CONTENTS

Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction	1
Prologue: Questions and Their Predecessors	8
Definitions	9
The Reality of Questions	12
Beyond Begriff	14
Questions as Problems	15
Ennui and Excess	17
Predecessors and Foils of Questions	18
Querelle, querist, querulant	23
1  The National Argument: The Imperial to the National Age	35
A Word-Making Age	35
An Imperial Prehistory of the Age	36
International Public Sphere	43
Hungary Enters the “Age of Questions”	52
What’s in a Word?	66
Epilogue	69
2  The Progressive Argument: The Age of Emancipation	72
A Progressive Age	72
Bundling Questions: For Our Freedom and Yours	75
Critics of the Age	77
The Essence of Questions	78
Contradictions and Defects	81
A New Man	82
Popular Pedagogy	84
An Answering Being	88
Epilogue	92
3  The Argument about Force: The Loaded Questions of a Genocidal Age	96
A Demoralized Age	97
The Dark Side of Emancipation	101
The Dark Side of Bundling	104
The Dark Side of Equilibrium	108
Sanctioned Decontamination: The Jewish Question in the Age of Questions	115
Hitler as Question Bundler	124
Epilogue	133
4  The Federative Argument: The Age of Erasing Borders	135
An Aggregating Age	135
Formulating Universalism	136
Federated Questions: From Indefinite to Definite	138
The Federation Consensus	145
Epilogue	151
5  The Argument about Farce: The Farcical Age	153
A Fraudulent Age	153
The Scientization of Questions	167
The Wages of Passion	170
Epilogue	178
6  The Temporal Argument: The Age of Spin	180
A Time-Conscious Age	180
Timing	181
The American Question Revisited	183
Periodicity	185
Cathartic Futures	190
A Question of Genre: The Constraints Imposed by Timeliness	192
Zeitfragen	197
Epilogue	206
7  The Suspension-Bridge Argument: The Age of Spanning Contradictions	209
A Paradoxical Age	209
Automatism	211
A Shift in Register	215
In Two Places at Once	218
The Function and Fiction of the Age	220
Notes 223
Index 319