MICHAEL ANDRE BERNSTEIN, FOREGONE CONCLUSIONS


Michael Andre Bernstein. FOREGONE CONCLUSIONS: AGAINST APOCALYPTIC HISTORY. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.


Michael Andre Bernstein is treated in our article, To Bear The Unbearable: reflecting on the "foregone conclusion" of Hiroshima.

He advances the theory of "sideshadowing" in contradistinction to "foreshadowing" and "backshadowing." We apply that theory to our personal reflection on the revisionist view of Truman's decision to drop the A-bomb. The theory helps us to explain our ability, a half century later, to both (a) understand and support the dropping of the bomb and (b) understand and support the impulse to revise judgment of it. This ability, we argue, partakes of the peculiar attitude or sensibility that we can label postmodern.

Our essay, Up the Chimney, refers to Bernstein's thesis.


November 1995; updated 22 February 1996
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