Transformation in the Writing

This work further develops the concepts first presented in "Surrender and Catch" (1976) and applied to sociology and its history in "Survival and Sociology" (1991) and autobiography in "O Loma" (1989). This idea is based on the recognition of the unprecedented nature of the present time in the history of humankind and the planet, a time when we ourselves, rather than Nature or the Deity, can annihilate both ourselves and our planet. "Surrender" is nonlinguistic (or prelinguistic), "prepredicative", "prephenomenal", and involves suspending or "bracketing" the world, calling it into question. In this book, the author explores how his hypothesis of Surrender (-and-Catch) bears on aspects of autobiography (emigre status, field work), sociology of knowledge, poetry, phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory and on attitudes to our time.