World Food Books

Eroticism and the Body Politic
edited by Lynn Hunt

1990, English
Softcover, 242 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore

$20.00 - In stock -

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First 1990 edition.

By the end of the nineteenth century, women had become an undeniable force both in the public discussion of social life and in politics itself. Yet in art and literature women's bodies continued to be represented—and domesticated—by men. They were still more often the object of the artist's or writer's gaze than they were the subject of their own representing processes. The erotic potential of women's bodies, however, was far from a marginal concern in the elaboration of modern forms of politics, art, literature, and psychology.

In Eroticism and the Body Politic, scholars from art history, history, and literature examine the frequent intersections between the body erotic and the body politic. Focusing on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, they show how eroticized representations of bodies had a multitude of political and cultural meanings. The authors consider the eroticized body in a wide variety of media: from Fragonard's paintings of "erotic mothers," to political pornography attacking Marie Antoinette, to the "new woman" of fin de siècle decorative arts.

Exploring the possibilities of a multidisiplinary approach, the volume shows that eroticism had an impact far beyond the usual confines of libertine or pornographic literature—and that politics included much more than voting, meeting, or demonstrating. At a time of general methodological ferment in the "human sciences," Eroticism and the Body Politic brings fresh approaches to the developing field of cultural studies.

Good copy, knock to top of front cover edge, otherwise a VG copy throughout.

File under: Lynn Hunt Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore Eros Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Art Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Freud and Oedipus
by Peter L. Rudnytsky

1987, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Columbia University Press / New York

$50.00 - Out of stock

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First 1987 edition.

Freud and Oedipus reassesses Freud’s central concept of the Oedipus complex from the interlocking perceptives of biography, intellectual history, and Greek tragedy. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary materials, Peter Rudnytsky establishes how Freud reached his epochal formulation through his own self-analysis and clinical work. He then places Freud’s discoveries in the context of nineteenth-century German intellectual and literary history. Finally, he demonstrates how many of Freud’s insights are foreshadowed in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and discusses the psychoanalytic and structuralist interpretation of Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle as a whole.

Very Good copy.

File under: Sigmund Freud Peter L. Rudnytsky Columbia University Press / New York Psychoanalysis Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Exotic Memories: Literature, Colonialism, and the Fin de siècle
by Chris Bongie

1991, English
Softcover, 162 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Stanford University Press / Palo Alto

$35.00 - In stock -

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First 1991 edition.

"A challenging study that will be welcomed by scholars in the fields of French, English, Italian, and comparative literature, as well as by his- torians of anthropology and colonialism, and readers interested in theories of postmodernism. This is a book whose time is exactly right: a fin-de-siècle meditation on the end of modernity, marked by a keen nostalgia for a past (and an elsewhere) that it knows to be already lost."—Richard Sieburth, New York University

"It brings together, as few works do, literature with history, criticism of aesthetic production with a subtle political consciousness. It makes one understand the colonial implications of modernity as nothing else does. It is essential for the re-evaluation of anthropology and is a powerful addition to the crucial philosophical issue of Alterity."—Michael Taussig, New York University

"This book focuses on the literature of exoticism at the turn of the last century and how it foreshadows our own fin de siècle. Earlier writers of exoticism had turned away from the West and its modernity, rejecting the social changes caused by industrialization and displacing onto "savage" or "primitive" cultures their aspirations for political freedom. By the turn of the century, however, European nations had reduced vast areas of the globe to colonial status: this global exportation of Western cultural norms and economic systems had a critical effect on the literature of exoticism.

The author concentrates on four writers-Jules Verne, Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen, and Joseph Conrad-although he touches on a number of other writers, and even painters, like Paul Gauguin. Making an explicit link between turn-of-the-century exoticism and the present day, the book concludes with a critical assessment of Pier Paolo Pasolini's neo-exoticist attachment to a supposedly revolutionary Third World in his poetry and literary criticism. The book's critical stance is noteworthy, drawing its basic assumptions from pensiero debole, the "weak thought" of the contemporary Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo."

NF copy.

File under: Pier Paolo Pasolini Paul Gauguin Chris Bongie Jules Verne Pierre Loti Victor Segalen Joseph Conrad Pier Paolo Pasolini Gianni Vattimo Stanford University Press / Palo Alto Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Out-of-print / Rare Art Fiction / Poetry

The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern
by Mary Ann Caws

1981, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Princeton University Press / New York

$30.00 - In stock -

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First 1981 edition. Illustrated.

Ranging from the English metaphysical poets to our contemporaries, Mary Ann Caws presents a new way of thinking about poetry and its relation to other forms of art, such as painting and film. She studies the poetic text conceived of as a threshold, as a boundary or crossing where the reader faces another consciousness staring back from the depths of the text.

"What is intended," the author writes, "is a study both textural and thematic, of an outer object and an inner seen. The question is, how to look from the inside at what we perceive outwardly, how to include ourselves in a writing which we, after all, only read. My topic, then, is the inclusion of the 'I' within the text.. I mean the eye in the text, and the reflexivity between text and reading, as mirror and mirrored object, in an extensive interchange of function, action, and glance."

Discussed against a background of mannerism, baroque, rococo, Dada, surrealism, and symbolism, are figures such as Crashaw, Rilke, Brancusi, Mallarmé, Duchamp, Reverdy, Char, Malraux, Bonnefoy, and Jabès.

Mary Ann Caws is Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of The Presence of René Char, The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism, and The Inner Theatre of Recent French Poetry (all Princeton books).

Very Good copy.

File under: Mary Ann Caws Stéphane Mallarmé Princeton University Press / New York Dada Surrealism Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Art Fiction / Poetry Film / Video Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Black Sun : Depression and Melancholia
by Julia Kristeva

1989, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Columbia University Press / New York

$45.00 - Out of stock

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In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva addresses the subject of melancholia, examining this phenomenon in the context of art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion and culture, as well as psychoanalysis. She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression's dark heart.

In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. Black Sun takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than strictly a pathology to be treated.

Translated by Leon S. Roudiez

Julia Kristeva is a professor of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. She is the author of many highly respected books (most published in English by Columbia University Press) and a practicing psychoanalyst.

Good copy with some wear and (erasable) pencil marginalia from previous owner.

File under: Julia Kristeva Leon S. Roudiez Columbia University Press / New York Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Feminism Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art
by Julia Kristeva

1984 / 1987, English
Softcover, 306 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by Basil Blackwell / Oxford

$35.00 - In stock -

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First 1984 UK Basil Blackwell edition, 1987 print.

Desire in Language traces the path of an investigation, extending over a period of ten years, into the semiotics of literature and the arts. But the essays of Julia Kristeva in this volume, though they often deal with literature and art, do not amount to either "literary criticism" or "art criticism." Their concern, writes Kristeva, "remains intratheoretical: they are based on art and literature in order to subvert the very theoretical, philosophical, or semiological apparatus."

Probing beyond the discoveries of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Roman Jakobson and others, Julia Kristeva proposes and tests theories centered on the nature and development of the novel, and on what she has defined as a signifying practice in poetic language and pictural works. Desire in Language fully shows what Roman Jakobson has called Kristeva's "genuine gift of questioning generally adopted 'axioms,' and her contrary gift of releasing various 'damned questions' from their traditional question marks."

Average—Good copy. Heavy tanning to page block edges, general wear to covers with knocking to spine.

File under: Julia Kristeva Sigmund Freud Jacques Lacan Basil Blackwell / Oxford Psychoanalysis Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Art Philosophy

The Imaginary Signifier : Psychoanalysis and the Cinema
by Christian Metz

1982, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 328 pages, 22.5 x 14 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by MacMillan / London

$40.00 - Out of stock

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First 1982 HC edition.

Since the publications of his first essays in the early 1960s Christian Metz has produced a body of work that has established him as the most influential contemporary theorist of cinema and as a leading contributor to the development of semiotics generally.

Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier is in many ways a culmination of this work. In the first half of the book Metz explores a number of aspects of the psychological anchoring of cinema as a social institution, using Freudian psychoanalysis to examine the nature of cinematic spectatorship, the relations of cinema and voyeurism, fetishism and so on. In the second half, he shifts his approach a little to look at the operations of meaning in the film text, at the figures of image and sound concatenation. Thus he is led to consideration of metaphor and metonymy in film, this involving a detailed account of these two figures as they appear in psychoanalysis and linguistics - an account which brilliantly disentangles the various analogies that have been proposed between metaphor and metonymy, condensation and displacement, paradigm and syntagm, and makes an important contribution to our general understanding of these issues as well as to our particular understanding of cinema.

Throughout, the book is an argument with and recasting of initial semiotic thinking dependent on reference to fixed linguistics models; it offers something of a 'second semiotics', concerned now with the institution of modes of subjectivity, cinema as imaginary signifier, and with the movement and effects of meaning, film as text.

CHRISTIAN METZ teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His published works include two volumes of Essais sur la signification au cinema, Langage et cinema and Essais semiotiques. The Translators CELIA BRITTON and ANNWYL WILLIAMS are with the Department of French Studies at the University of Reading. BEN BREWSTER is at the University of Kent at Canterbury. ALFRED GUZZETTI is at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University.

G—VG copy, discolouration to dj spine edge, light age/wear.

File under: Christian Metz MacMillan / London Film / Video Theory / Essay Psychoanalysis Out-of-print / Rare Art Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Powers of Horror : An Essay on Abjection
by Julia Kristeva

1982, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Columbia University Press / New York

$80.00 - Out of stock

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1982 Columbia classics re-print of Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (French: Pouvoirs de l'horreur. Essai sur l'abjection), a 1980 book by Julia Kristeva. The work is an extensive treatise on the subject of abjection, in which Kristeva draws on the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to examine horror, marginalization, castration, the phallic signifier, the "I/Not I" dichotomy, the Oedipal complex, exile, and other concepts appropriate to feminist criticism and queer theory.

According to Kristeva, the abject marks a "primal order" that escapes signification in the symbolic order; the term is used to refer to the human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object, or between the self and the other.

Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse. Kristeva is one of the leading voices in contemporary French criticism, on a par with such names as Genette, Foucault, Greimas and others...—Paul de Man

1982 English translation by Leon S. Roudiez.

File under: Julia Kristeva Columbia University Press / New York Art Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Feminism Philosophy Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Psychoanalysis Crime / Violence

The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde
by Alyce Mahon

2020, English
Softcover, 296 pages, ‎25.5 x 17.8 cm
Published by Princeton University Press / New York

$80.00 - In stock -

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How the notorious author of The 120 Days of Sodom inspired the surrealists and other avant-garde artists, writers, and filmmakers.

The writings of the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) present a libertine philosophy of sexual excess and human suffering that refuses to make any concession to law, religion, or public decency. In this groundbreaking cultural history, Alyce Mahon traces how artists of the twentieth century turned to Sade to explore political, sexual, and psychological terror, adapting his imagery of the excessively sexual and terrorized body as a means of liberation from systems of power.

Mahon shows how avant-garde artists, writers, dramatists, and filmmakers drew on Sade’s “philosophy in the bedroom” to challenge oppressive regimes and their restrictive codes and conventions of gender and sexuality. She provides close analyses of early illustrated editions of Sade’s works and looks at drawings, paintings, and photographs by leading surrealists such as André Masson, Leonor Fini, and Man Ray. She explains how Sade’s ideas were reflected in the writings of Guillaume Apollinaire and the fiction of Anne Desclos, who wrote her erotic novel, Story of O, as a love letter to critic Jean Paulhan, an admirer of Sade. Mahon explores how Sade influenced the happenings of Jean-Jacques Lebel, the theater of Peter Brook, the cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the multimedia art of Paul Chan. She also discusses responses to Sade by feminist theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag, and Angela Carter.

Beautifully illustrated, The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde demonstrates that Sade inspired generations of artists to imagine new utopian visions of living, push the boundaries of the body and the body politic, and portray the unthinkable in their art.

Alyce Mahon is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and a Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, England. Born in Galway in the west of Ireland, she studied Modern English and History of Art at Trinity College Dublin and then took her doctoral degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London (1999), prior to being appointed at the University of Cambridge in 2000. She specialises in Surrealism, feminist art practice, and contemporary art and politics in her publications and work as curator. Recent exhibitions she has curated include the first major retrospective of American Surrealist 'Dorothea Tanning' for the Reina Sofia Madrid and Tate Modern London (2018-19) and 'SADE: Freedom or Evil' for the CCCB (2023).

File under: Hans Bellmer Leonor Fini Andre Masson André Masson Pier Paolo Pasolini Marquis de Sade The Marquis de Sade Alyce Mahon Angela Carter Simone de Beauvoir Susan Sontag Princeton University Press / New York Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Surrealism Fiction / Poetry Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Art Film / Video Philosophy Theory / Essay Eros

The Sadeian Woman
by Angela Carter

1992, English
Softcover, 154 pages, 19.5 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by Virago / London

$20.00 - In stock -

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1987 Virago paperback edition of Angela Carter's 1979 classic, The Sadeian Woman, with Clovis Trouille artwork.

'Sexuality is power' says the Marquis de Sade, philosophe and pornographer extraordinary. His Justine keeps to th rules laid down by men, her reward rape and humiliatios Juliette, her monstrous antithesis, viciously exploits he sexuality in a world where all tenderness is false, all beds are minefields.

But in Angela Carter, Sade has met his match. With wit and genius, she takes on these outrageous figments of his extreme imagination, and transforms them into the symbols of our time - the Hollywood sex goddesses, mothers and daughters, pornography, even the sacred shrines of sex and marriage. With the precision of a surgeon, Angela Carter delves into the viscera of our distorted sexuality and reveals a vision of love which admits neither of conqueror nor of conquered.

"The boldest of English women writers"—Lorna Sage

"The most stylish English prose writer of her generation"—John Mortimer

Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, 1940—1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"

Good copy with general wear and age.

File under: Marquis de Sade The Marquis de Sade Angela Carter Virago / London Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry Eros Feminism

Nietzsche and Metaphor
by Sarah Kofman

2000, English
Softcover, 286 pages, ‎21.6 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by The Atlone Press / London

$40.00 - In stock -

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First 2000 edition.

This long-overdue translation brings to the English-speaking world the work that set the tone for the post-structuralist reading of Nietzsche.

The issue of style, of why Nietzsche wrote as he did, is fundamental, on any level, to reading his texts. Some Nietzsche critics (in particular, those, such as Jean Granier, indebted to Heidegger's reading), in effect translated Nietzsche's terms back into those of a philosophy of ontology. This book (which includes an appendix specifically directed against the "Heideggerian" reading) shows how such an approach fails to interrogate the precise terms, such as "Nature" or "life", that Nietzsche used in place of "being," and to ask the meaning of this substitution.

The author gives not only a reading of Nietzsche's ideas, but a method for investigating his style. She shows in great detail how it influences both Nietzsche's ideas and the way in which they are to be understood. In so doing, she exemplifies how post-structuralist methods can be used to open up classical philosophical texts to new readings. She write conceptually in the knowledge that the concept has no greater value than metaphor and is itself a condensation of metaphors, rather than writing metaphorically as a way of denigrating the concept and proposing metaphor as the norm, and thus acknowledges the specificity of philosophy, its irreducibility to any other form of expression—even when this philosophy has nothing traditional about it any longer, even when it is, like Nietzsche's an unheard-of and insolent philosophy.

Sarah Kofman (1934—1994) was a French Jewish philosopher and professor who published many books on Freud, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Derrida, Blanchot, and more.

Near Fine copy, light wear/corner crease.

File under: Sarah Kofman Friedrich Nietzsche The Atlone Press / London Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

The Childhood of Art: An Interpretation of Freud's Aesthetics
by Sarah Kofman

1988, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 239 pages, 21.5 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Columbia University Press / New York

$50.00 - Out of stock

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First 1988 English hardcover edition.

When first published in 1970, L'enfance de l'art—Sarah Kofman's first book—established her reputation overnight. More than a decade and a half later, it is still widely regarded as her most important work. This edition now makes available to an English-reading general audience Freudian analyses of art and literature that are more often alluded to than read.

Very Good copy.

File under: Sarah Kofman Sigmund Freud Columbia University Press / New York Theory / Essay Philosophy Psychoanalysis Art Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Premises: Essays on Philosophy from Kant to Celan
by Werner Hamacher

1999, English
Softcover, 406 pages, 21.6 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Stanford University Press / Palo Alto

$25.00 - In stock -

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"Poetry does not impose, it exposes itself," wrote Paul Celan. Werner Hamacher's investigations into crucial texts of philosophical and literary modernity show that Celan's apothegm is also valid for the structure of understanding and for language in general. In Premises Hamacher demonstrates that the promise of a subject position is not only unavoidable—and thus operates as a structural imperative—but is also unattainable and therefore by necessity open to possibilities other than that defined as "position," to redefinitions and unexpected transformations of the merely theoretical act.

Proceeding along the lines of both philosophical argument and critical reading, Hamacher presents the fullest account of the vast disruption in the theories and ethics of positional and propositional acts—a disruption first exposed by Kant's analysis of the minimal requirements for linguistic and practical action. Focusing on the double trait of every premise—that it is promised but never attained—Hamacher analyzes nine decisive themes, topics, and texts of modernity: the hermeneutic circle in Schleiermacher and Heidegger, the structure of ethical commands in Kant, Nietzsche's genealogy of moral terms and his exploration of the aporias of singularity, the irony of reading in de Man, the parabasis of positing acts in Fichte and Schlegel, Kleist's disruption of narrative representation, the gesture of naming in Benjamin and Kafka, and the incisive caesura that Paul Celan inserts into temporal and linguistic reversals. There is no book that so fully brings the issues of both critical philosophy and critical literature into reach.

"Werner Hamacher's Premises is the heir and successor to the most important theoretical and critical work done in American departments of comparative literature from the 1960s through the 1980s. Yet, Premises is no more a work of literary scholarship than one of philosophical submission to philosophy. With the gesture that is genuinely called post-structural, which is the suspicion and suspension of every code, the book's act of freedom is freedom to read and write language tout court."—Timothy Bahti, University of Michigan

"Hamacher's project can be described as the retracing of the epistemological ground upon which the modern conception of the literary was erected. It is quite clear to me that there is nothing presently available to rival this book."—Wlad Godzich, University of Geneva

Werner Hamacher, who taught for many years at the Johns Hopkins University, is Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. He is the author of pleroma—Reading in Hegel (Stanford, 1998).

File under: Werner Hamacher Stanford University Press / Palo Alto Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry

The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche
by Philip Grundlehner

1987, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 24.5 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Oxford University Press / UK

$80.00 - In stock -

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Rare first 1987 hardcover edition.

Nietzsche has long been recognized and acclaimed as a thinker who transcends disciplinary categories. Although much has been written of him as a forerunner of existentialism, Freudian psychology, and modern linguistics, no modern study had been devoted to one of his lifelong preoccupations: his poetry. This book--the first to bring together the poems in English--restores them to their proper central position in the Nietzsche canon. Begun in early youth and composed and revised until the onset of his insanity in 1899, the poems reflect his own imperative that "the philosopher should recognize that which is necessary and the artist should create it."

In The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche Grundlehner examines 30 major poems and in so doing draws allusions and references to 220 juvenilia, songs, epigrams, dithyrambs, and verse fragments found throughout Nietzsche's writing. Arranged chronologically according to the various stages of Nietzsche's life and philosophical development, these not only bear testimony to the many changes in his environment and thinking, but from a rich background to his prose writings.

Excerpt:
"Toward New Seas" (1882)

Toward that place--is my will. And I trust
Henceforth myself and my grip.
Open lies the sea, my
Genose ship heads into the blue.

Everything is shining new and newer for me.

Noon sleeps upon space and time--:
Only your eye--monstrously,
Stare at me, Infinity!

VG copy in Good dust jacket with closed tear and wear to spine ends/extremities.

File under: Friedrich Nietzsche Philip Grundlehner Oxford University Press / UK Philosophy Fiction / Poetry Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Prosthesis
by David Wills

1995, English
Softcover, 370 pages, 15.6 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Stanford University Press / Palo Alto

$65.00 - In stock -

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An examination of the presumed opposition between the natural human body and artificial inanimate objects.

"Many of you, many of us know [David Wills's] work and, like me, have admired it for a long time. It is work that I not only admire, but to which I owe a great deal. . . . [Prosthesis] is in my estimation a great book, a magnificent book."—Jacques Derrida

Prosthesis is a landmark work in posthuman thought that analyzes and explores the human body as a technology, seamlessly integrated (both physically and psychologically) with prosthetics. Here David Wills lays the groundwork for ideas he develops in two of his other books, Dorsality, exploring how technology functions behind or before the human, and Inanimation, giving perspective on what it means to be “alive.”

In Prosthesis, Wills promotes the idea that the human body is open to supplementation by artificial addenda that operate both internally or externally and engage it in an unceasing arbitration with the environment. Questioning the opposition between animate and inanimate along with the logic of the automatic prioritization of living flesh, Prosthesis undertakes these assumptions by studying thematics of artificiality through the writings of Freud, Derrida, William Gibson, Peter Greenaway, and others. In the twenty-five years since its first publication, Prosthesis has been a point of reference in the field of disability studies. It has also been recognized for its “prosthetic” writing, consisting of academic and autobiographical voices and styles that are artificially attached to one another.

Very Good—Near Fine copy.

File under: David Wills Stanford University Press / Palo Alto Theory / Essay Health Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Oedipus, Philosopher Jean-Joseph Goux Translated by Catherine Porter
by Jean-Joseph Goux

1994, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Stanford University Press / Palo Alto

$20.00 - In stock -

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If the logic of the Oedipus myth were subjected to rigorous and thoroughgoing analysis with the tools of anthropology, comparative mythology, and narratology, might it invalidate the approach to the 'Oedipus complex' that Freud derived from his psychoanalytic experience? This book answers 'yes', arguing that instead of the Oedipus complex explaining the myth, the Oedipus myth explains the complex. The author argues that the Oedipus myth is an historical anomaly, a myth of failed royal investiture or of avoided masculine initiation. Does this mean that we must return to the wisdom of tradition and strike out twenty-five centuries of Oedipal history? The author knows very well that such a solution would be fantasy, and he concludes by speculating on how his analysis might contribute to a vision that has eluded Freudian psychoanalysis: how to surpass the Oedipus complex, with all the ethical consequences this would entail.

Near Fine, light wear.

File under: Jean-Joseph Goux Stanford University Press / Palo Alto Philosophy Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Psychoanalysis Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism

Art & Text 29
June—August 1988

1988, English
Softcover, 110 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good

$30.00 - Out of stock

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Art & Text 29
June—August 1988
Edited by Paul Foss

Contents:
Julie Brown-Rrap and Lesley Stern "Stepping In"
Edward Colless "Love's Limbo: Paintings Of Vivienne Shark Lewitt"
Nicholas Zurbrugg "Baudrillard's Amérique, and the "Abyss Of Modernity""
Martin Thomas "Making This State Grate: The Pretensions Of Darling Harbour"
Rainer Borgemeister "Anne Zalhalka: Resemblance"
Marcia Langton "Eric Michaels On Aboriginal Media"
D.P. Cazaly "Sigi Gabrie: Tasmanian Games"
John Neylon "That Rare Bird: The 1988 Adelaide Festival Visual Arts Program"
Jim Moss and Linda Marie Walker "Victor Burgin In Residence"
Michele Helmrich "Interface/Brisbane"
Urszula Szulakowska "Luke Roberts: Pope Alice To Frida Kahlo"
Jill Carrick "Judy Chicago's Dinner Party"
Adrian Martin "Melbourne/Nostalgia"
Sylvia Kleinert "Black Canberra"
Julie Ewington "Two Poles: The Ramingining Community Memorial and Hermann Nitsch"
Nicholas Baume "Australian Biennale 1988: Just Not Cricket!"
Robert Nery "Matthys Gerber, Or Doing As The Romans Do"

Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.

Very Good copy.

File under: Juan Davila Vivienne Shark LeWitt Victor Burgin Anne Zalhalka Julie Brown-Rrap Sigi Gabrie Frida Kahlo Judy Chicago Hermann Nitsch Matthys Gerber Paul Foss Edward Colless Ted Colless Nicholas Zurbrugg Lesley Stern Adrian Martin Rainer Borgemeister Marcia Langton John Neylon Sylvia Kleinert Jill Carrick Urszula Szulakowska Jim Moss Linda Marie Walker Nicholas Baume Julie Ewington Robert Nery Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Philosophy Painting Australian Art Australian Photography Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video Art

Artaud — Terminal Curses: The Notebooks 1945—48
by Stephen Barber

2008, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
Published by Solar Books / US

$45.00 - In stock -

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The work of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) remains a constant source of seminal inspiration, astonishment and provocation across contemporary visual art, film, performance, choreography, digital media, and critical theory, throughout the entire world.

In Artaud: Terminal Curses, Stephen Barber explores the newly-revealed set of 406 notebooks which Artaud used in the final years of his life in Paris, after his release from a decade of asylum-incarceration, to carry through his projects for corporeal transformation and social refusal. Artaud’s notebooks are designed as an autonomous work in their own right, through which he distils his preeminent preoccupations: the envisioning of a new, organ-less human anatomy (crucial for Deleuze and Guattari’s theoretical work), his conception of the time and space of gesture, his raw fury against society and all of its manifestions, his visualization of a ruined and supplanted natural and urban world, his intensive confrontation between text and image, and his reflections on the fluctuationg parameters of life and death. Those preoccupations retrospectively illuminate Artaud’s earlier Surrealist work and theories of film and performance.

With 24 pages of illustrations, this eye-opening and original book will be of major significance for all readers interested in the extreme zones of art, literature and media, as well as providing critical new revelations for those engaged with Artaud’s work.

File under: Antonin Artaud Stephen Barber Antonin Artaud Solar Books / US Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Surrealism Art Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

Mysticism
by Simon Critchley

2024, English
Softcover, 336 pages, 21.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by The New York Review of Books / New York

$38.00 - Out of stock

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A probing, inspiring exploration of mysticism not as religious practice but as a mode of experience and way of life by one of the most provocative philosophical thinkers of our time.

Why mysticism? It has been called “experience in its most intense form,” and in his new book the philosopher Simon Critchley poses a simple question to the reader: Wouldn’t you like to taste this intensity? Wouldn’t you like to be lifted up and out of yourself into a sheer feeling of aliveness, both your life and those of the creatures that surround you? If so, it might be well worthwhile trying to learn what is meant by mysticism and how it can shift, elevate, and deepen the sense of our lives.

Mysticism is not primarily a theoretical issue. It's not a question of religious belief but of felt experience and daily practice. A rough and ready definition of mysticism is that it is a way of systematically freeing yourself of your standard habits, your usual fancies and imaginings so as to see what is there and stand with what is there ecstatically. Mysticism is the practical possibility of the achievement of a fluid openness between thought and existence.

This is a book about trying to get outside oneself, to lose oneself, while knowing that the self is not something that can ever be fully lost. It is also a book about Julian of Norwich, Anne Carson, Annie Dillard, T.S. Eliot, and Nick Cave. It shows how listening to music can be secular worship. It is a book full of learning, puzzlement, pleasure, and wonder. It opens the door to mysticism not as something unworldly and unimaginable, but as a way of life.

"Simon Critchley is the most powerful and provocative philosopher now writing about the complex relations of ethical subjectivity and reinvigorated democracy."—Cornel West

"Simon Critchley’s work manages the difficult task of drawing both accessibility and depth from his vast range of references."—Daniel Fraser, The Quietus

"Erudite and impassioned, Critchley’s intimate examination of mysticism speaks to a yearning for personal transformation and nothing less than enchantment. A stirring, lyrical meditation on transfiguration."—Kirkus Reviews

"Critchley is what one might call a 'working-class philosopher,' by which I mean he sees philosophy as a proletarian concern rather than an elite activity to be practiced in ivory towers. He approaches every subject — be it suicide or soccer — with the same intellectual rigor. The writing is not only deep and philosophical, but approachable and conversational."—Tyler Malone, Los Angeles Times

"Critchley is generous without being platitudinous, rigorous but not overbearing." —Houman Barekat, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“A study of mysticism—defined as an experience, rather than religious practice—by the great British philosopher Critchley, who mines music, poetry, and literature along the way.” —Sophia M. Stewart, The Millions

"Mysticism is a lucid, genial guide to a body of writing that describes states of being, and intuitions, that belong and don’t belong to the tradition in which its author finds himself." — Brian Dillon, 4Columns

“For readers looking to become one with the divine, philosopher Simon Critchley points to lessons from renowned religious mystics in Mysticism (New York Review Books, Oct.). In this book, God is optional, and one can find the extraordinary in the ordinary aspects of life.” – Cathy Lynn Grossman, Publishers Weekly

Simon Critchley has written over twenty books, including works of philosophy and books on Greek tragedy, dead philosophers, David Bowie, football, suicide, and many other subjects. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation.

File under: Simon Critchley The New York Review of Books / New York Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Art Occult / Esoterica

So Beautiful and Elastic
by Gary J. Shipley

2023, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia

$26.00 - In stock -

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"Gary J. Shipley's So Beautiful and Elastic entwines elegant prose, blistering suspense, and art criticism, all shot through with a dark secret. Exploring creators as diverse as René Magritte, Clarice Lispector, David Lynch, Dennis Cooper, Bruno Dumont, and Gary Indiana, Shipley claims his spot as a singular disciple of this genealogy of experimental art. Ann's voice will stay with you long after you exit her mind's haunted house. You won't even realize its cursed magic until it has already swallowed you whole."—Claire Donato, author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts

"Recalling Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women and Hadean in its academic waste, this miserabilist's trance of "fed-on thinas" dons a destructive getup. Cogitating on the "ignominy of actually having to exist." toxicity is king and identity gets tricked-up, looted from philosophy, film, art, plus porn. The metamuck of the erudite sex worker. The punk muck of the abused stray. The gothic muck of the terrible secret from the terrible past. Shipley's anti-heroine thinks, thinks, thinks her way into and outta existence. So Beautiful and Elastic is a visceral and psychological portrait of disguise. If Wuornos were on a spree with Cioran; if their stops were mapped by Magritte; if the map was an appointment for Die Familie Schneider."—Kim Gek Lin Short, author of China Cowboy

"This brutal book is one of the best-worst nightmares l've ever had—as if Kathy Acker had written a movie novelization of a grimy true crime documentary and then studded it with exactly the kind of art-historical and countercultural references I love. Or as if Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous had an evil twin."—Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence

File under: Gary J. Shipley Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Fiction / Poetry Film / Video Art Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! : A Paul Scheerbart Reader
by Paul Scheerbart

2014, English
Hardcover, 320 pages 25 x 18 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$65.00 $50.00 - In stock -

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German writer, critic, and theorist Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) died nearly a century ago, but his influence is still being felt today. Considered by some a mad eccentric and by others a visionary political thinker in his own time, he is now experiencing a revival thanks to a new generation of scholars who are rightfully situating him in the modernist pantheon.

Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is the first collection of Scheerbart’s multifarious writings to be published in English. In addition to a selection of his fantastical short stories, it includes the influential architectural manifesto Glass Architecture and his literary tour-de-force Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention. The latter, written in the guise of a scientific work (complete with technical diagrams), was taken as such when first published but in reality is a fiction—albeit one with an important message. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is richly illustrated with period material, much of it never before reproduced, including a selection of artwork by Paul Scheerbart himself. Accompanying this original material is a selection of essays by scholars, novelists, and filmmakers commissioned for this publication to illuminate Scheerbart’s importance, then and now, in the worlds of art, architecture, and culture.

Coedited by artist Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, with new artwork created for this publication by McElheny, Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is a long-overdue monument to a modern master

File under: Paul Scheerbart Paul Scheerbart University of Chicago Press / Chicago Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Architecture / Interior Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Drawing Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction SALE

BLOCK 14
AUTUMN 1988

1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 29 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Middlesex Polytechnic / UK

$75.00 - Out of stock

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Block magazine was founded in 1979 by a small group of lecturers at Middlesex Polytechnic and ran for eleven years. Block was a hugely influential journal in the developing fields of Visual and Cultural Studies. Edited by Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Melinda Mash, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner, Block “attempted to address the problem of the social, economic and ideological dimensions of the arts in society, and offered a challenge to a conventional understanding of art history.” Block featured important conceptual artists and contemporary cultural theorists including Terry Atkinson, Lucy Lippard, Mary Kelly, Art & Language, Allen Jones, John Berger, Susan Hiller, Martha Rosler, Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Conrad Atkinson, Terry Smith, amongst others. Despite the small scale of its operation, the magazine had a wide distribution in art colleges and was avidly read by lecturers looking for ways to incorporate new theoretical, often Marxist, anarchist, feminist, situationist, poststructuralist, perspectives into their teaching.

This issue features Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Stuart Hall, Guy Debord, Meaghan Morris, George Robertson, Phil Hayward, John Tagg, and many more.

Very Good copy, light wear/age.

File under: Paul Virilio Jean Baudrillard Stuart Hall Guy Debord Meaghan Morris George Robertson Phil Hayward John Tagg Middlesex Polytechnic / UK Periodicals Philosophy Art Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Psychoanalysis Sociology / Politics Out-of-print / Rare Situationism / Lettrism Feminism Anarchism Socialism / Communism / Capitalism

BLOCK 15
10th Anniversary Issue, SPRING 1989

1989, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 68 pages, 29 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Middlesex Polytechnic / UK

$65.00 - In stock -

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Block magazine was founded in 1979 by a small group of lecturers at Middlesex Polytechnic and ran for eleven years. Block was a hugely influential journal in the developing fields of Visual and Cultural Studies. Edited by Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Melinda Mash, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner, Block “attempted to address the problem of the social, economic and ideological dimensions of the arts in society, and offered a challenge to a conventional understanding of art history.” Block featured important conceptual artists and contemporary cultural theorists including Terry Atkinson, Lucy Lippard, Mary Kelly, Art & Language, Allen Jones, John Berger, Susan Hiller, Martha Rosler, Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Conrad Atkinson, Terry Smith, amongst others. Despite the small scale of its operation, the magazine had a wide distribution in art colleges and was avidly read by lecturers looking for ways to incorporate new theoretical, often Marxist, anarchist, feminist, situationist, poststructuralist, perspectives into their teaching.

This "Retrospective and Prospective" 10th anniversary issue features Patrick Wright, Dick Hebdige, Griselda Pollock, Judith Williamson, Jean Baudrillard, Adrian Rifkin, Jonathan Harris, Olivier Richon, Adorno, Barthes, Benjamin, and many more.

Very Good copy, light wear/age.

File under: Patrick Wright Dick Hebdige Griselda Pollock Judith Williamson Jean Baudrillard Adrian Rifkin Jonathan Harris Olivier Richon Theodor W. Adorno Roland Barthes Walter Benjamin Middlesex Polytechnic / UK Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Psychoanalysis Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Art Sociology / Politics

Steering The Craft
by Ursula K. Le Guin

2024, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by Silver Press / London

$35.00 - In stock -

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Revised and updated for the twenty-first century, 'Steering the Craft' is Ursula K. Le Guin’s carrier bag of the essentials of a writer’s craft, a generous gift from one of the great thinkers about how – and why – to write. An accessible and profound guide to the craft of writing and editing, in this handbook Le Guin lays out ten chapters that address the most fundamental components of narrative, from the sound of language to sentence construction to point of view. Drawing on the global canon, Le Guin offers her inimitably witty commentary and incisive dissection, developing into an exercise that the writer can do solo or in a group. No other writing guide offers such a comprehensive, experienced and kind approach to “steering the craft” as a writing crew.

File under: Ursula K. Le Guin Silver Press / London Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Fiction / Poetry