This book’s argument is that Walser “toys” with style in ways that are not purely literary, but which carry the ambivalent resonance of politics in all its forms—cultural politics, sexual politics, class politics—both in his own time and, still, today. Once almost forgotten, the Swiss modernist author Robert Walser is now widely read and celebrated both in Europe and in the Anglo-American world. Such was his early promise that Franz Kafka was heralded by Robert Musil as “a peculiar case of...

The Derrida Dictionary is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the world of Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction and one of the most important and influential European thinkers of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Derrida's thought. Students will discover a wealth of useful information, analysis and cri...

A colourful map of the current conflict between pessimism and optimism in Western politics and theory, Hope attempts to reveal both the deep history and contemporary necessity of political hopefulness.Starting in the 17th century with Spinoza, Wortham tells the story of the various fallacies and insights of pessimism and optimism through the 18th century with the help of Kant and Voltaire through to the famously nihilistic writings of Nietzsche and the 20th century works o...

Title first published in 2003. 'Weber is probably the only person in his generation who is equally at home in and directly informed about contemporary literary theory and its antecedents in Germany, France, and the US. His theoretical interest in psychoanalysis serves as a viewpoint from which a powerful combination of philosophical, linguistic, and political concerns are brought together in an uncommonly productive dialectical interplay' Paul de Man This book presents the first introducto...

The indebtedness of contemporary thinkers to Derrida's project of deconstruction is unquestionable, whether as a source of inspiration or the grounds of critical antagonism.This collection considers: how best to recall deconstruction? Rather than reduce it to an object of historical importance or memory, these essays analyze its significance in terms of complex matrices of desire; provoked in this way, deconstruction cannot be dismissed as 'dead', nor unproblematically defended as ...