We, the Other Victorians: Considering the Heritage of 19th Century Thought

The declaration of `the end of history’, understood as the elimination of all fissures and social tensions, is one of the intellectual parameters which form the bases of contemporary neo-liberal culture. The aim of this collection is to question the notion of a cultural process whereby discourses are rewritten while being, at times, reinscribed in a context that has been emptied of any historical meaning. By relating the Foucauldian analysis of the technologies of the self to a dialectical understanding of Cultural History, this collection aims to bridge theory and practice. The essays included in this book aim to demonstrate how the heritage of Victorian thought is still alive in the formation of contemporary neo-liberal philosophy. For this reason, the authors analyse how 19th-century cultural production created and/or interpreted medical discourse, domesticity and gender or popular literature, and how we `the other Victorians’ have used them not only to forge hegemony, but also to construct counterhegemonic discourses and discourses of resistance.