World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1982, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$70.00 - In stock -
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.
"Kristeva is one of the leading voices in contemporary French criticism, on a par with such names as Genette, Foucault, Greimas and others. ... [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. The sections on Celine, for example, are indispensable reading for those interested in this writer and place him within a context that is both illuminating and of general interest."—Paul de Man
1982 English translation by Leon S. Roudiez. Single spine crease, light knocking/creasing to baord extremities, otherwise VG throughout.
1989, English
Softcover, 213 pages, 20.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1989 City Lights English translation, long out-of-print.
Tears of Eros is the culmination of Georges Bataille's inquiries into the relationship between violence and the sacred. Taking up such figures as Giles de Rais, Erzebet Bathory, the Marquis de Sade, El Greco, Gustave Moreau, Andre Breton, Voodoo practitioners, and Chinese torture victims, Bataille reveals their common death. This essay, illustrated with artwork from every era, was developed out of ideas explored in Death and Sexuality and Prehistoric Lascaux or the Birth of Art . In it Bataille examines death—the "little death" that follows sexual climax, the proximate death in sadomasochistic practices, and death as part of religious ritual and sacrifice. "Bataille is one of the most important writers of the century."— Michel Foucault Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic he was founder of the College of Sociology. In 1959, Bataille began Tears of Eros , and it was completed in 1961, his final work. City Lights published two of his other Story of the Eye and The Impossible . Bataille died in 1962.
French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.
Very Good copy, light wear to extremities/corners.
1996, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 300,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
ACCA / Melbourne
$45.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Transgression And The Culture Industry — Critical Media: Perspectives On New Technologies, the book document of The Gordon Darling Foundation Seminars 1995, with guest convenors Denise Robinson and Julianne Pierce (VNS Matrix), presenting the papers from seminars held at the Australian Centre For Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 8 April—7 October 1995.
Contents:
"Introduction" – Denise Robinson, "Duchamp's Queer Signature" – Rex Butler, "Transgression And The Culture Industry (Australia/1995)" – Lesley Stern, "The Art Curator, Our Cultural Transponder" – Juan Davila, "Normalizing Transgression" – David M. Halperin, "Introduction" – Julianne Pierce, "The Indifference Engine – 1990s Culture And The Corporate Imagination" – David Cox, "Observations" – Linda Wallace, "The Amazing Mcscent™ Machine" – Bridget Mcgraw, "Rehearsal Of Memory" – Graham Harwood.
"This one day symposium is a response to the sliding formations of the concept of 'transgression', as it is appropriated, mobilised or mutated by our contemporary cultural institutions. The event comprised two elements. A two hour film screening of short films included a selection from 1964 by New York underground film maker, Kenneth Anger and a selection of recent contemporary films from Australia by Christopher Ryan and Leone Knight. A second element involved a presentation of papers published here by Rex Butler, Juan Davila, David Halperin and Lesley Stern. The papers were not intended to act as a commentary of the films or the films to reflect the papers, rather the co-existence of these elements were to function more like a folding of the languages of cinema and visual art: as one possible means of illuminating the effects of the historicisation of 'transgressive strategies in relation to the Culture Industry."—DENISE ROBINSON, Introduction
Good copy with sunned spine edge, crease to back cover corner.
2005, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$60.00 - In stock -
Scarce 2005 edition published by Creation Books.
The spectre of Gilles de Rais, satanist and child-killer, eclipses French history like a dark star. A fallen general, once the champion of Jeanne d'Arc, de Rais' riches and experimentations led him to the very gates of Hell.
With quotations, essays and fiction, as well as a complete chronology and register of people and places in de Rais' brief but cataclysmic existence, "Dark Star is a rich evocation of the satanic allure of the most intriguing figure in the annals of mass murder.
Features the writings of Georges Bataille, Blaise Cendrars, J-K Huysmans, Valentine Penrose, Angela Carter, Jean Genet, Marquis de Sade, André Breton, Arthur Rimbaud, Gustave Flaubert, Richard Thoma, James Havoc, Charles Perrault, and many others
"Gilles de Rais - one of the most glorious, sinister, enigmatie figures in all European history"—Henry Miller
Very Good copy with some age rippling to the cover laminate. Some foxing to block top.
2025, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 14.7 x 10.5 cm
Published by
Everyday Analysis / UK
$18.00 - In stock -
Patricia Gherovic takes as a model Jacques Lacan’s 1964 seminar in which he presented four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, repetition, the transference, and the drive.[i] In a similar manner, it reflects on some key concepts that underpin the author’s clinical work as a psychoanalyst with trans-identified analysands. It argues for the re-discovery of four terms that expand Lacan’s central insights and apply to the question of trans today.
The first one is that of realness and it develops Lacan’s notion of the Real as not identical with reality; realness is often used by trans persons to describe the authenticity of their gender performance for it is a supreme truth beyond any verification. The second concept is the concept of plasticity as developed by Catherine Malabou and applied to Schreber’s case discussed by Freud and Lacan. Plasticity leads to a conversation about beauty and its function in trans discourse. The third concept is that of the nothing articulated with a certain type of laughter, a nothing introduced by Democritus and discussed by Barbara Cassin, Alain Badiou and Madlen Dolar. Lacan famously identified the “nothing” as one of the objects of psychoanalysis. I push the analysis to the point where one can understand a wish to “not being” (as found in suicide) as leading to the goal of “being again.” The meden was deployed by Barbara Cassin in her book Lacan the Sophist, and in discussion with Alain Badiou. Finally, the last concept is that of the clinamen or turbulence in atomic philosophy (Lucretius) and in contemporary discourse; this turbulence throws new light on the role of accidents, and how accidents can turn into destiny (tuché). The classical concepts of the clinamen and turbulence have been explored systematically by Michel Serres. This turbulence echoes with Lacan’s notion of the sinthome as a symptom that does not need to be cured but leads to a re-creation of oneself that makes life livable.
Offering a new twist to philosophical references the author discussed in Transgender Psychoanalysis (2017). Taken together, these four clusters of concepts provide a foundation for Gherovici’s thinking about psychoanalysis. She rethinks Lacan’s notions of the Real, the nothing, the endless transformations of the body that pertain to plasticity, the clinamen, the death drive - all of which are shown to be key to her understanding of the trans experience as revealed in her clinical practice.
2024, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 14.7 x 10.5 cm
Published by
Everyday Analysis / UK
$18.00 - In stock -
In this new collected edition of his recent articles, Simon Critchley - one of the most important living philosophers - takes us through his reflections on death, questions of doubt and reason, the legacy of David Bowie, the nature of fear and empathy in a broken society and a critique of narrative identity - among other things. YOUR LIFE IS NOT A (FUCKING) STORY explores the contemporary world and its psychological impact on us, offering us a way to see our situation different and resist its tricks and contrivances.
Simon Critchley is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. His work engages in many areas: continental philosophy, philosophy and literature, psychoanalysis, ethics, and political theory, among others. He has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, football, suicide, Shakespeare, how philosophers die, and a novella. As co-editor of The Stone at the New York Times, Critchley showed that philosophy plays a vital role in the public realm.
1992, English
Hardcover, 262 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
State University of New York Press / New York
$10.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition, 1992.
This book asks how we may undertake to represent representation.
Stephen David Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the author of Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory-Second Edition; Metaphysical Aporia and Philosophical Heresy; Perspective in Whitehead's Metaphysics; Philosophical Mysteries; and A Theory of Art: Inexhaustibility by Contrast, all published by SUNY Press.
Reviews
"It's the ambitious question of how philosophical representation can proceed once it ceases to be naive regarding its representational means. Can philosophy recognize its own limits? (What is a 'limit' in this case?) It is Heidegger's question concerning the 'overcoming' of metaphysics. It is implicitly posed by Kant's 1st Critique: what is the status of the critique itself?"—Forrest Williams, University of Colorado, Boulder
"There is no book I know of that deals with such an extensive group of philosophers and themes. The author has addressed many of the most cogent issues in contemporary philosophy, allowed them to resonate in terms of each other, even provided an implicit landscape from which to organize them. There is a lot of original work here and some interpretation of recent essays that will prove extraordinarily helpful. I would point to his extraordinary treatment of Derrida's Geschlecht texts. The importance of these texts is well known and Ross' 'commentary' on them and his ability to situate Derrida's discussion in a chapter on embodiment is the best treatment of the subject I know of. I would also mention Ross' notion of 'sonorescence' which completely shifts the 'ground' of philosophy and is an original philosophical contribution. Finally, he has set up a dialogue between many of the key figures in philosophy, both contemporary and in the history.
"Ross shows that the issue is not an overcoming of metaphysics but a releasing of the excess within and beyond representational metaphysics. But his own work is itself a metaphysics. Each of the issues he addresses flow into the next issue so that his final discussion of physis and techne really returns and re-presents the origin of metaphysics." — Walter A. Brogan, Villanova University
VG copy.
1982/1992, Japanese
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
"Corpse" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, first published in 1982, then re-printed in 1992, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of death and the dead in the arts, literature, occultism, ancient sciences, philosophy, mythology, poetry, film, crime, and much more. Features John Duncan, Tetsumi Kudo, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Masahisa Fukase, Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Joe Potts (LAFMS), Takashi Ishii, Rudolf II — Holy Roman Emperor, Akinari Ueda, Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, Paul Celan, Alain Resnais, Gilyak Amagasaki, Shusaku Arakawa, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Shuji Terayama, Andy Warhol, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, Kyoko Endoh, Princess Yongtai, Salvador Dalí, Ono no Komachi, Kiyoshi Kasai, Caravaggio, Throbbing Gristle, Takizawa Bakin, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Manson Family, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wu Zetian, Genesis P-Orridge, Yusuke Nakahara, Ranpo Lagrange, Mitsusada Fukasaku, Nakai Hideo, Richard Wagner, and many more.
Very Good copy.
2000, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 20 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Twisted Spoon Press / Prague
$65.00 - In stock -
First hardcover English edition of The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch by Ladislav Klíma, published by Twisted Spoon in Prague, 2000. Long out-of-print. Translated from the Czech by Carleton Bulkin. Illustrated by Michal Vavrečka. Afterword by Josef Zumr.
Ladislav Klíma is considered to be one of the most important Czech philosophers of the 20th century, and arguably the greatest of the prewar era. His work has influenced artists of all stripes, most notably Bohumil Hrabal and the Plastic People of the Universe. His approach toward philosophy was similar to that of the sages of ancient India: i.e., one should not limit philosophy to speaking or writing about it, one should live it. In this way Klíma embarked on a lifelong pursuit of becoming “God,” which he equated with Absolute Will. Drawing his greatest inspiration from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, he developed his conception of will and radical subjectivism in numerous essays, aphorisms, tracts, prose works, and plays. Though he wrote many novels and stories, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch is the only full-length work of fiction Klima prepared for publication during his lifetime. In a series of journal entries, the book chronicles the descent into madness of Prince Sternenhoch, the German Empire's foremost aristocrat and favorite to the Kaiser. Having become the “lowliest worm” at the hands of his deceased wife Helga, the Queen of Hells, he eventually attains an ultimate state of bliss and salvation. Klíma explores here the paradoxical nature of pure spirituality with dark absurdist humor and comically grostesque, often obscene, scenes. This volume also includes Klima's notorious essay “My Autobiography.” Though Klíma's work has been translated into many languages, this is the first book of his to appear in English.
Carleton Bulkin, from the San Francisco area, received an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University. His translations include Hidden History by Otokar Brezina (Twisted Spoon Press, 1998) and A False Dawn by Ilona Lacková (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2000).
Josef Zumr, a member of the Philosophy Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, teaches philosophy at Palacky University in Olomouc. He has devoted much of his professional life to Klíma's work.
Michal Vavrečka was born in 1975 in Olomouc. He is a graduate of the School of Fine Arts in Prague and now teaches painting at the State Arts School in Český Krumlov.
"The non-conformist work of Ladislav Klíma has almost always shocked, has often incited scandal, but has hardly ever left us indifferent. It is not necessary to accept his view of the world, but it is possible to live through it and enjoy it in all of its ambiguity, just as one does in the theater."—Václav Havel
"Klíma's tale reads like a book that Edgar Allan Poe might have written if he'd read Nietzsche, but there are also moments of reverie that are pure Czech . . . Klíma's rambunctious mix of high and low style and holy and profane content has been stamped indelibly on the Czech literary tradition."—Washington City Paper
"A dark, diverting entertainment, certainly out of the ordinary ... [Klíma] was a decidedly odd bloke, a real character. But he was not a stupid man, and he could write. This volume is apparently the first book of Klíma's to appear in English. Certainly he is an author deserving wider recognition in the English-speaking world."—The Complete Review
"Given the power of Carleton Bulkin's excellent translation, I can only hope that Twisted Spoon or some other publisher sees fit to soon translate more of Klíma's works—fiction or philosophy . . . The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch runs with gale-force intensity and speed."—Tom Bowden, The Education Digest
ISBN 8086264106
224 pp.
14 x 20cm
hardcover
6 full-color illustrations
fiction • novel
cover by Pavel Růt
1982, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - In stock -
ART & TEXT 5
Autumn 1982
Edited by Paul Taylor
Contents:
"Self and Theatricality : Samuel Beckett and Vito Acconci" by Paul Taylor
"Beyond Beckett: Reckless Writing and the Concept of the Avant-Garde within Post-Modern Literature" by Nicholas Zurbrugg
"Dr. Spitzner’s Scrapbook" by Zerox Dreamflesh
"Literal Cloth: Elizabeth Paterson’s Masquerades" by Suzanne Spunner
"Musical Perception and Exploratory Music" by Warren Burt
"On Animism in Art" by Jenny Zimmer
"The 1979 Biennale ― ‘European Dialogue’" by Nick Waterlow
"Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese and Murray/Murundi by Bonita Ely" by Jill Graham
"On Photo-Discourse" by George Alexander
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.
Good - general wea, some rippling to bottom corner.
1984, Lithuanian / Russian / English / French / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 310 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vaga / Vilnius
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1984 edition of this wonderful, comprehensive monograph published by Leidykla Vaga in Vilnius on the work of fin de siècle composer, artist and writer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. Profusely illustrated with Čiurlionis' visionary musical landscape paintings, with accompanying texts by Antanas Gedminas, Jonas Kuzminskis and Pranas Gudynas in Lithuanian, Russian, English, French and German.
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875 – 1911) was a Lithuanian composer, painter and writer in Polish. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau, and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. He has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe. During his short life, he composed about 400 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings, as well as many literary works and poems. His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture. His pictures often have a philosophical background. The influence of music on painting is striking: Čiurlionis created several cycles of paintings, which he called "sonatas" and whose individual pictures he titled "allegro", "andante" and the like. The individual images are based on the character of the respective musical performance instructions: an Andante, for example, conveys a rather calm atmosphere. Some paintings even bear the title "Fuge". This synthesis of music and painting is unique in terms of art history.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1992, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 238 pages, 24.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1992 HC edition.
"Through his study of Bergsonism as a cultural phenomenon, Mark Antliff significantly enhances our understanding various art styles, articulating their social, political, and philosophical connotations and setting them coherently into a context. This book is particularly rewarding because it explores the full spectrum of interpretation and application of Bergson's theories. Many well-known artists emerge from this study making much more sense than before; and a number of interesting 'forgotten' artists come back to life in a pan-European cultural drama."—RICHARD SHIFF, University of Texas, Austin
At the turn of the century the philosophy of Henri Bergson captivated France, and Bergson's theories of intuition and élan vital influenced artistic and political notions of the supreme individual, the collective consciousness of a class or race, and the esprit of the nation itself. Here Mark Antliff demonstrates how various artists in prewar France positioned themselves and their art in this plurality of political discourse. By interrelating such movements as Futurism, Cubism, and Fauvism, he elucidates the pervasive impact of Bergson on modernism in Europe, especially in terms of theories of organic form.
Antliff defines the anarcho-individualism of Gino Severini as it relates to the anarcho-syndicalism of other Futurists, and contrasts both to the Puteaux Cubists, who embraced a leftist discourse of celtic nationalism. All these groups, including the "Rhythmists," an international group of Fauve painters, defined their Bergsonism in reaction to the campaign against Bergson launched by the royalist organization L'Action Française. Antliff shows that the organicism central to the Bergsonism of these leftist groups had a postwar legacy in fascist ideologies in France and Italy, and charts the transformation of an anticapitalist critique into the politics of reaction. Thus Antliff relates the Bergsonism of these movements to the larger political culture confronted by the Parisian avant-garde, exposing the volatile relation of art and culture to ideology in prewar France.
MARK ANTLIFF is Assistant Professor of Art History at The Johns Hopkins University.
Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket.
1996, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cambridge University Press / Cambridge
$25.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition.
The Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, is the most widely studied of all Descartes' writings. This authoritative translation by John Cottingham, taken from the much-acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of the Philosophical Writings of Descartes, is based upon the best available texts and presents Descartes' central metaphysical writings in clear, readable modern English. As well as the complete text of the Meditations, the reader will find a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies (which were originally published with the Meditations) containing Descartes' replies to his critics. These extracts, specially selected for the present volume, indicate the main philosophical difficulties which occurred to Descartes' contemporaries and show how Descartes developed and clarified his arguments in response.
This edition contains a new comprehensive introduction to Descartes' philosophy by John Cottingham and an introductory essay on the Meditations by Bernard Williams.
VG copy with light wear.
2001, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 22 x 13.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marion Boyars / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
'Bataille intellectualizes the erotic, as he eroticizes the intellect . . . reading him can be a disturbing kind of game'—The New York Times
'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and the writings of De Sade, Kafka, Blake, Genet, Michelet, Proust and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.
Translated by Alastair Hamilton.
'Bataille is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century'—Michel Foucault
VG copy.
2000, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 190 pages, 19.6 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$85.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of the first English translation of the essential work on Proust.
In a remarkable instance of literary and philosophical interpretation, the incomparable Gilles Deleuze reads Proust’s work as a narrative of an apprenticeship of a man of letters. Deleuze traces the network of signs laid by Proust (those of love, art, or worldliness) and moves toward an aesthetics that culminates in a meditation on the literary work as a sign-producing “machine”—an operation that reveals the superiority of “signs of art” in a world of signs.
"Deleuze conducts readers on a corollary search that leads to a new and deeper understanding of the network of signs laid down by Proust."—Translation Review
Translated by Richard Howard
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
1986 / 1992, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Nebraska Press / Lincoln
$25.00 - Out of stock
1992 print of 1986 Vison Books first English editon.
Maurice Blanchot has been praised on both sides of the Atlantic for his fiction and criticism. Paul de Man
hailed him as "one of the most important writers of this century"; Geoffrey Hartmann noted that "his influence on the present generation of famous writers ... cannot be overestimated"; the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas remarked that his writing is a "language of pure transcendence, without correlative."
Current history and literature are haunted by the disasters of our century —world wars, concentration camps, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust—and by disasters that came before and which may come yet. Indeed, disaster, Blanchot says, belongs to a past that never ceases to impend. How can we write or think about disaster when by its very nature it defies speech and compels silence — when, moreover, it consumes thought and rips books apart? We cannot; but writing, Blanchot says, is the patient response of this helplessness. He reflects upon writing that attempts to abide in the disaster's infinite threat, attempts even to dwell in its fellow-ship, without thereby abandoning the other task, which is describe, explain, prevent, redeem, or reduce the dread and pain.
The Writing of the Disaster was first published in French in 1980. The meditations in it are not a departure in Blanchot's work, but rather a continuation of the reflection on literature that he began at least thirty years before in The Space of Literature.
Translator Ann Smock is an associate professor of French at the University of California at Berkeley.
VG/Near Fine copy.
1996, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Routledge / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1996 edition.
"The essays in this collection provide a valuable introduction to the central questions of Blanchot's writing."—Allan Stoekl, Pennsylvania State University
Maurice Blanchot is one of the key figures of postwar European thought; he has radically transformed our understanding of the relations between philosophy and literature. His strikingly original fiction and his penetrating critical studies of other writers, such as Kafka, Beckett and Mallarmé, have long been recognized as influential. His oeuvre as a whole, with its connections to the thought of Hegel and Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Bataille and Foucault, places him at the forefront of contemporary debates on philosophical and literary culture.
This is the first collection of critical essays on the work of Blanchot in English. It brings together some of the most original commentators on Blanchot from the USA, Great Britain and France; it also includes a letter from Blanchot, published here for the first time, in which he addresses the contentious issie of his politics in the 1930s.
An ideal introduction to Blanchot's life, thought, politics and fiction, this collection will make fascinating reading for students of philosophy, literature and French studies.
Contributors: Simon Critchley, Paul Davies, Christopher Fynsk, Rodolphe Gasché, Leslie Hill, Michael Holland, Roger Laporte, lan Maclachlan, Jeffrey Mehlman, Michael Newman, Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, Gillian Rose, Ann Smock.
The Editor: Carolyn Bailey Gill teaches critical theory at London University. She is the editor of Bataille: Writing the Sacred (Routledge, 1995).
Good copy with heavy rubbing wear to covers, spine creases.
1986, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Manchester University Press / Manchester
$40.00 - In stock -
Translation by Harvey Mendelsohn
Foreword by Michael Hays
Peter Szondi was professor of literature at the Free University of West Berlin, and then briefly, before his death in 1971, at the University of Zurich. "Reading Peter Szondi is a direct encounter with a literary-philosophic sensibility of great distinction," says George Steiner. "It was Szondi's rare accomplishment to combine, to bridge the gap between, scholarly commentaries of a traditional kind and the new practice of linguistic and semiotic theory." This selection of Szondi's essays, written from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, can thus be seen as a bridge between German hermeneutics and French poststructuralist thought; they suggest the scope of his interests and the nature of his methodological procedures and assumptions.
Szondi would have described his practice as hermeneutic, but he used the hermeneutic method against the tradition itself. In Szondi's readings, the text becomes the source of questions about its context and, ultimately, about the intersection of language, text, and history. His concern, in the title essay and throughout the book, is to make textual knowledge "perpetually renewed understanding." Several of the essays focus on German romanticism and aesthetics—the work of Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel, Schlegel, and Schleiermacher—and there are individual studies on Diderot, Benjamin, and Celan. Michael Hays's foreword situates Szondi's practice in the historical and ideological context of postwar European and American criticism.
Harvey Mendelsohn is the principal translator of the French and German entries in the sixteen-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
Michael Hays is associate professor of theater studies at Cornell University and author of The Public and Performance: Essays in the History of the French and German Theatre, 1871-1900.
VG copy, first edition.
1985, English
Softcover, 385 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Oxford University Press / New York
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1985 Oxford edition.
"Elaine Scarry has written an extraordinary book: large-spirited, heroically truthful. A necessary book."—Susan Sontag
"No one, with the exception of Freud, more persistently brings one back to the reality of the body.... a richly original, provocative book which makes one reconsider torture, war, and creativity from a new perspective."—Anthony Storr, Washington Post Book World
"Brilliant, ambitious and controversial... an all-encompassing discourse on creativity, imagination and the distribution of power."—Gwen Yourgrau, Los Angeles Times Book Review
The Body in Pain is a profoundly original meditation on the vulnerability of the human body and the literary, political, philosophical, medical, and religious vocabularies used to describe it. Elaine Scarry bases her analysis on a wide array of sources, including literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, and the writings of such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, and Kissinger. The author begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility, noting not only the difficulty of describing pain, but its ability to destroy a sufferer's language. She then analyzes the political consequences of deliberately inflicted pain, particularly in cases of war and torture, showing how regimes "unmake" an individual's world in their exercise of power. From the actions that "unmake" the world Scarry turns to a discussion of actions that "make" the world-the acts of creativity that produce language and cultural artifacts.
Elaine Scarry is William T. Fitts, Jr., Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
"In its breadth and humaneness of vision, in the density and richness of its prose, above all in the compelling nature of its argument, this is indeed an extraordinary book."—Susan Rubin Suleiman, The New York Times Book Review
"A brilliant and difficult book... Scarry's compassionate linguistics docu- ments how [the] bridge between torturer and victim is cut."—Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic
Very Good copy, tanning to pages, light marking to block edges.
2007, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$30.00 - In stock -
First 2007 Norton edition, translated by Russell Grigg.
Revolutionary and innovative, Jacques Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, the law, and enjoyment.
This new translation of Lacan's yearlong deliberation on psychoanalysis and contemporary social order offers welcome, readable access to the brilliant author's seminal thinking. These deliberations took place at the time of the foundation of the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris (Vincennes), an event that raised for Lacan the question of the place that psychoanalytic knowledge might occupy in the university. The aspirations of a radical student movement were also an immediate cause for Lacan's reflection. Topics include Freud, Marx and Hegel, patterns of social and sexual behavior, and the nature and function of science and knowledge.
Russell Grigg practices psychoanalysis and teaches philosophy and psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Near Fine copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
1999 Norton PB edition.
Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller
Translated with Notes by Bruce Fink
In this volume Jacques Lacan takes us on a startling psycholinguistic exploration of the bounds of love and knowledge. He begins the twentieth year of his famous Seminar by weighing theories of the relationship between the desire for love and the attainment of knowledge from such influential and diverse thinkers as Aristotle, Marx, and Freud. From here he leads us through mathematics, philosophy, religion, and, naturally, psychoanalysis into an entirely new and unexpected way of interpreting the two most fundamental human drives. Anticipated by English-speaking readers for more than twenty years, this annotated translation presents Lacan's most sophisticated work on love, desire, and jouissance.
Jacques Lacan is known as one of the most influential psychoanalytic thinkers of modern times.
Bruce Fink, the translator of this seminar, is professor of psychology at Duquesne University.
Very Good copy.
1988, English
Softcover, 335 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verso / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
In the most comprehensive study of Jacques Lacan yet to be published in English, David Macey challenges many of the assumptions that have come to surround Lacan's work. He shows that key elements of Lacanian thought relate not to structuralism, as is often claimed, but to surrealism, Bataille and the early French phenomenologists. The famous "return to Freud" is shown to mask Lacan's adherence to a psychiatric tradition and to trends within French psychoanalysis which were opposed by Freud himself.
A detailed and challenging reading of work by Lacan and his associates on femininity reveals its reliance upon a virulently sexist discourse and upon an iconography derived from surrealism. The view that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a positive contribution to make to feminism and to theories of gender and sexual difference is contested. As well as providing a new and provocative reading of Lacan's work, Lacan in Contexts is an important contribution to psychoanalytic history and to the history of French intellectual life.
Very Good copy of the first 1988 edition.
1991, English
Softcover, 353 pages, 24.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1991 Norton edition.
A complete translation of the seminar that Jacques Lacan gave in the course of a year's teaching within the training programme of the Société Française de Psychanalyse. The French text was prepared by Jacques-Alain Miller in consultation with Jacques Lacan, from the transcriptions of the seminar. This Seminar, together with Seminar II, which was published simultaneously, was worked on by both translators so as to produce uniformity in both terminology and style. Considerable attention was paid to the practices of previous translators of Lacan, in particular Anthony Wilden, Alan Sheridan, Stuart Schneiderman and Jacqueline Rose, in the hope that some consistency in the English rendition of Lacan can be achieved.
Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller
Translated with notes by Jacques Forrester
Good copy. Crease to cover otherwise VG.
1991, English
Softcover, 353 pages, 24.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1991 Norton edition.
A complete translation of the seminar that Jacques Lacan gave in the course of a year's teaching within the training programme of the Société Française de Psychanalyse. The French text was prepared by Jacques-Alain Miller in consultation with Jacques Lacan, from the transcriptions of the seminar. This Seminar, together with Seminar I, which was published simultaneously, was worked on by both translators so as to produce uniformity in both terminology and style. Considerable attention was paid to the practices of previous translators of Lacan, in particular Anthony Wilden, Alan Sheridan, Stuart Schneiderman and Jacqueline Rose, in the hope that some consistency in the English rendition of Lacan can be achieved.
Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller
Translated by Sylvana Tomaselli.
Very Good copy.