Literary theory Books

Book SynopsisDrawing on the recent ontological turn in critical theory, Spectral Dickens explores an aspect of literary character that is neither real nor fictional, but spectral. This work thus provides an in-depth study of the inimitable characters populating Dickens’ illustrated novels using three hauntological concepts: the Freudian uncanny, Derridean spectrality, and the Lacanian real. Thus, while the current discourse on character studies, which revolves around values like realism, depth, and lifelikeness, tends to see characters as mimetic of persons, this book invents new critical concepts to account for non-mimetic forms of characterization. These spectral forms bring to light the important influence of developments in nineteenth-century visual culture, such as the lithography and caricature of Daumier and J.J. Grandville. The spectrality of novelistic characters developed here paves the way for a new understanding of fictional characters in general.Trade Review'Drawing on graphic traditions of the era, the author describes how Dickens developed objects like dolls and effigies to reinforce meanings beyond the literal. Bove is interested in visual and narrative techniques that move beyond the limits of mimesis.'CHOICE(Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.)Spectral Dickens will be of immense interest to those seeking to understand Dickens's enduring appeal for readers and critics alike, especially those with an interest in psychoanalysis and the literary critical paradigms it can enable.' The Dickensian'Bove has produced both a work that expands the ways we think about character, and a sustained demonstration of the continuing value of Lacanian thought for literary analysis.'BAVS newsletterThis is an exciting read for those of us long troubled by the old adage that Dickens is a “failed realist” who does not create convincing characters... a creative and original set of readings of how Dickens’s charactersare so powerful.'Dickens Quarterly -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: An uncanny ontology of characterisationPart I Spectral mimesis: portraits, caricature, and character1 Mimesis’s ghosts: caricature and anamorphosis2 Spectral character: dreams, distortion, and the (cut of the) realPart II “Moor eeffocish things”: effigy and the bourgeoisie3 Where “the specular becomes the spectral” in The Old Curiosity Shop and Dombey and Son4 Imagos, dolls, and other gazing effigies in Bleak HousePart III Beyond the realism principle: spectral materiality5 Dream as spectral form in Bleak House and the comic surplus of Micawber in David Copperfield6 The “As if” hauntology of Little Dorrit and the uncanny dream of the three fathersBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book brings together several major essays on foundational topics of narrative studies and the theory of fictionality by one of the preeminent figures of postclassical narrative theory. It reexamines and reconceives the role of the author, the status of implied authors, the model for unnatural narrative theory, the nature of narrative, and the ideological implications of narrative forms. It also explores the status of historical characters in fictional texts, the paradoxes of realism, the presence of multiple implied readers, the role of actual readers, and the question of fictionality. In addition, an appendix offers a useful approach for teaching narrative theory. The book includes analyses of works by Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov, Beckett, Jeanette Winterson, Deborah Eisenberg, and others. Throughout, it argues for a more expansive conception of narrative theory and keen attention to the nature and difference of fiction. This provocative book makes crucial interventions in ongoing critical debates about narrative theory, literary theory, and the theory of fictionality, and is essential reading for all students of narrative.

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Book SynopsisThis accessible, personal, and provocative study returns to the major subject in literary discussion before and during the relatively recent flourishing of literary theory, that of literary intention. Does the author’s personal intention or historical site determine a correct interpretation of a literary work? Probing the entire range of issues connected with this many-faceted and knotty concept, this book engages with interpretation on both theoretical and practical levels. It argues that the hard questions about interpretation connected to issues of intention cannot be sidestepped or ignored. It does not argue for conservative concepts of literature itself, nor against the major historical engagements of critics in our time. But in addressing those who continue to read or teach literature, it does insist on a level of sophistication in issues of literary interpretation that cannot be assured by historical research and knowledge of the social and cultural connections to literary works. The overall aim of the work is to recall readers to the great complexity, pleasure, and interest of literary interpretation. Trade Review“At last—a book on literary theory and interpretation that is as refreshing and as accessible to students and general readers as it is provocatively challenging to the professoriat. John Maynard’s essays are absorbing, probing, and inspiring in their broad re-thinking of the foundations of interpretation and the potential creation of a utopian moment of reader freedom, unencumbered by the stultifying models of monolithic interpretation. The scholarship is impressive, the style vibrant, the arguments forcefully stated, and the constructive power of diverse readers and readings eminently apparent.” — Lewis Kamm, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth“What is it to be a reader, as opposed to the author or the language, of a literary text? This was one of the regulating questions of literary criticism a generation ago. John Maynard’s Literary Intention is a comprehensive work of intellectual history that investigates the concepts and theories that once animated intense debates about intentionality, reception-aesthetics, and ideology-critique. At the same time, it locates the reasons why critics began to weave cultural tapestries around texts instead of interpreting them. By turns critical and elegiac, Maynard’s book is written with enviable clarity and grace. It will prove indispensable for courses on the history of criticism, not to mention our efforts to explain how we got to where we are now.” — Gerald Bruns, University of Notre DameTable of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTSSECTION ONE: INTRODUCTIONSECTION TWO: LITERARY INTENTION/ALITY Once More with Feeling Individual Psychological Uncertainties Ideological and Discursive Uncertainties Deliberate Uncertainties Performative Multi-Intentions Limits on the Author’s Control Cultural Determinism as Disguised Intentionality Intention in the Text Intended Initial Reception as a Guide to Intention Speech Act Thinking as a Way of Establishing Intentions Words Getting in the Way Syntax, Grammar, Logic Getting in the Way Tropes and Figures Getting in the Way Voice Gets in the Way Too Thematic Foregrounds Abounding Foregrounding Forms Abounding: Genres and Structures Interpretation: Some More Pragmatic Arguments You Can’t Properly Get There from Here: Babes in the Woodsof Historicity Brief Conclusion to a Long Discourse SECTION THREE: REREADING READER THEORIES:INTERVENTIONS AND INTRUSIONS Introduction What Was to Fear in the Wolf-gang in Sheep’s Clothing De Man’s Narrative of Reading: No Exit—for Others Reading in Textual Power Reread: The Big One that Got Away Theory Postscript: Communities and Schools of Fish SECTION FOUR: CONCLUSION AND WORK IN PROGRESS: READER THEORY MEETS REAL READERSAppendix 1: More on Speech Act Theory and IntentionAppendix 2: Stanley Fish’s IntentionsWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisThe only autobiography by the great Roland Barthes, philosopher, literary theorist and semiotician.This is the autobiography of one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. As idiosyncratic as its author, Barthes plays both commentator and subject to reveal his tastes, habits, passions and regrets. No event, relationship or thought is given priority over any other; no attempt to construct a narrative is made. And yet, via a series of vignettes, Barthes's life and views on a multitude of subjects emerge - from money and love to language and truth.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM PHILLIPSTrade ReviewHighly original, extremely fertile and inventive, [Barthes] really does represent, in a peculiarly qualified way, a new kind of writing, and he continually discovers new ways of writing about writing... It is a remarkable book * New York Times Book Review *Anyone who saw [Barthes] as only the stern structuralist, dissecting signs, symbols and systems, must have missed the personal touches that would eventually burst into the open in his weird and wonderful “anti-autobiography” which begins with the announcement that its contents “must all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel” and proceeds to jump from first to second to third person, accumulating scenes and lists and essay fragment * Telegraph *Though Barthes left behind disciples, there can be no replacing him; his brilliance had a wavelength all its own

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Book Synopsis"When I say this book is a love story, I mean it is about things that cannot be gotten over-like this world, and some of the people in it."In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes. Some of them-"Ode to a Nightingale," "To Autumn"-are among the most celebrated poems in the English language. Anahid Nersessian here collects and elucidates each of the odes and offers a meditative, personal essay in response to each, revealing why these poems still have so much to say to us, especially in a time of ongoing political crisis. Her Keats is an unflinching antagonist of modern life-of capitalism, of the British Empire, of the destruction of the planet-as well as a passionate idealist for whom every poem is a love poem.The book emerges from Nersessian's lifelong attachment to Keats's poetry; but more, it "is a love story: between me and Keats, and not just Keats." Drawing on experiences from her own life, Nersessian celebrates Keats even as she grieves him and counts her own losses-and Nersessian, like Keats, has a passionate awareness of the reality of human suffering, but also a willingness to explore the possibility that the world, at least, could still be saved. Intimate and speculative, this brilliant mix of the poetic and the personal will find its home among the numerous fans of Keats's enduring work.Trade ReviewIn Anahid Nersessian's Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse, red life streams again through Keats's poems. It is a risky, passionate criticism that - in addition to yielding all sorts of insights into the man and his writing - tests what of her own life the poems might hold (and quicken). This is living in and through and with and against poetry. A brilliant and refreshingly unprofessional book -- Ben Lerner * Paris Review *Keats's Odes is brash, skeptical, and tender by turns, offering a fluctuating re-visioning of Keats which is firm in its convictions...Nersessian's prose is bold, irreverent, declarative, and feral. Hyperbole and slackness are deceptive: every phrase feels carefully pitched. * Times Literary Supplement *The book's intimacy, vulnerability and determination to provoke is true to Keats, and Nersessian's genuine feeling for his work is never in doubt. One can't help but be pleased that two centuries on, Keats's odes still inspire engagement and love. * Washington Post *This book claims to be 'about' Keats's odes. And it is. But it is also about beauty and sadness and love and revolution and how the odes can help us to better understand these things. It is nothing short of a perfect book, one that understands how poetry can transform one's life. Nersessian is on track to be the Harold Bloom of her generation, but a Bloom with politics. -- Juliana SpahrThis is an intense, often dazzling, original, illuminating, idiosyncratic, but also welcoming and welcome book. Offering trenchant, astute, often polemical and sometimes breathtaking readings of Keats's Odes - and simultaneously of love, politics, worldmaking, and self - Nersessian has written a propelled, impelled, impassioned work, truly in Keats's spirit. -- Maureen N. McLaneThe best book about John Keats published at the poet's bicentenary. * Jacobin *I've read Anahid Nersessian's KEATS ODES: A LOVER'S DISCOURSE a half dozen times now, and it just keeps getting better. Nobody's smarter than Nersessian, nobody's more humane, nobody's more searching, fearless, nobody's more provocative, nobody challenges and cherishes their subject this way. It is that thrilling sensation of meeting a new voice on the page you know you'll spend your entire life following. -- Kaveh AkbarAnahid Nersessian offers a radical and unforgettable reading of the British writer's odes-one that upends our sense of his poetic project. * The Nation *Intense emotion abounds in this literary blend of analysis and autobiography. . . . In six essays that examine each of Keats's Great Odes, Nersessian tells a 'kind of love story' between herself and the poems. * Publishers Weekly *Thinking through John Keats's six "Great Odes," Nersessian offers up six critical and autobiographical essays that work, in their own right, like odes. Keats's Odes is also a terse, stunning pastiche of Roland Barthes's "A Lover's Discourse". In imaginative, lucid prose, Nersessian proves that criticism can be loving, literary art. * Boston Globe, Best Books of 2021 *Keats's Odes is a discourse on love as interpretive practice. Demanding, generous, precise, utopian, and unfailingly brilliant, Nersessian reinvents reading itself as a form of critical intimacy for our broken times -- Srikanth ReddyThis book is a classic of a new genre, a love letter of literary theory, giving a desired political language to the left's long-quivering heart for the lyric and sensuous knowledge of Keats. We always knew he was the activist's Romantic, and now in articulate and radical analysis, we have an understanding of his poetic form that illuminates our unwavering passion for his Odes. -- Holly Pester

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin, one of the foremost cultural commentators and theorists of this century, is perhaps best known for his analyses of the work of art in the modern age and the philosophy of history. Yet it was through his study of the social and cultural history of the late nineteenth-century Paris, examined particularly in relation to the figure of the great Parisian lyric poet Charles Baudelaire, that Benjamin tested and enriched some of his core concepts and themes. Contained within these pages are, amongst other insights, his notion of the flaneur, his theory of memory and remembrance, his assessment of the utopian Fourier and his reading of the modernist movement.Trade ReviewA series of brilliant insights ... a remarkable volume. * Times Educational Supplement *His analyses are inspired. His fragments about with insights. -- George SteinerBenjamin is indispensable as well as brilliant. -- Raymond Williams

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Book SynopsisThe Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.Trade ReviewHe drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe. -- Susan SontagIf the killing of Lorca was Fascism's first great crime against literature, Benjamin's death was undoubtedly the second. * The Listener *Walter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century. -- George Steiner

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Book SynopsisWhat does political agency mean for those who don't know what to do or can't be bothered to do it? This book develops a novel account of collective emancipation in which freedom is achieved not through knowledge and action but via doubt and inertia. In essays that range from ancient Greece to the end of the Anthropocene, Bull addresses questions central to contemporary political theory in novel readings of texts by Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Arendt, and shows how classic philosophical problems have a bearing on issues like political protest and climate change. The result is an entirely original account of political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise.Trade ReviewIn On Mercy, Malcolm Bull conducts a clever thought experiment on the question of whether mercy might not only be reconciled with justice but could displace it at the centre of our political life -- David A. Skeel * Wall Street Journal *Charmingly erudite and an important work of political philosophy -- Joe Humphreys * Irish Times (for On Mercy) *Highly compelling. Bull is to be congratulated on presenting such a thought-provoking study -- Alexander Marr * Apollo (for Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth) *Stimulating and delightful, subtle and deep -- Taylor Carman * Times Literary Supplement (on Anti-Nietzsche) *All of Bull's studies are utopian, in an oblique, offbeat way. In the spirit of Marx, you must see the future as in a glass darkly so as not to make a fetish of it. He combines a keenly analytical mind with a visionary impulse. It is a style for our times. -- Terry Eagleton * London Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThis volume contains a translation into English of Averroes's Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics, an introduction to the translation in which the arguments of both Averroes and Aristotle are sketch out and their differences from Plato and other important thinkers explored, an outline analysis of the order of Averroes's commentary, annotations to the text, a bibliography, and a glossary of important terms with their English translations. Heretofore, non-Arabic readers have had to depend upon Hermannus Alemannus's Latin translation of Averroes's Middle Commentary or on its English version. Both are inadequate. They incorrectly render Averroes's various arguments and make his beautiful poetic citations read like doggerel. Moreover, they provide inaccurate and incomplete information about the sources of those citations and consequently portray Averroes's text as a curious compilation of relics from some exotic but not very learned horde. The present translation is based on a sound, critical Arabic edition prepared by the translator. Not only is it the first English translation from the Arabic original, but also the first translation of the Arabic text into any language other than medieval Hebrew or Latin. The translation is literal and eloquent, albeit more literal when eloquent when sense demands such a sacrifice. Throughout the commentary, the same English word is used for the same Arabic word unless an exception is noted. The renditions of the poetic citations are somewhat freer without reaching to unwarranted innovations.

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Book SynopsisWhat is the difference between literal and figurative writing? Is there really a secret set of tricks used by top authors to make their writing even better? Why not use these tricks all the time? This excellent little book, by English literature and creative writing tutor Amy Jones, provides a vital introduction to the essential literary devices used by writers for thousands of years to engage and charm their readers, and better describe their worlds in words. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "Fascinating" FINANCIAL TIMES. "Beautiful" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Rich and Artful" THE LANCET. "Genuinely mind-expanding" FORTEAN TIMES. "Excellent" NEW SCIENTIST. "Stunning" NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.

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Book SynopsisStory and Structure tells the untold story of how story works. Using just six primary symbols, author Leon Conrad outlines eighteen story structures and shows how they all optimally solve the problems which give rise to them. The book also demonstrates the much wider application of story, presenting new insights into story as a dynamic force of life, allowing the reader to access more harmony and flow in their life. Writers, storytellers, creative writing teachers, folklorists, narrative therapists, anthropologists, poets, and readers interested in how story works will all find this book useful and informative. Rethink your idea of story.Trade Review"It's brilliant. I am on my third read through and haven't made any notes. It is informing my thinking and changing it." - Phil McDermott, Founder, The Story Emporium. "Beats Joseph Campbell at his own game." - Simon Heywood, University of Derby. "Genius approach ... Does for story what Foucault did for history." - Alexander Tsigkas, Democritus University of Thrace.

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Book SynopsisPart memoir, part biography, part book about creative writing and what really makes a novel, and also a brave book about failure, This Is Not A Book About Charles Darwin is unique and compelling.

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Book SynopsisMalcolm Hebron writes with one aim in mind: to help you read, understand and appreciate poetry. The English language has an extraordinarily rich stock of poems to its credit, from the epic Beowulf, written perhaps as early as the eighth century, to the poetry of Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and the many other fine writers working today. This slim volume is packed with good advice on how to get the most of great poems, whether old or new. Look for the surprising words, for example – that’s one good tip. They will help you understand what the poet is trying to say. And look for the conflict in a poem – there’s always some kind of central tension or opposition in great poetry. “Out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry,” observed W.B. Yeats. This book explains, too, those puzzling technical terms used to describe the tricks poets use, like enjambment, and shows how they use them to brilliant effect. Here are explained too the mysteries of rhythm, sound, meter and poetic imagery, amidst a wide variety of wonderful examples of great poetry, from Thomas Hardy to W.H. Auden. After reading this short book, you will approach any poem you read with fresh eyes.

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Book SynopsisThe impact of William James’s 1890 The Principles of Psychology is such that he is commonly known as the father of his subject. Though psychology itself is a very different discipline in the 21st-century, James’s influence continues to be felt – both within the field and beyond. At base, Principles was designed to be a textbook for what was then an emerging field: a summary and explanation of what was known at that point in time. As its continuing influence shows, though, it became far more – a success due in part to the strength of James’s analytical skills and creative thinking. On the one hand, James was a masterful analyst, able to break down what was known in psychology, to trace how it fitted together, and, crucially, to point out the gaps in psychologists’ knowledge. Beyond that, though, he was a creative thinker, who looked at things from different angles and proposed inventive solutions and hypotheses. Among his best known was an entirely new theory of emotion (the James-Lange theory), and the influential notion of the “stream of consciousness” – the latter of which has influenced generations of psychologists and artists alike.Table of ContentsWays in to the Text Who was William James? What does Principles of Psychology Say? Why does Principles of Psychology Matter? Section 1: Influences Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context Module 2: Academic Context Module 3: The Problem Module 4: The Author's Contribution Section 2: Ideas Module 5: Main Ideas Module 6: Secondary Ideas Module 7: Achievement Module 8: Place in the Author's Work Section 3: Impact Module 9: The First Responses Module 10: The Evolving Debate Module 11: Impact and Influence Today Module 12: Where Next? Glossary of Terms People Mentioned in the Text Works Cited

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Book SynopsisAlbert Bandura is the most cited living psychologist, and is regularly named as one of the most influential figures ever to have worked in his field. Much of his reputation stems from the theories and experiments described in his 1973 study Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis – a book that is both a classic of psychological study and a masterclass in the analytical skills central to good critical thinking. Bandura’s central contention is that much human learning is fundamentally social. As children imitate the behavior of those around them, and as their behaviors are reinforced by modelling, they entrench cognitive functions that more or less become part of their core personalities. The experiments that Bandura designed in order to prove his contentions with regard to learned aggressive tendencies show the powers of critical thinking analysis and evaluation at their best. Having set up a play environment for children in which they could be exposed to aggressive behavior (inflicted on a bobo doll), he was able to systematically examine their responses and learned behaviors, working out their functions and understanding the relationships between different aspects of behavior that combined to form a whole. Carefully evaluating at each stage the different extent to which children’s own aggressive behavior was affected by and modelled on what they saw. Bandura produced results that revolutionized psychology’s whole approach to human learning and behavior.Table of ContentsWays In to the Text Who is Albert Bandura? What does Agression Say? Why does Agression Matter? Section 1: Influences Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context Module 2: Academic Context Module 3: The Problem Module 4: The Author's Contribution Section 2: Ideas Module 5: Main Ideas Module 6: Secondary Ideas Module 7: Achievement Module 8: Place in the Author's Work Section 3: Impact Module 9: The First Responses Module 10: The Evolving Debate Module 11: Impact and Influence Today Module 12: Where Next? Glossary of Terms People Mentioned in the Text Works Cited

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Book SynopsisWhat is a self? Greenblatt argues that the 16th century saw the awakening of modern self-consciousness, the ability to fashion an identity out of the culture and politics of one’s society. In a series of brilliant readings, Greenblatt shows how identity is constructed in the work of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and other Renaissance writers. A classic piece of literary criticism, and the origins of the New Historicist school of thought, Renaissance Self-Fashioning remains a critical and challenging text for readers of Renaissance literature.Table of ContentsWays in to the Text Who was Stephen Greenblatt? What does Renaissance Self-Fashioning Say? Why does Renaissance Self-Fashioning Matter? Section 1: Influences Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context Module 2: Academic Context Module 3: The Problem Module 4: The Author's Contribution Section 2: Ideas Module 5: Main Ideas Module 6: Secondary Ideas Module 7: Achievement Module 8: Place in the Author's Work Section 3: Impact Module 9: The First Responses Module 10: The Evolving Debate Module 11: Impact and Influence Today Module 12: Where Next? Glossary of Terms People Mentioned in the Text Works Cited

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Book SynopsisFrom Finding to Making offers the first detailed discussion of the relationship between Marxism and pragmatism. These two philosophies of praxis are not incompatible, and an analysis of their relation helps one to better understand both. Establishing a transatlantic theoretical dialogue, this book discusses similarities and differences between these philosophies. It is an interdisciplinary study that brings together philosophy, American and European intellectual history, and literary studies. Schulenberg’s book shows that if we seek to continue the unfinished project of establishing a genuinely postmetaphysical culture, the attempt to elucidate the dialectics of Marxism and pragmatism is a good starting point. The book offers detailed discussions of Sidney Hook, Georg Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno, Fredric Jameson, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and Jacques Rancière. Table of Contents1. Introduction.- 2. Early Encounters: Sidney Hook, Richard J. Bernstein, and George Novak.- 3. Resuscitating Georg Lukács: Form, Metaphysics, and the Idea of a New Realism.- 4. “Kunst hat soviel Chance wie die Form”: Theodor W. Adorno and the Idea of a Poeticized Culture.- 5. “This morning I read as angels read”: Self-Creation, Aesthetics, and the Crisis of Black Politics in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Dark Princess.- 6. Marxism, Pragmatism, and Narrative.- 7. Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postcritique.- 8. From Finding to Making: Jacques Rancière, Richard Rorty, and the Antifoundationalist Story of Progress.- 9. Stories of Emancipation and the Idea of Creative Praxis: Karl Marx and John Dewey.- 10. Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisThis Pivot book provides a wide-ranging and diverse commentary on issues of legibility (and illegibility) around poetry, antifascist pacifist activism, environmentalism and the language of protest. A timely meditation from poet John Kinsella, the book focuses on participation in protest, demonstration and intervention on behalf of human rights activism, and writing and acting peacefully but persistently against tyranny. The book also examines how we make records and what we do with them, how we might use poetry to act or enact and/or to discuss such necessities and events. A book about community, human and animal rights and the way poetry can be used as a peaceful and decisive means of intervention in moment of public social and environmental crisis. Ultimately, it is a poetics against fascism with a focus on the well-being of the biosphere and all it contains. Table of Contents1. A Pacifist Antifa Poetics.- 2. Handwriting Protest.- 3. Marks.- 4. Privilege, Property, Opprobrium.- 5. Modes of Protest.- 6. Legibility of Journal Extracts January 2020 — followed by extracts from handwritten journal.- 7. Micro and Macro Aggressions and Social Contracts.- 8. Versions of Mallarmé.- 9. Against Competition/Against Winning... and Consequence Theory.- 10. Note in Journal Extracts 2017-2020 — followed by extracts from handwritten journals.- 11. Palestine and Israel.- 12. On Injustice. On peace. On Justice. On Peace....- 13. Pandemic/s.- 14. Choice and Whose Rights We Are Talking About? Cruelty and Animal Rights... Justice, Genetics and Consensus.- 15. Empathy, Not ‘Property’.- 16. ‘Conclusion’.

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Book SynopsisObject Studies: Introductions to Material Culture is a textbook that introduces students to an interdisciplinary approach to material cultural study. This text helps reveal how everyday objects from pens and coffee cups to our most cherished keepsakes help define our collective histories and personal narratives. Object Studies is organized around accessible and engaging chapters on objects with “model essays” that present original projects designed to engage students with a series of concepts and research activities. Each will demonstrate a key methodology tied to specific learning outcomes, but all chapters will be intertwined in their attention to the project of developing the core skills of “object studies”: careful viewing, writing detailed descriptions, setting out and testing research hypotheses, and telling stories through material artifacts. Aimed towards undergraduate students taking courses in material culture as well as postgraduate students embarking on independent research projects these chapter “studies” are practically oriented and demonstrate research projects that can be undertaken either in a course or even through personal study. Chapters in Object Studies conclude with research questions, suggestions on methodology, and a discursive bibliography designed to help students pursue their own projects based on these examples.Table of ContentsChapter 1: Personal Objects.- Chapter 2: Objects and Local History.- Chapter 3: A History of the World in Coffee Cups.- Chapter 4: Collecting Things: The Psychology of Accumulation, from Museums to Hoarders.- Chapter 5: The Things We Read.- Chapter 6: Consuming Objects.- Chapter 7: Thinking with Things.

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Book SynopsisPhilip Howell is Professor in Historical Geography at the University of Cambridge, UK.

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.Darwin called the Galápagos archipelago a little world within itself, unaffected by humans and set on its own evolutionary path strange, diverse, and unique. Islands are repositories of unique cultures and ways of living, seed banks built up in relative isolation. Island is an archipelago of ideas, drawing from research and first-hand experience living, working, and traveling to islands as far afield as Madeira and Cape Verde, Orkney and Svalbard, the Aran Islands and the Gulf Islands, Hong Kong and Manhattan. Islands have long been viewed as both paradise and prison we project onto them our deepest desires for freedom and escape, but also our greatest fears of forced isolation. This book asks: what can islands teach us about living sustainably, being alone or coexisting with others, coping with uncertainty, and making do?Island explores t

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.From the theater mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument for the protection and concealment of identity. Even as they conceal and protect, masks as faces are an extension of the self. At the same time, they are a part of material culture: what are masks made of? What traces do they leave behind? Acknowledging that that mask-wearing has become increasingly weaponized and politicized, Sharrona Pearl looks at the politics of the mask, exploring how identity itself is read on this object.By exploring who we do (and do not) seek to protect through different forms of masking, Sharrona Pearl's long history of masks helps us to better understand what it is we value. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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Book SynopsisIn 1906, two years after the appearance of her best-known novel, The Imperialist, Duncan published its darker twin, an Anglo-Indian novel which returns to political themes but with a deeper and more clinical irony than in her previous work. Set in Authority is about illusions: the imperial illusions of those who rule and are ruled; the illusions of families about their members; the illusions of men and women about each other. The setting moves between the political drawing rooms of London and the English station at Pilaghur in the province of Ghoom, where the murder of a native by an English soldier changes the lives of a cast of ruthlessly observed characters.Duncan, who grew up in Ontario, led a remarkably varied life, working as a political correspondent (writing for the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and the Montreal Star) and living in India for over twenty years. She is increasingly being regarded as deserving of a place among the first rank of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novelists; the re-publication of Set in Authority will do nothing to dispel that view.Trade Review“This valuable edition locates Duncan’s novel about the Anglo-Indian community at the height of the British Empire in its socio-political, historical context—one that foregrounds Duncan’s frank and insightful evocation of the imperialist project in this and other novels.” — Sukeshi Kamra, Chair, English Dept., Okanagan University CollegeTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionSet in AuthorityNotesAppendix I: ViceroysAppendix II: Contemporary Reviews of Set in AuthorityA Note on the TextVariants in the 1906 New York EditionSara Jeanette Duncan: A Brief Chronology

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Book SynopsisThe notion of the posthuman continues to both intrigue and confuse, not least because of the huge number of ideas, theories and figures associated with this term. More Posthuman Glossary provides a way in to the dizzying array of posthuman concepts, providing vivid accounts of emerging terms. It is much more than a series of definitions, however, in that it seeks to imagine and predict what new terms might come into being as this exciting field continues to expand. A follow-up volume to the brilliant interventions of Posthuman Glossary (2018), this book extends and elaborates on that work, particularly focusing on concepts of race, indigeneity and new ideas in radical ecology. It also includes new and emerging voices within the new humanities and multiple modes of communicating ideas.This is an indispensible glossary for those who are exploring what the non-human, inhuman and posthuman might mean in the 21st century.Trade ReviewMore Posthuman Glossary provides a significant set of framework concepts and topics that navigate through the abundance of innovative methodological tools generated by posthumanist practices, and enables ways to think with the complex conditions of the world. * Felicity Colman, Professor of Media Arts, University of the Arts, London, UK *How are we to navigate the world today? The editors of More Posthuman Glossary adopt the Stengerian strategy of forming relays. The question is no longer whether to render explicit or clarify what would remain implicit. It is about “consolidating just a little more”, always a little more with every new entry in the glossary. Encore! * Andrej Radman, Assistant Professor of Architecture Philosophy and Theory, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands *Table of ContentsContributors Preface, Donna Haraway Introduction, Rosi Braidotti, Emily Jones and Goda Klumbyte Glossary Acting as country, Daryle Rigney Agrarian (Post-)Humanities, Sophie von Redecker Algoritmic governmentality, Antoinette Rouvroy and Goda Klumbyte Art and Bioethics, Sarah Boers Collaborative Politics, Simone Bignall Collapse, Christopher F. Julien Composting, Astrida Neimanis and Jennifer Mae Hamilton Convergences, Rosi Braidotti, Emily Jones and Goda Klumbyte Cosmic Artisan, Kay Sidebottom Crip Theory, Kelly Fritsch Critical Posthuman Theory, Rosi Braidotti and Emily Jones (De)constructing Risk, Helene Kazan Defamiliarisation, Helen Palmer Dissappearance, Rick Dolphijn and Trixie Tsang The Distributed University, Sarah Nuttall and Rosi Braidotti EcoLaw, Margaret Davies Emergent Ecologies, Eben Kirksey Empathy Beyond the Human, Danielle Sands Endomaterialities, Celia Roberts Existential Posthumanism: A Manifesto, Francesca Ferrando Ex-colonialism, Simone Bignall Feminism and oceans, Gina Heathcote Fermentation, Olga Goriunova Geoengineering, Holly Jean Buck Geontopower, Elizabeth Povinelli Humus Economicus, Janna Holmstedt Hydrofeminism, Astrida Neimanis Internet of Trees, Jennifer Gabrys Intragenerational Justice and Care, Christina Fredengren Linguistic Incompossibility, Ruth Clemens Low Trophic Theory, Cecilia Åsberg and Marietta Radomska Manus Island and Manus Prison Theory, Omid Tofighian with Behrouz Boochani The Meltionary,Melt (Loren Britton and Isabel Paehr) Nauru Imprisoned Exiles Collective, Elahe Zivardar, also known as Ellie Shakiba (with Mehran Ghadiri) New Materialist Informatics, Goda Klumbyte and Claude Draude Norms, Fleur Johns Ontologised Plasticity, Zakkiyah Iman Jackson Organoids: arts, ethics, technology, Sarah Boers Parasitology, Rick Dolphijn Pattern Discrimination, Clemens Apprich Petroculture, Josephine Taylor Postcolonial and decolonial computing, Paula Chakravartty and Mara Mills Postcolonial Drone Scholarship, Sabiha Allouche Posthuman Agency, Simone Bignall Posthuman Care, Rosi Braidotti and Goda Klumbyte Posthuman Data, Jannice Käll Posthuman Feminist Aesthetics, Nina Lykke Posthuman International Law and Outer Space, Emily Jones and Rosi Braidotti Post-humanitarian law, Matilda Arvidsson Posthuman Nursing, Jamie B. Smith Posthuman Publics, Fiona Hillary Posthumanism and Design, Laura Forlano Proxy Reasoning, Olga Goriunova Queer Death Studies, Marietta Radomska and Nina Lykke Racialising Assemblages, Ezekiel Dixon-Román Relational Sovereignty, Simone Bignall Rights of Nature, Emily Jones Side-channel Attack, Matthew Fuller Surface Orientations, Nishat Awan Surrogacy, Sophie Lewis Swarm warfare, Lauren Wilcox Syndemic, Joni Adamson and Steven Hartman Toxic Embodiment, Cecilia Åsberg Transcorporiality II: Covid-19 and Climate Change, Stacy Alaimo Transjectivity, Christine Daigle Undead, Julieta Aranda and Eben Kirksey Vibrant Death, Nina Lykke Viral, Filipa Ramos Weird, Gry Ulstein Cumulative Bibliography

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Book SynopsisNotes to Literature is a collection of the great social theorist Theodor W. Adorno’s essays on such writers as Mann, Bloch, Goethe, and Benjamin, as well as his reflections on a variety of subjects. This edition presents this classic work in full in a single volume, with a new introduction by Paul Kottman.Trade ReviewAdorno’s Notes to Literature . . . sets an inimitable, always exhilarating standard. A volume of Adorno’s essays is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature. -- Susan SontagEccentric, brilliant, unreadably readable, aphoristic and gnomic in the extreme, Adorno’s Notes to Literature stand by themselves as essays of genius. They are not simply criticism, they are literature. -- Edward SaidThe most accessible works in Adorno’s canon, these short essays on literary and cultural subjects in reality touch on most of the major philosophical preoccupations of his life's work: ranging from figures like Beckett or Thomas Mann, Balzac or Dickens, Bloch or Lukacs to movements like surrealism and existentialism, they show what a dialectical analysis of poetic texts can yield as well as making some fundamental statements about the status of the intellectual and the political, social and historical function of art. In what must be the acid test for any translator, Shierry Weber Nicholsen expertly and reliably navigates the syntactical reefs. -- Fredric JamesonNotes to Literature is not only an important document of Adorno's interest in art and aesthetics, but it is also a groundbreaking examination of literature in general. -- Alexander García Düttmann, author of Philosophy of ExaggerationAnyone who wants to understand Adorno’s philosophy must return to the judgments rendered about literature within these pages. -- Paul Kottman, author of Love as Human FreedomTable of ContentsIntroduction to the Combined Edition, by Paul A. KottmanVolume 1Translator’s Preface, by Shierry Weber NicholsenEditorial Remarks from the German Edition, by Rolf TiedemannPart I1. The Essay as Form2. On Epic Naiveté3. The Position of the Narrator in the Contemporary Novel4. On Lyric Poetry and Society5. In Memory of Eichendorff6. Heine the Wound7. Looking Back on Surrealism8. Punctuation Marks9. The Artist as DeputyPart II10. On the Final Scene of Faust11. Reading Balzac12. Valéry’s Deviations13. Short Commentaries on Proust14. Words from Abroad15. Ernst Bloch’s Spuren16. Extorted Reconciliation: On Georg Lukács’ Realism in Our Time17. Trying to Understand EndgameVolume 2Translator’s Preface, by Shierry Weber NicholsenEditorial Remarks from the German Edition, by Rolf TiedemannPart III18. Titles: Paraphrases on Lessing19. Toward a Portrait of Thomas Mann20. Bibliographical Musings21. On an Imaginary Feuilleton22. Morals and Criminality: On the Eleventh Volume of the Works of Karl Kraus23. The Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer24. Commitment25. Presuppositions: On the Occasion of a Reading by Hans G. Helms26. Parataxis: On Hölderlin’s Late PoetryPart IV27. On the Classicism of Goethe’s Iphigenie28. On Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop: A Lecture29. Stefan George30. Charmed Language: On the Poetry of Rudolf Borchardt31. The Handle, the Pot, and Early Experience: Ui, haww’ ich gesacht32. Introduction to Benjamin’s Schriften33. Benjamin the Letter Writer34. An Open Letter to Rolf Hochhuth35. Is Art Lighthearted?NotesIndex

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Book SynopsisPresents 29 texts, beginning with "Immortality in the Light of Synechism", in which the author proposes synechism, tendency to regard everything as continuous, as a key advance over the 3 'isms' materialism, idealism, and dualism, and ending with the author's unfinished investigations of the relative merits of different kinds of reasoning.

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Book SynopsisNarratology has been conceived from its earliest days as a project that transcends disciplines and media. The essays gathered here address the question of how narrative migrates, mutates, and creates meaning as it is expressed across various media.Dividing the inquiry into five areas: face-to-face narrative, still pictures, moving pictures, music, and digital media, Narrative across Media investigates how the intrinsic properties of the supporting medium shape the form of narrative and affect the narrative experience. Unlike other interdisciplinary approaches to narrative studies, all of which have tended to concentrate on narrative across language-supported fields, this unique collection provides a much-needed analysis of how narrative operates when expressed through visual, gestural, electronic, and musical means. In doing so, the collection redefines the act of storytelling. Although the fields of media and narrative studies have been invigorated by a variety of theorTrade Review"Sporting essays by leading specialists in narratology and media studies, this volume is an absolute must for all interested in narrative genres in different media and in state of the art narrative theory."-Monika Fludernik, University of Freiburg, Germany -- Monika Fludernik "The accessable language and shared emphasis on 'the place of narrative in a comprehensive discourse theory' ensure that all readers will follow the fresh insights and penetrating observations."-Michigan Historical Review The Michigan Historical Review "Comprised largely of essays by scholars who teach narrative theory and media studies at universities in Scandinavia and the United States, [Narratives across Media] is significant among other reasons for the potentially useful contribution it makes to the ongoing paradigmatic debate about what a narrative actually is and about what it means to say that a particular medium is narrating (rather than doing something else). Broadly generalized, its explicit and implicit definition of narrative has two main components, from which it then draws two important implications for the fields of narratology and media studies."-Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

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Book SynopsisArgues that the writing of Percival Everett compels readers to retrain their thinking habits and to value uncertainty. Stewart maintains that Everett's fiction challenges its interpreters to question their assumptions, consider the spaces in between categories, and embrace the potential of a larger, more uncertain world.

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Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to lead an ethical life under vexed social and linguistic conditions? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice -one responsive to the need for critical autonomy yet grounded in the opacity of the human subject.Trade Review"A powerful exploration of the intersection of identity and responsibility, Giving an Account of Oneself shows us Judith Butler at her best, in dialogue with some of the other foremost thinkers of our age: Adorno, Foucault, Levinas, and Laplanche. Confronting the problem of identities that emerge only in relation to social and moral norms they may seek to contest, she proposes a rethinking of responsibility in relation to the limits of self-understanding that make us human." -- -Jonathan Culler Cornell University "A brave book by a courageous thinker." -- -Hayden White University of California and Stanford University "In stunningly original interpretations of Adorno and Levinas, ...Judith Butler compellingly demonstrates that questions of ethics cannot avoid addressing the moral self's complicity with violence. By laying out the premises of a creative rereading, this study proves that the discussion of these two authors and their future legacy has, in a sense, barely begun. Butler writes in a truly Spinozistic spirit, mobilizing the greatest forces and joys of philosophical intelligence to counteract and redirect the cruelest and most destructive of human passions. Brilliantly argued and beautifully written, Giving an Account of Oneself is destined to become a classic, a must read for philosophers and students of present-day culture and politics alike." -- -Hent de Vries The Johns Hopkins University "In a time when moral certitude is used to justify the worst violence, Butler's nuanced reworking of what it means to be ethically responsible to ourselves and to others is welcome indeed." -- -Drucilla Cornell Rutgers University

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Book SynopsisCreatively explores the utopian elements found in a variety of resistive and defiant activity in the past and in the present, with a focus on the Black Radical Tradition.Trade Review"The Hawthorne Archive is the 'Where's Waldo?' of theoretical treasure hunts. Avery Gordon's not-so-imaginary archive is a multi-media jig-saw puzzle, a plurivocal mystery story, an epistemic chameleon of present tenses, shimmering hints, fragmentary indices, and stumbling stones that keep moving. This is a curatorial masterpiece whose 'utopian margins' are as imperfectly futuristic, fleeting, and incommensurable as history itself." -- --Patricia J. Williams James L. Dohr Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law "The Hawthorne Archive offers an expansive theory of utopia in the form of a literary experiment. In this beautiful assemblage of the thoughts and deeds of vagabonds, anarchists, fugitives, deserters, idlers, radicals, storytellers, and artists, Avery Gordon, the keeper of the archive, creates an innovative and dazzling account of global efforts to live and create the "what might be." The Hawthorne Archive opens a path for thinking through an extended engagement with the documents and ephemera of utopian thought, which is defined broadly as a standpoint for living in the here and now that refuses the brutal dispositions of racial capitalism. It is a serial work whose iterations of radical and anarchist thought unfold in a speculative engagement and imaginative encounter with historical documents, social movements, novels, visual art, film and photography, and the ephemera of refusal. This archive of letters, essays, dialogues, images and documents becomes a collective utterance of the struggle to create another world inside this one. The Hawthorne Archive is an exercise in run-away thought; it is a blues, a manifesto, a love letter, and a freedom dream." -- -Saidiya Hartman Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave RouteTable of ContentsIntroduction I. the scandal of the qualitative difference II. a means of preparation III. the exile of our longing IV. perception of the subjectivity of the so-called object List of Images and Items Acknowledgments Notes

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Book SynopsisDesigned for students, teachers, scholars, poets, and readers with a general interest in poetics, this book presents an intellectual history of the theory of lyric reading that has circulated both within and beyond the classroom, wherever poetry is taught, read, discussed, and debated today.Trade ReviewThe thesis of The Lyric Theory Reader-that the very existence of the genre is more a critical extrapolation than anything solid and real-may seem to be itself a kind of critical conceit, but only because the argument serves the Reader exceptionally well as a cogent frame for taking stock of a diversity of approaches. Accordingly, the Reader would seem especially useful as a primer for up and coming scholars... Overall, the Reader should be considered essential in the formation of a thoughtful scholar of poetry and its criticism. -- Peter Fields Rocky Mountain ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments General Introduction Part I. How Does Lyric Become a Genre?Section 1. Genre TheorySection 2. Models of LyricPart I. Twentieth-Century Lyric ReadersSection 3. Anglo- American New Criticism Section 4. Structuralist Reading Section 5. Post- Structuralist ReadingSection 6. Frankfurt School and AfterSection 7. Phenomenologies of Lyric ReadingPart III. Lyric DeparturesSection 8. Avant- garde Anti-lyricism Section 9. Lyric and Sexual Difference Section 10. Comparative Lyric Contributors Source Acknowledgments Index of Authors and Works

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis book fills a gap. Finally, someone who has been entrusted with the evaluation, acquisition, and use of digital objects has summarized his tasks from a technical perspective in a well-thought-out text and backed up theory . . . [Owens] manages to guide the readers in an understandable and clear way through unfamiliar terrain. The book is therefore recommended to all beginners in this area, but also "old hands" will recognize many of their own experiences or maybe learn something else.—Dr. Kai Naumann, ArchivarTrevor Owens has written a thoughtful and thought-provoking book . . . Owens provides important guidance on taking a step back to gain perspective on what one is trying to accomplish with the preservation of a digital object or collection. That is, to see preservation not merely as a technological process to be applied to all objects, but as a craft to be applied as appropriate in the context of particular digital collections and their archival purpose.—Larry Weimer, Head of Archival Processing, New York Historical Society, Metropolitan ArchivistThe Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation is a thoughtful, well-written, and extremely readable book. Owens draws from many cultures and disciplines to illustrate and define how we have preserved and will continue to preserve digital information.—Sharmila Bhatia, Mid-Atlantic ArchivistAnyone looking for an approachable introduction to digital preservation, or a new perspective on persistent digital quandaries, will find something useful in this book.—Archival IssuesA thoughtful guide that will launch a thousand preservation projects. It will inspire many historians not only to approach their sources in productive new ways, but also to better appreciate the sophisticated contributions of those who tend the archives on which we depend. It is highly recommended.—American Historical ReviewAnyone looking for an approachable introduction to digital preservation, or a new perspective on persistent digital quandaries, will find something useful in this book.—Carli Lowe, San José State University, Archival IssuesTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Beyond Digital Hype and Digital AnxietyChapter 1. Preservation's Divergent LineagesChapter 2. Understanding Digital ObjectsChapter 3. Challenges and Opportunities of Digital PreservationChapter 4. The Craft of Digital PreservationChapter 5. Preservation Intent and Collection DevelopmentChapter 6. Managing Copies and FormatsChapter 7. Arranging and Describing Digital ObjectsChapter 8. Enabling Multimodal Access and Use Chapter 9. Tools for Looking ForwardNotesBibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn The Politics of Vibration Marcus Boon explores music as a material practice of vibration. Focusing on the work of three contemporary musicians-Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Swedish drone composer and philosopher Catherine Christer Hennix, and Houston-based hip-hop musician DJ Screw-Boon outlines how music constructs a vibrational space of individual and collective transformation. Contributing to a new interdisciplinary field of vibration studies, he understands vibration as a mathematical and a physical concept, as a religious or ontological force, and as a psychological determinant of subjectivity. Boon contends that music, as a shaping of vibration, needs to be recognized as a cosmopolitical practice-in the sense introduced by Isabelle Stengers-in which what music is within a society depends on what kinds of access to vibration are permitted, and to whom. This politics of vibration constitutes the hidden ontology of contemporary music because the organization of vibration shapes individual music scenes as well as the ethical choices that participants in these scenes make about how they want to live in the world.Trade Review"The boldest aspect of Boon's argument . . . is his move to the level of ontology—to the nature of being or reality itself. For him music's social and racial significance operates not at the level of social codes or experience, but as an intervention in how reality itself is organised: 'music does tell us something about being.' His framework certainly allows a place for aspects of music-making that usually get screened out of modern criticism: its religious power, its role in many cultures' sense of the world's structure. . . ." -- Dan Barrow * The Wire *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Music as a Cosmopolitical Practice 1 1. Lord’s House, Nobody’s House: Pandit Pran Nath and Music as Sadhana 29 2. The Drone of the Real: The Sound-Works of Catherine Christer Hennix 75 3. Music and the Continuum 125 4. Slowed and Throwed: DJ Screw and the Decolonization of Time 179 Coda. July 2, 2020 227 Acknowledgments 231 Notes 235 Bibliography 255 Index 269

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Book SynopsisIn How We Write Now Jennifer C. Nash examines how Black feminists use beautiful writing to allow writers and readers to stay close to the field’s central object and preoccupation: loss. She demonstrates how contemporary Black feminist writers and theorists such as Jesmyn Ward, Elizabeth Alexander, Christina Sharpe, and Natasha Trethewey mobilize their prose to ask readers to feel, undo, and reassemble themselves. These intimate invitations are more than a set of tools for decoding the social world; Black feminist prose becomes a mode of living and feeling, dreaming and being, and a distinctly affective project that treats loss as not only paradigmatic of Black life but also an aesthetic question. Through her own beautiful writing, Nash shows how Black feminism offers itself as a companion to readers to chart their own lives with and in loss, from devastating personal losses to organizing around the movement for Black lives. Charting her own losses, Nash reminds us that eve

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Book SynopsisAn accessible introduction to Badiou's key ideas In this short and accessible book, the French philosopher Alain Badiou provides readers with a unique introduction to his system of thought, summed up in the trilogy of Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, and The Immanence of Truths. Taking the form of an interview and two talks and keeping in mind a broad audience without any prior knowledge of his work, the book touches upon the central concepts and major preoccupations of Badiou's philosophy: fundamental ontology, mathematics, politics, poetry, and love. Well-chosen examples illuminate his thinking in regards to being and universality, worlds and singularity, and the infinite and the absolute, among other topics. A veritable tour de force of pedagogical clarity, this new student-friendly work is perhaps the single best general introduction to the work of this prolific and committed thinker. If, for Badiou, the task of philosophy consists in thinking through the truths of our time, the texts collected in this small volume could not be timelier.Trade Review"Badiou by Badiou synthesizes Badiou's key ideas with a personal touch, inviting readers into his presentation of what philosophy is and his highly original way of philosophizing. Badiou is brilliant at making anyone want to engage with philosophical questions."—Emily Apter, author of Unexceptional Politics"This book captures the latest developments in Alain Badiou's thought, while providing an excellent introduction for new readers. Badiou by Badiou, his most legible work, is a riveting tour of the domains of art, love, politics, and science."—Héctor Hoyos, author of Things with a History"Badiou proves himself again to be, like Socrates, a corrupter of the youth. With this clear entry point into his metaphysical project, Badiou demonstrates the dangerously transformative character of philosophy."—Jodi Dean, author of Comrade"As the 21st century shapes up to be all about ends, Badiou challenges us to think ab novo. This latest installment of his firebrand philosophy will ignite youth even among those who think its time has passed."—Joan Copjec, author of Imagine There's No WomanTable of ContentsPart One: Event, Truths, Subject Part Two: Philosophy Between Mathematics and Poetry Part Three: Ontology and Mathematics

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Book SynopsisThe Western, with its stoic cowboys and quickhanded gunslingers, is an instantly recognizable American genre that has achieved worldwide success. Cultures around the world have embraced but also adapted and critiqued the Western as part of their own national literatures, reinterpreting and expanding the genre in curious ways. Canadian Westerns are almost always in conversation with their American cousins, influenced by their tropes and traditions, responding to their politics, and repurposing their structures to create a national literary tradition. The American Western in Canadian Literature examines over a century of the development of the Canadian Western as it responds to the American Western, to evolving literary trends, and to regional, national, and international change. Beginning with Indigenous perspectives on the genre, it moves from early manifestations of the Western in Christian narratives of personal and national growth, and its controversial pulp-fictional popularity in the 1940s, to its postmodern and contemporary critiques, pushing the boundary of the Western to include Northerns, Northwesterns, and post-Westerns in literature, film, and wider cultural imagery. The American Western in Canadian Literature is more than a simple history. It uses genre theory to comment on historical perspectives on nation and region. It includes overviews of Indigenous and settler-colonial critiques of the Western, challenging persistent attitudes to Indigenous people and their traditional territories that are endemic to the genre. It illuminates the way that the Canadian Western enshrines, hagiographies, and ultimately desacralizes aspects of Canadian life, from car culture to extractive industries to assumptions about a Canadian moral high ground. This is a comprehensive, highly readable, and fascinating study of an underexamined genre.Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Signposts and Scales Chapter 1 Scaling and Spacing the Genre: Transnationalism, Nationalism, and Regionalism Chapter 2 Tom King's John Wayne: Indigenous Perspectives on the Western Chapter 3 The Northwestern Cross: Christianity and Transnationalism in Early Canadian Westerns Chapter 4 From Law to Outlaw: The Second World War, Westerns, and the '40s Pulps Chapter 5 CanLit's Postmodern Westerns: Ghosts and the Cowgirl Riding Off into the Sunrise Chapter 6 Degeneration Through Violence: Contemporary Historical Westerns and Posthuman Horsemen Conclusion: Mining the Western in the 21st Century Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTimothy Morton explores the foundations of the ecological crisis to reestablish our ties to nonhuman beings and rediscover playfulness and joy. Dark ecology puts us in an uncanny position of radical self-knowledge, illuminating our place in the biosphere and our belonging to a species in a sense that is far less obvious than we like to think.Trade ReviewIn often witty and humorous language, Timothy Morton provides a kind of affective atlas for the human era. The book calls for scholars to recognize the structures of entwinement between (the human) species and ecological phenomena and to develop modes of thought for accommodating them. -- Kate Marshall, University of Notre DameDark Ecology is a brave, brilliant interrogation of the presumptions that have driven our approach to the ecological and environmental challenges of our era. Anyone who is willing to ride the rollercoaster of ideas on which Morton takes us will reach the end brimming with new conceptual and intellectual energies with which to face up to our present limits and failures and to shape an alive and joyful future. -- Imre Szeman, University of AlbertaMorton is a master of philosophical enigma. In Dark Ecology he treats us to an obscure ecognosis, the essentially unsolvable riddle of ecological being. Prepare to be endarkened! -- Michael Marder, author of The Philosopher's Plant and PyropoliticsMorton commands readers' attention with his free-form style.... [Dark Ecology] extends his previous work to offer a seismically different vision of the future of ecology and humankind. * Publishers Weekly *With touches of humor, bits of information drawn from literature (ancient Latin and Greek), and plenty of philosophy, Morton takes readers on a strongly philosophical and semantic tour of 'the darkness and light' of human interrelatedness with the biosphere. * Choice *A playful, poetic parsing of our era's environmental crisis. * Rice Magazine *A rewarding hike. * Library Journal *Timothy Morton's new work by turns fascinates, mystifies, stuns, confuses, and excites...Readers who seek new vocabularies for thinking about the Anthropocene and the vexed relation between human society and biological life will find a lot to work with. * British Society for Literature and Science *[A] radical vision of what ecological thought can be. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Morton’s provocative book urges the reader to braid, to twist, or to play cat’s cradle with its looping logic. * Critical Inquiry *Morton disrupts the customary assumption that industrialization is the root cause of ecological crisis, such crisis being already contained in the agrilogistic drawing of a sharp boundary between human and nonhuman worlds. -- Charlene Elsby * The Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsBeginning After the EndThe First ThreadThe Second ThreadThe Third ThreadEnding Before the BeginningNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisSophie Williamson is Programme Curator: Exhibitions at Camden Arts Centre, London. She has written for frieze, Art Monthly and Aesthetica, and was the first recipient of the Gasworks Curatorial Fellowship in 2016 as well as completing a research residency at SOMA, Mexico City, through which she built a body of research on cultural translation and molecular curation.

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