Putting aside the many precautions taken by Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht to expound his position with nuance, one can bluntly summarize his main thesis in The Production of Presence as follows: it is time to question the omnipotence and centrality gained by “interpretation” as a research practice in the humanities; more precisely, the epistemological framework implied by “interpretation” must be shifted, so as to create a locus for theory which is, in the author’s own terms, nonhermeneutical and nonmetaphysical.
