Frontiers of Theory – serie

This book explores the radical reconceptions of knowledge and science emerging from constructivist epistemology, social studies of science, and contemporary cognitive science. Smith reviews the key issues involved in the twentieth-century critiques of traditional views of human knowledge and scientific truth and gives an extensively informed explanation of the alternative accounts developed by Fleck, Kuhn, Foucault, Latour, and others. She also addresses the various anxieties (e.g., over ‘relativism’) and ‘wars’ occasioned by these developments, placing them in their historical contexts and arguing that they are largely misplaced or spurious. Smith then examines the currently perplexed relations between the natural and human sciences, the grandiose claims and dubious methods of evolutionary psychology, and the complex play of naturalist, humanist, and posthumanist ideologies in contemporary views of the relation between humans and animals.

He insists on my dreams, on my letters, on my Hs on my Cs, on my Js, on my Gs. G, G, G, G, jet !« You are my insister » he says. « You are my insister » I say.No one has performed more learned yet more innocent pirouettes around words, letters, no one has ever managed to get French more joyously drunk, giving philosophy the full measure of its greatness once and for all, its tragic, its comic spell. [I never read him without being appalled at my urge to laugh with enchantment.]'Hélène CixousORIGINAL TEXT BY DERRIDA TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIMEIn this book Derrida responds to the work Dream I Tell You by Hélène Cixous, using it to explore the nature of the literary archive, the production of literature and Cixous' genius. These texts allow the reader to puzzle the genealogy of deconstruction and to consider the importance of the poetic and sexual difference to the entirety of Derrida's work. They also demonstrate that, as Derrida admits, he has always been a devotee of Cixous.Key Features:*The single most important work to address Helene Cixous' contribution to French thought.*Charts the influence of Cixous and Derrida on each other.

‘I have often declared my admiration for Hélène Cixous, for the person and for the work: immense, powerful, so multiple but unique in this century.’ - Jacques Derrida'Insister of Jacques Derrida, so expertly translated by Derrida's principal and most faithful translator, Peggy Kamuf, is an indispensable, daring, heartfelt and moving book...It presents a flawless, committed reading that is in the spirit of Derrida in its serious playfulness, its poetic sinuousness, its elegant reasoning and rhetoric while also being wholly in Cixous' own singular voice. This is not merely a study of Derrida, it is a haunting dialogue with his memory and with his phantom.' - Julian Wolfreys, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, Loughborough UniversityHélène Cixous is arguably the most insightful and unbridled reader of Jacques Derrida today. In Insister she brings a unique mixture of theoretical speculation, breath-taking textual explication and scholarly erudition to an extremely close reading of Derrida’s work, always attentive to the details of his thinking. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous’s from the beginning of their careers.Insister of Jacques Derrida joins Dream I Tell You by Hélène Cixous and Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius by Jacques Derrida, also published in The Frontiers of Theory series.

This major new collection of texts by Hélène Cixous brings together a range of important untranslated as well as four previously unpublished essays. These essays deal with literature, politics, history, Algeria, and the university and include works from Cixous' most significant contributions to literary criticism (Joyce, Kleist, Stendhal, Kafka, Shakespeare) as well as her contemporary writing on human rights and geo-politics. They are all informed by Cixous' unique gift for combining a writer's love of idiom and life with a scholar's acute deconstructive reading. These texts present an extended account of what Cixous calls here 'autobibliography' in which writing, theory, politics and life combine to open up the world through critical reading and self-reflection. 'I am on the side of life', says Cixous. These essays affirm Cixous' reputation as one of our greatest readers and sources of critical light in the world today.Key Features*Author is a leading French theorist and writer*Essays cover a wide range of topics and contemporary issues

By developing his own conception of the 'figure' Andrew Benjamin has written an innovative and provocative study of the complex relationship between philosophy, the history of painting and their presentation of both Jews and animals.As Benjamin makes clear the 'Other' is never abstract. He underscores the means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, shows us how to respond to an already identified, even if unacknowledged, determinant other.

A collection of critical texts from Paul de Man's Harvard University years, published for the first timeThese essays, brought together from the Paul de Man papers at the University of California (Irvine), make a significant contribution to the cultural history of deconstruction and the present state of literary theory. From 1955 to 1961, Paul de Man was Junior Fellow at Harvard University where he wrote a doctoral thesis entitled 'The Post-Romantic Predicament: a study in the poetry of Mallarmé and Yeats'. This dissertation is presented alongside his other texts from this period, including essays on Hölderlin, Keats and Stefan George. This collection reflects familiar concerns for de Man: the figurative dimension of language, the borders between philosophy and literature, the ideological obfuscations of Romanticism, and the difficulties of the North American heritage of New Criticism.Key Features: • The first collection of texts by Paul de Man published since the posthumous Aesthetic Ideology (1997)• The missing link in the published de Man corpus• With an introduction by Martin McQullian, a leading de Man scholar

Why have theorists approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect? Mark Currie argues that anticipation and other forms of projection into the future are vital for an understanding of narrative and its effects in the world. In a series of arguments and readings, he offers an account of narrative as both anticipation and retrospection, linking fictional time experiments (in Ali Smith, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Graham Swift) to exhilarating philosophical themes about presence and futurity. This is an argument that shows that narrative lies at the heart of modern experiences of time, structuring the present, whether personal or collective, as the object of a future memory as much as it records the past.

This book, newly available in paperback, gathers essays written by Geoffrey Bennington since the death of his friend Jacques Derrida in 2004. All continue the ongoing work of elucidating difficult and complex thought, often enough with reference to Derrida's persistent interrogation of the concepts of life and death, mourning and melancholia, and what he sometimes calls 'half-mourning'. Not Half No End relates this 'ethical' interruption of mourning to the persistent but still ill-understood motif of interrupted teleology, which, it is argued here, is definitive of deconstruction in general. This suspension or interruption of the end (which is none other than differance 'itself') has all manner of consequences for our thinking, and for how we attempt to categorize that thinking (as epistemological, ethical, political or aesthetic, for example). Not Half No End moves through all these domains, and the whole of Derrida's rich and varied corpus, in a weave of styles - from the expository and analytic to the autobiographical and confessional - in the ongoing process of deconstruction.Key Features* New collection of essays by major theorist* Expanded readings of late texts by Derrida* Research monograph on mourning and melancholy* First consideration of the legacy of Derrida by a co-author

By developing his own conception of the 'figure' Andrew Benjamin has written an innovative and provocative study of the complex relationship between philosophy, the history of painting and their presentation of both Jews and animals.As Benjamin makes clear the 'Other' is never abstract. He underscores the means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, shows us how to respond to an already identified, even if unacknowledged, determinant other.

What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? Derek Attridge argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met, and in this book, which traces a close engagement with Derrida's writing over two decades and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, shows how that work can illuminate a variety of topics. Chapters include an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction, and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida's philosophy as 'radical atheism', and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabaté. Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument, and responsibility to the reader.

The first book by Hélène Cixous on painting and the contemporary arts.This collection gathers most of Hélène Cixous' short texts devoted to contemporary artists, such as the painter Nancy Spero, the photographer Andres Serrano, the visual artists Roni Horn and Ernest Pignon-Ernest, the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel and the choreographer Karine Saporta, among others. The artworks belong to different genres and media: photography, painting, installations, film, choreography and fashion design. Nevertheless, Hélène Cixous' texts all deal with some of her privileged themes: exile, war, violence (against women) and exclusion, as well as love, memory, beauty and tenderness.Neither art criticism nor critical essays, Hélène Cixous responds to these artworks as a poet, reading them as if they were poems. Written between 1985 and 2010, most of these essays are unpublished in English, or published only in rare catalogues or art books. Key Features*Combines poetic, theoretical and critical writing and Cixous' unique methodology*Addresses an important collection of contemporary artists, including Americans Nancy Spero and Roni Horn, the London artist Maria Chevska, the Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, the filmmaker Ruth Bekermann, the French choreographer Karine Saporta and the French fashion designer Sonia Rykiel.*Treats a range of media and genre: photography, painting, installations, film, choreography, fashion design

Brilliantly traces a strange but compelling ‘literary turn’Exploring images of swerving, loss of control, digressing and deviating, Veering provides new critical perspectives on all major literary genres: the novel, poetry, drama, the short story and the essay, as well as ‘creative writing’. Royle works with insights from Lewis Carroll, Freud, Adorno, Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Deleuze, Cixous and Derrida. With wit and irony he investigates ‘veering’ in the writings of Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Melville, Hardy, Proust, Lawrence, Bowen, J.H. Prynne and many others.

'Already recognized as one of the most brilliant critical voices on both sides of the Atlantic, Peggy Kamuf''s book demonstrates her exemplarity as a reader of Derrida's texts. From her remarks on sovereignty and possibility to her commentaries on death and mourning, Kamuf's writing bears witness to an outstanding mind at work.'Lawrence D. Kritzman, John D. Willard Professor of French, Oratory and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College'Jacques Derrida used the phrases "friendly vigilance" and "rigorous collaboration" to describe Peggy Kamuf's long engagement with his work. This volume amply demonstrates those qualities: a warm appreciation of his achievement and the positive force of his example together with an acute eye, and ear, for the fine details of his language and his argumentation. No-one gets closer to both the spirit and the letter of Derrida's writing.'Derek Attridge, University of YorkThis book, newly available in paperback, collects ten years of Peggy Kamuf's writing on the work and friendship of Jacques Derrida.The chapters engage with a broad array of Derrida's work, from the 1960s to the posthumous publication of his teaching seminars. She also considers press interviews and the collaboration on the film D'ailleurs Derrida. These close readings - newly available in paperback - are punctuated by brief recollections from their long friendship.

Without Mastery engages the pleasures and rigours of reading, invoking Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters, Plato’s Lady Necessity, Freud, Derrida, Cixous, animals, angels, ghosts and children to explore our desire for mastery - especially the omnipotence of thoughts. Masterful thinking has brought the planet into environmental crisis. The acquiescence of reading, Wood shows, allows us to make contact with the unthinkable.Key Features:Provides a challenge and an alternative to ‘masterful’ or technical approaches to theoryDemonstrates that writing and power can work productively togetherDraws on the power of poetry and fiction to help us think and puts this to work in the book's own practice of creative critical writingPresents original new readings of canonical literary writers

Distinguished critic reads Derrida's early texts in terms of sexual difference, the uncanny and psychoanalysis The first complete translation into English of Sarah Kofman's only book length study of her former teacher demonstrates the essentially affirmative and open ended nature of Derridean deconstruction. It also shows the ways in which Kofman's thinking shaped Derrida's work, especially around the topic of sexual difference. This volume will help English readers to reconsider the relation of deconstruction to current political theory as well as to research into the post human, biopolitics, globalised political theory, and the on going transformation and displacement of philosophy by the methods of cultural studies. Readings of Derrida will help redress a gap in Derrida scholarship, as well as highlight Kofman's contribution to 20th century French feminism.English complete translation of an incisive work on Derrida by a significant French feminist critic; situates Derrida's ideas in original relation to Freud, Plato, sexual difference and political philosophy; covers all the major works for which Derrida is best known and the introduction sets Kofman's work in today's theoretical context.

The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of SurpriseMark CurrieExplores the relationship between unexpected events in narrative and lifeFocusing on surprise, spontaneous eruption and the unforeseeable, The Unexpected argues that stories help us to reconcile what we expect with what we experience. Though narrative is often understood a recapitulation of past events, the book argues that the unexpected and the future anterior, a future that is already complete, are guiding ideas for new understandings of the reading process. It also points beyond that to some of the key temporal concepts of our epoch, of unpredictability, the event, the untimely and the messianic.The Unexpected is an important intervention in narratology and a striking general argument about the cultural significance of surprise. The enquiry is developed by a range of new readings in philosophy and theory, as well as of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending.

A new work of scholarship in the practice of rhetorical readingThis monograph provides readings of literary and philosophical texts that work through the rhetoric of tropes to the material inscription at the origin of these texts. The book focuses on the practice and pedagogical value of rhetorical reading. Its readings follow an itinerary from poetic texts (such as those by Wordsworth and Keats) through theoretical or philosophical texts (by Descartes and Nietzsche) to narrative fiction (by Henry James). The book also contains two essays on Paul de Man and literary theory and an interview on the topic of "Deconstruction at Yale." All three of these latter texts are explicitly about the inescapable function and importance of the rhetoric of tropes for any critical reading or literary study worthy of the name. As Andrzej Warminski demonstrates, ‘rhetorical reading’ is a species of ‘deconstructive reading’—in the full ‘de Manian’ sense—but one that, rather than harkening back to a past over and done with, would open the texts to a different future.Key Features:New readings of texts by Wordsworth, Keats, Descartes, Nietzsche, and Henry JamesEssays and an interview on Paul de Man and ‘Deconstruction at Yale’ Reflects on and exemplifies the pedagogical value of ‘de Manian’ rhetorical readingAttempts to open a future for 'deconstructive' or 'de Manian' reading

Analyses how modern conceptions of politics, ethics, and critical thought may be re-evaluated through the question of pain.Through a series of rigorous encounters with key critical figures, this monograph argues that modern thought is, in a double sense, the thought of pain. The book investigates the idea that modern European philosophy after Kant offers less the conceptual equipment to tackle pain in explanatory terms, than an experience of thought that participates in the forms of pain and suffering about which it speaks. Perhaps surprisingly, the question of pain establishes a ground from which to examine key debates in twentieth-century European philosophy, most recently between forms of post-structuralist and ethical thinking imagined to be in crisis and the resurgence of discourses of political emancipation arising from traditions of thought associated with Marxism.  Key features:• Offers a systematic account of the modern European tradition’s relationship to the question of pain and suffering• Suggests new readings of ‘ethics’ and ‘evil’• Evaluates the politics of contemporary critical theory• Sets new agendas for reading post-Kantian philosophy

Spanning sixteen years, these letters chart a profound intellectual friendship at the heart of deconstruction, traversing philosophy, literature and the institutional life of theory from Yale to Paris. The exchange offers new insights into the private and professional worlds of Derrida and de Man as they navigate their writing, teaching and the intellectual crises of their era. Previously unseen material redefines our understanding of the Derrida-de Man relationship and illuminates the development of late-twentieth-century critical theory at its pivotal moment. Transcribed and translated with scholarly apparatus and a substantial contextual introduction, this volume is essential for understanding the evolution of modern thought and the ethics of reading and friendship.

Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death - Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put our selves at risk of death. In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since Freud.Key Features* Includes a general introduction to the death-drive* Presents an original theory of aesthetics* Analyses both theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis* Offers in-depth treatment of Freud* Provides an overview of philosophies of death

Hélène Cixous, author of over forty works of fiction, was deemed by Derrida to be the greatest living writer in French in 1990. Consistent with this evaluation, her writing is renowned for its dense poetical texture and lyricism. At the same time, she has been described by one of Derrida's translator's, Peggy Kamuf, as 'one of our age's greatest semi-theoreticians'. Connecting these two views, this book argues for a consideration of her texts as ‘semi-fictions’. Telling stories is, irreducibly, part of what Cixous does; it is irreducibly part of what she does. Fiction is at once the creation of an imaginary world and an ethical engagement, as intellectual as it is passionate, with the difficulties of the real. This book offers an in-depth reading of five different texts, addressing the idiomatic specificity of individual works and investigating how the textual fabric unfolds. It shows that the narrative dimension to Cixous’s writing needs to be reckoned with as a key component of the way it troubles the borders between fiction and its others. Each work is approached in relation to a particular theoretical question or discourse to explore how, in staging an encounter with something beyond itself, her fiction is the site of an active thinking.

In a very late essay, Remain(s) The Master, or the Supplement of Infinity, authored just two years before his death, Derrida conjoins two registers or fields of research, bringing together his early and his late work. In this complex and illuminating work, an analogy is drawn between two vastly different cultures the Greco-European Onto-theo-phenomenology and the Vedic Brahmanic of India. Commenting on the work of eminent Indianist scholar Charles Malamoud, Derrida argues for the significance of the notion 0f the remainder (reste) as a key word in his deconstructive vocabulary. This volume is devoted to elucidating Derrida's enigmatic essay and providing much-needed context.

Explores the relationship between unexpected events in narrative and lifeFocusing on surprise, spontaneous eruption and the unforeseeable, The Unexpected argues that stories help us to reconcile what we expect with what we experience. Though narrative is often understood a recapitulation of past events, the book argues that the unexpected and the future anterior, a future that is already complete, are guiding ideas for new understandings of the reading process. It also points beyond that to some of the key temporal concepts of our epoch, of unpredictability, the event, the untimely and the messianic.The Unexpected is an important intervention in narratology and a striking general argument about the cultural significance of surprise. The enquiry is developed by a range of new readings in philosophy and theory, as well as of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending.Key FeaturesAn original discussion of the relation of time and narrativeAn important intervention in narratology A striking general argument about the workings of the mind Provides an overview of the question of surprise in philosophy and literature

This anthology collects texts and papers from the Paul de Man archive, including essays on art, translations, critical fragments, research plans, interviews, and reports on the state of comparative literature. These texts offer a fascinating insight into the work of one of the twentieth century's most important literary theorists. The volume engages with Paul de Man's institutional life, gathering together pedagogical and critical material to investigate his profound influence on the American academy and theory today. It also contains a number of substantial, previously unpublished and untranslated texts by de Man from the span of his writing career. As a new collection of primary sources this volume further stimulates the growing reappraisal of de Man's work.

In two volumes, Geoffrey Bennington and Kas Saghafi present the majority of Jacques Derrida’s untranslated, and previously uncollected, essays and interviews. Dating mostly from 1992 to 2004, these writings offer a fuller picture of Derrida’s biography, theoretical engagements and the stakes of his social and political investments. In the interviews in Essays, Interviews, and Interventions by Jacques Derrida: Thinking What Comes, Volume 1, Derrida proposes the foundation of a new European political culture, discusses the strengths of Nelson Mandela, and reflects on the archive. He also considers his experience of political life, his relationship to institutions (particularly the Collège international de philosophie), and his views on ‘intellectualism’. Whether writing about public health, Palestine, or the notion of the promise, Derrida is razor-sharp and impassioned. These volumes allow significant insight into his mature thought.

In two volumes, Geoffrey Bennington and Kas Saghafi present the majority of Jacques Derrida’s untranslated, and previously uncollected, essays and interviews. Dating mostly from 1992 to 2004, these writings offer a fuller picture of Derrida’s biography, theoretical engagements and the stakes of his social and political investments. Institutions, Inventions, and Inscriptions by Jacques Derrida: Thinking What Comes, Volume 2 collects Derrida’s writings on friends including Emmanuel Levinas, Alain David, Louis Marin, Marie-Louise Mallet, Safaa Fathy, Mathieu Bénézet and Jos Joliet. It also features interviews that illuminate his experience at school, his writing habits, the relation he saw between philosophical discourse to the ‘poetic’, and his views on the singularity of literature and fiction. Whether writing about racism and anti-Semitism, filiation and fidelity, or hospitality and responsibility, Derrida is razor-sharp and impassioned. These volumes allow significant insight into his mature thought.

Hélène Cixous chronicles the last six months of her mother’s life, transgressing the mother-daughter relation in the experience of dyingMother Homer is Dead was written in the immediate aftermath of the death of the writer’s mother in the 103rd year of her life. Ève Cixous, née Klein, has figured centrally in her daughter’s writing since the publication of Osnabrück (1999). Since then, Cixous’s work has turned in ever-tighter orbits around the relation to her mother’s life as it tapers down toward death. The writer discovers a guide book for the task written in her mother’s own hand, where the narrator comes to realise that she will have been midwife to her mother’s death. In French, this substitutability or reversibility of birth and death is facilitated by the noun accouchement, childbirth or labour, but which literally says ‘bedding, putting or going to bed’. The reversal also concerns the positions of mother/child. What is happening requires the child to become the mother of the mother. How then must she hear her child’s repeated cry of ‘Help me, help me’? Is it help dying that she wants? And how to know this is indeed her desire? The narrator/writer, when in doubt, opts always for life, for more life for her mother, but to the point that many of those around her—family, friends, doctors, nurses—warn that she has lost touch with ‘reality’. Perhaps never has the agony of letting go of the dying one been so unflinchingly rendered. Cixous’s exquisitely poetic prose has also never been put to a more harrowing test of its inventive capacities. Key FeaturesThe first translation into EnglishPrimary text by a celebrated French author and intellectualExtraordinary account of the experience of death and coping with bereavement