Literary Theory
Knausgård and the Autofictional Novel
A probing, generative analysis of Knausgård’s My Struggle, with implications for our understanding of the novel form more broadly in the twenty-first century.
Psychoanalysis
Assesses the contributions of six major psychoanalytic thinkers in the light of current academic and clinical trends in psychoanalysis.
This Side of Philosophy
Assesses a distinct style of thinking in twentieth-century Spanish writing, one in which literature plays a central role in reaching behind philosophy to essential sources of life and meaning.
Passive Voices (On the Subject of Phenomenology and Other Figures of Speech)
Addresses the question of how language affects the subject of speech through readings of confessional, philosophical, and fictional writings.
The Story Is True, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded
Delves into the meaning of stories, their tellers, and those who experience them.
The Writing of Innocence
An original reading of Blanchot's thought with far-reaching philosophical and literary implications.
Between Celan and Heidegger
Probing reassessment of the relation between Celan's poetry and Heidegger's thought.
Poetics of Breathing
A comparative study of breath and breathing as a core poetic and compositional principle in modern literature.
Fracture Feminism
Shows how feminist writing in British Romanticism developed alternatives to linear time.
Toward an African Future—Of the Limit of World
Examines the thought of W. E. B. Du Bois, with attention to its potential for reorienting present-day critical theory and political philosophy.
Continental Theory Buffalo
Revisits, reassesses, and reclaims the legacy of May '68 in light of our present cultural and historical emergency.
The Blossom Which We Are
Charts the vicissitudes of a distinctly modern and peculiarly human vulnerability—our intimate dependence on the fragile, time-bound cultural framework that we inhabit—in the history of the realist novel.
Hu Feng
A study of Hu Feng as a literary critic and case study on how intellectual work can respond to political pressure.
The Play of Light
Juxtaposes five contemporary French poets, illuminating the philosophical elements of their work while making their sometimes difficult writing newly accessible.
Modernity as Exception and Miracle
Proposes "the extraordinary" as a defining characteristic of modernity.
Black Cultural Mythology
Offers a new conceptual framework rooted in mythological analysis to ground the field of Africana cultural memory studies.
The Space of Disappearance
Examines the evolution of disappearance as a formal narrative and epistemological phenomenon in late twentieth-century Argentine fiction.
Announcements
A study of novelty through analyses of the language of announcement in revolutionary texts.
Jouissance
A comprehensive discussion of an important but elusive Lacanian concept within the field of psychoanalysis, as well as its relevance for philosophy, literature, gender, and queer studies.
The Movement of Showing
Explores why Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger conceive their thought as a “movement” rather than as a presentation of results or conclusions, and of the consequences of such an indirect method for critique and responsibility.
The Lily's Tongue
Examines four discourses by Kierkegaard, arguing that they play a critical and surprising role in his oeuvre and contribute to the philosophy of figural language.
The Little Crystalline Seed
Shows how contemporary French philosophy adopted this literary paradigm and argues for its significance for addressing concerns in ethics, ontology, and aesthetics.
Legacies of the Sublime
Pairs literary works with philosophical and theoretical texts to examine how the Kantian sublime influenced authors in their treatments of freedom and subjectivity through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Unmaking The Making of Americans
Develops the sustained, relational, dynamic, and reflective attention demanded by Gertrude Stein’s novel into a theory of reading and critical analysis.
Adorno's Poetics of Form
A critical study of the concept of form in Adorno’s writings on art and literature.
The Essentialist Villain
The first book-length study of Bersani’s work, tracing the unfolding of his onto-ethics/aesthetics amidst numerous literary, artistic, and philosophical influences.
Phrase
The first complete English translation of Lacoue-Labarthe’s most innovative and original work, exploring the very origins of experience, language, desire, and mortality.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's Phrase
First sustained critical reading of Lacoue-Labarthe's Phrase, which provides insights into a philosophically inspired work of prose poetry.
Witnessing beyond the Human
Provides an innovative and theoretically rigorous approach to the subject of testimony in Latin America.
Romantic Mediations
Investigates the ways in which new technologies and theories of photography, phonography, moving images, and digital media engage with a diverse set of texts by British Romantic writers.
Oscillations of Literary Theory
Revises key psychoanalytic concepts that influence interpretive practices in the humanities and formulates a new approach to reading fiction.
In His Voice
A creative study of Maurice Blanchot’s theory of literary voice.
Deconstruction, Its Force, Its Violence
A reappraisal of deconstruction from one of its leading commentators, focusing on the themes of force and violence.
From Comparison to World Literature
Reintroduces the concept of “world literature” in a truly global context, transcending past Eurocentrism.
Leo Bersani
Examines the importance of Leo Bersani’s work for queer theory, psychoanalysis, literary criticism and theory, cultural studies, and film studies.
Kristeva's Fiction
Psychoanalytic perspectives on Kristeva's fiction.
Documents in Crisis
Examines the theory and practice of nonfiction narrative literature in twentieth-century Mexico.
Federman's Fictions
A comprehensive examination of one of the twentieth century's most innovative writers and critics.
The Unconcept
Explores the conceptualization of the Freudian uncanny in various late-twentieth-century theoretical and critical discourses (literary studies, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, art history, trauma studies, architecture, etc.).
Figures of Simplicity
A fascinating comparison of the work of Heinrich von Kleist and Herman Melville.
Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Beyond of Language
Explores why American Romantic writers and contemporary continental thinkers turn to art when writing about ethics.
The Passing of Postmodernism
Examines the increasingly prevalent assumption that postmodernism is over and that literature and film are once again engaging sincerely with issues of ethics and politics.
Africa Writes Back to Self
Explores the metafictional strategies of contemporary African novels rather than characterizing them primarily as a response to colonialism.
Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work of Julia Kristeva
Considers the social and political significance of Kristeva’s oeuvre.
Eros and Ethics
A comprehensive examination of Lacan’s seminar on ethics.
Caribbean Genesis
Philosophical exploration of Jamaica Kincaid’s entire literary oeuvre.
Forgetful Memory
Examines the role of forgetfulness in our understanding of the Holocaust.
Materializing Queer Desire
Uses iconic dandy and queer figures to explore relationships between homosexuality, modernism, and modernity.
Unspeakable Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Culture
Explores the radical political potential of close reading to make the case for a new and invigorated psychoanalytic cultural studies.
Otherwise Occupied
Questions whether current theories and pedagogies of alterity have allowed us truly to engage the Other.
Romantic Psychoanalysis
How the Romantics invented psychoanalysis in advance of Freud.
Lacan, Language, and Philosophy
Clinical and philosophical perspectives on key issues and debates in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University
Scholars engage the ideas and legacy of Cary Nelson in conversations about the corporate university, teaching, poetry, and activism.
The Order of Joy
Provocative exploration of a new concept of “joy” within psychoanalytic and cultural studies.
Signifiers and Acts
Situates Lacan’s theory of the subject within contemporary philosophical debates over freedom and agency.
Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine
Contributors explore the significance of literature and psychoanalysis for medical education and practice.
Fiction's Present
Fiction writers and critics engage the aesthetic, political, philosophical, and cultural dimensions of contemporary fiction.
The World of Perversion
An original critique of queer theory, from a psychoanalytic perspective.
Beyond Lacan
Traces the development of Lacanian theory, and its possible future.
Romantic Poetry and the Fragmentary Imperative
Uses the concept of the poetic fragment to draw connections between romantic poetry and modern literature and literary theory.
Alain Badiou
An introduction to Badiou's philosophical thought and its implications for other humanistic disciplines and the social sciences.
Postcolonial Whiteness
Explores the undertheorized convergence of postcoloniality and whiteness.
Post-Marxist Theory
An introduction to the philosophical, economic, historical, feminist, and cultural versions of post-Marxist theory.
African Fiction and Joseph Conrad
Interrogates the "writing back to the center" approach to intertextuality and explores alternatives to it.
TechnoLogics
Uses literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis to explore the emerging logic of the posthuman.
Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture
Explores postcolonial discourse from the standpoint of feminism and writers in minority languages.
Occasional Deconstructions
Argues that deconstruction is not a critical methodology or theory but that which makes any act of good reading possible.
Lacan in the German-Speaking World
Addresses Lacan's reception in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, offering new perspectives for American readers.
The Logic of Sexuation
Challenges essentialist notions of gender through a detailed account of Lacan's theories of gender, sexuality, and sexual difference.
Post-Jungian Criticism
Rereads Jung in light of contemporary theoretical concerns, and offers a variety of examples of post-Jungian literary and cultural criticism.
Disciplining English
Offers historical and present-day perspectives on what English departments do, and how and why they do it.
The Institution of Literature
Leading voices in literary and cultural studies examine the study of literature at the college level, including the fate of theory, the rise of cultural studies, the academic “star” system, and the difficult job market.
Eating Their Words
Examines the figure of the cannibal as it relates to cultural identity in a wide range of literary and cultural texts.
Going beyond the Pairs
Argues that German Romanticism, Zen Buddhism, and deconstruction, for all their cultural differences, are three expressions of a universal vision.
New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective
Offers an interdisciplinary approach to narrative perspective, with essays by leading scholars of literary studies, cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and film and media criticism.
Day Late, Dollar Short
Explores how shifts in the job market and changes in university culture and administration have influenced the "post-theory" generation of literary critics.
Traveling through the Boondocks
Wry and honest essays on the everyday conditions of professional life at a "second-rate" university, with implications for our understanding of higher education in general.
Narralogues
These "narralogues" combine story and argument, moving from Socratic dialogue to outright narrative, and ultimately making the case that fiction is a medium for telling the truth.
Psychoanalyses / Feminisms
Probes the complementary yet contested relations between psychoanalysis and feminism, emphasizing the plural nature of each.
The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction
Provides a clear account of the issues in Spanish American fiction in the last quarter-century by attempting to answer questions on the Boom, Post-Boom, and its relation to Postmodernism.
Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan
In this first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work, Nasio eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments.
Noplace Like Home
Explores the way that four major works of Russian literature--Gogol's Dead Souls, Goncharov's Oblomov, Zamiatin's We, and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita--define a cultural "self" for the Russian people. Focusing on the deep cultural currents that pull Russian society in contradictory ways, Noplace Like Home also explores the writer's struggle to overcome these tensions through the creation of a literary utopia.
The Wreath of Wild Olive
Examines the concept of play in Western thought, with special emphasis on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and envisions literary discourse as contributing to an alternative mentality based on peace rather than power.
Suffering and the Remedy of Art
This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study of suffering and literature examines how literature can give expression to the essentially wordless reality of suffering.
The Returns of History
Examines the influence of Nietzsche on Russian Formalists, Russian Modernism, and Mikhail Bakhtin, reinforcing the importance of the modernist theoreticians by reading them in the contemporary theoretical context.
The Biography of "the Idea of Literature"
A comprehensive examination of the meaning, history, and evolution of the basic notion of "literature" from antiquity to the seventeenth century.
The Poetics of Death
Discusses literary representations of death to explore the relation between writing and death--death understood as both the death of the individual and the death of meaning.
Leaves of Mourning
Examines allegory in Hölderlin's later work, exploring subjects such as Freud and Derrida's views of mourning, and offering original readings of works including Impossible Ode, Mnemosyne, and The Churchyard ...
Reading Seminars I and II
In this collection of essays, Lacan's early work is first discussed systematically by focusing on his two earliest seminars: Freud's Papers on Technique and The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique ...
Excavations and Their Objects
This is a collection of essays concerned with the thematic implications of Freud's deep interest in the art objects in his collection of antiquity.
Death in a Delphi Seminar
In this detective novel set in a small, intense seminar, eight students study what their professor regards as the central mystery of human nature: the uniqueness of the individual. One morning a woman ...
Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes
This book explores the consequences of postmodern theory and answers the question, "What did postmodern theory begin?"
Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression
This book offers a radical, "Third World" approach to current debates on canon revision, multiculturalism, Eurocentrism, and reforms in education and culture.
Thematics
This book aims at refocusing critical reflection on thematics in the arts, a topic that has been neglected recently. The volume is divided into four sections: theoretical essays, applications to literature, ...
Hauntings
This book is about the way that popular film brings to a "sayable" level that which haunts us in the media headlines.
Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon
Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon analyzes the limits of the applicability of psychoanalytic theory to aesthetic discourse, and in doing so expands the range of non-normative paradigms of spectatorial ...
Being English
Drawing on recent developments concerning national identity in post-Marxist criticism and Derridean philosophy, Wolfreys looks at the ways in which literature is used to represent the English middle-classes ...
Men Writing the Feminine
What happens when a male author writes the feminine? Can a male author completely identify with a woman? Or does a male author always write through a woman's voice for purposes of his own? This fascinating ...
Chaosmos
This book shows how writers like James Joyce, James Merrill, and Doris Lessing; scientists like Gregory Bateson, Ilya Prigogine, and David Bohm; and theorists like Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and ...
The Restorationist: Text One
This is an American novel of formed chaos playfully enacting the centrality of language in late twentieth-century art and life through the voices of two women steeped in Western traditions, one telling ...