What happens to the experience of community when the grounds of communal life collapse? The Romantic period's upheaval cast both traditional communal organizations of life and outgrowths of the new revolutionary age into crisis. In this context, Joseph Albernaz argues that Romantic writers articulate a vital conception of "groundless community," while following this idea through its aesthetic, ecological, political, and philosophical registers into the present.Amidst the violent ex...

Featuring scholars at the forefront of contemporary political theology and the study of German Idealism, Nothing Absolute explores the intersection of these two flourishing fields. Against traditional approaches that view German Idealism as a secularizing movement, this volume revisits it as the first fundamentally philosophical articulation of the political-theological problematic in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the advent of secularity.Nothing Absolute...

These political, philosophical, and literary essays mark the first collection of theoretical writing from the acclaimed novelist and French feminist writer Monique Wittig.“Among the most provocative and compelling feminist political visions since The Second Sex. These essays represent the radical extension of de Beauvoir’s theory, its unexpected lesbian future. Wittig’s theoretical insights are both precise and far-reaching, and her theoretical style is bold, incisive, eve...

What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepti...

The new edition of this bestselling literary theory anthology has been thoroughly updated to include influential texts from innovative new areas, including disability studies, eco-criticism, and ethics.Covers all the major schools and methods that make up the dynamic field of literary theory, from Formalism to PostcolonialismExpanded to include work from Stuart Hall, Sara Ahmed, and Lauren Berlant.Pedagogically enhanced with detailed editorial introduction...

“A powerful diagram of the moral life from Shakespeare to the present...a book crowded with insights.”—Geoffrey Hartman, New York TimesOne of the twentieth century’s foremost literary critics traces the idea of the self across five hundred years of Western cultural history.“One cannot both be sincere and seem so,” André Gide once wrote. Attempting to inhabit sincerity to satisfy social expectations makes it into a posture or a pers...

The writings of William James represent one of America's most original contributions to the history of ideas. Ranging from philosophy and psychology to religion and politics, James composed the most engaging formulation of American pragmatism. 'Pragmatism' grew out of a set of lectures and the full text is included here along with 'The Meaning of Truth', 'Psychology', 'The Will to Believe', and 'Talks to Teachers on Psychology'.

A deep dive into the power of reading and language.Nilling is a sequence of six loosely linked prose essays that explore the elemental forces of reading and writing. Lisa Robertson applies an acute eye to subjects ranging from noise and pornography to the codex, melancholy, and cities. These essays build into a lively conversation with Robertson's "masters": past writers, philosophers, and idealists who have guided her practice.For readers of deep ...

An anthology of exemplary readings by some of the twentieth century’s foremost literary critics, Close Reading presents a wide range of responses to the question at the heart of literary criticism: how best to read a text to understand its meaning. The lively introduction and the selected essays provide an overview of close reading from New Criticism through poststructuralism, including works of feminist criticism, postcolonial theory, queer theory, new historicism, and more....

Truth is not just a recent topic of contention. Arguments about it have gone on for centuries. Why is the truth important? Who decides what the truth is? Is there such a thing as objective, eternal truth, or is truth simply a matter of perspective, of linguistic or cultural vantage point? In this concise book Simon Blackburn provides an accessible explanation of what truth is and how we might think about it. The first half of the book details several main approaches to how we should think ...

Throughout his long career, Jacques Derrida had a close, collaborative relationship with Critical Inquiry and its editors. He saved some of his most important essays for the journal, and he relished the ensuing arguments and polemics that stemmed from the responses to his writing that Critical Inquiry encouraged. Collecting the best of Derrida's work that was published in the journal between 1980 and 2002, Signature Derrida provides a remarkable introduction to t...

This volume brings together some of the most well-known and highly respected commentators on the work of Jacques Derrida from Britain and America in a series of essays written to commemorate the life and come to terms with the death of one of the most important intellectual presences of our time.Derrida’s thought reached into nearly every corner of contemporary intellectual culture and the difference he has made is incalculable. He was indeed controversial but the astonishing origi...