Literary theory Books

Book SynopsisLocating literature at the intersection of distinct areas of thinking on the nature, scope and methods of knowledge - philosophy, theology, science, and the law - this book engages with literary texts across periods and genres to address questions of probability, problems of evidence, the uses of experiment and the poetics and ethics of doubt.Trade Review“All the essays provide a complex but readable text, backed by massive scholarship, meticulously documented in the notes at their end. … the essays in Fictions of Knowledge offer rich and complex investigations of the fascinating world of knowledge in its varied manifestations in literary and non-literary texts, and should be of interest to all who are interested in meaningful connections between the two.” (Tej N. Dhar, The European Legacy, Vol. 20 (1), October, 2015)Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; Y.Batsaki, S.Mukherji & J.M.Schramm Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Evolution of a Concept; B.Shapiro Providence, Experience and Doubt in Medieval England; C.Watkins Law, Probability and Character in Shakespeare; L.Hutson Trying, Knowing and Believing: Epistemic Plots and the Poetics of Doubt; S.Mukherji The Anxiety of Variety: Knowledge and Experience in Montaigne, Burton and Bacon; K.Murphy Novel Knowledge: Judgment, Experience, Experiment; J.Bender Lost in the Castle of Scepticism: Sceptical Philosophy as Gothic Romance; S.Kareem From Alchemy to Experiment: The Political Economy of Experience in William Godwin's St Leon: A Tale of The Sixteenth Century; Y.Batsaki Towards a Poetics of (Wrongful) Accusation: Innocence and Working-Class Voice in Mid-Victorian Fiction; J.M.Schramm Afterword; M.Wood Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis_______________A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists'' - London Review of BooksGracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said''s own elegiac masterpiece of late style'' - Financial TimesWhat Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work'' - Hanif KureishiHis own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties'' - Guardian_______________On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime''s artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrabTrade ReviewSaid's last book is a series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists. * London Review of Books *What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work * Hanif Kureishi *Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said's own elegiac masterpiece of late style * Financial Times *Table of ContentsForeword by Mariam C. Said Introduction by Michael Wood 1. Timeliness and Lateness 2. Return to the Eighteenth Century 3. Cosìfan tutte at the Limits 4. On Jean Genet 5. A Lingering Old Order 6. The Virtuoso as Intellectual 7. Glimpses of Late Style Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisNotes from the Crawl Room employs the lens and methods of horror writing to critique the excesses and absurdities of philosophy. Each story reveals disastrous and de-humanising effects of philosophies that are separated from real, lived experience (e.g. the absurdity of arguing over a sentence in Kant while the world burns around us). From a Kafkaesque exploration of administrative absurdities to the horrors of discursive violence, white supremacy and the living spectres of patriarchy, A.M. Moskovitz doesn''t shy away from addressing the complex aspects of our lives. In addition to offering often humourous critiques of philosophy, these works are also, somewhat ironically, pieces of philosophy themselves. Each story seeks to move a subject area forward offering the reader the capacity to think through ideas in a weirder and more open way than traditional philosophy usually allows. An antidote to philosophy that seeks to close down and shut off the imaginative potential of humanTrade ReviewKafka wrote that ‘we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us’. Notes from the Crawl Room makes its mark more insidiously, uncovering the wounds that already exist in us and our institutions, those parts of ourselves we prefer to disavow. Disappearances, burnings, hauntings, and the violence inherent in reason: A.M. Moskowitz’s vanished selves exemplify the words of the playwright Sarah Kane, another master explorer of the psyche’s nightmarish corridors: ‘It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind.’ These are tales of psychic horror that creep under the skin and burrow their way inexorably to the heart. * Emily Berry, poet and editor *These uncanny stories of philosophical horror surprise, delight and perplex. Notes from the Crawl Room is at once a warning of what happens when the philosophical impulse is taken too far, and a reminder of how seductive that impulse can be. * Amia Srinivasan, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK *Table of ContentsIntroductory Essay: Uroborotic Horror by Susan K. Lang 1. The Ring of Gyges 2. Cousin Vincent 3. By which we learn that “Snow is white” 4. Empty Man I: The German Logician (1902) 5. The Gravesend Institute 6. A Response to C.D. Baird’s Reading of the Pitwell Phenomenon 7. Empty Man II: Theodore (1999) 8. Bare Substrata 9. such brittle bodies 10. Empty Man III: Marcia (2010) 11. The Locked Room 12. Campus Rumpus I–V 13. The Master’s Delight 14. Cloakroom, 1984 15. Empty Man IV: Abbie (2018) 16. Mycorrhizae 17. A Manifesto for Horror As Critique of Analytic Philosophy Appendix I: Recurring Characters Appendix II: Quotations Select Bibliography Acknowledgements Credits

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume is the first attempt to reconsider the entire corpus of an ancient canonical author through the lens of queerness broadly conceived, taking as its subject Euripides, the latest of the three great Athenian tragedians. Although Euripides' plays have long been seen as a valuable source for understanding the construction of gender and sexuality in ancient Greece, scholars of Greek tragedy have only recently begun to engage with queer theory and its ongoing developments. Queer Euripides represents a vital step in exploring the productive perspectives on classical literature afforded by the critical study of orientations, identities, affects and experiences that unsettle not only prescriptive understandings of gender and sexuality, but also normative social structures and relations more broadly. Bringing together twenty-one chapters by experts in classical studies, English literature, performance and critical theory, this carefully curated collection of incisive and provoTrade ReviewReading Queer Euripides from start to finish feels like receiving an invitation to a conversation, a collective, an in-crowd, a protest, a manifesto for change ... I feel deeply grateful to the editors of Queer Euripides and to its contributors for this volume that in its reckoning with the failures of Classics is no less full to the brim with ‘weedy hope’. I am trying to imagine the landscapes that will grow from such endings. * The Classical Review *The surprise factors of these re-readings ... will constantly challenge our assumptions and force us to read the text with fresh eyes. * Journal of Classics Teaching *Full of innovative analyses of Euripides’ plays, this ground-breaking volume is the first to employ queerness as a lens for examining the entire surviving corpus of an ancient Greek playwright. In both form and content it heralds a new approach to ancient texts that should have a deep impact on the field of Classics and reach many audiences beyond it. * Naomi A. Weiss, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University, USA *Table of ContentsList of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgments Queer Euripides: An Introduction (Sarah Olsen, Williams College, USA and Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, USA) Part I. Temporalities 1. Hippolytus: Euripides and Queer Theory at the Fin de Siècle and Now (Daniel Orrells, King’s College, London, UK) 2. Rhesus: Tragic Wilderness in Queer Time (Oliver Baldwin, University of Reading, UK) 3. Trojan Women: No Futures (Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) Part II. Escape/Refusal 4. Iphigenia in Aulis: Perhaps (Not) (Ella Haselswerdt, University of California, Los Angeles, USA) 5. Helen: Queering the Barbarian (Patrice Rankine, University of Richmond, USA) 6. Children of Heracles: Queer Kinship: Profit, Vivisection, Kitsch (Ben Radcliffe, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA) 7. Suppliant Women: Adrastus’s Cute Lesbianism: Labor Irony Adhesion (Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, USA) Part III: Failure 8. Medea: Failure and the Queer Escape (Sarah Nooter, University of Chicago, USA) 9. Alcestis: Impossible Performance (Sean Gurd, University of Missouri, USA) 10. Ion: Into the Queer Ionisphere (Kirk Ormand, Oberlin College, USA) Part IV: Relations 11. Heracles: Homosexual Panic and Irresponsible Reading (Alastair Blanshard, University of Queensland, Australia) 12. Andromache: Catfight in Phthia (Sarah Olsen, Williams College, USA) 13. Orestes: Polymorphously Per-verse: On Queer Metrology (David Youd, University of California, Berkeley, USA) Part V. Reproduction 14. Hecuba: The Dead Child or Queer for a Day (Karen Bassi, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) 15. Phoenician Women: “Deviant” Thebans Out of Time (Rosa Andújar, Kings’ College, London, UK) 16. Electra: Parapoetics and Paraontology (Melissa Mueller, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA) Part VI: Encounters 17. Iphigenia in Tauris: Iphigenia and Artemis? Reading Queer/Performing Queer (Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Hamilton College, USA and David Bullen, Royal Holloway, UK) 18. Cyclops: A Philosopher Walks into a Satyr Play (Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley, USA) Part VII: Transitions 19. Hippolytus: Queer Crossings: Following Anne Carson (Jonathan Goldberg, Emory University, USA) 20. Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria: Reality and the Egg: An Oviparody of Euripides (L. Deihr, UC, Berkeley, USA) 21. Bacchae: “An Excessively High Price to Pay for Being Reluctant to Emerge from the Closet?” (Isabel Ruffell, University of Glasgow, UK) Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisEconarratives are all around us, describing and shaping human interactions with other species and the physical environment. This book provides a foundational theory of econarrative, drawing from narratology, human ecology, critical discourse analysis, and ecolinguistics, and offering insights from a rich variety of texts including: Creation myths Indigenous podcasts Ethical leadership speeches Haiku poetry Documentary films New nature writing Advertisements and campaigns Apocalyptic storiesAdopting a global, transdisciplinary approach, it conducts in-depth analysis of specific works, including the Cherokee myth How the World Was Made, the speeches of Vandana Shiva, Nightwalk by Chris Yates, Naomi Klein's documentary This Changes Everything, the podcasts of Mohawk seed-keeper Rowen White, the Book of Revelation, and The Dark Mountain Manifesto.Raising awarenTrade ReviewThis book, presenting a clearly defined, comprehensive and coherent overview of econarrative with cogent and intrinsically interesting illustrative examples and a strong argument, is set to become the authoritative and seminal text of a new field. -- Guy Cook, Emeritus Professor of Language in Education, King's College London, UKTimely, compelling and written with great lucidity and clarity, this book offers a wide-ranging account of econarrative and its crucial function in protecting the ecosystems that life depends on. Alongside narratological and linguistic reflections, it presents an impassioned case for challenging our unsustainable civilisation and finding new econarratives to live by. -- Emanuela Ettorre, Professor of English, Università degli Studi ‘Gabriele d'Annunzio’, Chieti-Pescara, ItalyTable of ContentsList of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Beginning: Activation in Creation Narratives 3. Identifying: Ecocultural Identity in the Seed Sovereignty Movement 4. Emplacing: Timelessness and Placefulness in Haiku 5. Enchanting: Wonder in Nature Writing 6. Leading: Ethics in Leadership Communication 7. Feeling: Emotional Narrative in Climate Change Documentaries 8. Persuading: Multimodal Genres in Food Advertising 9. Endings: Metaphor and Finding Ourselves at the End of the Road 10. Conclusion Appendix A: How the World was Made Appendix B: Credits and Permissions Glossary References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAaron Mauro is Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Brock University, Canada.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities reconsiders key debates, methods, possibilities, and failings from across the digital humanities, offering a timely interrogation of the present and future of the arts and humanities in the digital age.Comprising 43 essays from some of the field's leading scholars and practitioners, this comprehensive collection examines, among its many subjects, the emergence and ongoing development of DH, postcolonial digital humanities, feminist digital humanities, race and DH, multilingual digital humanities, media studies as DH, the failings of DH, critical digital humanities, the future of text encoding, cultural analytics, natural language processing, open access and digital publishing, digital cultural heritage, archiving and editing, sustainability, DH pedagogy, labour, artificial intelligence, the cultural economy, and the role of the digital humanities in climate change. The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanit

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis field-defining collection maps key intersections between sound studies and literary studies

Read more less

Book SynopsisProvides a road map for negotiating the tensions between the text and the world in our reading practicesTrade Review"Mena Mitrano recasts the literary scholar's work in terms of an essential commitment to knowing and thinking the world through its texts. Written with ethical seriousness and theoretical suppleness, Literary Critique, Modernism and the Transformation of Theory is a bold program for literary scholars and students, under pressure from forces inside and beyond the contemporary academy, to reengage critique as a practice of gracious attention, radical reconstitution and creative experimentation." -Alix Beeston, Cardiff University

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThese stories of trauma cannot be limited to the catastrophes they name, and the theory of catastrophic history may ultimately be written in a language that already lingers in a time that comes to us from the other side of the disaster.Trade ReviewOf immense significance to scholars in multiple disciplines, including history, literature and literary theory, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, this book will set the tone for future discussion... Essential. Choice Caruth, then, presents a "new kind" of history: a history that is itself under erasure and that calls for an urgent reimagining of the way we think of-and write about-the past. Journal of Literature and Trauma StudiesTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart One: Literature and the Life Drive1. Parting Words: Trauma, Silence, and SurvivalSigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle2. The Claims of the Dead: History, Haunted Property, and the LawHonoré de Balzac, Colonel ChabertPart Two: After the End3. Lying and HistoryHannah Arendt, "Truth and Politics" and "Lying in Politics"4. Disappearing History: Scenes of Trauma in the Theater of Human RightsAriel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden5. Psychoanalysis in the Ashes of HistoryWilhelm Jensen, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques DerridaAfterwordNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamining hardboiled fiction through Flaubert, New Yorker cartoons through modernist painting, and Bette Davis through Hegel and Marx, Transatlantic Aliens challenges and changes the way we understand modernism's place in midcentury American culture.Trade ReviewWriting with the style and vocabulary of modern intellectualism, [Norman] demonstrates the culture to which new scholars can aspire. Highly recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1Homeless Aliens and Dialectical Culture Critique: C. L. R. James and Theodor AdornoChapter 2 The Yankee from Berlin: George GroszChapter 3The Big Empty: Raymond Chandler's Transatlantic Modernism Chapter 4 The Taste of Freedom: Simone de Beauvoir, Vladimir Nabokov and the Intellectual Road Trip Chapter 5 Saul Steinberg's Vanishing Trick: Modernism, the State, and the Cosmopolitan Intellectual Conclusion: Not to Grin is a Sin Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisNeoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture is essential reading for anyone invested in the ever-changing state of literary culture.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Neoliberalism and Literature, by Mitchum Huehls and Rachel Greenwald SmithPart I1. Fifty Shades of Neoliberal Love, by Walter Benn Michaels2. The Microeconomic Mode, by Jane Elliott3. The New Materialism and Neoliberalism, by Min Hyoung Song4. Realisms Redux; or, Against Affective Capitalism, by Jeffrey T. Nealon5. The Surfaces of Contemporary Capitalism, by Jeffrey T. BaskinPart II6. Fictions of Neoliberalism, by Mathias Nilges7. Totaling the Damage, by Jennifer Ashton8. Against Omniscient Narration, by Marcial González9. The Memoir in the Age of Neoliberal Individualism, by Daniel WordenPart III10. The Perpetual Fifties of American Fiction, by Matthew Wilkens11. The Neoliberal Novel of Migrancy, by Sheri-Marie Harrison12. Neoliberal Childhoods, by Caren Irr13. Post-recession Realism, by Andrew HoberekPart IV14. The Author as Executive Producer, by Michael Szalay15. Neoliberalism and the Demise of the Literary, by Sarah Brouillette16. The Humanist Fix, by Leigh Claire La BergeList of Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow does theatre shape the body and perceptions of it? How do bodies on stage challenge audience assumptions about material evidence and the truth? Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies responds to these questions by examining how theatre participates in and informs theories of the body in performance, race, queer, disability, trans, gender, and new media studies. Throughout the 20th century, theories of the body have shifted from understanding the body as irrefutable material evidence of race, sex, and gender, to a social construction constituted in language. In the same period, theatre has struggled with representing ideas through live bodies while calling into question assumptions about the body. This volume demonstrates how theatre contributes to understanding the historical, contemporary and burgeoning theories of the body. It explores how theories of the body inform debates about labor conditions and spatial configurations. Theatre allows performers to shift an audience'sTrade ReviewTheory for Theatre Studies: Bodies offers a rich survey of the body in performance through a broad and diverse range of examples that refer to wider socio-cultural movements and concerns yet are firmly placed in theatre practice. Soyica Diggs Colbert draws arguments fluently, shifting from illustration to illustration, theory to theory, with ease and in a way that remains focused for the reader. -- Josephine Machon, Middlesex University, UKSoyica Diggs Colbert’s extraordinary new book Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies is a comprehensive and complex consideration of the discontinuities of material and discursive theatrical histories from Medieval Drama to the contemporary period, which challenges scholars and artists to reconsider how embodied meaning is created by and through performance on stage. This game-changing text deftly argues that bodies carry meaning into every theatrical text and event and thus directly impact how shifting understandings of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality and ability become inseparable facets through which modalities of power, economics and privilege are realized on and off stage. Colbert connects both theatrical and critical theoretical discourses of the acting body in Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies as she translates new possibilities of imagining, seeing and reading the body. This book unhinges notions of classical texts and is poised to become a 'must read' book for any artist, scholar and/or theater enthusiast who believes that equitable and inclusive theater is not only obtainable in the 21st century, but necessary for manifesting anti-racist futures. * Nicole Hodges Persley, University of Kansas, USA *Table of ContentsSeries Preface Acknowledgements Bodies: An Introduction Section One: Historical Approaches to Theatre Theory Section Two: Extended Case Studies Section Three: Porous Bodies: New Interpretations References Further Reading Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisKey Concepts in the Gothic' provides a one-stop resource which details and defines, in accessible language, those contexts essential for the study of the Gothic in all periods and media.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first translation into English of Mother Homer is Dead, written in the immediate aftermath of the death of the Cixous's mother in the 103rd year of her life.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection of newly commissioned essays brings together major scholars in the field of Gothic studies in order to re-think the topic of `Women and the Gothic .

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection provides a thorough representation of the early and ongoing conversation between Gothic and theory philosophical, aesthetic, psychological and cultural.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume critically investigates current topics and disciplines that are affected, enriched or put into dispute by the burgeoning scholarship on Animal Studies.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThrough readings of an array of recent texts literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental this book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture.

Read more less

Book SynopsisReassesses Scottish textual practice in the context of the natural and post-natural landscapes

Read more less

Book Synopsis Many of Bob Dylan''s most well-known works date from the 1960s, and can be seen as critical indicators of the changes in American society then and since. This book explores the unthreading of ideas about masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and identity through the lens of some of Dylan''s most popular love songs. The author revealingly employs specific aspects of cultural theory to explore the appeal of Bob Dylan''s music both now and during the time it was written.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being, Kevin Quashie imagines a Black world in which one encounters Black being as it is rather than only as it exists in the shadow of anti-Black violence. As such, he makes a case for Black aliveness even in the face of the persistence of death in Black life and Black study. Centrally, Quashie theorizes aliveness through the aesthetics of poetry, reading poetic inhabitance in Black feminist literary texts by Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, and Evie Shockley, among others, showing how their philosophical and creative thinking constitutes worldmaking. This worldmaking conceptualizes Blackness as capacious, relational beyond the normative terms of recognition—Blackness as a condition of oneness. Reading for poetic aliveness, then, becomes a means of exploring Black being rather than nonbeing and animates the ethical question “how to be.” In this way, Quashie offers a Black feminist philosophy oTrade Review“Black studies is a spiritual discipline, one devoted to that dispersed and disseminated gathering of a nonexclusionary black world. Kevin Quashie has helped me think about this and has given me intellectual and theoretical tools and language for this. Black Aliveness is one of the most intellectually stimulating, illuminating, and spiritually moving books I’ve read in a very long time. Its impact will be immediate.” -- J. Kameron Carter, author of * Race: A Theological Account *“Decentering the focus on ‘social death’ in current black studies, Black Aliveness is the first book to push us to the next step when we start with the feeling of aliveness rather than with black death as a way of understanding black life. There is magical thinking and writing in this paradigm-shifting book.” -- Margo Natalie Crawford, author of * Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *"I found great relief in Quashie's formulation of the concept of 'oneness,' which he insists is 'not akin to individualism.'… Quashie's book has shifted decades of denial, distancing, and suppression for me, not by rescuing the I, but by giving me one, the becoming, the relational.… In dealing with my ontological anxieties, I have dreamed of dissolution, a release into the elements of the universe of which we are all made. But even if we mingle with the stars we are still left with particles and forms of relation between these particles. What an aha! moment for me, reading Quashie…. How freeing and wonderful. To relate, to mingle, is not a dissolve, but a proliferation." -- Jayna Brown * Critical Inquiry *"This deeply poetic, rich book may be paradigm shifting. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- J. A. Kegley * Choice *"Kevin Quashie's book provides a blueprint for alternative methods of reading and studying Black life, Black worldmaking, and Black relationality." -- Daisy Guzman * E3W Review of Books *"Quashie's efforts are triumphant. . . . This work and its tender attention to that which constitutes humanity within these texts of aliveness would retain its magic regardless of the world, 'the episteme,' in which one finds it." -- Erin Tatz * Theory & Event *"One of the most significant contributions of the book as a whole is the quiet but insistent contention that poetry and poetics can do the work of social analysis. It is here, in Quashie’s attention to aesthetic choices and form, that we appreciate the value of Black Aliveness. . . . Quashie has written a field-shifting book that centers aesthetic paths to life in place of restraint in its treatment of Black being." -- Gershun Avilez * Genre *"Quashie’s Black Aliveness is not a blueprint or a definitive answer to his opening question. Rather, the book is more like a gesture and an invitation; it offers a path for studying Black life and world-making through aesthetics. Throughout, Quashie’s prose emulates the beauty, splendor, and energy of the writings that constitute the matrix for his reflections. The reader will appreciate how the author frequently pauses to consider the grandeur of an essay or the rhythm of a poem. Students of Black literature and aesthetics should also praise Quashie’s practice of sitting with Black texts as primary sources for critical thought and ethics." -- Joseph Winters * American Literary History *"Black Aliveness is an important intervention in a conversation that has come to dominate black studies in recent years, under a variety of different names: the question of the human, black ontology, the(im)possibility of black subjectivity, and afropessimism. . . . Quashie’s book offers a loving response to and reorientation of a field that has come to read blackness as synonymous with death, and antiblackness as constitutive of black life." -- Jennifer C. Nash * Cultural Critique *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Aliveness 1 1. Aliveness and Relation 15 2. Aliveness and Oneness 31 3. Aliveness and Aesthetics 57 4. Aliveness in Two Essays 83 5. Aliveness and Ethics 107 Conclusion. Again, Aliveness 141 Acknowledgments 155 Notes 157 Bibliography 219 Permissions 227 Index 229

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn recent years, queer theory appears to have made a materialist turn away from questions of representation and performativity to those of dispossession, precarity, and the differential distribution of life chances. Despite this shift, queer theory finds itself constantly reabsorbed into the liberal project of diversity management. This theoretical and political weakness, Petrus Liu argues, stems from an incomplete understanding of capitalism's contemporary transformations, of which China has been at the center. In The Specter of Materialism Liu challenges key premises of classic queer theory and Marxism, turning to an analysis of the Beijing Consensus-global capitalism's latest mutation-to develop a new theory of the political economy of sexuality. Liu explores how relations of gender and sexuality get reconfigured to meet the needs of capital in new regimes of accumulation and dispossession, demonstrating that evolving US-Asian economic relations shape the emergence of new queer identities and academic theories. In so doing, he offers a new history of collective struggles that provides a transnational framework for understanding the nexus between queerness and material life.Trade Review"Petrus Liu’s The Specter of Materialism is intellectually courageous and theoretically sophisticated, advancing both queer theory and Marxist thought. This review has only scratched the surface of this paradigm-shifting work. Scholars of queer theory, gender and sexuality studies, Marxism, and China Studies will all find this book indispensable for their fields." -- Wenqing Kang * Modern Chinese Literature And Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Periodizing the Post-1989 World Order 1 Part I: Theory 1. Alterity in Queer Theory and the Political Economy of the Beijing Consensus 21 2. The Specter of Materialism 52 Part II: History 3. The Subsumption of Literature: Lu Xun’s Queer Modernism in the Chinese Revolution 81 4. The Subsumption of the Cold War: The Material Unconscious of Queer Asia 104 5. The Subsumption of Sexuality: Translating Gender from the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women to the Beijing Consensus 135 Conclusion: Toward a Transnational Queer Marxism 161 Notes 165 Bibliography 195 Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The open-access edition of this text was made possible by a Philip Leverhulme Prize from The Leverhulme Trust.Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Where does a password end and an identity begin? A person might be more than his chosen ten-character combination, but does a bank know that? Or an email provider? What's an identity theft' in the digital age if not the unauthorized use of a password? In untangling the histories, cultural contexts and philosophies of the password, Martin Paul Eve explores how what we know' became who we are', revealing how the modern notion of identity has been shaped by the password. Ranging from ancient Rome and the watchwords' of military encampments, through the three-factor authentication systems of Harry PotteTrade ReviewAn erudite and interesting amble through the history, philosophy, and psychology of passwords. * Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist and New York Times-Bestselling Author of Data and Goliath The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World *Conjuring our passwords has become a daily act of our computer-saturated existence. By no means sequestered to our digital present, Martin Paul Eve's excellent account of the password covers its long and lively history. Weaving literary references with lucid technical explanations, Eve skillfully traces the evolution of password to probe its fundamental connections to issues of human identity, trust, and ownership. * Gabriella Coleman, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, McGill University, Canada *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. “Who goes there?”: Military, Mortality and Passwords 3. Special Characters: Passwords in Literature and Film 4. P455w0rd5 and the Digital Era 5. Identity List of Illustrations Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. When the Sony Walkman debuted in 1979, people were enthralled by the novel experience it offered: immersion in the music of their choice, anytime, anywhere. But the Walkman was also denounced as self-indulgent and antisocialthe quintessential accessory for the me generation. In Personal Stereo, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow takes us back to the birth of the device, exploring legal battles over credit for its invention, its ambivalent reception in 1980s America, and its lasting effects on social norms and public space. Ranging from postwar Japan to the present, Tuhus-Dubrow tells an illuminating story about our emotional responses to technological change. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewA compelling and expertly researched study of the Sony Walkman. * New Books Network *An honest & deft entry in [Bloomsbury's] Object Lessons series. * Music Book Review *In 2017, having music pumped into your ears through headphones while existing in public is a thoroughly normal thing to do. But as Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow outlines in the delightful Personal Stereo, being able to do so is a relatively recent development ... Her thoughtfulness imbues this chronicle of a once-modern, now-obsolete device with a mindfulness that isn’t often seen in writing about technology. * Pitchfork (named one of Pitchfork's favorite books of 2017) *[A] careful, astute study. * The Wire *Tuhus-Dubrow illuminates a web of stories connected to the Walkman, her references as ubiquitous as its users ... After finishing Personal Stereo, I found myself wondering about the secret lives of every object around me, as if each device were whispering, “Oh, I am much so more than meets the eye”... Tuhus-Dubrow is a master researcher and synthesizer. It would appear that she has left no Walkman-related stone unturned ... Tuhus-Dubrow [is] an elegant, engaging storyteller who unpacks complex social and political concepts with clarity and panache ... Personal Stereo is a joy to read. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Personal Stereo is loving, wise, and exuberant, a moving meditation on nostalgia and obsolescence. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow writes as beautifully about Georg Simmel and Allan Bloom as she does about Jane Fonda and Metallica. Now I understand why I still own the taxicab-yellow Walkman my grandmother gave me in 1988. * Nathaniel Rich, author of Odds Against Tomorrow *Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s affectionate history traces the Walkman out of an electronics workshop in bombed-out postwar Tokyo to global icon of solitary, un-networked bliss. * Sasha Issenberg, author of The Sushi Economy *Personal Stereo explores the development of the Walkman, its impact on our culture, and its legacy, not only highlighting its time as a status symbol but discussing its surprising resurgence today as part of the analog revolution. Plus Tuhus-Dubrow shares her own personal memories of Walkman ownership, offering a nice intimate touch to a book full of fun pop-culture trivia and anecdotes. Perhaps the best part of Personal Stereo was seeing parallels between reactions to the Walkman and recent complaints about smartphone ownership. (Particularly regarding selfishness and isolation.) Observing these cyclical historical undercurrents, large and small, is both entertaining and engaging. You might have preferred your iPod, but there’s no doubt the Walkman was worthy of a tribute and brief history like this. * San Francisco Book Review *Tuhus-Dubrow’s valuable historical and pop cultural analysis provides a genuine yet evenhanded portrait of all that has been loved and lost in the way the personal stereo has impacted public spaces and social communication. Personal Stereo is a clear-eyed study on the way this technology continues to disrupt, for better and for worse. * PopMatters *A fascinating and informative, yet also nostalgic, look at the rise and fall of the personal stereo ... The author has worked hard to make this book readable, accessible and thorough in its enquiry ... Tuhus-Dubrow manages to keep the feel of the book light and engaging. It has enough information in to feel academically researched, yet is written in an easily accessible fashion ... Although I enjoyed the final 'Nostalgia' section, I think anybody with an interest in design, business, technology, or social and cultural history, will find the first section, 'Novelty', an interesting delve into the development of Sony as a company, its founders, and its famous Walkman. Five stars. * The Bookbag *Personal Stereo accomplishes a lot in the short time it takes to read. It reminds readers (or informs them) of just how revolutionary the Walkman experience was, and how much it anticipated today's conversations about technology and personal space. * The Current *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Novelty 2: Norm 3: Nostalgia Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Jonathan Maskit takes us on an interdisciplinary ride to see what makes the bicycle a magical machine that could yet make the world a safer, greener, and more just place.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewIn his insightful contribution to the Object Lessons series, Jonathan Maskit dives deep into this great yet humble human invention and its role in transportation. After reading Bicycle, you’ll never think of cycling the same way again * Sanna Lehtinen, Research Fellow, School of Arts, Design, and Architecture, Aalto University, Finland *Table of ContentsList of Figures 1. A Tale of Two Cyborgs 2. A Brief History 3. The Magical Machine 4. The Death Machine 5. What Does It Mean to Share the Road? 6. Right of Way 7. Bicycle Diaries 8. Motorism and Motorists 9. The Visible and the Invisible 10. Ghost Bikes 11. Idaho Stop 12. Space 13. History Repeats Itself 15. Dark Clouds, Silver Linings Acknowledgements Bibliography Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisRandy Malamud is Regents' Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is the author of ten books, including Reading Zoos (1998) and An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture (2012). He has written for HuffPost, Salon, Film Quarterly, Chicago Sun-Times, and the Los Angeles Times and has appeared on CNN, BBC, and NPR.Trade ReviewThis involving and innovative volume's aggregation of ephemera will no doubt delight the social historian ... The snappy prose and keen engagement help pull together the text into an engaging and successful snapshot of collective experience. * Times Higher Education *In this slyly subversive little book, part rhapsody, part diatribe, Randy Malamud can’t leave e-mail alone. His exuberant rants and riffs give us a new perspective on our infernal electronic inboxes. A fast, funny, compulsive read. * Mikita Brottman, Professor of Humanistic Studies, Maryland Institute College of Art, USA, and author of An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere (2018) and The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men's Prison (2016) *Table of ContentsPre-mail Email Compose Subject Attachment Inbox Send Reply-All Delete Junk Out of Office: After Email Postscript: How to Write and Read an Email Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisDinah Lenney is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and the author or editor of four books, including The Object Parade (2014). Her essays and reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post among other publications.Trade ReviewLenney’s book, part of the publisher’s Object Lessons series about the ‘hidden lives of ordinary things,’ is a fluid, involving memoir of her experience of coffee, a pleasurable tour of her memories, reflections, and research on the topic … The result is a winning combination of enthusiasm and naïveté, which allows the reader to explore recent research about coffee and its physiological effects, the more esoteric corners of coffee connoisseurship and fandom, and the cultural attitudes to coffee shown by her friends and family without ever feeling lectured ... This deft memoir-cum-meditation is as savory and stimulating as its subject. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Where Lenney really shines… is in her ability to interweave environmental, sociopolitical, and cultural concerns with reflections on time, womanhood, and family. Her lyrical prose is as invigorating as a strong jolt of caffeine. * Alta *True to its subject, this book is a real stimulant: the prose is caffeinated, zany yet serene and habit-forming. Chock full of odd facts, poignant autobiographical vignettes, comic touches, and wistful philosophical insights, it is a delicious brew, all in all, and as fine and accomplished an example of that contemporary form, the extended mosaic essay, as we are likely to encounter. * Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction (2013) *If there's ever been a more perfect pairing of author and subject matter, I can't recall it. Dinah Lenney was meant to write this book. I could say this is not just a book about coffee, but we knew that already. So what I will say is that it's about all that coffee represents; being awake, being cozy, being able to savor what's in your cup as well as what's in your life. Lenney's mastery of these lessons comes from her mastery of the fleeting moment, the quiet revelation, the unlikely holiness of even the most ordinary objects and everyday rituals. She's more than an observer of the world in her midst, she's a precise and careful excavator of the ground beneath her feet. How lucky we are to dig alongside her. * Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion (2014) and The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars (2019) *An expert brew of research, memoir, and introspection, this lovely and satisfying book delivers many pleasures also found in a perfect cup of espresso. Reading Dinah Lenney, one's brain and heart feel quickened. Lenney's writing throughout is moving, intimate, eager, graceful, discerning, tender. The generosity of her self-examining candor and the warmth with which she admits us into her life play off beautifully against her natural reporter's curiosity. And happily, the salutary effects of Lenney's excellent prose last much longer than the buzz of mere caffeine. * Amy Gerstler, author of Scattered at Sea (2015) *Dinah Lenney is a treasure. The acuity of her eye, the precision of her voice: Reading Coffee is like savoring the notes, the nuances, of a finely brewed cup. Energizing and engaging, full of deft and unexpected narrative turns, this book reminds us of the depths inherent in the simplest pleasures, as well as the ongoing relationships and daily interactions that add up to a life. * David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles (2015) *Reading Dinah Lenney's frenetic ditty on coffee mimics the thing itself: one tries to quit it, but can't; one tries to put it down, only to pick it up again for stimulus, for agitation, for one more lasting epiphany! * Mark Yakich, Gregory F. Curtin, S.J., Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, USA, and author of Poetry: A Survivor’s Guide (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Spiritual Exercises (2019) *Table of ContentsPrologue 1. The Impossibility of the Task 2. My Mother Is Coming, My Mother Is Coming The Questionnaire 3. Coffee-Milk From the Coffee Diaries #1 4. My Emerging Palate A Coffee Story (Third-Hand) 5. What We Talk About When We Talk About Coffee (Teresa Was Right) 6. Coffee in Brooklyn 7. Twenty-Two Hands... A Coffee Story (First-Hand) Rules Shmules (Just a Few, in No Particular Order) These Things About Coffee Are True From the Coffee Diaries #2 8. Serious Business 9. Shouldn’t Coffee Taste Like Coffee? (If You Say So) 10. Coffee in Paris 11. Extending the Metaphor 12. All the Things You Are 13. The Power of Suggestion 14. One More Prompt 15. Am I Blue From the Coffee Diaries #3 16. A Word About Tea A Riddle (Excellent Advertising) From the Coffee Diaries #4 17. Reunion Coffee and My Father From the Coffee Diaries #5 From the Coffee Diaries #6 18. Coffee and Catastrophe From the Coffee Diaries #7 19. Coffee in Echo Park 20. Coffee and the Jews Coffee and Dad 21. The Widow 22. Altered States From the Coffee Diaries #8 From the Coffee Diaries #9 From the Coffee Diaries #10 Epilogue Acknowledgements My Coffee Book Fort (Further Reading) Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The story of the compact disc is also the story of the end of physical media. It is the story of how the quest for perfection laid the grounds for the death of a great industry. For in the passage from analogue media, like records and tapes, to digital formats, like CDs, something changed in the nature of media and in the relationship we have with music. Music became code, a sequence of 1s and 0s, a flow of pure information. The material structure of the medium itself was always supposed to disappear. But the physical has proved to possess an uncanny knack for returning. Today the CD is a zombie medium, still popular amongst certain avant-garde record labels and Japanese consumers. Against all the odds, the spectre endures.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewThis thoughtful, elegantly written little book pays homage to that least loved of music formats, the compact disc. Filled with engaging anecdotes and philosophical observations, the book offers a concise cultural history of audio recording, describing the vicissitudes of the music industry and the dissolution of sonic objects into codes and clouds. * Christoph Cox, Professor of Philosophy, Hampshire College, USA, and author of Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics (2018) *Robert Barry rekindles our wonder for the technology that ‘put a laser in your living room.’ Futuristic and confounding, the CD converted light into sound, philosophers into audio critics, and audio critics into philosophers. But this book is more than the story of a format whose perfection laid the groundwork for its own demise--it’s also an intercultural history of light, the quest for technological perfection, and the art of critiquing that quest through glitches, skips, and stutters. * Mack Hagood, Robert H. and Nancy J. Blayney Associate Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Miami University of Ohio, USA, and author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control (2019) *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 The Little Disc 2 The Faithful Disc 3 The Wounded Disc 4 The Undead Disc Postscript Acknowledgements Select Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.When is the beautiful game at its most beautiful? How does football function as a lens through which so many view their daily lives? What's right in front of fans that they never see? Football celebrates and scrutinizes the world's most popular sportfrom top-tier professionals to children just learning the game. As an American who began playing football in the 1970s as it gained a foothold in the States, Mark Yakich reflects on his own experiences alongside the sport's social and political implications, its narrative and documentary depictions, and its linguistic idiosyncrasies. Illustrating how football can be at once absolutely vital and only a game, this book will be surprising and insightful for the casual and diehard fan alike.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewFootball is Mark Yakich's reflection on not only the sport itself, but on his own experiences alongside it, from the ways it is portrayed, its implications, and even its language. * Buzzfeed *In the times of pandemic soccer, Mark Yakich rediscovered the importance of a harmless disease: fever pitch. His well informed and passionate book on the “beautiful game” is a survival kit. It shows that reading about football can be as intense and joyful as smelling the grass. * JUAN VILLORO is the author of half a dozen novels, including God is Round: Tackling the Giants, Villains, Triumphs, and Scandals of the World's Favorite Game, and a columnist for the newspapers Reforma and El Periódico de Catalunya. In 2004, he received the Herralde Prize for his novel El testigo (The Witness). *New Orleans is my favorite city, and pickup is my favorite thing; naturally, I loved reading about Yakich's hometown game, which serves as a starting point for thoughtful, affectionate reflections on football in all its forms. * Gwendolyn Oxenham, author of Under the Lights and in the Dark: Untold Stories of Women’s Soccer and Finding the Game: Three years, Twenty-five Countries, and the Search for Pickup Soccer *In this lyric study of the sport of football, Mark Yakich invites us to look away from the bright lights of Wembley and the Maracanã to the ordinary, unmaintained pitches where football is doing its most sacred work. Through stories of his own reverie during pick-up games in New Orleans during the height of the pandemic, to memorable lore of football’s eccentric legends, to an etymological survey of the varied global languages of the game, Yakich reveals football’s power to help people realize our interconnectedness - and to restore us. * Benjamin Gucciardi, founder of Soccer Without Borders *Table of Contents1. Introduction to a Slightly New Game 2. A Concession 3. The Name of the Game 4. Popularity, Contests 5. Standstill 6. How to Make a Football 7. Two Games 8. 90-Minute Meds 9. Geisterspiel 10. Pickup 11. The Life-Changing Magic of Three-Touch 12. Of Nutmegs and Fish up a Tree 13. For the Love of a Pretty Move 14. Zone 15. A 21st Century Portrait 16. Zone Painting 17. Future Stronger in Color 18. Reset 19. The Best Seats 20. Hacking, Diving, Hugging 21. Intersectionality 22. Live Football in a Pandemic 23. Child’s Play 24. Assessment Acknowledgments Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhile many of Freud's original formulations have required either revision or rejection and replacement with newer models, his cultural books, such as Civilization and Its Discontents and Totem and Taboo, though extremely influential in the early part of the 20th century, have more recently been either neglected or else dismissed as long-outdated fantasies. Robert A. Paul shows that Freud''s ideas in these books, and his thinking on how human society is possible, given the unpromising materials out of which it is constructed (i.e. human beings), can appear in a different and more favorable light when viewed through the lens of contemporary anthropology, cultural studies, and evolutionary theory.Trade ReviewBased on his dual inheritance theory, Robert Paul provides us with an excellent integration of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking, evolutionary theory, and cultural anthropology, without minimizing the contributions of each of them. This thought-provoking book shows ways to bridge the gap between the disciplines and how this opens up new insights and approaches for psychoanalytic theory-building. * Werner Bohleber, PhD, psychoanalyst, former editor-in-chief of the German psychoanalytic journal Psyche *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Stream and the Road Part I. DROSS INTO GOLD: Recuperating Freud’s Social Theory 1. Freud’s Theory of Society 2. Biology and Culture in Civilization and Its Discontents 3. Yes, the Primal Crime Did Take Place PART II. LIKE RABBITS OR LIKE ROBOTS? Sexual versus Non-Sexual Reproduction in the Western Tradition 4. The Genealogy of Civilization 5. Sons or Sonnets? 6. The Pygmalion Complex PART III. OUR TWO TRACK-MINDS: A Dual Inheritance Perspective on Some Classic Psychoanalytic Issues 7. Incest Avoidance: Oedipal and Preoedipal, Natural and Cultural 8. Sexuality: Biological Fact or Cultural Construction? 9. Consciousness, Language, and Dual Inheritance References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Glitter reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Nicole Seymour describes how glitter's consumption and status have shifted across centuriesfrom ancient cosmetic to queer activist tool, environmental pollutant to biodegradable accessoryalong with its composition, which has variously included insects, glass, rocks, salt, sugar, plastic, and cellulose. Through a variety of examples, from glitterbombing to glitter beer, Seymour shows how this substance reflects the entanglements of consumerism, emotion, environmentalism, and gender/sexual identity. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewHard facts, philosophical musings, and trivia galore commingle in this madcap toss of shimmery delight. * Passport Magazine *Nicole Seymour peers beyond the surface of glitter and finds a material that is irreverent and political, sticky and elusive, that shapes communities as it challenges preconceptions. Glitter shines with new ways of thinking. * David Farrier, Professor of Literature and the Environment, University of Edinburgh, UK *Glitter is an original, nuanced and thorough analysis that examines glitter’s significance beyond its usual connotations of frivolousness at best and environmental disaster at worst. As vibrant as the substance itself, Seymour’s thoughtful exploration situates glitter in current cultural and political contexts without dulling its shine. Positively dazzling! * Hillary Belzer, Founder and Curator, The Makeup Museum *Table of ContentsDiary Entry: Glitter in Quarantine 1. The Great Glitter Backlash Glitter Bar: A Makeover Takeover! 2. “Feel the Rainbow!”: Glitter as Tactic Poetry Reading: CAConrad 3. “Too Much Bling”: Glitter in Children’s Entertainment Interview: Machine Dazzle 4. Recrafting Glitter: The Sustainable Turn Taste Test: Glitter Beer 5. Conclusion: Facing the Plasticene Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or no answer. That answer had the power to change the course of their reproductive lives, and it chipped away at a paternalistic culture that gave gynecologiststhe majority of whom were mencontrol over information about women's bodies.However, while science so often promises clear-cut answers, the reality of pregnancy is often much messier. Pregnancy Test explores how the pregnancy test has not always lived up to the fantasy that more information equals more knowledge. Karen Weingarten examines the history and cultural representation of the pregnancy test to show how this object radically changed sex and pregnancy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Object LesTrade ReviewA new gem from Object Lessons. . . . A quick and quirky read. * Zoomer Magazine *Karen Weingarten illuminates the fascinating history, politics, and culture of the pregnancy test in this kaleidoscopic and entertaining volume. It’s all in there: life and death, feminist empowerment and patriarchal coercion, scientific discovery and sci-fi dystopia. Weingarten shows how a seemingly modest yet ingenious technology has profoundly shaped—and even brought into being—some of our most intimate, vulnerable, and meaning-filled moments. * Lara Freidenfelds, Ph.D., author of The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America *As anyone who has anxiously shut a bathroom door to take one knows, the home pregnancy test is a riveting plot in and of itself: within its pages, lives are made and unmade. Karen Weingarten’s Pregnancy Test tells the fascinating story of how this intimate technology came to be with insight and compassion, suggesting that the strange mix of reproductive agency and reproductive surveillance the home pregnancy test has enabled in US culture will be of central importance as these private dramas become ever more encroached upon by the state. * Sarah Blackwood, Associate Professor of English, Pace University, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: History 1. Designing the Home Pregnancy Test 2. Hormones 3. Urine and Blood 4. The Stick Part Two: Culture 5. Tell Me Doctor 6. The Psychological Torture of a Beautiful Young Woman 7. There is No Pregnancy Without the Pregnancy Test 8. The Science Fiction of Pregnancy Testing Afterword Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.What can underground pipes tell us about human eating habits and the spread or containment of disease, such as COVID-19? Why are sewers spitting out plastic and trash into waterways around the world? How are clogs getting gnarlier and more numerous? Jessica Leigh Hester leads readers through the past, present, and future of the system humans have created to deal with our own waste and argues that sewers can be seen as a mirror to the world above at a time when our behaviors are drastically reshaping the environment for the worse. Sifting through the muck offers a fresh way to approach questions about urbanization, public health, infrastructure, ecology, sustainability, and consumerism and what we value. Without understanding sewers, any attempt to steward the future is incomplete.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The AtlantTrade ReviewGet ready to dive into the wondrous underworld of waste. . . . It's perfect for the fatberg fan in your life. * Mental Floss *Hester goes deep on a topic that few relish: the inner workings of wastewater infrastructure. The book . . . dives into the past and present worlds of pipes and pumping stations, sifts through archives for blueprints, and tags along crews on late-night excursions to tackle gnarly clogs and whale-sized fatbergs — all to answer questions of how human habits are reshaping the environment, and what needs to change. * Bloomberg CityLab *Takes readers on a journey underground to the meandering pipes and waterways underneath us where waste ferments and disease percolates. The oft-forgotten and hidden-but-so-necessary infrastructure below us has deep implications for urbanization, public health, infrastructure, ecology, and sustainability, not to mention our future. * Architect’s Newspaper *Hester peels off the layers of discomfort of the sewer, and brings readers to a full understanding of the function, history, and future of sewers, and how climate change needs to be factored in to how sewers operate. . . . This is an easy to read, approachable book, written in a captivating style. * Viewpoint Vancouver *Overall a fascinating and short read, pretty well exactly what it was designed to be. Very much recommended. * BookAnon *Sewer gives you that magical feeling of peeking behind the curtain—or should I say, under the manhole—into a hidden world. Let Jessica Leigh Hester be your guide to fatbergs, sea snot, and all the things we might think we don't want to ponder, but which nevertheless become enchanting in her winsome prose. * Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic *Jessica Leigh Hester drops feet-first into a Hadean underworld of tunnels and drains, bacteria and geology. Sewer proves that some of our most consequential urban achievements are seldom seen—and rarely so well illuminated. Come for the fatbergs, stay for Hester’s lucid history of architecture and engineering, public health and political ambition. * Geoff Manaugh, New York Times-bestselling author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City *This book is really remarkable ... it’s personal and it’s deeply researched and it’s fascinating. * Randomly Yours, Alex *Very few scholars working on drainage infrastructure can reach as wide an audience as Hester has managed to do with this book. * H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Our Sewers, Ourselves 1. Cathedrals of Sewage 2. Wipes & Pipes 3. Fatbergs 4. Waterways 5. Super Sewers 6. The Innovators 7. Conclusion: The Afterlife Acknowledgments Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The mushroom is an ordinary object whose encounters with humans are usually limited to a couple of species prepackaged at the grocery store. This book offers mushrooms as much more than a pasta ingredient or trendy coffee alternative. It presents these objects as the firmament for life as we know it, enablers of mystical traditions, menders of minds lost to depression. But it acknowledges, too, that this firmament only exists because of death and rot. Rummaging through philosophical, literary, medical , ecological , and anthropological texts only serves to confirm what the average forager already knows: thaTrade ReviewIn times when fungi mean high tech and big business, this book gracefully brings the human-mushroom relationship back to earth. An ode to our partners in eco-intimacy and mortality, it reminds us that foraging involves much more than learning how to ID--it also requires risking, dreaming, and opening to the future. Mushroom belongs on every forager's shelf, next to the field guides. * Margret Grebowicz, author of Rescue Me: On Dogs and Their Humans *Table of ContentsPre-amble Summer Part I. Mystery Fall Part II. Metaphor Winter Part III. Mycology Spring Part IV. Medicine Summer Part V. Magic Fall Post-Amble Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent world and the belief that transparency conveys truth. It stands to reason, then, that our relationship with X-rays would be a complicated one of fear and fascination, acceptance and resistance, confusion and curiosity.In X-ray, Nicole Lobdell explores when, where, and how we use X-rays, what meanings we give them, what metaphors we make out of them, and why, despite our fears, we''re still fascinated with them. In doing so, she draws from a variety of fields, including the history of medicine, science and technology studies, literature, art, material culture, film, comics, gender studies, architecture, and industrial design.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlan

Read more less

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.A cylinder of baked graphite and clay in a wood case, the pencil creates as it is being destroyed. To love a pencil is to use it, to sharpen it, and to essentially destroy it. Pencils were used to sketch civilization's greatest works of art. Pencils were there marking the choices in the earliest democratic elections. Even when used haphazardly to mark out where a saw's blade should make a cut, a pencil is creating. Pencil offers a deep look at this common, almost ubiquitous, object. Pencils are a simple device that are deceptively difficult to manufacture. At a time when many use cellphones as banking branches and instructors reach students online throughout the world, pencil use has not waned, with tens of millions being made and used annually. Carol Beggy sketches out how the lowly pencil is still a mighty useful tool. Object Lessons is pTrade ReviewA fascinating voyage of discovery demonstrating why, in an age of electronic everything, the pencil still grips us. * Daniel Rosenberg, Professor of History, University of Oregon, USA, and author of Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline *This tribute to the lowly pencil is a celebration of the life of the mind and hand. Born in the sixteenth century, this familiar writing instrument lives on in our digital age as a tool of thought, indispensable for some, an object of nostalgia for others, collectible or disposable, a bond of community or a companion in solitude. Carol Beggy captures the presence of pencils in our lives with enthusiasm and wit. Her book is an object lesson in how to see and appreciate the humblest elements of existence and not to take anything for granted. * Robert A. Gross, author of The Transcendentalists and Their World (2021) *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Variations on a Theme 2. Making Their Mark 3. Tools of the Trade 4. People and Their Pencils 5. To Boldly Go 6. Collectors Versus Users 7. Pencils in the Wild 8. A Thoreau Job 9. Pencils Up 10. #FindYourPeople Afterword Notes Acknowledgments Selected Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Of Effacement, David Marriott endeavors to demolish established opinion about what blackness is and reorient our understanding of what it is not in art, philosophy, autobiography, literary theory, political theory, and psychoanalysis. With the critical rigor and polemical bravura which he displayed in Whither Fanon? Marriott here considers the relationships between language, judgement and effacement, and shows how effacement has become the dominant force in anti-blackness. Both skeptically and emphatically, Marriott presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with Fanon's "is not" (n'est pas) and its "black" political truth. How does one speak—let alone represent—that which is without existence? Is blackness n'est pas because it has yet to be thought as blackness? And if so, when Fanon writes of blackness, that it is n'est pas (is not), where should one look to make sense of this n'est pas? Marriott anchors these questions by addressing the most fundamental perennial questions concerning the nature of freedom, resistance, mastery, life, and liberation, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Huey Newton, Nietzsche, Malcolm X, Edward Said, Georges Bataille, Stuart Hall, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a reading of blackness by recasting its effacement as an identity, while insisting on it as a fundamental question for philosophy. Trade Review"Dazzlingly original, forcefully subtle in its argumentation, Of Effacement is undeniably path-breaking. Marriott's reading allows us to see Fanon's 'black being' as a 'disquieting in-plenitude' visible only in the way it curves the spaces of the personal, cultural, and political."—Joan Copjec, Brown University"Brilliant, relentless, and unblinking in its acknowledgment that 'there is no ontology of black pain,' David Marriott's Of Effacement is a tour de force of critical analysis. Lingering with Fanon's crystallization of wretchedness into 'a new law of expression' that would precipitate a 'politics beyond that of racial community,' Marriott refuses to avert his gaze from the abyss of Fanon's 'n'est pas.' For in the 'nothing that governs the world gone black,' he locates the possibility of invention without 'arche,telos, or predestined end.' The result is this rigorous, transformative, and supremely necessary book that dares, like Fanon, to 'make the incomprehensible the vocation of [its] politics' and so to open—in ways at once unbearable and exhilarating to contemplate—new pathways for our own."—Lee Edelman, Tufts University"With an unflinching lucidity in reading and critique, Marriott develops a demanding and often startling thinking across the fields of ontology, politics, and aesthetics. Of Effacement deserves the closest attention of all those working in philosophy and theory today."—Geoffrey Bennington, Emory UniversityTable of ContentsPreface PART I ONTOLOGY AND LANGUAGE One N'est Pas Two Nigra Philologica Three Nègre, Figura Four Ontology and Lalangue PART II WRITING AND POLITICS Five Autobiography as Effacement Six Crystallization Seven On Revolutionary Suicide Eight The Real and the Apparent PART III ART AND PHILOSOPHY Nine Corpus Exanime Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTakes the singular eco-catastrophic “Age of Man” and redefines this epoch We live in a new world: the Anthropocene. The Age of Man is defined in many ways, and most dramatically through climate change, mass extinction, and human marks in the geological record. Ideas of the Anthropocene spill out from the geophysical sciences into the humanities, social sciences, the arts, and mainstream debates—but it’s hard to know what the new coinage really means. Break Up the Anthropocene argues that this age should subvert imperial masculinity and industrial conquest by opening up the plural possibilities of Anthropocene debates of resilience, adaptation, and the struggle for environmental justice. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Read more less

Book SynopsisExploring why there is so much fecal matter in literary works that matterCacaphonies takes fecal matter and its place in literature seriously. Readers and critics have too long overlooked excrement’s vital role in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century French canon. In a stark challenge to the tendency to view this literature through sanitizing abstractions, Annabel L. Kim undertakes close readings of key authors to argue for feces as a figure of radical equality, both a literary object and a reflection on literature itself, without which literary studies is impoverished and sterile. Following the fecal through line in works by Céline, Beckett, Genet, Sartre, Duras, and Gary and the contemporary authors Anne Garréta and Daniel Pennac, Kim shows that shit, far from vanishing from the canon after the early modern period, remains present in the modern and contemporary French literature that follows. She argues that all the shit in the canon expresses a call to democratize literature, making literature for all, just as shit is for (or of) all. She attends to its presence in this prized element of French identity, treating it as a continually uttered desire to manifest the universality France aspires to—as encapsulated by the slogan Liberté, égalité, fraternité—but fails to realize. In shit there is a concrete universalism that traverses bodies with disregard for embodied differences. Cacaphonies reminds us that literature, and the ideas to be found therein, cannot be separated from the corporeal envelopes that create and receive them. In so doing, it reveals the aesthetic, political, and ethical potential of shit and its capacity to transform literature and life. Trade Review "In dazzling readings of classic French texts, Annabel L. Kim reclaims feces as literary matter. Sidestepping familiar psychoanalytic frames, Kim turns excrement into a force for democracy. From Céline to Duras to Garréta, this caca communism blows up our old ways of thinking. Irreverent and erudite, as funny as Rabelais, Cacaphonies is a genuine scatological pleasure!"—Lynne Huffer, Emory University "We tend to assume that the trajectory of modern literature repeats that of society and technology (urbanization, sanitation, dematerialization, sanitization, deodorization) in taking us ever further away from the excretory body. It does not, insists Annabel L. Kim. On the contrary, modern literature refuses to endorse the fantasy of being ‘free from or clear of shit.’ Thus, to turn to the excretory body in literary works is to ask what literature’s deepest understanding of the human is, and what literature itself is. Cacaphonies is an extraordinarily engaging project: insightful, serious, self-consciously ‘profane,’ metacritically alive."—Thangam Ravindranathan, author of Behold an Animal: Four Exorbitant Readings "Kim’s readings are creative, bold and surprising. They reek, but they are never gratuitous, and they open up a field of literary waste studies that poses pressing ecological questions."—Times Literary Supplement "Kim’s book offers a fresh, fun(ny), clever, and innovative perspective on canonical texts while weaving through her analysis a discussion about life and death, and about how shit ultimately brings us back to that."—H-France Reviews "A must-read, Cacaphonies provides a truly insightful, engaging, and joyful reading experience."—The French Review Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: We Have Always Been FecalPart I. Necessary Shit1. Céline: Shit on the Installment Plan2. Beckett: Shit for BrainsPart II. Shitty Ideas3. Fecal Freedom: Sartre and Genet’s ))< >((4. To Wipe the Other: Duras’s and Gary’s Fecal Care EthicsPart III. Political Shit5. Fighting Words: Anne Garréta’s Ultimate Weapon6. Daniel Pennac’s Excremental Poetics: Literature for AllConclusion: Caca CommunismAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisBringing the resources of critical theory to bear on the genre of dystopian fiction, this volume demonstrates both the continuing potential of Theodor Adorno's work on literature, and the meaning of dystopia when considered in the light of Adorno's critique of modernity. -- .

Read more less

Book SynopsisNietzsche and Irish Modernism demonstrates how the ideas of the controversial German philosopher played a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of a distinctly Irish brand of modernist culture. Making an essential new contribution to the history of modernism, the book traces the circulation of these ideas through the writings of George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, as well as through minor works of literature, magazine articles, newspaper debates, public lectures, and private correspondence. These materials reveal a response to Nietzsche that created abiding tensions between Irish cultural production and reigning religious and nationalist orthodoxies, during an anxious period of Home Rule agitation, world war, revolution, civil war, and state building. With its wealth of detail, the book greatly enriches our understanding of modernist culture as a site of convergence between art and politics, indigenous concerns and foreign perspectives.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Nietzsche, Ireland, Modernism1 Shaw: ‘An English (or Irish) Nietzsche’ 2 Yeats: ‘Proud hard gift-giving joyousness’ 3 Joyce: ‘James Overman’ 4 War: ‘The duel between Nietzsche and civilisation’ 5 Postwar: ‘The Forerunner’ Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisLuminous presence: Derek Jarman's life-writing is the first book to analyse the prolific writing of queer icon Derek Jarman. Although he is well known for his avant-garde filmmaking, his garden, and his AIDS activism, he is also the author of over a dozen books, many of which are autobiographical. Much of Jarman's exploration of post-war queer identity and imaginative response to HIV/AIDS can be found in his books, such as the lyrical AIDS diaries Modern Nature and Smiling in Slow Motion. This book fully explores, for the first time, the remarkable range and depth of Jarman’s writing. Spanning his career, Alexandra Parsons argues that Jarman’s self-reflexive response to the HIV/AIDS crisis was critical in changing the cultural terms of queer representation from the 1980s onwards. Luminous presence is of great interest to students, scholars and readers of queer histories in literature, art and film.Trade Review'In this engrossing collection of essays, Parsons captures well Jarman’s frenetically creative impulses...'Choice(Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association) -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction1 'The porter into forgotten landscapes': A finger in the fishes mouth2 Dancing Ledge: 'An autobiography at forty'3 Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio: 'Reading between the lines of history'4 Becoming Pasolini: Derek Jarman in Ostia5 Kicking the Pricks: 'Forward into an uncertain future...'6 Self-Projection in film: The Last of England and The Garden7 Modern Nature: Haunting, flowers and personal mythologies8 Queer Edward II: 'Are you a closet bigot?'9 At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament10 Smiling in Slow Motion: Testimony and elegy11 'A kind of bliss': Blue and Chroma12 Derek Jarman’s Garden: A therapy and a pharmacopoeiaConclusion: 'The past is the mirror'BibliographyFilmographyIndex

Read more less