Search results for ""author zahi zalloua""

Essayist Michel de Montaigne is one of the most accessible and widely read authors in world literature. His skepticism and relativism, and the personal quality of his writing, make him a perennial favorite among readers today. Montaigne After Theory / Theory After Montaigne pursues the idea that theory has altered the scholarly understanding of Montaigne, while Montaigne's ideas have simultaneously challenged the authority of the various interpretive doxa collectively known as "theory." Montaigne's life and writings have drawn myriad interpretations. While some scholars of his work focus on the content of the writings to define the man, others stress his playful use of language. Montaigne's complex and multifaceted works provide fertile ground for exploring themes of wide-ranging significance within the field of literary theory, including the relationship between biography and theory; the critique of modernism; a critical history of the confessional mode of writing; sexuality and gender; and the theory of practice. The essays in this collection move beyond the current stalemate in Montaigne criticism by revisiting questions about the role of theory in literary studies and by opening up a dialogue on the validity and limitations, or use and abuse, of theory in Montaigne studies.

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Essayist Michel de Montaigne is one of the most accessible and widely read authors in world literature. His skepticism and relativism, and the personal quality of his writing, make him a perennial favorite among readers today. Montaigne After Theory / Theory After Montaigne pursues the idea that theory has altered the scholarly understanding of Montaigne, while Montaigne's ideas have simultaneously challenged the authority of the various interpretive doxa collectively known as "theory." Montaigne's life and writings have drawn myriad interpretations. While some scholars of his work focus on the content of the writings to define the man, others stress his playful use of language. Montaigne's complex and multifaceted works provide fertile ground for exploring themes of wide-ranging significance within the field of literary theory, including the relationship between biography and theory; the critique of modernism; a critical history of the confessional mode of writing; sexuality and gender; and the theory of practice. The essays in this collection move beyond the current stalemate in Montaigne criticism by revisiting questions about the role of theory in literary studies and by opening up a dialogue on the validity and limitations, or use and abuse, of theory in Montaigne studies.

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Slavoj Žižek’s prolific comments on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, scapegoating, popular nationalism, the refugee crisis, Eurocentrism, the War on Terror, neocolonialism, global justice, and rioting comprise a dizzying array of thinking. But what can we pull out of his various writings and commentaries on race in the contemporary world? Is there anything approaching a Žižekian philosophy of race? Zahi Zalloua argues here that there is and that the often polemical style of Žižek's pronouncements shouldn't undermine the importance and urgency of his work in this area. Zalloua not only examines Žižek's philosophy of race but addresses the misconceptions that have arisen and some of the perceived shortcomings in his work to date. Žižek on Race also puts Žižek in dialogue with critical race and anti-colonial studies, dwelling on the sparks struck up by this dialogue and the differences, gaps, and absences it points up. Engaging Žižek’s singular contribution to the analysis of race and racism, Žižek on Race both patiently interrogates and critically extends his direct comments on the topic, developing more fully the potential of his thought. In a response to the book, Žižek boldly reaffirms his theoretical stance, clarifying further his often difficult-to-work-out positions on some of his more controversial pronouncements.

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In Universal Politics, Ilan Kapoor and Zahi Zalloua argue that, in the face of the relentless advance of global capitalism, a universal politics is needed today more than ever. But rather than appealing to the narrow particularism of identity politics, the authors argue for a negative universality rooted in social antagonism (i.e., shared experiences of exploitation and marginalization). This conception of shared struggle avoids the trap of a neocolonial universalism, while foregrounding the politics of the systematically dispossessed and excluded. The book examines what a universal politics might look like in the context of key current global sites of struggle, including climate change, workers' struggles, the Palestinian question, the refugee crisis, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Political Islam, the Bolivian state under Morales, the European Union, and COVID-19. It also discusses the main political ingredients, gaps, and limitations of a universal politics.

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Over many decades, "contagion" has been a metaphor of choice for everything from global terrorism, suicide bombings, poverty, immigration, global financial crises, human rights, fast food, obesity, divorce, and homosexuality. Essays examine the language of epidemiology used in the war on terror, the repressive effects of global disease surveillance, and films and novels that enact the perplexities of contagion in a global context. Fear of microbial disaster becomes a framework for larger questions about the nature and location of sovereignty and the related questions of contact and hygienic isolation, fear and invisibility, the hazards of sociability, the security of surveillance, and what a healthy security might mean. Utilizing the cross-disciplinary approach of global studies, contagion emerges as a vexed trope for globalization itself.

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The counterterrorism policies following September 11, 2001, brought the definition and legitimacy of torture to the forefront of political, military, and public debates. This timely volume explores the question of torture through multiple lenses by situating it within systems of belief, social networks of power, and ideological worldviews. Individual essays examine the boundaries of what is deemed legitimate political violence for the sake of state security, the immediate and long-term effects of torture on human and social bodies, the visual and artistic representations of torture, how certain people are dehumanized to make it acceptable to torture them, and how we understand complicity in and the ethical boundaries of torture.

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The presentation of technology as a response to human want or need is a defining aspect of Black Mirror, a series that centers the transhumanist conviction that ontological deficiency is a solvable problem. The articles in this collection continue Black Mirror's examination of the transhuman need for plentitude, addressing the convergence of fantasy, the posthuman, and the dramatization of fear. The contributors contend that Black Mirror reveals both the cracks of the posthuman self and the formation of anxiety within fantasy's empty, yet necessary, economy of desire.The strength of the series lies in its ability to disrupt the visibility of technology, no longer portraying it as a naturalized, unseen background, affecting our very being at the ontological level without many of us realizing it. This volume of essays argues that this negative lesson is Black Mirror's most successful approach. It examines how Black Mirror demonstrates the Janus-like structure of fantasy, as well as how it teaches, unteaches, and reteaches us about desire in a technological world.

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