven)
5. Resilience, ecosystems, and places: can resilience delineate dynamic entities?
Patrik Baard
6. Adapt Creatively or Perish: How Resilience Carved the Grave of Strong Sustainability
Andrea Lehner (University of Los Andes, Bogota)
Part II: Application
7. Resilience and Race in the Hagiographic Tradition of Saint Martin of Porres
Celia Cussen (University of Chile)
8. Resilience in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Stephen M. Hart (University College London)
9. Discovering Women's Resilience: The Development Film in the 1970s
Molly Geidel
10. Reimagining home: Exile and resilience in Chilean film, 1970-1990
Jennifer Alpert (Stanford University) and Camila Gatica Mizala (University of Chile)
11. 'A Time that Has Not Yet Been'. Futurity and Survival in Marta Aponte's Caribbean Archive
Carlos Fonseca
12. Beyond resilience: Debrouillardise in civil war novels
Hannah Grayson
13. Resilience in the Latin American Anthropocene Western
Leidy Paola Bolanos Florido (University of Los Andes, Bogota) and Wolfgang Fuhrmann (Leipzig University)
14. 'Now Where Am I?': Endurance in Peter Loizos's Sophia and Her People (1985)
Ignacio Albornoz (University of Paris) and Katerina Hatzikidi (University of Tuebingen)
15. When I'm Down I Just Get up-or Do I? Contentiousness of Resilience in the Face of Natural Disasters in Jamaica
Victoria Carpenter (University of Bedfordshire)
List of Contributors
Index