ABSTRACT
This essay is an attempt to trace the ways in which certain paradigmatic shifts in the humanities were anticipated by Russian literary thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Viktor Shklovsky, and to fashion a response to the central strategic question: what in contemporary culture comes after the post-(modernism, structuralism, communism, utopianism, etc.)? I will propose and examine a number of paradigmatic shifts or modes of possible transition, such as the transition from finalizing to initiating approaches in the humanities, or the shift from translation to interlation and stereotextuality; and I will do so always in the subjunctive mood, rather than in the future tense; any response to the earlier question can deal only with what may be, not what will be.
