Essays exploring interrelated strands of material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing, through a rich variety of case studies. Much as the complexities of climate change and the Anthropocene have queried the limits and exclusions of literary representation, so, too, have the challenges recently presented by climate activism and intersectional environmentalism, animal rights, and even the power of material forms, such as oil, plastic, and heavy metals. Social and protest movements have revived the question of whether there can be such a thing as an activist ecocriticism: can such an approach only concern itself with consciousness, or might it politicise literary criticism in a new way? Attempting to respond, this volume coalesces around three interrelated strands: material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing itself. Contributors consider the ways in which literary form has foregrounded the complexities of both matter (in essays on water, sugar, and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so?

Aidan Tynan provocatively rethinks some of the core assumptions of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Showing the significance of deserts and wastelands in literature since the Romantics, he argues that the desert has served to articulate anxieties over the cultural significance of space in the Anthropocene. He explores the ways in which Nietzsche's warning that 'the desert grows' has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity. And he looks at how the desert has been a terrain of desire over which the Western imagination of space and place has range, in writings from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo, from imperial travel writing to postmodernism; and from the Old Testament to salvagepunk.

The first study of Deleuze's critical and clinical project Aidan Tynan addresses Deleuze's assertion, that 'literature is an enterprise of health', and shows how a concern of health and illness was a characteristic of his philosophy as a whole, from his earliest works to his groundbreaking collaborations with Guattari, to his final, enigmatic statements on 'life'. He explains why alcoholism, anorexia, manic depression and schizophrenia are key concepts in Deleuze's literary theory, and shows how, with the turn to schizoanalysis, literature takes on a crucial political and ethical role in helping us to diagnose our present pathologies and articulate the possibilities of a health to come. Key Features * The first book length study of Deleuze's critical and clinical project and the conceptualisations of health and illness he developed over the course of his career * Uses the idea of the literary clinic to unify Deleuze's literary theory with the political critique he developed with Guattari, and argues in this way for a distinctively Deleuzian critical practice * Draws on Deleuze conceptualisations of health and illness to reassess his relationship to key thinkers such as Spinoza, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Melanie Klein and literary figures such as Melville F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kafka, Beckett and Artaud

Aidan Tynan provocatively rethinks some of the core assumptions of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Showing the significance of deserts and wastelands in literature since the Romantics, he argues that the desert has served to articulate anxieties over the cultural significance of space in the Anthropocene. He explores the ways in which Nietzsche's warning that 'the desert grows' has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity. And he looks at how the desert has been a terrain of desire over which the Western imagination of space and place has range, in writings from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo, from imperial travel writing to postmodernism; and from the Old Testament to salvagepunk.

Money facilitates the rites and rituals we perform in everyday life. More than a mere medium of exchange or a measure of value, it is the primary means by which we manifest a faith unique to our secular age. But what happens when individual belief (credo, 'I' believe) and the systems into which it is bound (credit, 'it' believes) enter into crisis? Where did the sacredness of money come from, and does it have a future? Why do we talk about debt and repayment in overtly moral terms? How should a theological critique of capitalism proceed today? With the effects of the 2008 economic crises continuing to be felt across the world, this volume brings together some of the most important contemporary voices in philosophy, literature, theology, and critical and cultural theory together in one volume to assert the need to interrogate and broaden the terms of the theological critique of capitalism.

In 1972, the French theorists Deleuze and Guattari unleashed their collaborative project-which they termed schizoanalysis-upon the world. Today, few disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have been left untouched by its influence. Through a series of groundbreaking applications of Deleuze and Guattari's work to a diverse range of literary contexts, from Shakespeare to science fiction, this collection demonstrates how schizoanalysis has transformed and is transforming literary scholarship. Intended for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars with an interest in continental philosophy, literary theory and critical and cultural theory, Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Literature is a cutting edge volume, featuring some of the most original voices in the field, setting the agenda for future research.

Money facilitates the rites and rituals we perform in everyday life. More than a mere medium of exchange or a measure of value, it is the primary means by which we manifest a faith unique to our secular age. But what happens when individual belief (credo, 'I' believe) and the systems into which it is bound (credit, 'it' believes) enter into crisis? Where did the sacredness of money come from, and does it have a future? Why do we talk about debt and repayment in overtly moral terms? How should a theological critique of capitalism proceed today? With the effects of the 2008 economic crises continuing to be felt across the world, this volume brings together some of the most important contemporary voices in philosophy, literature, theology, and critical and cultural theory together in one volume to assert the need to interrogate and broaden the terms of the theological critique of capitalism.