First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. 'New Accents' is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change. To stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.

First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. 'New Accents' is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change. To stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.

For more than 30 years and until his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida remained one of the most influential contemporary philosophers. It may be difficult to evaluate what forms his legacy will take in the future but Derrida Now provides some provocative suggestions. Derrida's often-controversial early reception was based on readings of his complex works, published in journals and collected in books. More recently attention has tended to focus on his later work, which grew out of the seminars that he presented each year in France and the US. The full texts of these seminars are now the subject of a major publication project, to be produced over the next ten years. Derrida Now presents contemporary articles based on or around the study of Derrida. It provides a critical introduction to Derrida's complex and controversial thought, offers careful analysis of some of his most important concepts, and includes essays that address the major strands of his thought. Derrida's influence reached not only into philosophy but also into other fields concerned with literature, politics, visual art, law, ecology, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality and this book will appeal to readers in all these disciplines. Contributors include Peggy Kamuf, Geoff Bennington, Nicholas Royle, Roy Sellars, Graham Allen and Irving Goh.

Contemporary Capitalism, Crisis, and the Politics of Fiction: Literature Beyond Fordism proposes a fresh approach to contemporary fictional engagements with the idea of crisis in capitalism and its various social and economic manifestations. The book investigates how late-twentieth and twenty-first-century Anglophone fiction has imagined, interpreted, and in most cases resisted, the collapse of the socio-economic structures built after the Second World War and their replacement with a presumably immaterial order of finance-led economic development. Through a series of detailed readings of the words of authors Martin Amis, Hari Kunzru, Don DeLillo, Zia Haider Rahman, John Lanchester, Paul Murray and Zadie Smith among others, this study sheds light on the embattled and decidedly unstable nature of contemporary capitalism.

In Derrida, Myth and the Impossibility of Philosophy, Anais N. Spitzer shows that philosophy cannot separate itself from myth since myth is an inevitable condition of the possibility of philosophy. Bombarded by narratives that terrorize and repress, we may often consider myth to be constrictive dogma or, at best, something to be readily disregarded as unphilosophical and irrelevant. However, such dismissals miss a crucial aspect of myth. Harnessing the insights of Jacques Derrida's deconstruction and Mark C. Taylor's philosophical reading of complexity theory, Derrida, Myth and the Impossibility of Philosophy provocatively reframes the pivotal relation of myth to thinking and to philosophy, demonstrating that myth's inherent ambiguity engenders vital and inescapable deconstructive propensities. Exploring myth's disruptive presence, Spitzer shows that philosophy cannot separate itself from myth. Instead, myth is an inevitable condition of the possibility of philosophy. This study provides a nuanced account of myth in the postmodern era, not only laying out the deconstructive underpinnings of myth in philosophy and religion, but establishing the very necessity of myth in the study of ideas.

Brings together philosophy, psychoanalysis and religious elements. Examines current 'crisis' in mental health and social stability. Unique in its contradictory orientation towards Christianity. Zizek, Baudrillard, Levinas and Steiner are strong influences on the author. Likely to appeal to academic followers of Jordan Peterson.

Jacques Lacan is widely recognized as a key figure in the history of psychoanalysis and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th Century. In Anxiety, now available for the first time in English, he explores the nature of anxiety, suggesting that it is not nostalgia for the object that causes anxiety but rather its imminence. In what was to be the last of his year-long seminars at Saint-Anne hospital, Lacan's 1962-63 lessons form the keystone to this classic phase of his teaching. Here we meet for the first time the notorious a in its oral, anal, scopic and vociferated guises, alongside Lacan s exploration of the question of the 'analyst's desire'. Arriving at these concepts from a multitude of angles, Lacan leads his audience with great care through a range of recurring themes such as anxiety between jouissance and desire, counter-transference and interpretation, and the fantasy and its frame. This important volume, which forms Book X of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, will be of great interest to students and practitioners of psychoanalysis and to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences, from literature and critical theory to sociology, psychology and gender studies.

This book synthesizes Jacques Derrida's hauntology and spectrality with affect theory, in order to create a rhetorical framework analyzing the felt absences and hauntings of written and oral texts. The book opens with a history of hauntology, spectrality, and affect theory and how each of those ideas have been applied. The book then moves into discussing the unique elements of the rhetorical framework known as the rhetorrectional situation. Three case studies taken from the Christian tradition, serve to demonstrate how spectral rhetoric works. The first is fictional, C.S. Lewis 'The Great Divorce. The second is non-fiction, Tim Jennings 'The God Shaped Brain. The final one is taken from homiletics, Bishop Michael Curry's royal wedding 2018 sermon. After the case studies conclusion offers the reader a summary and ideas future applications for spectral rhetoric.

The Place of the Mosque: Genealogies of Space, Knowledge, and Power extends Foucault's analysis Of Other Spaces and the "ideological conflicts which underlie the controversies of our day [that] take place between pious descendants of time and tenacious inhabitants of space." The book uses this framework to illuminate how mosques have been threatened in the past, from the Cordoba Mosque in the eighth century to the development of Moorish aesthetics in nineteenth-century United States to the clashes surrounding the building of mosques in the West in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Foucault's genealogy allows us to elaborate and study the subjects that are caught in the emergence of a battle-the social and political will to power, the networks of power and the rituals of power-in the interstitial space which define the subjects and clears a space ruling both the body and space. In going beyond individual buildings to broader geographical and genealogical dimensions of the power struggles, The Place of the Mosque reconciles the public space experience, governmentality, and micro powers, paving the way for a new philosophical language. Expanding architectural and urban regional approaches, Kahera shows the biopolitical significance of the problem of space.

Putting the New Materialist figure of diffraction to use in a set of readings - in which cultural texts are materially read against their contents and their themes, against their readers or against other texts - this volume proposes a critical intervention into the practice of reading itself. In this book, reading and reading methodology are probed for their materiality and re-considered as being inevitably suspended between, or diffracted with, both matter and discourse. The history of literary and cultural reading, including poststructuralism and critical theory, is revisited in a new light and opened-up for a future in which the world and reading are no longer regarded as conveniently separate spheres, but recognized as deeply entangled and intertwined. Diffractive Reading ultimately represents a new reading of reading itself: firstly by critiquing the distanced perspective of critical paradigms such as translation and intertextuality, in which texts encountered, processed or otherwise subdued; secondly, showing how all literary and cultural readings represent different 'agential cuts' in the world-text-reader constellation, which is always both discursive and material; and thirdly, the volume materializes, dynamizes and politicizes the activity of reading by drawing attention to reading's intervention in, and (co)creation of, the world in which we live.

This book's overarching premise is that discussion and critique in the discourses of architecture and urbanism have their primary focus on engagements with form, particularly in the sense of the question as to what planning and architecture signify with respect to the forms they take, and how their meanings or content (what is "contained") is considered in relation to form-as-container. While significant critical work in these disciplines has been published over the past 20 years that engages pertinently with the writings of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, there has been no address to the co-incidence in the work of Benjamin and Foucault of an architectural figure that is pivotal to each of their discussions of the emergence of modernity: The arcade for Benjamin and the panoptic prison for Foucault have a parallel role. In Foucault's terms, panopticism is a "diagram of power." The parallel, for Benjamin, would be his understanding of "constellation." In more recent architectural writings, the notion of the diagram has emerged as a key motif. Yet, and in as much as it supposedly relates to aspects of the work of Foucault, along with Gilles Deleuze, this notion of "diagram" amounts, for the most part, to a thinly veiled reinstatement of geometry-as-idea. This book redresses the emphasis given to form within the cultural philosophy of modernity and-particularly with respect to architecture and urbanism-inflects on the agency of force that opens a reading of their productive capacities as technologies of power. It is relevant to students and scholars in poststructuralist critical theory, architecture, and urban studies. "This is a book about Foucault and Benjamin and it is grounded in a deep knowledge of and reflection upon their works, but it is also underpinned by an impressive erudition. There are reflections on Hegel and Heidegger (central to the author) and Derrida, along with Kierkegaard, and others. This leads to a rich and suggestive discussion ... in staging a spatial-architectural-political conversation between Foucault and Benjamin." - Anonymous Reviewer "Mark Jackson's Diagrams of Power in Benjamin and Foucault, The Recluse of Architecture juxtaposes and interrogates its two leading actors so as to draw from and through them a theory of architecture, which is inseparable from its recluse. In doing so it elaborates a series of complex connections with their various interlocutors and inspirations, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, the Kabbalah, Agamben, allegory, Marx, Deleuze, Klossowski, tragedy, capitalism, modernity, and so on. The list is long and impressive. This is not only done with an extremely high degree of scholarship, but is presented in a light, lucid and very compelling manner in a voice both personal and authoritative. The recluse is the figure of mimesis itself, the appearance of a withdrawal, always already a ruin. This book not only contributes a highly astute reading of its philosophical objects, but it enacts the ontology of the recluse through its own unfolding, simultaneously revealing and withholding the meaning of architecture 'as such', so that we not only understand its meaning, but feel the pulsing differential of the book's object as if it were alive within us." - Stephen Zepke, Independent Researcher, Vienna

This book explores how language constructs the meaning and praxis of security in the 21st century. Combining the latest critical theories in poststructuralist and political philosophy with discourse analysis techniques, it uses corpus tools to investigate four collections of documents harvested from national and international security organisations. This interdisciplinary approach provides insights into the ways in which discourse has been mobilised to construct a strategic response to major terrorist attacks and geo-political events. The authors identify the way in which it is used to realize tactics of governmentality and form security as a discipline. This at once constructs a state of exception while also adhering to the principles of liberalism. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of subjects such as applied linguistics, political science, security studies and international relations, with additional relevance to other areas including law, criminology, sociology and economics.

Critically and comprehensively examining the works of Habermas and Foucault, two giants of 20th century continental philosophy, this book illuminates the effects of scientific reason as it migrates from its specialized institutions into society. It explores how science permeates shared human consciousness, to produce effects that ripple through the entire social body to restructure relations between discourses, institutions, and power in ways which we are barely conscious of. The book shows how science, through its entwinement with power, politics, discourses, and practices, presents certain social arrangements as natural and certain courses of action as beyond question. By arguing for a non-reductive, liberal scientific naturalism that sees science as one form of rationality amongst others, it opens possibilities for thought and action beyond scientific knowledge. The book analyses the work of Foucault and Habermas in terms of their social, political, and historical contexts. It examines science in relation to society, power, and discourses and their shifting historical relations. But rather than withdrawing from normative dimensions by merely describing scientific practices within their contexts, McIntyre explicitly opens the normative question of the good life and the good society. He thus simultaneously raises the question of philosophy and how philosophical critique is both directed towards science and, at the same time, must accommodate it. Foucault and Habermas emerge as linked by a commitment to the Enlightenment tradition and its emancipatory telos which underlies their work. The significant differences between the two thinkers are seen to result from Foucault's radicalization of this tradition, a radicalization which is, at the same time, implicit within the Enlightenment project itself.

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of �postmodernism�. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high� art to “low� from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk� film, from video art to literature.  

The Pursuit of Myth in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan and John Forbes traces a tradition of revolutionary self-mythologising in the lives and works of Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan and John Forbes, as a significant trefoil in twentieth-century English language poetry. All three had untimely deaths, excited a collective homage, and developed cult followings that reverberate today. This book tracks the transmission of the poem as charm, the poet as charmer, and the reinstitution of troubadour erotics as a kind of social poetics. Starting with Orpheus, the book refreshes the myth of the poet as mythmaker, examining how myths of "self" and "nation" are regenerated for the twenty-first century and how persons-as-myths are made in community through coteries of artists and beyond. Duncan Bruce Hose's critical vocabulary, with its nucleus of mythos, searches the edges of phenomenal enquiry, closing in on the work of "glamour", "aura", "charm", "possession", "phantasm", the "daemonic", and the logic of haunting in the continuing being of these three poets as "charismatic animals".

Using empirical research, this book critically analyses the dynamics, culture and forms of subjectivity of neo-liberalism. It draws upon existing historical, sociological and cultural studies to excavate the geneaology of the capitalist subject with specific emphasis on the neo-liberal govern-mental context of the last four decades. Michel Foucault's notion of governmentality, which he developed in his College de France lectures of 1978 and 1979, is employed as an hermeneutic key to historically situate and critically analyse the regimes of subject-formation characteristic of neo-liberal capitalism. The current crisis in capitalism is surveyed, along with earlier forms of capitalism, and the transition in power from discipline to control is explored. The study concludes by tracing the changing face of Homo Economicus in relation to resistance levelled against neo-liberal capitalism and the resultant metamorphises it has undergone. Drawing upon political philosophy and political economy, Benda Hofmeyr presents a comprehensive Foucaultian analysis and historical contextualisation of the rise of neo-liberal governmentality.

Life on earth is currently approaching what has been called the sixth mass extinction, also known as the Holocene or anthropocene extinction. Unlike the previous five, this extinction is due to the destructive practices of a single species, our own. Up to 50% of plant and animal species face extinction by the year 2100, as well as 90% of the world's languages. Biocultural diversity is a recent appellation for thinking together the earth's biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, the related causes of their extinctions and the related steps that need to be taken to ensure their sustainability. This book turns to the work of Jacques Derrida to propose a notion of 'general ecology' as a way to respond to this loss, to think the ethics, ontology and epistemology at stake in biocultural sustainability and the life and death we differentially share on earth with its others. It articulates an appreciation of the ecological and biocultural stakes of deconstruction and provokes new ways of thinking about a more just sharing of the earth.

Drawing on the theories and philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari, this edited collection explores the concept of rhizomatic learning and consolidates recent explorations in theory building and multidisciplinary research to identify new directions in the field. Knowledge transfer is no longer a fixed process. Rhizomatic learning posits that learning is a continuous, dynamic process, making connections, using multiple paths, without beginnings, and ending in a nomadic style. The chapters in this book examine these notions and how they intersect with a contemporary and future global society. Tracking the development of the field from postructuralist thinking to nomadic pedagogy, this book goes beyond philosophy to examine rhizomatic learning within the real world of education. It highlights innovative methods, frameworks and controversies, as well as creative and unique approaches to both the theory and practice of rhizomatic learning. Bringing together international contributors to provide new insights into pedagogy for 21st-century learning, this book will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in education and adjacent fields.

The concept of community is one of the most frequently used and abused of recent philosophical or socio-political concepts. In the 1980s, faced with the imminent collapse of communism and the unchecked supremacy of free-market capitalism, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (in The Inoperative Community) and the writer Maurice Blanchot (in The Unavowable Community) both thought it essential to rethink the fundamental basis of "community" as such. More recently, Nancy has renewed the debate by unexpectedly attacking Blanchot's account of community, claiming that it embodies a dangerously nostalgic desire for mythic and religious communion. This book examines the history and implications of this controversy. It analyses in forensic detail Nancy's and Blanchot's contrasting interpretations of German Romanticism, and the work of Heidegger, Bataille, and Marguerite Duras, and examines closely their divergent approaches to the contradictory legacy of Christianity. At a time when politics are increasingly inseparable from a deep-seated sense of crisis, it provides an incisive account of what, in the concept of community, is thought yet crucially still remains unthought.

Rethinking Joseph Conrad's Concepts of Community uses Conrad's phrase 'strange fraternity' from The Rover as a starting point for an exploration of the concept of community in his writing, including his neglected vignettes and later stories. Drawing on the work of continental thinkers including Jacques Derrida, Jean Luc-Nancy and Hannah Arendt, Yamamoto offers original readings of Heart of Darkness, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', The Rover and Suspense and the short stories "The Secret Sharer", "The Warrior's Soul" and "The Duel". Working at the intersection between literature and philosophy, this is a unique and interdisciplinary engagement with Conrad's work.

This volume brings together an international array of scholars to reconsider the meaning and place of poststructuralism historically and demonstrate some of the ways in which it continues to be relevant, especially for debates in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. The book's chapters focus on the works of Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard-in combination with those of Agamben, Luhman, Nancy, and Nietzsche-and examine issues including biopolitics, culture, embodiment, epistemology, history, music, temporality, political resistance, psychoanalysis, revolt, and the visual arts. The contributors use poststructuralism as a hermeneutical strategy that rejects the traditional affirmation of unity, totality, transparency, and representation to instead focus on the foundational importance of open-ended becoming, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This approach allows for a more expansive definition of poststructuralism and helps demonstrate how it has contributed to debates across philosophy and other disciplines. Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism will be of particular interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, aesthetics, feminist theory, cultural studies, intellectual history, psychoanalysis, and sociology.