something happened in the mid/late 1990’s

These exercises suggest there was something to my feeling that there was a change of mood around the mid/late 1990’s. Many of the people we consider big names in continental philosophy, whether big names in the world-historic sense (Heidegger) or in the more local sense, peaked around 1995-97 before tailing off.

But keep in mind, this graph measures references in books, and books often take 2-3 years to appear in print after they are composed. So let’s say roughly somewhere around 1993 through 1996 is when something happened. People started becoming vaguely discontented.

A couple of key moments, in my opinion:

*The rise of Deleuze (c. 1995), who (if you’re young you won’t remember) wasn’t at all one of the continental kingpins in 1990. He had his special interest fans, but when I sat in Lingis’s class in Fall 1990 and we did both Baudrillard and Deleuze, at the time they felt of comparable centrality: i.e. not central at all! They were both equally the continental clowns then. Baudrillard still has his fans, but I doubt anyone would weigh him and Deleuze equally today.

*The Sokal Hoax (1996). Not very popular in our circles, perhaps, but it skillfully signaled the decadent excess in which a moment of continental self-parody had been reached.