The Problematic Present; or What Happened to History after 1989? Prof. Lilla Balint, UC Berekely

The Problematic Present; or What Happened to History after 1989?

This talk traces a neglected turn in theory: whereas debates on postmodernism centered on the problem of history, recent theorists of the contemporary have shifted the focus to a problematic present—often locating this transition around 1989. Yet how does this diagnosis of the present hold up when set against literary production after the fall of the Berlin Wall? Arguing that it does not, this lecture surveys a range of experimental literary responses that rethink such claims by developing new ways of writing and imagining history.

Lilla Balint is Assistant Professor of German at the University of California Berkeley, where she is also affiliated with the Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Institute for European Studies. She has published widely on subjects ranging from the Poetikvorlesung as performance of theory to the medial self and the relation between literary production and critique. She is co-editor of the Text+Kritik volume on Judith Schalansky and most recently also co-edited a special issue of Germanic Review, titled “Text+Critique: Gegenwartsliteratur.” Her monograph The Contemporary: History and Temporality after 1989 is forthcoming in 2026.