Complaint

Avital Ronell is University Professor of the Humanities at New York University, where she is a professor of German, comparative literature, and English. She holds the Jacques Derrida Chair of Media and Philosophy at the European Graduate School. Her books include The Telephone Book, Stupidity, The Test Drive, and Fighting Theory (with Anne Dufourmantelle).

"Brilliantly written in an open style, complex and persuasive. Ronell moves like no other between the recesses of philosophy and the intensities of contemporary culture, offering us here a theory of melancholy's mainly hapless relation to protest." --Judith Butler, author of Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism"Beyond adding a further dimension to Ronell's critique of contemporary modes of scholarly inquiry, which has already transformed the study of modern literature and thought, Complaint accomplishes a surprising task: it celebrates the voice of complaint as the subtle tissue in which fragile ties of friendship have a chance to survive."--Peter Fenves, author of The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time

• Title PageCopyrightContentsIntroduction1. Raising the Visor: The Complaint of Modernity2. Ach!: The History of a Complaint3. The Trouble with Deconstruction4. A Pass of Friendship5. Hannah Arendt Swallows the Lessing Prize6. The Right Not to Complain: On Johnson's Reparative ProcessNotesIndex