Jane Gallop's book offers a clear-eyed and comprehensive history of feminist literary criticism. Why, she asks, have we so quickly buried 1970s feminist criticism? What lies buried there? Why do 1990s academic feminists accuse other academic feminists of being 'academic'? Gallop takes the novel approach of structuring her inquiry around anthologies of feminist criticism: twelve important texts that have had a wide impact on more than a decade of scholarship. In reading an anthology as a whole, she typically identifies a central, hegemonic voice (usually that of the editor/s) which would organise all the voices into a unity, and then explores the resistance within that volume to such a unity. Weight is placed behind these internal differences as a wedge against the centrist drive. Around 1981 addresses briefly 'french feminism' and psychoanalytic feminism before focusing on its principal subject: the mainstream of feminist literary criticism, before and after its general acceptance as part of the changing institution of literary studies. This brilliantly illuminates the dilemma of the feminist critic, divided by her allegiance to both feminism and literary studies.

What is criticism supposed to do? Is polemic a legitimate face of criticism, or simply its excess? What does it mean to read critically or uncritically? As Jane Gallop writes in her introduction to "Polemic," "Should the critical attitude be devoid of all passions, not just the reverent but the aggressive as well?"
These new essays by leading scholars examine some famous and less well-known instances of polemical encounters: Louis Menand on the Andrew Sarris - Pauline Kael slugfest over popular movies; Jonathan Crewe on the entertainment value that printed polemics provided as far back as the 16th century; Michael Warner on Kant's views of critical reading; as well as other essays on Foucault, Habermas, and Boswell with (or vs.) Dr. Johnson. The essays are enhanced by an interview with Gayatri Spivak, specially conducted by Jane Gallop for this volume
Historically rigorous, theoretically astute, and sometimes wickedly funny, "Polemic" makes criticism a critical issue.

Jane Gallop s book offers a clear-eyed and comprehensive history of feminist literary criticism. Why, she asks, have we so quickly buried 1970s feminist criticism? What lies buried there? Why do 1990s academic feminists accuse other academic feminists of being academic ?

Gallop takes the novel approach of structuring her inquiry around anthologies of feminist criticism: twelve important texts that have had a wide impact on more than a decade of scholarship. In reading an anthology as a whole, she typically identifies a central, hegemonic voice (usually that of the editor/s) which would organise all the voices into a unity, and then explores the resistance within that volume to such a unity. Weight is placed behind these internal differences as a wedge against the centrist drive.

Around 1981 addresses briefly french feminism and psychoanalytic feminism before focusing on its principal subject: the mainstream of feminist literary criticism, before and after its general acceptance as part of the changing institution of literary studies. This brilliantly illuminates the dilemma of the feminist critic, divided by her allegiance to both feminism and literary studies.

What is criticism supposed to do? Is polemic a legitimate face of criticism, or simply its excess? What does it mean to read critically or uncritically? As Jane Gallop writes in her introduction to "Polemic," "Should the critical attitude be devoid of all passions, not just the reverent but the aggressive as well?"
These new essays by leading scholars examine some famous and less well-known instances of polemical encounters: Louis Menand on the Andrew Sarris - Pauline Kael slugfest over popular movies; Jonathan Crewe on the entertainment value that printed polemics provided as far back as the 16th century; Michael Warner on Kant's views of critical reading; as well as other essays on Foucault, Habermas, and Boswell with (or vs.) Dr. Johnson. The essays are enhanced by an interview with Gayatri Spivak, specially conducted by Jane Gallop for this volume
Historically rigorous, theoretically astute, and sometimes wickedly funny, "Polemic" makes criticism a critical issue.

Drawing on her own experiences with late-onset disability and its impact on her sex life, along with her expertise as a cultural critic, Jane Gallop explores how disability and aging work to undermine one's sense of self. She challenges common conceptions that equate the decline of bodily potential and ability with a permanent and irretrievable loss, arguing that such a loss can be both temporary and positively transformative. With Sexuality, Disability, and Aging, Gallop explores and celebrates how sexuality transforms and becomes more queer in the lives of the no longer young and the no longer able while at the same time demonstrating how disability can generate new forms of sexual fantasy and erotic possibility.

From one of our most outspoken feminist critics, this collection explores various ways in which the body can be rethought of as a site of knowledge rather than as a medium to move beyond or dominate. Moving between a theoretical and confessional stance, Gallop explores Sade's relation to mothers both in his novels and his life; Barthe's "The Pleasure of the Text;" Freud's work, read not as a psychological text but as a literary endeavor and from a woman's point of view; and Luce Irigarary's famous "This Sex Which Is Not One."

Drawing on her own experiences with late-onset disability and its impact on her sex life, along with her expertise as a cultural critic, Jane Gallop explores how disability and aging work to undermine one's sense of self. She challenges common conceptions that equate the decline of bodily potential and ability with a permanent and irretrievable loss, arguing that such a loss can be both temporary and positively transformative. With Sexuality, Disability, and Aging, Gallop explores and celebrates how sexuality transforms and becomes more queer in the lives of the no longer young and the no longer able while at the same time demonstrating how disability can generate new forms of sexual fantasy and erotic possibility.

An essential guide to an essential book, this first anthology on Camera Lucida offers critical perspectives on Barthes's influential text. Roland Barthes's 1980 book Camera Lucida is perhaps the most influential book ever published on photography. The terms studium and punctum, coined by Barthes for two different ways of responding to photographs, are part of the standard lexicon for discussions of photography; Barthes's understanding of photographic time and the relationship he forges between photography and death have been invoked countless times in photographic discourse; and the current interest in vernacular photographs and the ubiquity of subjective, even novelistic, ways of writing about photography both owe something to Barthes. Photography Degree Zero, the first anthology of writings on Camera Lucida, goes beyond the usual critical orthodoxies to offer a range of perspectives on Barthes's important book. Photography Degree Zero (the title links Barthes's first book, Writing Degree Zero, to his last, Camera Lucida) includes essays written soon after Barthes's book appeared as well as more recent rereadings of it, some previously unpublished. The contributors' approaches range from psychoanalytical (in an essay drawing on the work of Lacan) to Buddhist (in an essay that compares the photographic flash to the mystic's light of revelation); they include a history of Barthes's writings on photography and an account of Camera Lucida and its reception; two views of the book through the lens of race; and a provocative essay by Michael Fried and two responses to it. The variety of perspectives included in Photography Degree Zero, and the focus on Camera Lucida in the context of photography rather than literature or philosophy, serve to reopen a vital conversation on Barthes's influential work.

In Pedagogy: The Question of Impersonation, authors argue that teaching is a performance that incorporates the personal in acts of "im-personation." After David Crane's prefatory "postscript," George Otte recommends that students pretend, writing from various perspectives; Indira Karamcheti suggests putting on race as one can put on gender roles. Cheryl Johnson gets personal by playing the "trickster," and Chris Amirault explores the relationship between the teacher and "the good student." While Karamcheti, Gallop, and Lynne Joyrich use theatrical vehicles to structure their essays, Joseph Litvak, Arthur W. Frank, and Naomi Scheman incorporate performance as examples. Madeleine R. Grumet theorizes pedagogy, while Roger I. Simon suggests that pedagogical roles can be taken on and off at will; Gregory Jay discusses the ethical side of impersonation; and Susan Miller denounces "the personal" as a sham.

For thirty years "the death of the author" has been a familiar poststructuralist slogan in literary theory, widely understood and much debated as a dismissal of the author, a declaration of the writer's irrelevance to the reader's experience. In this concise book, Jane Gallop revitalizes this hackneyed concept by considering not only the abstract theoretical death of the author but also the writer's literal death, as well as other authorial "deaths," such as obsolescence. Through bravura close readings of the influential literary theorists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, she shows that the death of the author is best understood as a relation to temporality, not only for the reader but especially for the writer. Gallop does not just approach the death of the author from the reader's perspective; she also reflects at length on how impending death haunts the writer. By connecting an author's theoretical, literal, and metaphoric deaths, she enables us to take a fuller measure of the moving and unsettling effects of the deaths of the author on readers and writers, and on reading and writing.

"Anecdote" and "theory" have diametrically opposed connotations: humorous versus serious, specific versus general, trivial versus overarching, short versus grand. "Anecdotal Theory" cuts through these oppositions to produce theory with a sense of humor, theorizing which honors the uncanny detail of lived experience. Challenging academic business as usual, renowned literary scholar Jane Gallop argues that all theory is bound up with stories and urges theorists to pay attention to the "trivial," quotidian narratives that theory all too often represses.

Published during the 1990s, these essays are united through a common methodological engagement--writing that recounts a personal anecdote and then attempts to read that anecdote for the theoretical insights it affords. Gallop addresses many of the major questions of feminist theory, regularly revisiting not only '70s feminism, but also poststructuralism and the academy, for, as Gallop explains, the practice of anecdotal theory derives from psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and feminism. Whether addressing issues of pedagogy, the sexual position one occupies when on the academic job-market, bad-girl feminists, or the notion of sisterhood, these essays exemplify theory grappling with its own erotics, theory connected to the real. They are bold, illuminating, and--dare we say--fun.

Sexual harassment is an issue in which feminists are usually thought to be on the plaintiff's side. But in 1993--amid considerable attention from the national academic community--Jane Gallop, a prominent feminist professor of literature, was accused of sexual harassment by two of her women graduate students. In "Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment," Gallop tells the story of how and why she was charged with sexual harassment and what resulted from the accusations. Weaving together memoir and theoretical reflections, Gallop uses her dramatic personal experience to offer a vivid analysis of current trends in sexual harassment policy and to pose difficult questions regarding teaching and sex, feminism and knowledge.
Comparing "still new" feminism--as she first encountered it in the early 1970s--with the more established academic discipline that women's studies has become, Gallop makes a case for the intertwining of learning and pleasure. Refusing to acquiesce to an imperative of silence that surrounds such issues, Gallop acknowledges--and describes--her experiences with the eroticism of learning and teaching. She argues that antiharassment activism has turned away from the feminism that created it and suggests that accusations of harassment are taking aim at the inherent sexuality of professional and pedagogic activity rather than indicting discrimination based on gender--that antiharassment has been transformed into a sensationalist campaign against sexuality itself.
"Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment" offers a direct and challenging perspective on the complex and charged issues surrounding the intersection of politics, sexuality, feminism, and power. Gallop's story and hercharacteristically bold way of telling it will be compelling reading for anyone interested in these issues and particularly to anyone interested in the ways they pertain to the university.

Photography is usually written about from the point of view of either the photographer or the viewer. Living with His Camera offers a perspective rarely represented-that of the photographed subject. Dick Blau has been making art photographs of the people he lives with for more than thirty years; cultural theorist Jane Gallop has been living with him-and his camera-for twenty years. Living with His Camera is Gallop's nuanced meditation on photography and the place it has in her private life and in her family. A reflection on family, it attempts-like Blau's photographs themselves-to portray the realities of family life beyond the pieties of conventional representations. Living with His Camera is about some of the most pressing issues of visuality and some of the most basic issues of daily life. Gallop considers intimate photographs of moments both dramatic and routine: of herself giving birth to son Max or crying in the midst of an argument with Blau, pouring herself cereal as Max colors at the breakfast table, or naked, sweeping the floor. With her trademark candor, humor, and critical acumen, Gallop mixes personal reflection with close readings of Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag's On Photography, Kathryn Harrison's novel Exposure, and Pierre Bourdieu's Photography. Presenting his photographs and her text, Living with His Camera is a portrait of a couple whose professional activity is part of their private lives and whose private life is viewed through their professional gazes. While most of us set aside rigorous thought when we turn to the sentimental realm of home life, Gallop and Blau look at each other not only with great affection but also with the keen focus of a sharp, critical gaze.

The influence of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has extended into nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences-from literature and film studies to anthropology and social work. yet Lacan's major text, Ecrits, continues to perplex and even baffle its readers. In Reading Lacan, Jane Gallop offers a novel approach to Lacan's work based on his own theories of language. Lacan locates truth in the letter rather than in the spirit-in the ways statements are expressed rather than in their intended meaning. Gallop here grapples with six of Lacan's essays from Ecrits: "The Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,' " "The Mirror Stage," "The Freudian Thing,'' "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious,'' "The Signification of the Phallus," and "The Subversion of the Subject." While other commentators have chosen not to confront Lacan's notoriously problematic style in their discussions of his ideas, Gallop addresses herself directly to the problem and the practice of reading Lacan. She takes her direction from Lacan's view of subjectivity and offers a deeply personal, feminist reading of Ecrits. Concentrating on the relation of desire and interpretation, she opens up the rich implications of Lacan's thought, for psychoanalytic theory, for the act of reading, and for knowledge itself. Forceful and revealing, yet utterly candid about its own areas of uncertainty, Gallop's book will be indispensable to readers of Lacan and to scholars and students who have felt his impact.

Four writers--the first, an eighteenth-century Frenchman whose works still retain their power to shock, scandalize, and instruct; the others, three twentieth-century Frenchmen, heirs and explicators of their earlier compatriot--form the central cast of characters of this literary-philosophical dialogue which seeks to transcend the barriers of time, space, and sexual identity imposed by traditional approaches to literature.

Professor Gallop, acknowledging her debt to such writers as Friedrich Nietzsche and Roland Barthes, cites as the shaping principle of her work the central tenet of intertextuality--that a literary work is not a closed system which can be definitively characterized by reference either to its creator or to its beholder. Rather, reader, writer, and text meet, react, and interact in a performance of "polymorphous per-versity"--a performance which, Professor Gallop points out, finds a parodic analogue in the activities of Sade's distinguished libertines. Professor Gallop observes that Sade and the structuralists display a congruity of purpose, in that both take as their goal the destruction of the classical dichotomy, long enshrined at the heart of the humanist tradition, between the ideal and the material.

Working from these peculiar conjunctions of theory, purpose, and enactment--and from a distinctly feminist point of view--Professor Gallop moves freely among the texts of her four subjects. She introduces Bataille's Sade to Blanchot's Sade, relates Klossowski's Sade to Klossowski's Bataille, and, when necessary extricates Sade himself from the web of what has been written about him. She finds that each of the three later writers constructs his own "fiction," with Sade as chief character: Bataille, caught up in the idea of the "sovereign man," discovers the sovereign man in Sade; Blanchot, for whom the real action is the act of writing itself, describes a Sade confronting the horror of the loss of self in that act; while Klossowski creates several Sades, marking different moments in his intellectual itinerary: psychoanalytic, Catholic, Nietzschean.

Professor Gallop demonstrates, however, that Sade is ultimately not appropriable--cannot, in effect, be consumed--and that, thus, an inversion occurs whereby Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski become extensions of Sade's characters, subsumed into the Sadian world. And she finds herself likewise a part of that world and her work "an ever reverberating extension of Sade's own writing."