Description
Book SynopsisExplores the fading empire of cognition, modulating stupidity into idiocy, puerility, and the figure of the ridiculous philosopher instituted by Kant. Drawing on a range of writers including Dostoevsky, Schlegel, Musil, and Wordsworth, this book investigates ignorance, dumbfoundedness, and the limits of reason.
Trade Review"The foremost thinker of the repressed conditions of knowledge, Avital Ronell, with the Nietzschean audacity characteristic of her thought, probes the philosophical no-man's land of stupidity." -- Jean-Luc Nancy, author of The Sense of the World "[An] energetic book ... [Ronell's] fifth and perhaps most accomplished... Stupidity as Ronell understands it is a kind of black hole devouring the light of rationality itself." -- Jonathan Re, Times Literary Supplement "In the face of the Enlightenment, stupidity disrupts, disturbs, or dissents... Disrupt, disturb, and dissent -- that is just what Ronell means to do in this book." -- Edward Rothstein, New York Times "[Ronell] proves herself yet again to be one of the most original and exciting of contemporary critics... If you at all suspect that you might be intelligent, do not avoid Stupidity -- embrace it." -- Choice "Stupidity is remarkable in its ability to connect and co-articulate questions of Western literature and philosophy in a language that is original, moving, and exact." --differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
