Description
Book SynopsisIn this extended meditation on the language of the self within contemporary social politics, the author ponders the question: What does it matter what you say about yourself? She studies why the requirement
to be a something-or-other should be so hard to satisfy in a manner that rings true in the ears of its own subject.
Trade Review"This is a remarkable book, eloquent and imaginative, witty and learned, brilliant and intellectually nuanced. It redefines a knot of difficult issues concerning language, subjectivity, and politics that have claimed critical attention for many years. Riley offers a new vocabulary and a new problematic for approaching these topics and thus rewrites some of the most seemingly intractable debates in contemporary cultural theory in an inventive and persuasive way." -Ellen Rooney,Brown University
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. 'Who me?' self-description's linguistic affect; 2. Linguistic unease; 3. Lyric selves; 4. 'The wounded fall in the direction of their wound'; 5. Echo, irony, and the political; Notes; Index.
